As with the skaters, early-season numbers for the goalies aren't causing an overreaction in the list here. Stuart Skinner looks like a great buy-low, with his three years remaining on a bargain deal. Meanwhile, Ilya Samsonov, Jeremy Swayman, and Carter Hart are all fighting (with varying success) for a big new contract this summer. If you're looking for rebound candidates in net to buy-in on, it's the struggling UFAs to be, and anyone on Edmonton.

Akira Schmid and Vitek Vanecek as a tandem have not been good this year. Big things were expected of both, but it's looking like this could be a position where New Jersey looks to bring in some support to finish off the season. Schmid hasn't claimed a larger share of the starting pie, even though it has been his for the taking. Meanwhile, Vanecek hasn't looked like someone that can lead a team to a solid regular season finish, let alone a long playoff run. He's going to have to turn that around soon if he wants to keep his job, and his spot in the top-tier here.

Standard pre-rankings note:

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 entry-level deals. 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 value 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.