True Value Goalie Rankings: Season Recap

Hey Everyone! Welcome to a deep dive on the fantasy hockey voodoo position of Goalies. If you haven’t heard of my True Value Goalie Rankings, I’ll give a quick rundown, but you can find an in-depth explanation here.

These rankings came about due to the fact the conventional rankings for goalies in categories leagues are broken. They take cumulative GAA and SV% and treat it as a singular counting stat. With this, a goalie that plays one game and lets in no goals would be ranked 1st in GAA and in Sv% in the conventional rankings for the season. My rankings account for the true value that goalies have contributed to your fantasy team week in, week out. These rankings consider three constructs: Quality Weeks, Really Bad Weeks, and Star Weeks. Quality Weeks keep you in contention for your goalie cats as your goalie has been better than 50% of goalies that week. Star Weeks put you in a great spot to win most of them, true elite play for the week. Really Bad Weeks hurt your chances of winning any cats that week. These rankings are strictly for categories leagues, and mainly for leagues that count these four Cats (W, GAA, SV%, SO). I may expand these rankings this year to have the capabilities to include other combinations of categories, but that will be based on some Twitter/X polls. So, give me a follow @fantasycheddar.

I will dive into the Rankings and point out some discrepancies with Yahoo’s rankings

So, let’s dive in! Here are the top 30 goalies from last season:

The full rankings can be found here.

Let’s revisit the biggest differences in my value rankings to Yahoo’s current rankings. These goalies’ perceived value may be very different to their true value because of the discrepancy:

Vitek Vanecek had himself a much better season than Yahoo’s ranking leads on. He was consistently good and had a healthy amount of Star Weeks helping lock down those goalie cats. What is interesting about Vanecek is that he a lot of Really Bad Starts (10; 19.2%), but only 3 Really Bad Weeks. This means that in those weeks that he had a really bad start, he was able to rebound and put up strong starts in the games following.

Alexander Georgiev doesn’t have a the biggest discrepancy, but since he is near the top (2nd best), he is worth talking about. He is similar to Vanecek, in that he was able to rebound from his 6 Really Bad Starts and ensure he didn’t put up many Really Bad Weeks. Week in, week out, he was more consistent than guys like Sorokin, Shesterkin, Vasilevskey, and Gustavsson. He is still the starter on a top 5 defensive team (5th in xGA last season).

Frederik Andersen had a quietly valuable season. Even with his injuries, he was super consistent being able to play on the best defensive team in the NHL (1st in xGA). He only put up a .903 save percentage, hurting is ranking on Yahoo and in some people’s minds. But, with an 81% Quality Week percentage, he was providing exceptional value when he was playing. If you were able to stash him on the IR when he was injured and stream some other value goalies, he helped your team secure those goalie cats.

Joonas Korpisalo was great on the Kings. His 3 Really Bad Weeks were all when he was on an abysmal Columbus team. In the 5 weeks with Los Angeles, he put up 4 Quality Weeks, 2 of which were Star Weeks, and no Really Bad Weeks. He was perfectly consistent on a strong Los Angeles Team. This highlights just how much a strong defensive team can make a difference for a questionable Goalie. Going to Ottawa is not promising for this coming season, but I will dive into that in my next article.

As above, a strong defensive Kings team helped another goalie have a career resurgence in Phoenix Copley. His cumulative save percentage of .903 seems boring, but that was exactly what Copley was, consistently suitable and boring. In his 17 fantasy weeks, he only had 1 Really Bad Week, that is only third to Linus Ullmark and Logan Thompson. Interestingly, like Vanecek, Copley had a high amount of Really Bad Starts (8; 21%). He was still able to grab some Wins in those starts, and rebound for strong starts in the same fantasy week. With only 3 Star Weeks, he didn’t crush the goalie cats for you, but he kept you in it week in, week out. This is great for a waiver wire add.

Sergei Bobrovsky had some bad stretches and quite a few Really Bad Starts (10; 20%) that hurt his cumulative stats immensely. Last season though, he had his highest share of Quality Starts (60%) since 2017. This is a similar percentage to Jake Oettinger (61%) and Igor Shesterkin (60%). He definitely did not have a good season, but it is a much better fantasy season than his Yahoo ranking leads on. With a bad season, he was still the 28th best fantasy goalie. I’d be happy taking him late with hopes he has an average season jumping into the top 20, or maybe even a good season….

Jacob Markstrom is in a similar boat to Bobrovsky. He had by far his worst season as a starting goaltender, but he wasn’t as bad for fantasy as his cumulative stats, and his Yahoo ranking of 71, lead on. His Quality Week percentage is very respectable (64%; same as Shesterkin!). It is the Star Weeks that has been missing, with only 1 last season. With a high amount of Really Bad Weeks, and barely any Star Weeks, fantasy owners must have been very frustrated holding onto him as he did provide negative value in at least 36% of the fantasy weeks. Even with all this though, he was the 25th best fantasy goalie. This is terrible for a goalie that was going in the top 10 in drafts, but much better than the Yahoo ranking of 71. He should still get the bulk of starts and may regress back to his mean this season.

Finally, Logan Thompson was the pinnacle of why these rankings were valuable, until he got injured. He had ZERO Really Bad Weeks and a Quality Week percentage of 89%. He was Mr. consistent, with only 1 Really Bad Start all season. His Yahoo Rankings were always quite low throughout the season. This was due to him not putting up many Star Weeks and pretty average cumulative stats. Vegas’ goalie situation is much cloudier now that Adin Hill had a playoff performance for the ages, but I’d be keeping a close eye on Logan Thompson this season. If he can get 1-2 starts a week, he could be very valuable for category leagues.

These are fairly new constructs aimed to help show past value in H2H category leagues (that utilize W, SV%, GAA, SO). They could be altered to better fit leagues that use a different combination of categories and I will explore this in the coming season. I will be writing another article on these constructs before the season starts examining the goalie landscape this coming season and making some predictions. Keep an eye out in September!

I would love to hear some feedback and answer any questions you may have, hit me up on Twitter/X @fantasycheddar.

• Ryan Brudner from Top Cheddar Fantasy