Goalie shortage

[kluu]

Hey all, I'm in a middle of an offline draft right now and we're in the 5th round. This is a salary cap keeper.

Many goalies have been taken and I have only Niemi while theres 2 goalie slots.
Theres only a few goalies left such as Neuvirth, Dubnyk, Montoya, Bobrovsky, Enroth, Niitty. At the same time theres still Lecavalier, Iginla, Marleau, Boyle, Visnovsky, Briere and so on.

I have 3 picks in the next 10 also. Should I wait it out on goalies?

[GoHabsGo]

The question would be how many goalies are active at once?

All the goalies that you listed are backups, so I would think you have your one starter.

How close are you with the cap?

[bondon]

Scoring cats?? Min goalie starts?? How many teams?? Is it a dynasty or limited keeper and if limited how many??

To put it bluntly you put yourself behind the eight ball by waiting so long. I wouldn't keep doing that especially if you only have 3picks in the next 10 rounds. If you want to plan to win next year or in a couple of years take Neuvirth (assuming you'll be able to keep him). If you're wanting to try to win now take Montoya who,one way or another, will see quite a few starts this season.

[JHM]

It's pretty hard to pass up:

Lecavalier, Iginla, Marleau, Boyle, Visnovsky, Briere...

That's some serious points at other positions. In most cases the goalies you are pointing out are all somewhat the same. I think I like Dubnyk the best, to oust the starter. These tenders, generally have an upside of about 30 games. Picking the guy, who's partner is injured, is what you really need. We all know you can't really project who is going to be injured. Pay attention in Colorado though. I would have said the same thing about Dallas last year and Lehtonen played most of 70 games.

Neuvirth will have a high winning percentage (should do the most with the least).

I'm pretty sure I would take the skaters at this point. You will need to pay attention to those tenders though.

Striving to make a trade later, will be difficult, but having an Iggy/Visnovsky/Briere as trade bait, should get attention. It also opens you up to trade a bigger name (if you have one).

Pay some attention to the backups. Which other team has two tenders and would like to secure the backups and the trading possibilities that you're looking for? You'll have to study hard. Is someone taking "rebuild" too seriously, and trading away all their veterans? Get into their line.

In times gone by, I've occassionally made the mistake of picking for position, instead of taking the best player available. I don't recommend it. Taking the best player assures you of having the most trading power later on, which in turn, gets you the best player possible.

Good luck!

[kevinsrangers]

to little to late. you gotta land a goalie eirlier. you might as well pick a good forward now because it wont make a big differance of those goalies left. just make sure you get one.

[mrmojorisin]

If possitions matter take Iggy, there is a real lack of depth at the RW slot.

[kluu]

I left out a few details. The salary cap is 70mil. We use cap hits. We're doing some franchise player thing, so each respective team gets to pick 2 from their NHL team. I got Carolina, I got Staal and Skinner. (I had no choice, I took over the team, I think I rather have kept Ward)

So imagine 16 teams picking the best 2 players from their NHL team. Then now we start the draft. I ended up with the last pick of the first round (snake draft) and went with St Louis + Niemi. Round 1-3 were mostly goalies, I'd say 75%. After 4 rounds, I have 6 players so far, Staal/Skinner/Niemi/Yandle/StLouis/Clowe.

From my eyes, it seems many of the GMs here are picking young cheap contract talents with their early picks. Examples below.

3rd overall - Howard
4th - Price
10th - Giroux
12th - Crawford
25th - Subban (first dman drafted)

Theres much more to list.

@Gohabsgo - 2 active goalie slots. This is tough going with the remaining goalies. Wish I was able to get Ward. I've used 27.5m on 6 players

@JHM - Thanks for your great response. Theres no way I can pass those skaters up....right? This is my first salary cap league so I'm having a hard time deciding if I should be trying to grab players with a great $ to points ratio. Players such at Marleau/Iginla/Briere/Boyle come with a pricey price tag. Anyway I do have a short list of goalies I'd like, will attempt to draft them as late as I can.

@mrmojorisin - I feel like LW is much shallower, wasn't RW considered shallow last yr? Then I think the yr before, LW was shallow.

[dyzfunctioned]

There's not enough difference in the goalies remaining to justify using a pick. It'd be different if one was miles ahead of the rest and you were worried he wouldn't make it to your next pick.

Take one of the skaters and pick up one of the goalies later.

[Fast Tony DeNiro]

There's not enough difference in the goalies remaining to justify using a pick. It'd be different if one was miles ahead of the rest and you were worried he wouldn't make it to your next pick.

Take one of the skaters and pick up one of the goalies later.

This. Those goalies are so bunched together in terms of talent and opportunity, it's not worth drafting one just for the sake of getting a goalie. Take a forward or defenseman with the upcoming pick. Your goalies are going to be your team's weakpoint no matter what, so you might as well look to make the rest of your team as strong as you can.

[JHM]

In cap league it's all about ratios. I should have guessed that this was salary cap, just by looking at the list of players available. A player like Subban should NEVER have dropped to 25th. Howard was a solid pick at third, and maybe should have been higher.

You're looking for guys that can get you 20 points for every $1.0M of cap space. Draft that way, you'll be surprised how quickly the cap still fills. Others will be looking to you later on, to fix their cap problems. The trick is to get the cheap pieces. You can always fill in later with more expensive pieces.

Cap is ALL ABOUT RATIO. It's a math equation. Manage your cap, don't let it manage you. Open cap space is EXTREMELY valuable. You'll be able to make deals and pickup waivers, which in turn you'll be able to trade for picks on down the road. Plan ahead, and trade players that will soon no longer be achieving cap ratio. Manage your cap.

[asv27]

As others have said you're pretty much screwed in net already so you have to hope your forwards can make up for the lost points in net. Also, because all the goalies you mentioned are equally bad, take two forwards then a goalie with your three picks.

[spencergough]

As others have said you're pretty much screwed in net already.

Lol.

Kluu, I always end up in the same position when I draft a goalie in rounds 6-8 or so. Last year it was Anderson, a couple years before that it was Pascal Leclaire in Columbus. I hit in 2008 with Vokoun in round 6, but that was after I'd picked Luongo in the first round, so who knows how

Think of it as an opportunity to be Johnny-On-The-Spot and sign the next Andrej Pavalec or James Reimer or Buddy Whatsisname who comes out of nowhere...

Oh, and don't draft Lecavalier. He's got a terribly expensive contract, probably one of the worst. [well, if you're using his cap hit, I guess it isn't much worse than those others you mentioned]