Hello everyone and welcome back to Geek of the Week! My name is Ryan Brudner and I will be the new contributor for this weekly column, where I will highlight a few interesting players to keep an eye on for your multi category leagues. These may include streamer-level players, waiver pickups, trade targets, or just about any fantasy player that should be on your radar in these leagues. I hope you enjoy! I won't mention goalies often, but wanted to dive into them in my first article with the new Stats available on Frozen Tools.

With a lot of yearly variances occurring in this position, goalies always seems to provide frustration to fantasy managers – I'm talking to you, third-round Jacob Markstrom drafters of last year. Every year, there seems to be many goalies drafted early that turn out to be busts and many gems that could be found on the waiver wire throughout the season. In most head-to-head category leagues, goalies can play a huge role in whether you come out on top in a given week.

The standard goalie categories include Wins, Save Percentage, Goals-Against Average, and Shutouts. In most leagues, there are only 5-7 skater categories to go along with these four goalie cats. With these set ups, there is a large portion of categories to be determined by a small percentage of your roster. If you have an edge on the goalie position, you can have the upper hand at crushing your opponent for the week. Though due to the variance in the position, drafting goalies early does not always lead to having this edge and can hurt you greatly in your skater cats.

The new stats – Quality Weeks, Really Bad Weeks, and Star Weeks, to go along with Quality Starts and Really Bad Starts – can help you gain the edge on goalies, painting a clearer picture of what is happening week-in week-out at the position. Rather than looking at the cumulative stats in each category, you can see exactly what value a goalie brought to their fantasy teams each week.

Ian Gooding recently introduced these stats and examined the top goalies in each category. Take a look here to understand what these stats are. Generally, these stats can show which goalies are more consistent, and which ones have more variance (boom-or-bust, if you will) in their play. The more consistent goalies are ultimately more valuable for head-to-head category leagues.

A great example to show why these stats are valuable is comparing Connor Hellebuyck to Ilya Sorokin. Yahoo had Sorokin as the second-most valuable goalie last season with stellar cumulative stats (31 W, 2.34 GAA, .924 SV%, 6 SO), and Hellebuyck ranked lower at 6^th with less stellar – albeit great – cumulative stats (37 W, 2.49 GAA, .920 SV%, 4 SO). Hellebuyck had 20 Quality Weeks to Sorokin's 19, with one better Star Week as well. Sorokin also had 2 Really Bad Weeks, where Hellebuyck had 0. These Really Bad Weeks are the weeks that make fantasy managers pull their hair out giving them no chance at competing in their goalie categories. These stats tell a different story to the cumulative stats that go into the season's ranking.

Hellebuyck was actually more valuable in head-to-head category leagues, providing more consistency, even with less stellar cumulative stats. When Sorokin was on his game, he was absolute lights out, but he was on his game less often than Hellebuyck. This can also be seen in the Really Bad Start statistic, where Sorokin had 14.5% of his starts end terribly. This is a great marker for consistency. If a goalie is low in Really Bad Starts, he can generally be trusted to not give you Really Bad Weeks. This comparison of elite goalies may not seem like a big deal, but applying this method of evaluating goalies to less elite goalies can make things much clearer for you to target goalies later in your drafts or target streamers that may end up as locks on your roster.

I am not claiming to have predicted Linus Ullmark's insane season last year, but Ullmark was a goalie who has always proven to be consistent, yet not stellar, with a low percentage of Really Bad Starts throughout his career. He just needed the right team environment to have a dominant season for fantasy managers. The key is to find the goalies that have lower overall cumulative stats, but actually provide value week-in week-out. I will be highlighting three goalies I am very interested in this coming season based on this method.

Logan Thompson

I have to give props to Adin Hill for what he did in the playoffs last year, but I am not convinced that he will be Vegas' clear starter throughout the season. His regular season play was inconsistent, where he had a Really Bad Start percentage of 18.5% and put up 2 Really Bad Weeks with only 11/20 Quality Weeks. Logan Thompson was one of the most consistent goalies in the league last season. His Quality Week percentage of 61% was similar to Andrei Vasilevskiy, Vitek Vanecek, and Tristan Jarry, but it is his Really Bad Week total of zero that made him great. What is even more impressive, is that he only had one Really Bad Start all season, the lowest of any goalie who played in 10 or more games.

In the 2020-2021 season, Thompson also showed consistency with zero Really Bad Weeks. These are great stats and point to Thompson being a consistent goalie. Vegas will likely give Hill the first crack at the starting job, but if Hill shows the inconsistency he has shown in past regular seasons, Thompson could run away with the starter job, at least as the 1A. For someone being drafted as the 30^th goalie off the board in Yahoo, he could provide great value as a late round flier or a waiver add down the road.

Tristan Jarry

Jarry was ranked as the 24^th best goalie in Yahoo's rankings from last season and is being drafted as the 21^st Goalie according to Yahoo's ADP. My interest in Jarry mainly comes from what I think is a discrepancy between the Yahoo rankings and the true value he provided to his fantasy managers last season. Jarry ranked 14^th in Quality Weeks and posted only one Really Bad Week. Of the 13 goalies above him in Quality Weeks, only seven of them were able to post one or fewer Really Bad Weeks (Ullmark, Hellebuyck, Saros, Oettinger, Shesterkin, Gustavsson). Jarry also didn't lack Star Weeks (when your fantasy goalie dominates a week and almost guarantees a few goalie category wins), ranking 7^th. These rankings paint a much better picture than being the 24^th best fantasy goalie.

The consistency doesn't seem to be a fluke either, as he had zero Really Bad Weeks in the 2020-2021 season as the Penguins starter. He also has posted a low Really Bad Start percentage of 10% in back-to-back seasons. Aside from this proven consistency, I expect the Penguins to be slightly better this season and allow Jarry to grab some more wins. I'd be happy drafting Jarry in the 10-15 range of goalies this coming season.

Akira Schmid

With Mackenzie Blackwood shipped out to San Jose, Schmid is the clear backup to Vitek Vanecek. He might be just that, a backup, but there is potential for a timeshare in New Jersey and Schmid stealing the starter role is not out of the range of outcomes for this season. He did in fact do this in the playoffs, gaining more trust than Vanecek. Schmid showed consistency when he got starts last season, ranking 6^th in Quality Week percentage (69%) and only having one Really Bad Week. He only had two Really Bad Starts all season, good for a low 11% share. These are great consistency stats and I would be happy to stream him as a backup when he gets a start. He may earn some extra ones, though.

Vitek Vanecek has a history of inconsistency and may lose the trust from his coaches. He had four Really Bad Weeks last season, which was second worst in percentage (16%) among goalies with 50 or more starts. In all three of his seasons, Vanecek has shown a high percentage of Really Bad Starts, posting his worst yet last season at 19%. If Vanecek continues his inconsistency, Schmid might just snag the starting role on one of the best teams in the league.

Hope you enjoyed! See you next week.

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