The Vezina Trophy is often the most difficult award to predict in the NHL, because goalies themselves are often hard to predict. Which surprising candidates might be in the mix for the award this year?
The Hockey News is putting together a short series breaking down some of the top candidates for the NHL's major awards for the 2026-27 season. Today's focus is on the Vezina Trophy.
In the NHL, goalies who even contend for the Vezina — given annually to the league's top netminder — in back-to-back seasons are pretty rare. Only four have been able to actually win it back-to-back when the award was actually voted on by the PHWA: Patrick Roy, Dominik Hasek, Martin Brodeur, and Connor Hellebuyck.
That simple fact makes it incredibly easy for some goaltenders to come out of nowhere, have a monster season, and become discussed among the league's best, names like Hellebuyck, Igor Shesterkin, Andre Vasilevskiy, and Ilya Sorokin.
So which goalies are best positioned for an unexpected run to the Vezina in 2026-27? Here are a few ideas:
1. Mackenzie Blackwood/Scott Wedgewood, Colorado Avalanche
This is cheating a little bit, but let me explain.
One of the things you have to keep in mind about the Vezina is that it's voted on by the league's 32 general managers, and often, the top three guys in terms of wins — not goals-against average, save percentage, goals saved above expected, or anything else — are the three finalists for this award.
With that in mind, either Blackwood or Wedgewood could be the kind of goalie to make his case. Blackwood had a really good season for Colorado two years ago, and was quite good last season as well, but in those campaigns he played 37 and then 39 games. That's not enough for Vezina consideration.
But Wedgewood played 45 games of phenomenal hockey in 2025-26, and only 19 the year before that.
If one of these two guys can make a case that he should not just be the 1A or 1B, but the actual, bonafide No. 1? That becomes very interesting for the GMs who vote on this award. Even a medium-term injury, which obviously no one is rooting for, could present that opportunity.
The Avalanche feel more or less guaranteed to get to 50-plus wins, so if one guy gets the lion's share of them, they're gonna get a long look for the Vezina.
2. Joel Hofer, St. Louis Blues
Hofer played 46 games for the Blues last season. According to Money Puck, he was also 13th in the league in goals saved above expected. That performance was limited by the team's insistence on playing Jordan Binnington (a league-worst minus-22.4 GSAx) in 41 games. The latter goalie cost the Blues a playoff spot single-handedly.
If Hofer gets more games, and he should, while keeping up the kind of performance he did last season, the Blues should make the cut with relative ease and he should be easily among the top 10 in terms of goalie quality.
That doesn't necessarily mean he's going to rack up 45 wins or anything, but as much as GMs love wins, they also love a player who turns around a struggling team.
Hofer could, in theory, be seen as sort of an MVP candidate among goalies if he's good enough. We have plenty of evidence now that he's capable of it.
3. Lukas Dostal, Anaheim Ducks
Dostal is seen as Anaheim's goalie of the future, and his performances before he turned in a frustrating 2025-26 campaign show why.
Behind a not-great team, he routinely put up above-average save percentages. If he can prove the .888 from last season was a blip on the radar, and not an indicator of a new trend, there's a lot of opportunity for him to rack up a ton of wins.
He picked up 30 wins in 56 appearances with a sub-par performance, while the team in front of him also suffered from the eighth-worst team shooting percentage in the league. If things normalize on the percentages front, it's not hard to see the Ducks being one of the better teams not just in the Pacific Division, but maybe the Western Conference or entire league.
If they are, Dostal, who has never received a single Vezina vote in his life, should have both the individual stats and the win total to get serious consideration.
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