Last week, we published an attempt to rank the goaltending outlook for all 32 NHL teams. It was a three-person effort, with Jesse Granger handling the scouting duties for each team’s current situation, Scott Wheeler grading the prospect pipelines and Sean McIndoe looking at contracts and cap situations. By averaging out and weighting the scores, we wound up with a countdown from the worst outlook to the very best.
If you missed the series, you can find it here:
And then, in a stunning development that nobody could have foreseen, some of you didn’t agree with each and every ranking.
That was fine. It was even a big part of the point. But the twist here is that we didn’t necessarily agree with the overall rankings either. After all, all three of us had our own views, and the final list had come together by averaging them out. That meant that we might not necessarily buy the exact order either.
Scott is enjoying some well-earned vacation this week, but Jesse and Sean figured it would be worthwhile to take one last look at the project, and have our say on what we got right, what we think we maybe didn’t and any final words we can offer.
A peek behind the curtain: We all submitted our rankings for our own category separately, and only combined them into a final list as the last step. That means none of us knew how it would turn out until we saw that final ranking. Given that, it’s inevitable that there would be some rankings we were surprised by, or even disagreed with.
Let’s start on the positive side: Which teams did you personally feel deserved a better ranking than they ultimately received?
McIndoe: The ones that stand out for me are teams such as the New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning, who appear to have very good goaltending right now and yet didn’t rank all that highly, largely because they had low scores in terms of prospects and cap situation.
I don’t think we got any of those individual rankings wrong, per se, but I do think that maybe the weighting that I came up with could have used some adjustment. The original plan was to weigh all three categories (current, future, cap) equally, but it quickly became apparent that that would place too much importance on the cap situation, which is very important but, as we’ve seen in recent years, can be worked around. I eventually settled on the 100/75/50 weighting that we went with, and at some point you have to just pick something and stick with it, because otherwise you’re putting your thumb on the scale to get the result you want. But I get why a fan of the Rangers or Lightning would look at the overall rankings and say, “Aren’t there teams ranked ahead of us who’d rather have what we have right now and worry about the future down the road?”
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Granger: I’m in complete agreement with Sean here, and I’d throw the Winnipeg Jets into the same bucket. If there is a blind spot in these rankings, it’s teams with a currently elite goalie who projects to be so for the foreseeable future. Igor Shesterkin is 28, Andrei Vasilevskiy just turned 30 and even Connor Hellebuyck is only 31. They’re not the youngest, but they’re all known commodities (at a position where projecting is at its most difficult) and aren’t heading for a steep age cliff for quite a while. In my “current” rankings I had the Rangers No. 1, Lightning No. 2 and Jets No. 4, so I expect them to be excellent for the next three years.
Another team that I thought deserved a better ranking (but is much more risky than the three mentioned above) is the New York Islanders. Ilya Sorokin has received Vezina Trophy votes in all three of his full NHL seasons to this point, and is still only 28. We are fresh off him losing the net in the playoffs, which shouldn’t be completely discarded, but he projects as a top goalie for the foreseeable future so the 22nd ranking is a bit tough.
Now for the other end of the spectrum. Which teams did you think our final ranking was too generous to?
McIndoe: I won’t say that I disagree with the rankings, because I have to trust that Jesse and Scott know more than I do. But I’ll admit that I was shocked to see how high the Buffalo Sabres, Montreal Canadiens and Calgary Flames ended up.
Again, some of that can be chalked up to the weighting maybe being not quite right, with too much emphasis on the future over the present. But all three teams scored decently in terms of right now, with Buffalo and Montreal both being in the top half of the league in the category. That surprised me, especially the Habs given that they’re coming off a season in which they were 28th in goals allowed.
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Granger: I went out on a bit of a limb putting Buffalo and Montreal as highly as I did for the current rankings, but I thought Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Sam Montembeault had two of the most underrated seasons in the NHL last year, largely overshadowed by the poor play in front of them. Luukkonen finished sixth with 22.46 goals saved above expected (right between Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark), but didn’t receive proper recognition. Montembeault was 10th in the league with 18.39 GSAx, and both are on the way up in their career arcs in my opinion. Betting on them to continue those trajectories is a risk, for sure, but I like where both are heading and am particularly bullish on Luukkonen’s immediate future.
The other team that surprised me by how high they were ranked was Calgary. I love the prospects of Dustin Wolf, but there are legitimate concerns (which is part of the reason he wasn’t drafted until the seventh round in 2019) and he has yet to show he has what it takes on the big stage. If he pans out, the Flames’ ranking will be justified, but with the end of the Markstrom era, there’s also a world in which Calgary’s goaltending is sub-par moving forward.
The ranking generated plenty of feedback from readers — over 1,000 comments and counting across the posts and social media. As you’d expect, a lot of that was from fan bases defending their own teams, arguing for a more generous ranking.
As far as the rankings you were responsible for, was there any feedback from specific fan bases that led you toward maybe changing your mind on individual teams or players? Anyone make any decent points?
Granger: There were quite a few Penguins fans unhappy with their placement at No. 30 (and current ranking of 27th) and I totally get it. I will concede that the Penguins have better goaltending than more than five teams in the NHL. I even wrote in that explanation that the floor for Pittsburgh’s goaltending is higher than several teams ranked above them. My reasoning for putting the Penguins as low as I did was simply chasing upside. When I ranked the teams for the next three years, I often asked myself: “Do they have a goalie I see being a difference-maker during that time frame?”
And while Pittsburgh has two steady pros in Tristan Jarry and Alex Nedeljkovic, I don’t see the Penguins winning a ton of games, or going on any long playoff runs specifically because of them. I ranked other teams above them based on that, but I will concede to the Penguins nation that their current rank of No. 27 may have been a bit harsh.
McIndoe: A lot of the debate was around the mushy middle, with fans getting upset that their favorite team wasn’t ranked ahead of a rival who was two spots later. As I pointed out in the ranking, that section had a lot of teams that were separated by very slim margins, so sure, if you think your team was a few spots off of where they should be, you might be right — that was probably one point in one section that made the difference.
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The one bit of pushback that I think did have some solid merit was that I had the Vancouver Canucks ranked too favorably for the cap situation. I really struggled with the top of the cap rankings, since we’re so used to viewing that through a negative lens that it’s hard to give anyone credit for managing it well. I still think the Canucks are arguably paying the smallest cap charge for elite goaltending in the league but, yeah, I might have been too high on them given that they’re only a year away from needing to start down the extension path with Thatcher Demko. I’d probably move them down a few spots if I had a do-over.
The flip side of that last question: Were there any stances you took in the posts that you’ve had pushback on where you still feel strongly that you’re right and they’re wrong?
Granger: I saw quite a bit of pushback on the Nashville Predators at the top overall spot, with some questioning Jusse Saros’ place amongst the other elite goalies, and I couldn’t disagree more. This past season was a “down” year by Saros’ lofty standards, but make no mistake, he’s one of the best goaltenders on the planet. Over the last four years, he’s started the second-most games in the league and ranks fourth in GSAx despite playing behind a team that hasn’t always given him the most help.
Saros is undersized, and that could be the biggest driving force behind the pessimism surrounding him, but his edgework and athleticism are otherworldly, and with the aggressive moves GM Barry Trotz made this summer, he could finally be playing behind a legitimate contender.
McIndoe: I could have included the Jets in the first section, as a team that has very good goaltending right now but didn’t rank as well as you might expect because of how the weighting worked. But while I’d love for my favorite team to have Hellebuyck starting its next big game, I stand by my pessimism over how that contract will age. Remember, it’s only kicking in this year, meaning it runs all the way through 2031, at which point Hellebuyck will have played a full season at 37 years old. The only goalies that age who were anything close to full-time starters this year were Cam Talbot and Marc-Andre Fleury, so the end of that contract could be bleak.
Of course, it’s also possible that Hellebuyck will be retired by then, or (more likely) on LTIR. And you don’t need Vezina-level goaltending through the entire contract for it to provide positive value. The deal could work. And even if it doesn’t, I certainly get why rolling the dice felt like a better decision for the Jets than letting their guy walk, or making a trade that would have essentially waved a white flag on this version of the team. But I think that contract has a ton of risk attached to it, and that risk could detonate sooner than we’d expect.
I hope I’m wrong, because I like Hellebuyck and want to see the Jets do well. But I don’t think I am.
Finally, let’s wrap up this project with the biggest question of them all. Having stuck our necks out, which single team are you the most worried will make us all look dumb over the next few years?
McIndoe: The obvious answers are the Predators and Columbus Blue Jackets, since the two teams at the extreme ends of the list are almost guaranteed to be “wrong.” But I’m more concerned about the Sabres, who don’t exactly have a strong track record of making positive takes about them look smart for the last, oh, decade or so. I get why we showered so much optimism on them, but it’s still the Sabres, and I think we can all imagine a world where it’s 2026, Luukkonen is an overpaid one-hit wonder, Devon Levi never quite reached expectations and 31 other fan bases are reposting our link with “this aged well” after a 10-2 Buffalo loss. And even the most loyal Sabres fan is fighting the urge to nod right now.
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And sure, the Jets, too, given how I just doubled down on that take. Enjoy the next three Vezinas, Connor.
Granger: It’s definitely the Sabres for me as well. As Sean mentioned, betting on Buffalo hasn’t worked out for most of my lifetime, and the fact that I also doubled down with my confidence in Luukkonen only leaves the ranking more vulnerable to looking silly. Still, completely aware of all of that, I love Luukkonen’s chances. He’s one of the smartest goalies I’ve watched in terms of his ability to diagnose and predict the flow of play in front of him.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, I was pretty harsh on the Detroit Red Wings, ranking them last in current goaltending despite the addition of Talbot, who is coming off a great year in Los Angeles. My opinion is that Talbot’s impressive numbers were largely a product of the Kings’ defensive system, and with him at 37 years old, I’m expecting a massive regression this year behind a less-stout Detroit squad. I stand by the ranking, but I also see a world in which Talbot is still good, the Red Wings finally get back to the playoffs, and fans send me the link to the ranking incessantly.
Thanks again to everyone who read, shared and commented on the goalie outlook rankings project. It will be fun to revisit over the years, and maybe something we can reconvene on and try again a few seasons down the line. Until then, we’d be happy to have any feedback on what you think worked, what could have been improved, and what you might like to see for future projects. The comment section is open like a Blue Jackets goalie’s five-hole, so have it.
(Top photo of Connor Hellebuyck: Jonathan Kozub / NHLI via Getty Images)