Welcome back to The Journey, where we track the development of prospects as they excel in junior, make the NHL, and push towards stardom. This week, we will do a deep dive on a single player to answer an interesting question in fantasy right now: could Akira Schmid, 22, be a legitimate option in net for the New Jersey Devils?

The entire organization is in the midst of a renaissance, and Schmid has been an important part of that success: he has saved 5.5 Goals Scored Above Average and boasts a 71% Quality Start ratio in his role backing up Vitek Vanecek while Mackenzie Blackwood works his way back from an injury sustained in early November.

Schmid's track record stretching back to junior is solid but not incredible. The Devils plucked him out of a lower-tier Swiss league, U20-Elit league, with a fifth-round pick in 2018 acquired from moving Scott Wedgewood (DAL). He then crossed over and turned in a couple excellent seasons in the USHL with a small blip in the middle due to Covid interruptions and a mid-season trade. Throw in a solid AHL rookie season with Utica and that was enough for him to out-muscle Nico Daws for the call up when Blackwood went down.

His Hockey Prospecting projection is likewise solid but not incredible.

That "Goalie Score" for each year is the goalie's era-adjusted SV% multiplied by the league translation value. In other words, that number contextualizes their performance to provide a way of comparing goalies from different leagues and eras—a very difficult task. The higher the score, the more significant that season is in terms of them making the NHL, which is then taken into account via the NHLer Probability percentage. Schmid's score and probability will almost certainly see a boost once the model includes his 2022-23 performance. But even still, he does not look nearly as good on paper as his peers at the top of the prospect goalie rankings like Pyotr Kochetkov and Daniil Tarasov.

His closest comparables (Full Comps) in terms of development patterns (not playing style or size) are a bit of a mixed bag: Antti Niemi ended up flaming out of the NHL but was a successful starter for a few years and a decent backup for a few more; Andrew "The Hamburgler" Hammond had a brief glorious stint with the Senators but then regressed out of the league; Alex Nedeljkovic has excelled at the AHL level but has not yet established himself as an NHL-level goalie for the Red Wings.

Basically the trajectory and comparables show us that Schmid is trending in the right direction but still has a lot to prove.

Schmid certainly seems to have made Blackwood, once thought to be the Devils' future in net, expendable. But the two main questions around Schmid right now, at least in the short term, are: How much of his success this year can be attributed to the strength of the team around him? And what will happen when Blackwood returns?

The first red flag to me is his age. As Dobber reminds readers of his Top 50 Prospect Goalie list, most goalies don't put up meaningful numbers in the league until they are 25 or 26 years old. The only goalies to be fantasy relevant at even 23 over the last 20 years were Carey Price and Andrei Vasilevskiy —though Carter Hart's first two years in the league as a 20 and 21 year old were quite solid. At 22, Schmid is probably too young to be looked at as a reliable fantasy option just yet.

Regarding team strength, while it's an intriguing question in terms of ascertaining Schmid's individual talent and impact, it does not really matter for fantasy purposes. At the end of the day, good numbers are good numbers, and though the "goalies are voodoo" mantra is frustrating, it still continually proves to be true. Just look at Colorado turning Philipp Grubauer, Darcy Kuemper, and Alexandar Georgiev into high-end options basically overnight. For 2022-23, the Devils are allowing the fourth-fewest goals against per 60, one spot ahead of the Avalanche. Whoever they have in net should be a solid fantasy play this year as long as New Jersey can maintain this level of success.

One way to zoom in on Schmid in particular is to compare him to his peers in the Devils' crease. Of course, his small sample size versus Vanecek means there would be inevitable regression were his workload to increase. But there are still a few insights here.

Schmid certainly has been lucky so far in terms of avoiding Really Bad Starts (RBS), which is when a goalie posts a Save Percentage (SV%) in a game less than 85%. He has been playing lights out but will get hit with a stinker or two at some point, especially given that Vanecek has not been immune despite being one of the league's top tenders this year. Plus, the Devils are on a four-game losing streak right now and have slowed after going 13-1 in November.

A couple bad starts will make Schmid's stats look a lot more like Vanecek's, which is still fantastic but also a reminder that he is not "better" than his counterpart just because he has the edge in a few categories right now.

That said, it is interesting to note that Schmid has been stopping a higher percentage of pucks from inside 15 feet than Vanecek—and so has Blackwood. Shots from in tight are obviously the most dangerous and hardest to stop, whereas anything from 16 feet out should be a higher percentage save. Here are a couple examples from Schmid's latest start, a loss against Dallas, where he came up with at least two incredible saves on shots right at the doorstep.

Age, role, and sample size are all valid concerns about Schmid in fantasy right now, but the best goalies are the ones who can come up with huge saves like these to keep their teams competitive and spark comebacks.

As a final insight from comparing the three Devils goalies, Schmid and Vanecek stop about the same number of pucks in the 16+ range but Blackwood has had pronounced difficulty with shots in the critical 16-30 range this year. Here is one from that distance that beat him during a recent AHL game against Laval (where he is currently playing on a conditioning stint). It is a great shot but he just needs to stop pucks like this:

Regarding those mid-range shots, Blackwood has historically stopped a much higher percentage than this year. Here are his 16-30 FT SV% over the previous four seasons: 0.878, 0.884, 0.896, 0.902. So that is probably going to correct itself over time. The concerning part for Blackwood owners is that pretty much all of his metrics have steadily declined since 2018-19. The baffling part of that trend and his future outlook is that he posted his best couple seasons at ages 22 and 23 when the Devils were one of the worst teams in the league. You're telling me that he is that much worse at 26 now that the Devils are near the top of the pack?

Devils fans seem largely enamoured with Schmid and fed up with Blackwood but it still seems premature to dismiss a 26-year-old goalie who was previously seen as the answer in net. Schmid has been incredible and the Devils clearly have an excellent asset there. Given his age, however, it makes more sense for them to send Schmid back down to the AHL when Blackwood returns and see what value they can recover from their former starter (even just for trade purposes). If Blackwood continues to struggle, they know Schmid is there as a capable backup.

Schmid should be a valuable goalie to own longer term—and is just another example of why not to select goalies with high draft picks in fantasy: a Schmid or two comes out of nowhere every year—but in the short term, stash him and buy low on Blackwood. Despite Blackwood's steady decline and now-uncertain employment, plus the Devils appearing to have finally hit a rough patch, there is still a lot of potential value there and he should come dirt cheap right now. Park Schmid on your farm and get your hands on Blackwood before he completes his conditioning stint.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter @beegare for more prospect content and fantasy hockey analysis.