[The Athletic] Ce que nous avons bien et mal compris dans notre classement des perspectives des gardiens de but de la LNH
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seeldoger47
@Sabres de Buffalo
[The Athletic] Ce que nous avons bien et mal compris dans notre classement des perspectives des gardiens de but de la LNH
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seeldoger47
2 Comments
> **Now for the other end of the spectrum. Which teams did you think our final ranking was too generous to?**
> **McIndoe:** I won’t say that I disagree with the rankings, because I have to trust that Jesse and Scott know more than I do. But I’ll admit that I was shocked to see how high the Buffalo Sabres, Montreal Canadiens and Calgary Flames ended up.
> Again, some of that can be chalked up to the weighting maybe being not quite right, with too much emphasis on the future over the present. But all three teams scored decently in terms of right now, with Buffalo and Montreal both being in the top half of the league in the category. That surprised me, especially the Habs given that they’re coming off a season in which they were 28th in goals allowed.
> **Granger:** I went out on a bit of a limb putting Buffalo and Montreal as highly as I did for the current rankings, but I thought Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Sam Montembeault had two of the most underrated seasons in the NHL last year, largely overshadowed by the poor play in front of them. Luukkonen finished sixth with 22.46 goals saved above expected (right between Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark), but didn’t receive proper recognition. Montembeault was 10th in the league with 18.39 GSAx, and both are on the way up in their career arcs in my opinion. Betting on them to continue those trajectories is a risk, for sure, but I like where both are heading and am particularly bullish on Luukkonen’s immediate future.
> The other team that surprised me by how high they were ranked was Calgary. I love the prospects of Dustin Wolf, but there are legitimate concerns (which is part of the reason he wasn’t drafted until the seventh round in 2019) and he has yet to show he has what it takes on the big stage. If he pans out, the Flames’ ranking will be justified, but with the end of the Markstrom era, there’s also a world in which Calgary’s goaltending is sub-par moving forward.
>**Finally, let’s wrap up this project with the biggest question of them all. Having stuck our necks out, which single team are you the most worried will make us all look dumb over the next few years?**
>**McIndoe:** The obvious answers are the Predators and Columbus Blue Jackets, since the two teams at the extreme ends of the list are almost guaranteed to be “wrong.” But I’m more concerned about the Sabres, who don’t exactly have a strong track record of making positive takes about them look smart for the last, oh, decade or so. I get why we showered so much optimism on them, but it’s still the Sabres, and I think we can all imagine a world where it’s 2026, Luukkonen is an overpaid one-hit wonder, Devon Levi never quite reached expectations and 31 other fan bases are reposting our link with “this aged well” after a 10-2 Buffalo loss. And even the most loyal Sabres fan is fighting the urge to nod right now.
>And sure, the Jets, too, given how I just doubled down on that take. Enjoy the next three Vezinas, Connor.
>**Granger:** It’s definitely the Sabres for me as well. As Sean mentioned, betting on Buffalo hasn’t worked out for most of my lifetime, and the fact that I also doubled down with my confidence in Luukkonen only leaves the ranking more vulnerable to looking silly. Still, completely aware of all of that, I love Luukkonen’s chances. He’s one of the smartest goalies I’ve watched in terms of his ability to diagnose and predict the flow of play in front of him.
*nods*