With the big update to the goalie rankings, we overhaul the top-10, as a lot of our bargain goalies from last season are now due for raises. That's going to make for an expensive summer on the goalie market, with Ville Husso, Jack Campbell, Vitek Vanecek, and others all looking for multiple millions more than they were making this past year – $0 is currently shown as the cap hit of impending free agents.

In the initial rankings for the 2022-23 campaign, we see that there aren't as many bargain goalies near the top, and that it's more about the proven commodities. That is in part due to how the projections here work, but also because the goalies on the smaller contracts usually have to work their way into more playing time, either because of an injury, a starter in a slump, or occasionally a trade. Keep an eye on where Eric Comrie and Alexandar Georgiev end up, as they have the potential to jump up the rankings.

If you're looking for other bargains, the Avalanche have a few players to re-sign, and they may look to cup costs in net. With Pavel Fancouz back in the fold on another $2 million deal, there is room (and injury potential to Francouz) for Justus Annunen to come in and see a lot of starts. On the other side of the first-round sweep, Juuse Saros is showing his wear after being one of the busiest goalies over the past three seasons, and we may see Connor Ingram step into a larger role next year. In Edmonton, they seem to have an issue with acquiring new goalies, so the opening in there for Stuart Skinner to split time with Mike Smith next fall. Smith will be 41, and on the last year of his contract. With Edmonton likely to win a lot of games (though the defence is a little suspect) there should be some excellent volume to share between the goalies.

Standard pre-rankings note:

This isn't meant to be a be-all and end-all rating system for you to use without thinking and just trade your players for anyone above them on the list that you can find, but used with some foresight for managing salaries. Cap hit is used for the player cost, so if your league uses salary or AAV, please account for that, as it can greatly change the impact of rookies. The rankings are set up so as to provide the most value in the current season, while providing some value in future years, based on modeling for predicted salary increases and production growth.

The stats used for the goaltenders attempt to balance both ratio stats as well as volume. For those of you with variations towards either end of the spectrum, leaning more towards volume or rate stats, you will want to account for that change in value. Same thing goes for setting variations such as: number of teams, salary space, or roster positions. This list is made to be a baseline guide for player evaluation, and to promote discussion and understanding of how to optimize rosters in a cap league setting.

The goalie list comes not only with a rankings system, but with value tiers. The tiers (also computed by a formula of mine) represent a more general view on a goalie's value taking into account a few overarching factors. Cheap backups can have higher ratings but show up lower down the tier rankings. The high ranking is due to their low cap hits coupled with an established floor with some possible upside. The lower tier is a result of them having uncertain volume, and the lower likelihood of hitting their upside in any given year. In general, aim to have the highest rated players if you are looking to be most cap efficient, but use the tiers if you just want to focus on having the best goalies and you are comfortable paying a little more for that security (my preference is usually to lean towards the more cap efficient options because of how variable goalies can be).

If you note a mistake, or have any further questions about the ranking system, please let me know. You can find me on Twitter here @alexdmaclean.

Comments help with optimizing the values, because they're not perfect and they never will be.

We're sticking with the +/- 5.0 rating that Dobber uses on all of his rating schemes as the range for approximately equivalent value. The skater and goalie rankings are synched so that the value of a skater against a goalie can be compared, though the scale of the ratings has changed a little since the last update.