Last week we rounded out our skaters by looking at the most valuable defensemen, and this week caps the endeavor by reviewing goalies. Starting next week, we will be diving into the playoff matchups to see if there are any nuggets worth carrying over into next season.

As with our previous articles we will be looking at Most Valuable in a couple of contexts. We will have straight up production and then production compared to draft position. Like the strategy we used for skaters we are using the standard Yahoo scoring format to arrive at a fantasy points number. In this case the scoring is as follows: 4 points for a win, -1 point for a goal against, 0.2 points for a save, and 2 points for a shutout.

The following note from skater draft position still applies:

…The draft position data was pulled from Yahoo at the start of the season, and only for the top 200 players. 200 was picked as it is a round number that is a reasonable (if slightly low) approximation for a lot of leagues and it is a pain to export data from Yahoo. It also will not completely match Yahoo's current ADPs as those will take into account drafts that took place once the year began.

For goalie data we are pulling the Goalie Big Board report from the reports page, which includes, among many other things, all of the scoring categories described above.

Who were 2021-22's highest scoring goalies?

Nothing too surprising here. If I asked most managers to guess the top five most valuable goalies, most would probably guess at least four of these names. This scoring format clearly values wins, and each of these goalies has at least 35. Sergei Bobrovsky is the only goalie not in the top five who also had more than 35 wins. If we were just looking at games played, we might wonder how Igor Shesterkin was able to keep up, but he managed just as many wins as this crew, was surprisingly close in shots (though maybe not if you watched the Rangers play), and had significantly fewer goals against (that isn't all accounted for with games played).

On the flip side Juuse Saros was good, but his elite production really comes on the back of his workhorse status. He led the league in games played, and is one of only five goalies to play over 60 games. He was second only to Connor Hellebuyck in saves who barely misses this list (ranked 7th goalie overall) because he "only" put up 29 wins.

Our next list is the attempt to take expectations and draft positions into effect. We take all of our players' fantasy output compared to their ADP and get the trend line equation. Then by knowing a goalie's ADP we can estimate the amount of points the average goalie drafted in that position would have gotten and compare that to the points each player actually put up.

Clearly Jacob Markstrom takes the cake here. He had an incredible season with 37 wins, nine shutouts, a .922 save percentage and a 58.7 quality start percentage. Even better for fantasy managers is that he was drafted 137th on average, or the 26^th-ranked goalie. A sampling of goalies drafted ahead of him? Petr Mrazek, Philipp Grubauer, Jordan Binnington, and Carter Hart. The average manager was not very high on him (or more likely Calgary) going into the season, but they certainly will be going into next season. I very much doubt he will be the 26th goalie off the board next time around.

Elvis Merzlikins is an interesting one here. Going into the season it wasn't entirely clear what the goaltending situation was going to be, which contributed to a very low ADP for Merzlikins. Whatever life Joonas Korpisalo breathed into his career when Bobrovsky left definitely evaporated and Merzlikins was the go-to in net (minus the time he spent injured). That provided the lion's share of his value as he played 59 games and put up the third highest save per game rate in the league (for goalies who played more than ten games).

Our most valuable list wouldn't be complete without looking at players who weren't drafted at all (at least according to our data set – ADP over 200).

Honorable mention to Karel Vejmelka and Scott Wedgewood.

Anton Forsberg was a bit of revelation in net. At the start of the season, it certainly wasn’t a given he was going to get any time at all. But then Matt Murray went and did Matt Murray things (getting sent to the minors, and of course, getting injured) and Forsberg managed to take the reins. While his win numbers weren't enormous, he ended with a .917 and a 58.7 percent quality start percentage, and the starter's gig over the second half (almost) of the season.

Now I won't leave it entirely at that, as there are a number of goalies who absolutely tanked their fantasy managers this season.

Honorable mentions here include Grubauer, Binnington, Mrazek, and Robin Lehner, who lost time to injury. That is some of it, but what people were thinking with Kevin Lankinen is unclear. He didn't exactly shine in 2020-21 (outside of a great first month), and Chicago went and added Marc-Andre Fleury. He wasn't exactly drafted top tier, but still ahead of guys like Markstrom, and Tristan Jarry – sure fire starters for their teams (even if they had question marks during the off season).

Semyon Varlamov and Spencer Knight were both disappointments, but it is a little surprising to see both of them listed here higher than the aforementioned Binnington and Grubauer. As much as Knight was a potential starter for a good team, Binnington was the clear starter going into the season and played so badly he straight up lost the job. Grubauer was coming off of a great season in Colorado so we might have expected to see his draft number inflated from folks just looking at last season's results. Add to that the fact that the Kraken were supposed to be a playoff team but decidedly weren't, and the fact that Grubauer's first half was not just bad, but an epic disaster of historic proportions it is very surprising he didn't make the top five.

That is all for this week. Do your part to support organizations working to make hockey for everyone.

Black Girl Hockey Club

Hockey is For Everyone

Athletes for Hope

Premier Hockey Federation