Oh absolutely. I didn't mean it as though they won't pan out, its just that for every goalie drafted in the first round, you can find an equal if not better goalie in the 2nd 3rd 4th round ect. The first rounder is better spent on a forward or Dman.
That's one of the oddities of the draft. Top end forwards are usually found in the first round, top end dman are most commonly found in the 2nd round, and goalies are most commonly found in late rounds. Obviously exceptions exist in all cases but generally these are (or have been) the case.
Luongo, Price, and Fleury have all worked well its true but for those three you could turn to Lundqvist, Thomas, Rinne in response as late round picks. It's generally accepted that only the most talented of talented goalies go in the top 30, the ones that seem like sure locks to be superb starters. However I think the logic is that goalies are very hard to peg at 18 years old, even compared to players so teams decide they would rather go with late round picks and let them develop.
Burke has even taken it a step further and decided to forgo picking goalies at all. He just signs them as FA's. He did it with Hiller and now he has filled the Leaf system with FA goalies (and they look pretty damn good, with the exception of Gustavsson). Granted Reimer was a late round pick but that was before Burke's time.
Goalies are just interesting draftees.
