Quote:
Originally Posted by DionTheDman
I don't know the specific statistics, but franchise goalies are more commonly found in later rounds, are they not?
The most recent Vezina winners are:
Henrik Lundqvist - 205th overall
Tim Thomas - 217th overall
Ryan Miller - 138th overall
Martin Brodeur - 20th overall
Miikka Kiprusoff - 116th overall
Jose Theodore - 44th overall
Dominik Hasek - 199th overall
Out of those, only one was from the first round.
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At the same time goalies like Rask, Price, Ward, Varlamov, Lehtonnen, Markstrom, Brodeur, Fleury, Luongo, and Schneider were first round picks and are bonafide number 1s for their team. Jonathan Bernier is one you may be able to add to the list later. DiPietro was for all intensive purposes a bust, but he still posted a few good years(behind an awful Islanders defence) before being completely derailed by injuries...and soured by the large contract.
In the 2nd round you have guys like Jake Allen(35), Pavelec(41), Crawford(52), Neuvirth(34) who are either solid starters or have good trade value.
Guys like Vasilevsky, Campbell, Subban, and Gibson are projected as their respective teams' "next" goalie and are doing well developmentally. All except Gibson, who went 39th, were first round picks.
Obviously there are numerous cases of goalies busting when being selected that early, but there are 10 bonafide NHL starters taken in the first(with Bernier potentially making that 11), and you have 2 more RIGHT NOW if you include the 2nd...with Jake Allen possibly being another in the near future. Neuvirth is a little tougher to gauge so I'll omit him. That's 12-14 goalies taken with picks 52 and above who are legitimate NHL starters. I'd say it's worth "wasting" a pick if there's a starter to be found....almost half the league unearthed a goalie this way.