This is an argument I have been screaming from the rooftops for YEARS. The practice of having a true number one and riding him for a full season and a postseason to success is, in my opinion, a very outdated philosophy that, in recent years, has been challenged by teams simply investing more money and pick capital into their defensive prowess and then running two cheaper, well established, positionally sound, veteran goalies.

Now this dark art of spending money strategically based on value of return for a given position is new and directly opposes the tried and true "Chairelli Method" of giving a **** ton of money to players with one big season, but I really think this is the future of the league. Teams have already began to do this effectively, but the huge caviot is you need to solid on defense for this to work. THE CANES HAVE THIS, so we should not put much capital, money or draft, into finding a goalie and instead continue to build up our wall of top tier talent on defense and as long as our system work stays on point we can live with the luxury of more cap space to spend on our elite core of young forwards and D.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk and stay classy Canes fans

I mostly agree with your statement. But more often I disagree with many fans on the definition of " # 1". Often their definition seems to be a aging overpaid veteran. But look at the two of the four top teams in the playoffs last year the Canes and Blues....who were their goalies? Mrazek and Bennington. Almost be most folks definition....not # 1s at all.
Just saying, players and their on ice values can change very quickly.

I would call any goalie that takes a workload of 60 plus games a season a "Number One" just because you clearly shown who your guy was through the season. A tandem, like the hurricanes have, you will see more of a 45/35 split in games, its better for a goalies workload, injury management, and it keeps them from tiring out. Teams like Toronto are seeing big issues in goalie play when they run into back to backs because they have to put their worse goalie out for one of the two games and often they are sacrificing games like that. For Carolina, its more of their players fatigue that is an issue for them, because if they start Reimer or Mrazek they are fully ready and confident in their goalie for both nights. And if an injury happened they still dont have to overwork one guy because Nedejelvic (No idea how thats spelled) is a solid number 3. Your only as good as your third string goalie at the end of the day XD

The point of having one good goalie vs 2 mediocre goalies is that come playoff time rest isn't a major issue, so you only use one goalie and the better that goalie is the better the team is. The ideal goaltending situation is something along the lines of Arizona or Anaheim, where you have an elite goaltender and a good enough backup to only play them 45 times a year (my argument would work better if either of those teams could make the playoffs, but Carlyle and the Arizona injury bug have decided that I can't have nice things.)

Let's say we have 2 teams. One team has one goalie worth one win per 10 games (very very good) and one goalie worth -0.5 wins every ten games (less good). That comes to +0.5 wins per 10 games from goaltending with an even workload over the regular season for maximum rest, about +4 wins on the year. The other team has 2 goalies each worth 0.3 wins per 10 games, for 0.6 wins per ten games from goaltending, or 4.8 per year. Which team would you rather be?

The answer is the 1st one, for 2 reasons. For one, you can adjust the usage to make the 1st one get more wins. If you change it to a 50-30 split (using round number for easier mathing), suddenly that's +4.5 wins, or almost even. At a 60-20 split you've got +5 wins, with a 0.2 win cushion to account for diminished performance due to lack of rest. The coach can ride a #1 goalie hard to get a bad team into the playoffs, and can give some rest if the team is good enough to survive it, while a team without one is left in a trickier spot, even with a goalie tandem that's better overall.

The 2nd answer is playoffs. Teams pretty much never use their backups in the playoffs, even when the dropoff is pretty small, and rest generally isn't a factor in the playoffs thanks to the lack of travel. With that in mind, over a 7-game series, team #1 will get 0.7 wins from goaltending (1 win times 7/10ths of a ten game stretch), while team 2 will get 0.21 (3 tenths times 7 tenths) in that series. Half a win might not sound like a ton, but in a tight series it means everything.

Investing a ton in a number one goalie isn't a great idea with how inconsistent and difficult to project goalies are, but there's no denying you'd rather have a #1 than a platoon.

Okay first, a .3 goalie and another .3 goalie don't get you to a .6 goalie, every game would be played at a .3 Wins Per Ten pace so obviously you would be at .3 wins per ten for all 82 games. But this theoretical stat game is a zero ends game because i can give you stats that say one thing you can refute with a different one that says another. SV% doesn't account for quality, Wins above expected doesn't give enough credit to goalies with defensively solid teams, and doesn't take in to account quality, GAA is literally just a team stat, WAR is OK but oversimplifies whats going on and punishes goalies in good defensive systems. Plus all goalies are unicorns, defining them as if they will act consistently year round is disingenuous.

But on another note, the Ducks are proof that over work is definitely a thing, Gibson is the best goalie in hockey period in my opinion, and early in the year the Ducks ride him to being competitive in the early playoff race. But after January his stats begin to really fall off because its not just a volume of games played it is a volume of shots he faces and a very uniquely high volume of quality chances to score against him. Basically Gibson faces a constant barrage of rubber to the face every night for 60+ nights unimpeded by his offensively focused defense. Under this system the Ducks backup gets absolutely torched in the fire that only Gibson is able to handle. Gibson under the Islanders system (Assuming his play remains just as good which isn't true but theoretically speaking) his numbers would be godlike. He's not a better goalie in New York, he is very much a product of environment. The Islanders have a very competent defense and don't let quality chances through often at all. Thus, the reason that you see Robin Lehner, Thomas Griess, and now Varlomov are all putting up numbers that are equal too Gibson's (SV% wise, GAA, GPG, Wins). All flawed stats in their own right but so is Wins above expected. These goalies aren't better than Gibson in any world but their environment makes them play at a level that is equal too a Gibson. Gibson would put up a .935 sv% in NY, Lehner put up a .931% Griess put up a .927%, basically, by putting their money and focus on building up a strong defensive system they have given themselves a goalie that is equal to what Gibson would do every night. This is accomplished by understanding the mechanics of being a goaltender in the NHL. Most guys that are good in the NHL can stop the shots a NYI goaltender faces on a nightly basis, no goalie on the planet not named Gibson or Jesus himself can put up the performances Gibson puts out on a nightly basis in Anaheim.

What I just described to you is the future of hockey, by letting Lehner walk in free agency the Isles demonstrated they understand what they've done, they have created a system where all they need is a goalie that is positionally sound and they will preform the same as if they had Carey Price. Thus they can spend less on a goalie tandem than anyone else have it play better than anyone else, and invest the extra Draft capital and extra money capital on maintaining a good defensive core, and to pay Barry Trotz whatever the hell he wants to keep running it.

Im not arguing simply that two decent goalies are better than one Amazing one, cause thats not true, im arguing that understanding the goalie position and practically eliminating the high danger scoring chances by bolstering your defense will produce a tandem of goalies that, if they are positionally sound, will both play at a level equivalent to a Gibson or a Price in their systems which often leave them out to dry.

This is better for playoffs because your season can't be jack knifed by one player being injured, if one of your goalies gets cold and starts letting in weak pucks you have another that will work equally well, and you have more money and draft picks that you spent in making your defense better so your team can theoretically be better in the process. This is economics merging with hockey to make our game more efficient and smarter, this is the future of the game.

But if we are talking wins above expected if you have 2 goalies with a .5 WAE vs one with a 1WAE and his partner with a -.5 WAE in a 45 game split they are equal, and favering more games towards your number 1 would make it better than my split. This number is flawed obviously but i do understand your logic mathematically

The point was if the total talent level was close to equal, you'd rather it be concentrated into one goalie than spread across two. The example you gave isn't equal talent between the tandems: the even tandem has a total WAE of 1 (0.5+0.5=1), while the unequal one's total is 0.5 (1 + -0.5=1-0.5=0.5). The example I was using had a WAE of 0.5 for the unequal one and 0.6 WAE for the equal one.

There is a limit to how much total talent loss a team should accept in the name of having a true #1, but if the total talent of the tandem is close to equal you're better off with one good/one bad than with two decent.

Wins above expectation isn't an actual stat (at least not what I was using), it's an entirely theoretical construction I made for the thought experiment: a perfect goalie WAR model with no flaws whatsoever, so that the quality of the goalies could be a constant in order to discuss how that quality being broken down would be. The idea of having the sum of the tandems was to show the total ability of the tandems. You're right that assuming consistency from goalies is a bad plan and that evaluating goaltenders is analytics hell, I conceded those at the end when I said that teams shouldn't invest a lot in goaltending for those reasons, but you'd still rather have a #1 goalie than a platoon.

If a goalie is better entirely because of a different environment, that just means the goalie has an easier job, not that he's become any better/worse. Therefore my theoretically perfect WAR model would still give them credit for the same amount of wins above expected.

I get the point about how a strong team defence can inflate goaltending numbers and make great goaltending unnecessary, and you're right that generally it's more efficient to invest in good skaters and trust that the goaltending won't completely screw you over. But iffy goaltending can definitely doom even teams with elite skaters, the Carolina Hurricanes have learned that lesson the hard way many times with the Cam Ward Experience (and the .888 incident).

Again, my point wasn't that the Canes should give Gibson an 8x8 offersheet, it's that the Canes would right now be better off with a true #1 goalie than with their current tandem situation. They can win with this setup, but it'd still probably be worth making a low-risk trade for Raanta or Kuemper to get a proper #1 if the Yotes are willing to do so (they might be).

Yeah, killing the high-danger stuff really helps a goalie, but Minny's done that better than any team in the league the last few years and Dubnyk still managed to cost them a playoff spot. Goaltending definitely matters.