Here are the top 62 goalies to own in your salary cap league – January 26^th, 2022 edition.

This month, Tuukka Rask makes his return to Boston, but he seems to need a little more time to get his feet under him.   Pavel Francouz is finally healthy, and has posted two straight shutouts, giving Darcy Kuemper a run for the larger quantity of starts behind the juggernaut Colorado Avalanche team. Both are worth looking into in cap leagues as players that aren't thought of as top tier options, but can give you top tier production in the second half.

The goalie landscape seems to be in a constant state of flux, and that's even the case mid-season as the crease situation for the Washington Capitals and St. Louis Blues is anything but clear. Ilya Samsonov may be the golden boy in Washington, but without the contract forcing the coach to feed him more starts, they will start leeching away to Vitek Vanecek. Having Zach Fucale in the picture complicates things as well, because now it's not just as simple as balancing the two slots between two goalies. Look for the two big names to share the majority of the starts the rest of the way, but in the rankings Vanecek takes the higher spot in the rankings thanks to his contract.

Over in St. Louis, we may be seeing a takeover that no one expected. Years ago, Ville Husso was regarded as the heir to the crease in St. Louis, but Jordan Binnington got the chance with the big club, and went on to win a Stanley Cup with them, and earning a big raise. Husso is still the same prospect he was before, and Binnington has long been a goalie with peaks and valleys (who also has a history of tailing off after 20-30 starts). Don't sleep on Husso as just a hot backup, he has a higher upside than that.

Standard pre-rankings note:

This isn't meant to be a be-all and end-all rating system for you to use without thinking and just trade your players for anyone above them on the list that you can find, but used with some foresight for managing salaries, I'm hoping that the list can help you mine value in trades, and at the draft table.

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 rookies. 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 rankings 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.

I'm not perfect, and the rankings won't be either. Comments help with optimizing the values.

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.

All salary info is courtesy of capfriendly. Without further ado, the rankings: