Not One Goalie in the First Fifty Picks

The regular season opens on Tuesday 29 September. Preseason finales are being played this weekend, rosters get cut to twenty-three, and whatever you draft after today you draft with real games a few days away.

This is the last board before that happens, and the first thing it says is the same thing we have been saying for a month.

The top twenty-five is finished

Compare Friday's board to the one pulled on 2 September, twenty-three days earlier:

Free agency ended, the eight-year re-signing window closed, camps opened, a Vezina winner refused to report, and not one name entered or left the first twenty-five picks. Against 8 September the order has shuffled (eleven of the twenty-five sit at a different rank), but nobody in that group has moved as much as a pick and a half.

If you pick in the first two and a half rounds, ADP is as settled as it is going to get, so use it.

No goalie until pick 51

One thing did change near the top. Andrei Vasilevskiy, the first goaltender off the board, has drifted from 45.3 on 8 September to 50.2, and John Carlson passed him at 49.4. That leaves the first fifty ranked players looking like this: 34 forwards, 16 defencemen, zero goalies. The first goalie is the 51st player on the board.

By the hundredth player the count is 58 forwards, 31 defencemen and 11 goaltenders. The market waits on the position, and then it takes eleven of them in fifty picks.

That is a sensible reading of a best-ball format, where a bad goalie start costs you nothing because your best scores are selected for you. It is a bad reading of almost everything else. In a league where you set a lineup, your goalie plays every week whether he stops pucks or not, and a starter you waited on is a starter you cannot bench. If you are drafting a roster league off this board, the goalie column is the first place its advice stops applying.

The board finally added goalies, both backups

For a month the ranked goalie pool only shrank. Now it has grown for the first time:

The two goalies added are Stuart Skinner (WPG, 171.3) and Tristan Jarry (EDM, 175.9). Both got a crease this week because somebody else's emptied.

In Edmonton, Frederik Andersen, signed in July after winning the Cup in Carolina, is still recovering from a knee injury from that playoff run, with a return expected in late October. The Oilers are carrying three goalies, and until Andersen is back Jarry is the one playing. Andersen came off the board; Jarry went on at the very bottom of it, the 219th player of 219.

In Winnipeg, the Jets suspended Connor Hellebuyck on 16 September for refusing to report while his trade request stands. Trade offers have reportedly been poor, and Skinner, signed to a two-year deal in July, has been in the Jets' net this preseason.

The board has not resolved Winnipeg. Hellebuyck has fallen from 64.4 on 8 September to 79.0, and he is still the sixth goalie off the board, level with Jeremy Swayman. Skinner is the 33rd. The market is paying a mid-round price for a Winnipeg goaltender who is not at camp and a last-round price for the one who is. They cannot both be right, and the cheaper one is the one currently playing.

This is the same pricing problem we wrote about in August when Hellebuyck first asked out, and it has only become sharper since.

Who moved

The average ranked player moved 3.3 picks between 8 and 25 September, with a median of 1.9. Forty-three moved more than five picks, and sixteen moved more than ten. These are the ones that mattered.

Fiala has fallen further than anyone for the second board running. He was at 153.4 when we last published on 19 September; six days later he is at 163.5, which puts him inside the pile of near-interchangeable players at the end of the board. The Kings announced on 10 September that he had undergone a further procedure on the left leg he fractured at the Olympics in February, and they still have not given a return date.

Barzal is not skating for roughly two weeks after the knee that cost him the last 31 games of last season flared up again. The Islanders announced it on 16 September. General manager Mathieu Darche said there was "still a chance" for opening night, but the timeline covers the whole preseason.

Larkin hurt his upper body in an off-ice workout just before camp and was back at practice on Wednesday, not on a line. Todd McLellan says there is a chance he plays in Saturday's preseason finale. Jarvis is still expected to miss about the first month after shoulder surgery.

McKenna and Martone are the exceptions, because nothing happened to either of them. McKenna, the first overall pick, made his preseason debut on a line with John Tavares and William Nylander. Martone played his first NHL exhibition game this week. Both are rookie prices that the market set high over the summer and is now bringing back down, with no bad news involved.

Washington fell as a group

Look at the fallers table again. Three of the ten are Capitals, and a fourth, Dylan Strome, fell 6.1 picks. Washington's eight ranked players drifted down by an average of 6.3 picks, the most of any team with four or more on the board. (St. Louis went the other way, 6.9 picks up on average, half of it Philip Broberg.)

There is no single cause. Ovechkin missed two practices with a lower-body injury and left another early on Wednesday. Beyond that, the reason is on the record: Spencer Carbery has said he wants to spread ice time across a deeper forward group this season, and has described Ovechkin's role as "a game-by-game thing." Washington's forward group now runs Jordan Kyrou, Alex Tuch, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Boone Jenner alongside Ovechkin, Wilson and Strome. More forwards on one team means fewer minutes for each of them, and the board has marked down all of them at once. Ryan Leonard, who started camp on Ovechkin's line, is not ranked at all.

Blackwood is the biggest riser for the second board running. Jared Bednar opened camp saying Colorado wants him to establish himself as the starter ahead of Scott Wedgewood, and the market has moved him up 18.7 picks since 8 September. Broberg was named one of four alternate captains in St. Louis and opened camp paired with Logan Mailloux. Lafrenière is back on the line with Mika Zibanejad and Gabe Perreault that worked for the Rangers late last season. Buium signed an eight-year extension at the start of the month.

Notice the Kings again: Byfield rises 11.9 picks and Fiala falls 27.4 over the same seventeen days, on the same injury.

Eight in, eight out

Since 8 September the ranked pool has held at 219, but eight players have traded places at the bottom.

In: Kreider (F, MON, 167.0), K'Andre Miller (D, CAR, 166.0), Luca Cagnoni (D, SJ, 170.2), Zach Benson (F, BUF, 170.9), Skinner (G, WPG, 171.3), Tristan Luneau (D, ANH, 171.5), Matt Coronato (F, CGY, 173.0) and Jarry (G, EDM, 175.9).

Two of those are worth a second look. Chris Kreider was unranked on every pull we checked from 30 August through 20 September, and was the subject of a whole piece about why a 50-point winger was being drafted by nobody. He opened Montreal's camp on the top line with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield, in Juraj Slafkovský's spot, and the board has finally noticed. Luneau played 25 minutes 31 seconds in one of Anaheim's first preseason games, which we flagged in our piece on who actually dresses in September. He is now ranked.

Out: Frederik Andersen (G, EDM), Matt Duchene (F, DAL), Frank Nazar (F, CHI), Ilya Protas (F, WAS), Troy Terry (F, ANH), Alex Lyon (G, BUF), Anton Forsberg (G, LA) and Sean Durzi (D, NYR). Terry, Lyon, Forsberg and Durzi were already gone by our 19 September update. Of the newer departures, Andersen is the knee injury described above. Duchene has barely skated at camp (Glen Gulutzan calls it maintenance) and is questionable for Dallas's opener on 2 October. Protas is one more Washington forward in the crowd described above. Nazar has no reported injury and no visible cause. He was at 172.4 on 8 September and now he is not ranked, which near the bottom of this board is the difference between two rounding errors.

The bottom is still a pile

Through sixteen rounds the board is spaced almost perfectly, one ranked player per pick. Then it isn't:

Fifty-seven ranked players sit between 160.3 and 175.9. Forty-nine are above 165. Gabriel Vilardi, Alexander Nikishin, Darnell Nurse, Tomas Hertl, Carter Verhaeghe and K'Andre Miller all sit between 165.0 and 166.0: six players, two positions, one pick.

That is exactly where all eight of the new additions landed, and where Fiala has now fallen. It is also where the only real information left in September lives. The top of the board stopped moving weeks ago. The bottom moves on line rushes, injury reports and goalie depth charts, and it will keep moving after Tuesday.

What to take into your draft

The first twenty-five picks are settled: take the board at its word. Wait on goaltending only if your format forgives a bad start (best ball does, a weekly lineup does not). And when you reach the last two rounds, stop reading the ADP column. Fifty-seven players are separated by fifteen and a half picks, and the difference between them is who is actually playing on Tuesday.