The 40 team no-trade format is a good one. Nice to see teams still getting fleshed out on the top lines/pairings with guys typically assigned to bottom-unit stuff.
Seems like the goalie market is really different at 40 teams than it is in smaller formats. No surprise. The "undervaluation" of goalies in the ATD was always a matter of supply and demand much more so than a cultural bias against the position. In smaller drafts, the back end of the goalie market is good enough that waiting becomes a quite viable tactic. In larger drafts, scarcity drives the price of starting goalies up. It's simple.
So, I decided to do a quick shadow draft of where I'd be thus far. Did it the first time I looked through the draft list so as not to "game" later round picks by knowing what others would do. Shadow drafts are always a little wonky because changing one pick can change them all, but anyway, here goes [I use CDF's #19 position]:
1: Frank Nighbor
2: Borje Salming
3: Busher Jackson
4: Bernie Parent
5: Frantisek Pospisil
6: Helmuts Balderis
7: Frank Fredrickson
8: Bernie Morris
9: Doug Mohns
10: Dean Prentice
11. Dave Burrows
I'm pretty happy with it. My shadow team then looks like:
Jackson - Nighbor - Morris
Prentice - Frederickson - Balderis
Salming - Pospisil
Mohns - Burrows
Parent
Blast from the past Sturm! How long has it been haha?
As for the bolded? That position never made sense to me.
In a 25 team draft if you get Gump Worsley or Grant Fuhr you're going to have one of the worst starters in the league as both goalies are in the mid 20's ranking all time.
In a 40 team draft if you get Percy LeSueur you're going to have one of the worst starters in the league since he'd probably fall in the 35-40 range all time.
The only difference is Billy Smith or Grant Fuhr are more recognizable names. Yes they are ranked higher than Percy LeSeur, but Percy isn't getting drafted at all in a 25 team draft....Not as a starter.
It's all relative based on where a player ranks all time in relation to the size of the draft. The 25th ranked goalie in a 25 team draft means you have a crap starter.
The 38th ranked goalie in a 40 team draft means you have a crap starter.
I think there were people who began a trend, articulated their position in a way that made it seem feasible, pushed that position, in order to basically ignore the goalie in favor of drafting a stronger skater for a top 6/top 4 role. I don't think for one second it was a simple matter of organic, simple math.
It pained me watching people routinely putting off drafting a goalie, not as a matter of mathematics, but because they undervalued (and artificially reduced the value of) a position that is the only player to play 60 minutes of a hockey game and is almost always going to be more impactful than a 3rd wheel on a top line or conductor of a 2nd line, which is what you're upgrading to pass on say a Dryden or Brimsek. Unless you're talking on a 1D or 1C, I don't see another spot in a hockey lineup that is more critical than your G. But I realize that isn't a universal opinion.
Almost every ATD is chalk full of series where far worse goalies are routinely beating the better netminder. Some of those series made sense as the skaters on the inferior goalie team were so strong it overcame their crappy netminder. Other times I saw a lopsided goalie match up and skaters that were absolutely close enough that the Roy or Hasek or Plante's should have carried their respective team over the top vs the George Hainsworth's of the world.
For many years, I think voters largely only cared about F's and D's (look at the old assassination and H2H threads to see where debates focused on positinally speaking) where the G and coaches spots were, in some cases, shat on/largely ignored.
Just how I felt in years past. Mainly pre 2015/16ish.
