3 reasons why drafting goalies early can kill your fantasy hockey team.
3 reasons why drafting goalies early can kill your fantasy hockey team.
The beauty of fantasy hockey is that there’s a ton of different ways to play it. With the season just two weeks away, this is the peak season for fantasy drafts.
One strategy that’s become very popular is the zero-G strategy, as in “zero goalies.” This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t draft or roster a single goalie; that’s a sure-fire way to lose since most leagues have scoring categories and minimum games played limits for goalies. The zero-G strategy simply implies that managers aren’t going to take goalies in the early rounds.
If your league has already drafted, don’t fret. Take note of where you drafted your goalies and how they fared this season. Depending on how your early-pick goalie has fared, consider the zero-G option next season.
Here are three reasons why managers should consider a zero-G strategy.
1. Goalie performances can be very unpredictable
It is the position most fraught with pitfalls, constant overreactions and mid-season changes. Consider in the cap era that only one goalie – Martin Brodeur – has won the Vezina in consecutive seasons and the only other goalie to come close – Tim Thomas – won it twice in three seasons. For more than a decade now, a different goalie has won the Vezina every season.
Last season, among the top 10 goalies with the most wins, three of them – Ullmark, Vitek Vanecek and Stuart Skinner – were barely on the fantasy radar. There’s a significant turnover in wins leaders, too; of the top 10 leaders in wins in the 2021-22 season, only three of them – Andrei Vasilevskiy, Juuse Saros and Igor Shesterkin – finished in the top 10 in 2022-23. Save percentages and goals-against averages are slightly more predictable, but there’s still a ton of variance every season and quantity is king in fantasy.
There are so few reliable goalies that it’s a waste of an early pick unless you can get one in the top tier.
2. Goalies don’t play as much
In the days of Brodeur and Miikka Kiprusoff, goalies regularly started 60 to 70 games. That’s exceedingly rare these days, and only around five to ten goalies start 60 games every season. The wear and tear of the position is just too much, and fatigue can be a huge factor in their performance. Just look at Jake Oettinger in March and in the playoffs the last two seasons.
That means goalies are not giving you 82 games’ worth of value, unlike a forward or a defenseman who plays every night. Rostering a goalie can be a wasteful roster spot when they’re not playing, and there’s an opportunity cost at the draft table, too. If the choice is between a 50-goal scorer and a goalie, go for the goal scorer.
3. Goalies pop up everywhere
Pheonix Copley. Logan Thompson and Adin Hill. Pyotr Kochetkov. Filip Gustavsson. At some point or another, every season there’s a handful of valuable goalies in fantasy who pop up out of nowhere. Even backups can get on hot runs, such as Spencer Martin, and with so many more tandems now than in the past, it’s even more likely that a presumptive starter loses his job. Injuries are a huge risk, which is one reason why the Canes might carry three goalies at various points throughout the season.
The problem with the zero-G strategy is…
You really have to pay attention to the waiver wire, and you must have enough knowledge and guts to keep streaming goalies. For example, do you have the risk appetite to start Jordan Binnington against the Coyotes?
If you choose not to have someone reliable that you can just start and forget, then you need to be the first to pull the trigger on pick-ups and even foresee certain situations where a backup is close to winning the starting job. This will go on all season, so make sure you have the time and knowledge to pull it off.
So, when do I draft a goalie?
After deciding to go with a zero-G strategy, pay attention to what’s left, because you don’t want to be caught with, literally, zero goalies even though that’s what the name implies. If you can’t get your hands on an elite workhorse, pay attention to draft flow.
When the top of middle class of goalies starts thinning out, that’s when you should think about grabbing one. When the list of desirable goalies dwindles, it usually sends managers into a panic. What ends up happening is that goalies start going off the board really quickly – called a goalie run – causing managers to start reaching. You don’t want to get to that point; you want to grab at least a few goalies just before the goalie run starts in tiers 3 to 5 below. It helps, obviously, if you personally know the managers and their tendencies rather than going in blind in public leagues.
To further help you along, here’s a list of goalies separated into tiers. This list of goalies is not meant to be exhaustive.
Tier 1 – worth the early pick
Alexandar Georgiev; COL; Jake Oettinger, DAL; Juuse Saros, NSH; Ilya Sorokin, NYI; Igor Shesterkin, NYR; Andrei Vasilevskiy, TB; Connor Hellebuyck, WPG
Tier 2 – potential top-10 material for middle rounds or early goalie runs (don’t reach)
Jacob Markstrom, CGY; Sergei Bobrovsky, FLA; Vitek Vanecek, NJ; Tristan Jarry, PIT; Ilya Samsonov, TOR; Thatcher Demko, VAN
Tier 3 – timeshares (don’t just draft one)
Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman; BOS; Frederik Andersen and Antti Raanta, CAR; Stuart Skinner and Jack Campbell, EDM; Filip Gustavsson and Marc-André Fleury, MIN; Logan Thompson and Adin Hill, VEG
Tier 4 – late-round targets with potential surplus value (zero-G targets)
Karel Vejmelka, ARI; Ville Husso, DET; Cam Talbot, LA; Joonas Korpisalo, OTT; Carter Hart, PHI; Philipp Grubauer, SEA; Jordan Binnington, STL; Darcy Kuemper, WSH
Tier 5 – high-upside, late-round targets (zero-G sleepers)
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, BUF; Devon Levi, BUF; Dustin Wolf, CGY; Akira Schmid, NJ; Joel Hofer, STL
Tier 6 – streamers (backups)
Pyotr Kochetkov, CAR; Scott Wedgewood, DAL; Spencer Knight, FLA; Pheonix Copley, LA; Anton Forsberg, OTT; Chris Driedger, SEA; Joey Daccord, SEA
Tier 7 – streamers (if you have a death wish)
John Gibson, ANA; Petr Mrazek, CHI; Elvis Merzlikins, CLB; Jake Allen, MTL; Samuel Montembeault, MTL; Kaapo Kahkonen, SJ; Mackenzie Blackwood, SJ
