Last week, given the break we took a look at how skaters’ value had shifted during the first portion of the year. At the time it made sense as we were dealing with a planned break that was extended because of a flurry of COVID postponements. Games are back on, but it is still hard to look at our current data and make recommendations given all the uncertainty in the schedule. Given the rate of postponements any advice gleaned from this article might be out of date by next week because a slew of games have been postponed, or half of the players are out. So this week we are going to complete the suite as it were, and take a look at how our top drafted goalies have performed to date.

As with last week, the idea is to take each goalie's draft ranking and compare it to a current ranking. To generate the draft ranking I ordered average draft positions and provided them a sequential rank. So Andrei Vasilevskiy gets a one rather than a 12.2, Robin Lehner a two rather than a 19.3, and so on and so forth. To create the comparison, I ran the Top 100 Roto report for goalies. The one caveat with this report is that it gives you all of the goalies listed in the top 100 Roto players (not the top 100 Goalies), so for the sake of this article we are looking at the top 17 goalies – so really the top half of the league.

Again, those goalies are ranked so Vasilevsky's roto rank of nine turns into a one, and Frederik Andersen's roto rank of 30 turns into a two, and so on. Having them ranked in this way means we can compare their value just within goalies from preseason to now.

Before we get to the full list though let's take a look at the top ten drafted goalies based on Yahoo's draft positions.

Just for fun, how many of these players do you think rank in the top ten now? Any guesses?

It's seven. The answer is seven. I feel like that is decent. Goalies are voodoo, but a top ten drafted goalie still has a good shot at being a top ten goalie 30 games into the season.

Editor's note: Igor Shesterkin was removed from the December edition of the Top 100 Roto Rankings solely because of an injury that occurred in early December. He has since returned to the lineup and seems like a good bet to return to the top 100 in January.

So what about the top five?

Yup it's two. Quite not great. Again, Vasilevskiy and Connor Hellebuyck seem to be the two mainstays at the top of the heap, but apologies if you drafted any of the other three. If you drafted goalies this early there was a 60 percent chance of them falling out of the top five. I suppose 80 percent of them still made it into the top ten, but likely not what anyone who drafted them highly was hoping for.

So without further ado, we turn our attentions to the roto list – our top goalies in the season to date.

The following table is sorted by biggest improvement from draft rank. It also includes a few of each goalie's stats for comparison. For the sake of space, we are looking at games played, wins, saves, save percentage and quality start percentage. Oh, and quick caveat – all data was pulled before games played on Thursday December 30.

The big winner by far here is Elvis Merzlikins. His roto rank is still only 13 (up from a draft position of 48), his quality start numbers aren't great, and his raw save percentage is one of the lowest in this group, but his save numbers and win totals are very solid, particularly since his games played total is pretty low compared to the rest of this group. He does only have one quality start in his last seven though and only a 30 percent quality start over his last 10, so a big part of his inclusion here is a red hot start to the season that has since substantially cooled.

There were some questions about Merzlikins coming into the season. He has been the heir apparent since he joined the team, but hadn't been able to shake Joonas Korpisalo, who in all honesty wasn't exactly great either. Those questions clearly played into his draft position, and it was looking like his first ten games were putting all of them to rest, but the door seems to be open again, and we will have to see if he can hold on going forward.

Jacob Markstrom and Tristan Jarry fall into sort of the same category. There were big questions about their performance after the offseason. Jarry because he completely collapsed in the playoffs and Markstrom because Calgary was coming off of a rough season, he had a new coach, and no one knew what to expect. These were two chances worth taking though as both have been excellent thus far. Markstrom's torrid start (.942 save percentage over his first 13 games) has cooled (hard to maintain a pace of five shutouts in eleven games), but he is still putting up very consistent quality starts (62.5 percent over his last eight). Jarry started well but has really been on fire lately with nine wins in his last eleven games, a .946 save percentage, and a 90.9 (!!) quality start percentage.

Sergei Bobrovsky and Carter Hart fall into a similar category too. Both were coming off of pretty rough seasons (and in Bobrovsky's case – several), but both were given a renewed opportunity this year and are making the most of it. They were discounts on draft day because of the big question marks, but are clearly making the most of their opportunities even if they are not quite reaching the heights of Markstrom and Jarry.

As the only goalies to lose ranks on this list, it is probably worth mentioning Robin Lehner and Darcy Kuemper. Both were highly sought after in preseason as they were walking into a new starting gig for a Cup contender. Clearly reality has yet to meet expectations, but it isn't like these goalies are terrible. They are still both ranked around the top ten, so while it is a disappointment, it likely is losing managers their leagues just yet.

That is all for this week

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