On the topic of Askarov, I did a little digging on goalies in the first round and came up with this:
***1992 was chosen moreso for nostalgia than anything scientific.
Between 1992-2019, 47 goalies were taken in the 1st round. I cut the "bust line" at the 2013 draft since goalies in this draft or later are still in the developmental phase of their careers, including Hogberg. That left me with 44 goalies. Of those 44, I would argue that about 21 were busts while the remaining 23 carved out a decent career (i.e., Jocelyn Thibault or Martin Biron), a good career (i.e., Jean-Sebastien Giguere or Cam Ward) or were absolute heroes (i.e., Roberto Luongo or Carey Price).
During the same period, 5 goalies were picked T5 of which, two are suspect...Kari Lehtonen in 2002 and Rick Dipeitro in 2000. And when I mean suspect, I mean not in the same realm of the other top 5 picks (Fleury, Luongo, and Price). Dipeitro was an aberration as much due to the stuff that management and ownership were smoking on Long Island at the time, than with hype. Kari Lehtonen was and still is a solid and serviceable goalie. It would seem that a goalie who was deemed "good" enough to be a top 5 pick turned out pretty well...in some cases, really freaking well!
The one thing I didn't look up, and I think would be helpful in my analysis, is where those top 5 picked goalies were slated by ISS or TSN to go in their respective drafts. I assume that all of these top 5 picked goalies were all listed in the top 10 of ISS' and TSN's final draft rankings.
As Sens fans, I think that our distaste towards taking goalies in the first round is influenced largely by the Chouinard debacle as well as a bit from seeing those 21 busts noted above. I can't say for sure if those 21 were "reaches" in their draft year, but there does seem to be a lot of failures regardless. The other side of the aversion is the fact that a lot of people believe that choosing a goalie is a crapshoot and that, "you can pick up an all-star goalie (i.e., Nabokov, Hasek, Thomas, Lundquist, Miller, Turco, Kipper, etc) in the later rounds so why blow a 1RP?" mantra. I've heard this position for years now...probably about the time that people realized that Depeitro was a bust, and for the longest time i believed it. But I would argue that this could and should be changing. First, those old late round goalies mentioned above were all drafted in the time before smart phones and when most were still using dial up internet. There was a data imbalance in much the same way that Alfie was able to go so late without being selected. Back then, it seemed that you needed to know a guy in Sweden or Russia who was drinking buddies with a goalie coach in some remote area who had a lead on an awesome looking player. Today this data dis-symmetry is almost non-existent. You have youtube, a billion different scouting services, instagram/twitter, and even boards like this where data and videos are scrutinized on end. Teams are also more prudent in their analysis and scouting, looking at intangibles and Moneyball metrics/analytics.
While it's impossible to know if a 1st round goalie will be a sure thing, I would argue that it's becoming less of an issue as time passes. These days, if a goalie is ranked top ten in a draft, and in this year's case - a very deep draft, there's a strong sense that the kid's got something special.
This isn't a push to have the Sens draft Askarov, but just food for thought.
