Buy-Low Goaltenders
With the weekend acting as the NHL season’s midway point, the time has come for fantasy managers to dissect their teams and make adjustments for the second half. And if you’re one of the many managers looking to improve your goaltending stats, finding a buy-low bargain can set you on a course for late-season surges and playoff success.
Eleven Goalie Prospects to Watch in 2011
There’s no better way to kick off the new calendar year than by writing a School of Block lesson that reflects the general psyche of a goaltender. So instead of looking behind us and recapping 2010, I want to look ahead and help you prepare for what could be a 2011 stuffed to the brim with goalie prospects.
The biggest key to a goalie’s success in the World Junior Championships is making the first few saves in their first game. Accomplishing this can not only set a positive tone for the opening game, it can also dictate the pace of their entire tournament. And in such a pressure-filled event comprised of so many elite players, a goalie’s confidence can make or break a trip to the medal round, and ultimately a spot on the podium.
In what has to be one of the most interesting goalie dilemmas of the season, the Philadelphia Flyers are currently stuck with three goalies on their active roster. Russian rookie Sergei Bobrovsky, wily veteran Brian Boucher and the rehabbing Michael Leighton all have something to prove right now, which makes for quite the interesting fantasy predicament.
A goaltender’s ability to kill a penalty is an important part of not only tracking their performances, but quantifying their potential short and long-term success. Within a game, killing a penalty forces a goalie to increase their focus, awareness and timeliness. They also have to exert more energy, deal with more traffic and usually make those extremely tough lateral post-to-post pushes.
With Corey Crawford’s sixth straight win on Sunday night against the feeble Calgary Flames, the Chicago Blackhawks are very close to having a controversy on their hands. And although there are many ways the Blackhawks can handle their goalies in a positive manner moving forward, many questions surround both Crawford and Marty Turco’s short and long-term fantasy value.
The keen fantasy manager cares little about who currently dominates the crease. Instead, they care more about who is going to dominate next. Whether you’re molding a keeper team for future seasons or simply taking mental notes for next year’s draft, you gain more wisdom by knowing which goalies are making solid strides today in order to build a foundation for a better tomorrow.
At this stage of the season, you should have plenty of well-defined opinions regarding the fantasy value of goalies like Michal Neuvirth, Ondrej Pavelec, Tuukka Rask, Jimmy Howard and Jonathan Quick. If you don’t, or you still have specific questions regarding any goalie, you can always toss me a question in the weekly fantasy goalie mailbag.
Upon the horizon and around the corner, under the surface and out of thin air, they’re coming in waves and I don’t know from where. A backup here, an emergency recall there, you just simply can’t prepare for when a fantasy sleeper will appear. The key is to remember that anything is possible when the stars are aligned and a goalie quickly gets comfortable.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s even a real word and other times it seems like a tacky term only used for the sake of being creative. But “Stick-to-itiveness” is actually a pretty important aspect of managing fantasy goalies. It also happens to broach many levels of the goaltending position, and when that happens, I have to take the time to explain what it can teach a fantasy manager.
Try as you might, there’s simply no way of stopping the inevitability of a goalie’s sudden failure and surprising success. Every season, nay, every month, an unsuspecting group of them spring forward, while a few of the more valuable ones fall back and almost single-handedly crush your chance of winning it all.
But as I have come to learn over the years, it’s not the goalies you draft that make or break your season. Rather it is the ones you acquire through a trade, or the ones lost on the free agent wire that you are able to project correctly before everyone else.
