We are back this week 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 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 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.

The table below contains the top three total fantasy producers in goal for the 24-25 season. We start with basic player information on the left (name, team, and total games) then get into some production stats (wins, save percentage, and quality start percentage), and finally Yahoo standard league fantasy points.

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

Andrei Vasilevskiy had a nice rebound year, but overall, it isn't really surprising to see him on this list. Connor Hellebuyck is of course no surprise either, but the real thing of note is the gap between Hellebuyck and the field. The rest of the top 10 goalies not listed here are all in the 580 to 620 range. Hellebuyck is over 60 points up on second place, nearly 160 up on third, and has 25-30% more points than the remaining top 10. His dominance of the field this season is impressive.

The other note here is Filip Gustavsson. He had an excellent rebound season as well. He played 58 games, an increase from 23-24, and rebounded all the way up to a .914 save percentage from his .899 in 23-24. He was drafted quite late for a starter, 25th off the board, as clearly managers were very hesitant to take the chance, but he certainly rewarded those who did.

In addition to total fantasy points I have also pulled 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 the draft position to the end of year fantasy points for all goalies, we can get an equation 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. The ADP data below is compiled (averaged) Yahoo, and Fantrax ADPs for the 2023-24 season.

Our next table contains the players who provided the most value once we account for where they were drafted. I have included their ADP data, and the difference between each goalie's expected fantasy points and their actual fantasy points.

There are two additions to our top producers list. From our past articles it isn’t surprising that several of the top overall producers were also valuable compared to their draft position.

Mackenzie Blackwood leads the way here. Part of it is playing 56 games, an improvement from 23-34's 44 and part of it is certainly the trade to Colorado, but let's not downplay his performance in San Jose either. Blackwood had a .910 save percentage and a 52.6 quality start percentage in the 19 games prior to his trade. Clearly the quality start numbers, and the win rate improved when he went to Colorado, but he was valuable even before that. Blackwood had a rough final three games in the Dallas series, which certainly contributed to Colorado's early exit, but is under contract for starter money the next three seasons so should once again be Colorado's starter in 25-26.

Karel Vejmelka was also a significant surprise. He has shown flashes of relevance before but in 23-24 was very clearly beaten out by Conor Ingram for the starter's role. In 24-25 he played 58 games, but not until November when Ingram took a leave of absence from the team. He played quite well and capped it all with a streak of 23 consecutive games played to finish the season.

Now we move on to the least valuable. These guys all underperformed their draft slot by significant margins.

Obviously, a big issue with all of these players is total games played. For the most part drafters were not expecting 10 games played from these players. To make matters worse, they were all pretty bad in the games they did get. We already mentioned Ingram above as missing a ton of time and so did Semyon Varlamov. He was drafted the latest of the bunch as he was a backup going into the season, but more than 10 games were expected. Arturs Silovs and Devon Levi were always going to be slightly more prospective buys, being young guys that were hoping to establish themselves as solid backups, but Thatcher Demko really stands out here.

We knew Demko was hurt over the off season, but there wasn't much info available. Particularly for folks who drafted early it wasn't clear how impactful the injury was going to be. It ended up being very impactful with Demko only playing 23 games, and Vancouver signing Kevin Lankinen to share time even when Demko was healthy. Silovs was supposed to be the next man up, which is also why his stock rose a bit on draft day, but his .862 save percentage over 10 games was brutal enough that Vancouver went and signed Lankinen for three more seasons. With both Lankinen and a hopefully-healthy Demko, 25-25 will be interesting in Vancouver's crease.

Finally, I will wrap the column with a few names. These are the guys who weren't drafted but provided the most fantasy points.

Undrafted Lankinen leads the way here. As just discussed, he was signed late in the offseason and then played his way into a three-year contract extension with Vancouver. He was particularly excellent in the early going, but it is very unclear what the workload will be like in 25-26.

Casey DeSmith and Arvid Soderblom had some value as backups. DeSmith because he played for Dallas got the wins and save percentage to go along with that, and Soderblom mostly because he got more games than expected. There were at least three times during the season where he got mini runs of games, whether because of injuries to other goaltenders or changes in performance, capped by a run in December where he played 11 of 14 games for Chicago. The results were just ok, very similar to his year-long averages, but the volume was helpful in some formats.

That is all for this week.

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