Fantasy hockey goalie rankings – Which goalies avoid negative points?

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Sean Allen, Special to ESPN.comNov 28, 2023, 01:00 PM ET

CloseSean Allen is a fantasy analyst for ESPN.com. He was the 2008 and 2009 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hockey Writer of the Year. You can tweet him @seanard.

What do you expect from your netminder when you start them in fantasy hockey?

A win? A certain number of fantasy points? As long as it’s above zero?

Not everyone can have Cam Talbot and Thatcher Demko patrolling their fantasy crease. In fact, in a 12-team league, someone will be digging down to the 24th-ranked goaltender — if they’re lucky and another fantasy manager doesn’t have an extra good one stashed.

But let’s take some theoretical 12-team ideals to further explore expectations.

Actually get a number in your head for how many fantasy points you reasonably expect from your goaltender in a single start. Think about it. As a reminder, a win is four points, each goal against counts as minus two points, a save is 0.2 points, they get one point for an overtime loss and a shutout provides a bonus of three points.

So a win in which a goaltender allows three goals on 30 shots is worth 3.4 points, just as an example.

But that example is unfair, as it’s actually an above average start.

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If we take a goaltender pool of just the top 24 goalies based on their roster percentage in ESPN leagues, the average (mean) for their box scores is just 2.4 fantasy points. If you take a pool of the top 24 goaltenders for total fantasy points so far, it’s better, but not by a lot: 3.0 is the mean.

I’ll admit, before I started this exercise, I anticipated a higher average. But those negative points will get you.

So using the lesser of the two averages (2.4 based on the rostered top 24 goalies), let’s have a quick look at the 24 goaltenders that make up the list.

We’ll show how many of their starts have been above the 2.4 threshold, how many have been below, the total…

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Source link : https://www.espn.com/fantasy/hockey/story/_/id/38999069/fantasy-hockey-goalie-rankings-analysis-igor-shesterkin-jeremy-swayman

Author : Sean Allen

Publish date : 2023-11-28 17:36:48

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