We are back this week, after a couple of week hiatus, to finish our MVP series. We have completed reviews for centers, right and left wingers, and defensemen. Today we will be moving on to goalies.

The process will be much the same as with skater articles, though using different categories and scoring metrics. "Most Valuable" is a tricky term that is going to be completely dependent on the league specific context. For the purposes of this article, we are going to use standard Yahoo point scoring to calculate the total fantasy points for each player. This year the stats include wins, shutouts, saves, and goals against. Obviously, this means there might be some general deviations to your league, based on your settings, but it is at least a good starting point. In order to grab all of this data I am exporting the Goalie Big Board Report for the full season, and doing a bit of rearranging so I can have only the pertinent fields.

In addition to total fantasy points, I have also pulled Yahoo average draft position data (ADP). These ADPs are based on preseason drafts so don't take into account leagues and drafts that started part way through the season. The idea here is that if we compare that draft position to the end of year fantasy points for all goalies, we can get a trend line that lets us say on average a player with X draft position would be expected to get Y fantasy points. Once we have that we can compare that expected number to the player's actual number and see who performed the best based on their draft position.  

First up, who were the top five goalies this year?

Notable on this list are a few absences who happen to be ranked six through eight. Ilya Sorokin, Igor Shesterkin, and Andrei Vasilevskiy. For the goalies on this list though Alexandar Georgiev is perhaps the most surprising. He joined Colorado straight from his backup gig and was given the starter's job. Pavel Francouz theoretically could have pushed him for starts but didn't, and being injured for part of the season didn't help. One number that stands out for Georgiev is his goals saved above average number. He saved almost 28 goals more than an average goalie would in his place. In his career he has never had a number like that before. Part of that is pure volume, but on a per game level it is still dramatic. Over his three prior seasons he was saving 0.11 goals per game below average, whereas in 22-23 he saved 0.45 goals above. To put that in perspective, if he had saved goals at his recent career rate his 22-23 save percentage would have dropped to .900. That is a huge swing. So, is playing a starter's gig for Colorado versus a backup gig for the Rangers enough to account for that change? That is the risk going into 23-24.

Let's move on to goalies who provided the most value once we take into account their draft position.

There isn't much more to say about Linus Ullmark. Or really about Connor Hellebuyck either. So let's jump to Stuart Skinner.

Paying big money for a long time to Jack Campbell doesn't appear to have worked out too well for Edmonton so far. Stuart Skinner was clearly the better goalie in 22-23. Skinner put up a very solid 50-game sample with a .914 save percentage, and a 58 percent quality start number. The problem Skinner is going to face is not so much Jack Campbell, but Campbell's contract. Edmonton has every motivation to give Campbell a bunch more chances – either to save face and show that the contract is worthwhile, or to pump his value a bit before trying to trade him. Either way Campbell is likely going to have to fail again for Skinner to get as many games in 23-24 as he did in 22-23.

The bad news for Skinner is that some of what ailed Campbell appeared to be back luck. Campbell's overall goals saved above expected numbers are so completely out of line with his recent career history it seems hard to believe that he will repeat them. Even just performing at his three-year average there would have bumped his save percentage up to .900 or so. His penalty kill save percentage is also quite low, which given that it is usually very random could bounce back to something more palatable for the 23-24 season. Those changes might be enough for Edmonton to decide to give Campbell a much longer rope for 23-24. Skinner likely should be the starter, but drafting him like one might end up being a mistake.

And because we can't look at most valuable without thinking about the flip side – now on to the disappointments.

A lot of the disappointments here really come down to games played. This list maxes out at 34 games, when essentially all of these players were projected to be starters going into the season. The name I want to focus on is Elvis Merzlikins, and not because of anything specific that happened in 22-23, but because of what he can do for us in 23-24.

Merzlikins' goals saved above expected numbers are almost comically bad. Kind of like Philipp Grubauer from 21-22. So bad that there is just absolutely no way we can expect them to repeat. If instead of allowing 0.8 goals against more than expected each game, he saved 0.2 goals above expected each game (his average over his previous three seasons), then he would have had a .911 save percentage.

Using the same logic, we might have hoped for Grubauer to get closer to a .916 in his 22-23 season, though unfortunately his .895 certainty fell short. He did improve, just not all the way back to his previous goals saved above expected numbers. There are some reasons to be a bit more optimistic about Merzlikins, though. All of his data is with the same team, whereas these past two underperforming seasons for Grubauer have been with a different team (Seattle) than that better three-year average (Colorado). Additionally Columbus will essentially be adding three defensemen with trades for Ivan Provorov and Damon Severson plus the return of Zach Werenski which should give Columbus on the whole and Merzlikins specifically a boost.

And finally, who were the best players left undrafted in most leagues?

Filip Gustavsson saw an increased share of the games in Minnesota over the course of the season, but never fully took over a true starter’s workload. Given his performance (a .931 save percentage and a 69.2 quality start percentage) and question marks around Marc-Andre Fleury (both his age and being out-performed in 22-23) Gustavsson should at least be the 1A in 23-24. The one note of caution is that he put up a .919 on the penalty kill, which is likely very unsustainable so we shouldn't expect that .931 overall save percentage to continue.

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

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