So hands, please who drafted the Buffalo goalies? No? Your loss. The start of the season has given us some real surprises in net. The caveat here is of course we are dealing with one, two, and three-game samples for the most part. Most goalies in the league can pull off one good game every now and then. Our goal for the week is to take a quick look at who are our top performances in the crease and see if anything has changed from our preseason expectations.

This week of Frozen Tool Forensics: 2021-22's Top Goalies?

I wanted to take a moment to chat about another quick way to access the data within Frozen Tools. On the home page, or any of the pages really, there is a drop down menu for Recent Trends. In that menu there is quick access to some of the reports that Frozen Tool can run and includes Hot/Cold Players as well as top performers at each position over the last month/week. We are going to look at Hot Goalies over the course of this season.

Once I have the report I exported the data so I could highlight the columns I wanted to share and import them into this column.

The inspiration for this article comes from seeing a number of usual goalies getting starts and wins (in addition to those Sabres) while some of the top goalies seem to be struggling (looking at you Connor Hellebuyck, Robin Lehner, and Andrei Vasilevskiy). What I was not exactly prepared for is the extent of questionable goalies with incredible starts.

Cam Talbot, and Igor Shesterkin are not incredible surprises, given some of their performances last season, but the rest of this list? Thomas Griess, and Jonathan Bernier I can more or less accept as they had hot runs last season, so having another one isn't coming completely out of left field.

Elvis Merzlikins' is kind of similar to Greiss and Bernier. His final numbers look pretty decent, though the start of his 2020 season was pretty awful and then had a great stretch around the midway point of the season in 2020-21. This year Columbus was projected by most to be a mess, but the early signs at least are positive. That doesn't mean we should expect this performance going forward, and Columbus is likely going to experience some ups and downs so enjoy the performance while it lasts.

John Gibson, Frederik Andersen and Sergei Bobrovsky sort of fall into the category of starters who used to be good, and have some major question marks going forward.

Gibson has had two less than stellar seasons ending with .903 and 904 save percentages with about a 43 percent quality start number. Prior to 19-20 though he was a rock in Anaheim even when they did not have the best teams. There is some reason for future optimism in Anaheim, but most are still projecting them at the bottom of the relatively weak Pacific Division. Gibson has the personal history of success so there is a chance for a rebound here, but he also started 2020-21 with five quality starts in his first seven games (71.4 percent) before completely falling off the wagon, and taking 20 games to put up his next five quality starts (20 percent) so we also have recent precedent of a hot start tanking quickly.

Andersen and Bobrovsky have the additional challenges of good backups, have lost starting gigs over the last couple of years, and are now in a bit of a new situation. Bobrovsky's challenger of last year is gone to Seattle, but he is now going to have to contend with potential rookie sensation Spencer Knight. Andersen is now in Carolina, which protects it's goalies very well, but he is going to have to deal with Antti Raanta (assuming he can stay healthy) and the fact that Carolina seems to very much like to split the goalie workload.

That leaves us with Adin Hill and Craig Anderson – probably the two most shocking names on this list. Hopes were not that high for San Jose, though from a team perspective, expectations are certainly higher than in Buffalo. Hill has never been a starter and has floundered a bit when given the reins in the past. He will still battle with James Reimer for playing time for a San Jose team that has typically been pretty porous on defense. Sure, you can argue whether it was the team or the goaltending these last few years, but nothing about this start makes Hill any less of a risky play night in and night out.

Craig Anderson seems to perform the best in the worst situations. He has put together two incredible starts, and somehow Buffalo (most people's pick as the worst team in the league – and potentially even the decade) is somehow undefeated to start the season. Just as a reminder though we have definitely seen this movie before, a hot start followed by a collapse. Plus Anderson is still 40 and has Dustin Tokarski, Aaron Dell, and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen surrounding him if Buffalo wants to try something different. Additionally, Anderson playing well definitely doesn't fit into the tank mindset either, so if he somehow keeps Buffalo in games going forward they may decide to go in a different direction.

All of the referenced goalies are a buyer beware situation. Sure there is a chance that Hill and Anderson pull off another game or two, but if you are desperate enough to own them cut and run at the first sign of trouble. If I am owning anyone on this list, my target would be Merzlikins and I would probably go in this order (assuming all are healthy).

1. Merzlikins
2. Andersen
3. Gibson
4. Bobrovsky
5. Hill
6. Anderson

The list might swap slightly depending on league settings. I am assuming Hill is going to play fewer games, but has a higher chance at a win when he does, but if saves is all I care about maybe I go with Anderson for the bottom pair as long as he is getting trotted out on a regular basis. Same with Andersen and Gibson. I assume fewer games, but higher chance of a win with Andersen, but if starts/saves are key I would bump Gibson up. Oh, just FYI, I have Andersen over Bobrovsky because Bob has already lost this specific job to a different goalie, Knight seems ready to be an impact player in the NHL, and Raanta will likely get hurt the next time someone sneezes in his general direction leaving Andersen as the only option.

That's all for now. Stay safe out there.

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