Welcome everyone, we're now entering the Dustin Wolf era, as the flip to the 2025-26 numbers in the system serve his outlook well, and he's providing ridiculous value even compared to the names just below him on the list like Pyotr Kochetkov and Anthony Stolarz. That's because there's no other workhorse goalie out there right now on a sub-$1 million contract (now that Logan Thompson's extension is kicking in), and Wolf is adding some excellent peripherals on top of that to go along with a clean track record health-wise in his career to this point as well.

There are plenty of other bargains in the $2-4 million range, such as Filip Gustavsson, Sam Montembeault, Stuart Skinner, and the duo mentioned above, but Wolf comes in at about a third of the price of all of them, and is still just 24. Now, Wolf does only have one year left on that contract, but the upside is that with goalies you don't see them go straight from ELCs to the bank-breaking contracts like you do with the top skaters. Thompson's sub-$6 million cap hit on his new deal would be a solid benchmark for a long-term contract for Wolf next summer, even assuming he continues on the trajectory towards being a star.

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.