Dave Poulin: Why these NHL playoffs will showcase a growing goaltending trend
It is that time of year when hockey fans are thinking about the looming NHL playoffs and wondering if their team’s goaltending is good enough. They know it is inevitable that, at some point, a key game will be determined by the netminder. The key save will be the difference.
But the approach to the goaltending position appears to be changing. After a long stretch of Stanley Cup-champion goalies drafted and developed by their teams — from the Los Angeles Kings’ Jonathan Quick to Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy, the ColoradoThe 2022 champions featured trade acquisition Darcy Kuemper, with free-agent signing Pavel Francouz providing support.
It seems to be increasingly difficult to draft and develop a goaltender to match a team’s arc, partly because of the physical demands of the position. There are fewer No. 1 goaltenders capable of playing 60-plus games — only Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck and Nashville’s Juuse Saros have hit that mark this season — and more teams are embracing the two-goaltender system.
There may have been as few as 12 teams in the 32-team league who entered the season knowing, health provided, who their main goaltender was. Of those 12, only Boston , Tampa Bay , Dallas and the New York Rangers had secured playoff spots heading into the final week. Coupled with the lack of stalwarts at the sport’s most critical position is a growing trend for teams to simply go out and find a goalie when the time is right to contend. Only three of the top 10 teams in the NHL right now have drafted and developed their top guy: the Rangers, the Stars and the Edmonton Oilers . It’s simply easier and more efficient to steal someone else’s guy.
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