Lightning, Canadiens show you get what you pay for with goaltending

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This article was published 03/07/2021 (1616 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The goalie. It says it all. Why did you win? Our goalie played well. Why did you lose? Our goalie struggled.

The most important position in sport is the hockey goalie. We are reminded of that every year when the NHL playoffs roll around. The teams with the best goaltending win. And the two teams in the Stanley Cup final have arguably the two best goaltenders in today’s game — Montreal’s Carey Price and Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy.

And yet the hockey world is still trying to figure out the complexity of the goalie position. Five skaters on the ice can all do their jobs perfectly, and one minor slip by the goalie allows a goal that could be the deciding factor in the game, the series, the championship. One goal can be the turning point in a team’s fortunes, the difference between the ultimate success and the ultimate disappointment. Still somehow, they are undervalued and underappreciated by many, except at the most critical moment. By then it’s too late.

It starts early, when scouting and drafting experts are trying to evaluate where goalies fit in the big picture. It’s a challenging position to scout. If a prospect plays for too strong a team in the development years, the lack of competition make evaluation difficult. But a prospect can be overwhelmed on a weak team. One popular theory is that a prospect will learn more on a bad team, dealing with the shot volume and being left alone by teammates.

At my first NHL amateur draft meetings, I was intrigued to see how goalies are handled. At early meetings, skater lists are built geographically, by countries in Europe, by regions in North America. Goalies are off to the side, on their own island. They have their own list in each of those regions.

As the various regions are merged through the year, the goalie list is merged, but remains off to the side. Finally, the task is called — how to insert the outlier position into the mainstream. And the arguments begin. In the past 20 years, only three goaltenders have found their way into the top five draft picks. Price was one of those three, taken with the fifth pick in 2005. Marc-André Fleury went first overall in 2003; Kari Lehtonen was the second pick in 2002.

Over the last 10 years, there have been five drafts without a single goalie taken in the first round. Scouts simply can’t figure out the position at an early age. General managers are hesitant to use a high pick on a player that likely won’t develop into a regular contributor for four to six years, the time frame generally required. Vasilevskiy was the 19th pick in the 2012 draft, so 18 players were deemed more worthy by the scouting fraternity. He wasn’t even the first Tampa Bay player selected that year; the Lightning chose rearguard Slater Koekkoek with the 10th pick.

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The salary structure somehow doesn’t respect the goaltending position any more than the scouting world does. There are currently three goalies among the top 59 earners in the NHL. Price is eighth, Sergei Bobrovsky 11th and Vasilevskiy 16th, That’s it.

The position is even more complicated when you factor in the second goalie. Some team’s combinations are old and young, veteran and up-and-comer, some are more evenly balanced. Three of the last five Cup champions have seen more than one goalie play in the playoffs, emphasizing the strength of depth. Yet total dollars expended for the position still remain a challenge.

Montreal GM Marc Bergevin made an interesting move last year, essentially protecting his highest paid player in Price with a 1A starter in veteran Jake Allen. The Canadiens’ investment in the position this year was $13.375 million (U.S.), or 16 per cent of their salary cap. Another final four team, Vegas, was second at 14.7 per cent. Tampa Bay was fourth at 13.3 per cent. The best teams spend on the position.

The Maple Leafs must decide whether to keep the tandem of Frederik Andersen and Jack Campbell together. Campbell, a bargain at $1.65 million, is seen as a potential starter for the first time in his career but he must prove he can play a full regular season in that role. Andersen, coming off a contract that paid him $5 million annually, is an unrestricted free agent. If Toronto was to bring him back at the same salary, it still would be spending eight per cent of its cap on goaltending, a middle-of-the-pack number and half of what Montreal allocated.

Dave Poulin is a former NHL player and executive and a TSN hockey analyst based in Toronto. He is a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @djpoulin20