I hope the new GM continues to pick 1 late round goalie a year. You almost have to fall into one that sticks at some point.
Well, Andersen. What is the frequency of falling into two that stick?
I hope the new GM continues to pick 1 late round goalie a year. You almost have to fall into one that sticks at some point.
Well, Andersen. What is the frequency of falling into two that stick?
To me, our roster is young enough that it makes sense for these picks to be more like 3rd, 4th rounders rather than the usual 6th, 7th.
That's what they Canes have been doing. Only 1 goalie (Olson) was drafted beyond the 5th round in the last 6 drafts and they've picked 5 goalies in the 2nd-4th round over that timeframe.
2012: Altshuller (3rd round), Olson (6th)
2013: None (only 4 picks that draft)
2014: Ned (2nd round),
2015: Booth (4th round),
2016: LaFontaine (3rd round), Helvig (5th round)
2017: Makiniemi (4th round)
Here's a list of the top (SV%) goalies in the NHL with > 35 games played.
1: Raanta - Undrafted
2: Luongo -High 1st round
3: MAF - High 1st round
4: Rinne - 8th round
5: Gibson - 2nd round
6: Hellebuyck - 5th round
7: Grubauer - 4th round
8: Quick - 3rd round
9: Bobrovsky - Undrafted
10: Varlamov - Late 1st round
11: Vasilevskiy - Mid-late 1st round
12: Dubnyk - Mid 1st round
13: Andersen - 7th round / 3rd round
14: Rask - Mid/Late 1st round
15: Smith - 5th round
16: Bishop - 3rd round
So of the top 16 goalies this past season, a high % of them were 1st rounders:
1st round: 6
2nd round: 1
3rd round: 2 (3 with Andersen in re-draft)
4th round : 1
5th round: 2
6th round: 0
7th round: 1 (Andersen's first draft)
Other: 3
I love the breakdown, but totally disagree with the conclusion. That's not a "high" percentage. By my informal count just now, 16 of the top 20 scorers in the NHL this year were 1st rounders, including 7 former 1st overall picks.
1st round: 16
2nd round: 1 (Kucherov)
3rd round: 1 (Marchand)
4th round : 1 (Gaudreau)
5th round: 0
6th round: 0
7th round: 0
Undrafted: 1 (Panarin)
The distribution is VASTLY different than other positions. Defensemen may be a little more skewed to the later rounds, but still drastically different. I think in comparison to the other positions in hockey, characterizing the above goalie distribution as a "high" percentage of them being in the first round misses how different the goaltending position is from the rest of the positions in the league.
I like what the Canes have been doing. Using 3rd/4th round picks, particularly when they have extra picks and hope you hit on one. Whether or not they have the right scouting / coaching in place to make that work is a different question.
I don’t mind anything after the 2nd round, but I’d be willing to bet there’s a statistical argument to be made that the later the better (as in, the pick value is still high enough to justify grabbing a skater in the 3rd or 4th rounds, while the goalie “randomness” doesn’t reduce the value that much of taking a goalie later).
We picked Ned 37th overall, highest goalie we’ve taken since Ward to my knowledge, and so far he is pretty much just as valuable a ping pong ball as the other guys. He was one of 5 goalies taken in that second round, and of those 5 he’s probably 2nd today only to Demko (who himself hasn’t done a ton for his stock since being a highly touted pick). Admittedly this is just a random draft I’ve highlighted, but I’m willing to bet in-depth statistical work done to this will show a far flatter distribution for goalies.
Your conclusion is statistically flawed for a couple of reasons:
1) You picked only the top 20 in scoring though which is vastly different sample than the top 16 goalies. There is 1 goalie / team, so only 31 starting goalies so when I list 16 of them, I'm listing ~50% of the starting players. There are 12 forwards / 6 defensemen per team, so by only picking the top 20, you are taking a very, very small portion of players (3.5% of all skaters or 5.3% of all forwards) vs. what I looked at for goalies. It's not remotely apples to apples from a distribution standpoint. I bet if you listed the top 50% of scorers in the NHL, the distribution might not be that much different.
2) The fact that there have only been 6? (going off your comment above) goalies drafted in the 1st round in the last 10 years is going to ensure that a fewer % of the best are from the 1st round, vs. almost 300 skaters over that same timeframe. That probably makes the fact that 6 of the top 16 right now is pretty significant.
Anyhow, I don't disagree though that projecting the success of a forward when drafting is immensely easier than that of a goalie and that goalies are more of a crapshoot. No argument there.
I wonder how much of it is due to lack of coaching, training and scouting. In youth hockey, goalies almost "fend for themselves" when it comes to coaching. Even watching Canes practices, I sometimes see a goalie coach working with the goalies, but it's a small percentage of the ice time. Yet, skaters are getting coached every drill and the goalie is in net stopping shots during those drills.
Same goes for scouting (Rod's question). I wonder how much dedicated time a team spends on goalie scouting. After the Lack and Darling debacles, it would seem to me the Canes are lacking in that department. Maybe other teams aren't much better, just some of them get lucky?
^ and ^^
I get all that, but there are certain things at are observable that seemed to be missed. That article that was posted a year or two ago that showed why Lack was a terrible choice for the style Carolina played for example. The fact that Darling, although a big guy, makes himself small by not coming out and challenging, or that once he's out of position, he has terrible ability to recover, etc.
No doubt there are mental things that affect goalies and there is not much margin for error, but it seems to me there are a lot of observable traits (quickness, recovery, lateral movement, glove hand, how they track the puck, puck handling, etc...) that ARE observable and yet, seem to be missed by many teams.
Not even joking about this but it honestly seems like you almost need a background in psychology to properly evaluate a goalie. It honestly feels like the position is as much based on psychological makeup as it is the players talent and physical attributes combined... if not more so. I mean just look at what happened to Cloutier after that Lidstrom mid-ice laugher, or Darling after the one against the Rangers.
As an aside, I think we now have an owner that'd view Chayka's philosophy pretty favorably, based on what he's said publicly. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up on the forefront of some of these things, especially since we have Tulsky, who's generally considered one of the most purely intelligent men in hockey, in the fold.
Not even joking about this but it honestly seems like you almost need a background in psychology to properly evaluate a goalie. It honestly feels like the position is as much based on psychological makeup as it is the players talent and physical attributes combined... if not more so. I mean just look at what happened to Cloutier after that Lidstrom mid-ice laugher, or Darling after the one against the Rangers.
Remember when Chayka was the star of the off season, and McPhee was a bumbling idiot?