Still on this crazy opinion about how Avs should pick goalers with late 1sts and seconds still? Martin busted because he was a 3rd? Definitely disagree with your statements here, especially when the data is on the contrary. We as a league went through that faze during the 2000s when teams tried to solve their goaltending issues by picking them high and in the 1st round....besides a couple we kept going through notorious busts year after year.
In actuality, organizations started drafting goalers later because of all the ones who kept being busts in the 1st and 2nd. You mention Spencer Martin year and as I fan of him I will even admit he didn't take a step in the right direction. I still don't think he's a lost cause as Sparks showed you can go on waivers and have a revolutionary year still. Just surprised you didn't mention Peter Delmas who was a 2nd rounder you dream of GTG and was an utter failure. Trevor Cann is another 2nd rounder who failed. Only person who didn't fail is Calvin Pickard and not sure you can call him a saviour either, more like a good teammate/back up combo which is what we picked in Peter Budaj who also was a 2nd rounder.
Sorry, but I just cannot agree that we should use some of our top 60 picks on goaltender prospects. If we have more than one I don't mind going for some risk like we do in this draft, but for the most part I rather grab players and try to trade for prospects from other teams. Goaltenders don't go for a lot and there are limited number of positions available, so certain teams which have stocked goaltending system will eventually get rid of some because that's the nature of the game. Look at the Ducks for example, they had a deep system with Andersen and Gibson, they targeted Gibson and allowed Andersen to move on for not a whole lot. That's how we targeted Varlamov in the first place and the route Avs should go when it comes time to address our goaltending situation again (which will be soon). I am not saying Avs shouldn't fill the need from within, they absolutely should, but I haven't seen good reason for me to change my mind and pick one in the top 60.
Sorry for the late response, I wanted to make sure I actually had time to sit down and ensure my answers/response was clear.
There's a misconception around how we look at goalie prospects and unconsciously compare them to skaters. When we look at goalie prospects everything about them is magnified because there's never as many goalies in the system as there are forwards or defenders. If Jake Oettinger busts all we'll ever hear about is how you never should take goalies in the 1st round. Yet Bleackley busts and it's fine to take another forward there because he's a late 1st rounder and while it sucks that it happens it's not exactly unheard of. Hell look at the history at the 10th overall pick before the Avs got it twice in a row, from 2014 to 2006 all skaters have been chosen there and the best players taken there have been Frolik and Brodin.
Failures and marginal players happen out of every part of the draft yet we don't care about McIlarth, MSP, Hodgson, Ellerby when there's a lot of noise made about Jack Campbell or any other goalie drafted out of the first round that didn't work out. Everyone knows about Campbell because goalies are under the magnifying glass more which leads to the narrative that goalies taken in the 1st round are infinitely more risky to take then a skater yet the data doesn't share that view.
InGoal magazine took a good look at the question just how much more riskier is it to draft a goalie vs a skater in the 1st round by taking the data from the 2002 to 2013 drafts
(Article was published in 2015).
"
First round failure rates are worth a closer look. While it appears that skaters taken early in the draft are more likely to be better than marginal players, the vast majority of that advantage comes from players drafted in the top 15 spots alone and it is largely a function of who gets drafted first.
In essence the top 15 draft picks are highly successful and are almost never goaltenders. When goalies do get drafted there, they are as likely to enter the NHL as forwards and defensemen and are as likely to be better than marginal. There are simply not very many of them. Thus we get a very high success rate at the top of the first round that doesn’t accrue to goaltenders.
So what does this all mean?
In essence it means that NHL teams are generally bad at drafting at all positions with the important exception of the very, very best. Those players who are exceptionally outstanding at age 18–the can’t miss prospects–have a very high rate of success. That efficiency is largely gone by the second round, where more than 40% of all draftees will never play in the NHL at all and around 70% or more will become only marginal players.
NHL teams are bad at projecting players at all positions, not just goaltending and goalies don’t really fail at much higher rates than skaters."
I've done some data tracking myself just looking at starting goalies as the back-ups change so often and generally you're always aiming to end up with starter over just a back-up. There are 31 starters in the league and here's where which round they came from:
1st Round: 28.1%
2nd Round: 21.9%
3rd Round: 18.8%
4th Round: 3.1%
5th Round: 6.3%
6th Round: 0%
7th Round: 3.1%
8th Round: 3.1%
Free Agents: 12.5%
It's hard to argue that there isn't any talent in the first two rounds of the draft especially when looking at the goalies who are starters:
Cam Ward, Carey Price, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Tuukka Rask, Semyon Varlamov, Roberto Loungo, Devan Dubnyk, Cory Schneider, MAF, John Gibson, Corey Crawford, Jimmy Howard, Jake Allen, Michal Neuvirth, Robin Lehner, Jacob Markstrom, Jon Quick
Sure there's some not so great starters in there however the same can be said for 1st/2nd rounders in the NHL that aren't so great either. Yet a goalie taken in the late first is often thought of in the same vein as a player taken in the top 10 rather than comparing them to other late 1st rounders. Martin busting as a 3rd round pick really shouldn't be that surprising considering that 3rd round picks aren't guarantees to play any NHL games. 14 out of the 30 2013 3rd rounders have yet to play an NHL game. That's a 46.7% failure rate, 26.7% marginal rate, 26.6% success rate for the 3rd round in 2013. None of those successes are goalies. Do we now never draft a goalie in the 3rd round? That'd be ridiculous because teams still draft skaters in the 3rd despite the high failure rate.
I agree it's not over for Martin yet however it's not looking great when he's trending down and his draft mates are trending up. I'd be down for giving him next season to see if he's capable of making any improvements. There's obvious talent that you want to see come through and don't want to give up too quickly. The time is starting to run down on him though because of the downward trend. I also want to say that I don't advocate for the Avalanche to just take a goalie in the 1st/2nd round for the hell of it. If a goalie is worthy of it take him there just like you a forward or defender.
As for the "just trade for a starter" idea it's certainly feasible just like it's feasible to trade for defenders or forwards to fill in important parts of the line-up but it's rarely cheap. Here's prices teams have paid for goalies via trade and remember a large majority of these were unproven starters:
Trading for established starters is very difficult as team's just hate to give them up if they can avoid it. Even when they are available they aren't overly cheap.