Goalies are weird this draft, not many good ones, no clear top guy, and the order isn’t as established as past years. Imo there’s three tiers:
Best available: Topias Leinonen, Tyler Brennan
For the record: Wheeler views these as the likely top two goalies taken but personally likes Havelid more and wouldn’t take any goalie in the top 100. These two are the only goalies mentioned in THN’s top 100, Pronman’s top 118 (he had 4 more in the 119-127 range), and Bob McKenzie’s top 90 + HMs (so basically top 100).
“Bigger” guys with some upside, except all are only 6’2”-6’3” except the 6’5” Beaupit and the 6’4” Kochendorfer (who is probably not a lock to get selected, he’s mentioned in the THN Draft Preview but Ryan Kennedy seems to love the best draft-eligible NAHL goalie, probably because of Bishop/Hellebuyck, but they don’t get taken that often, see: him liking Bartoszkiewicz a lot last year, and neither Kochendorfer nor Bartoszkiewicz had close to the DY season in the NAHL that Bishop and especially Hellebuyck did) so not even THAT big, and I’d say this is typically minimum size for an NHL goalie: Mason Beaupit, Niklas Kokko, Andrew Oke, Ty Young, Axel Mangbo, Ivan Zhigalov, Ian Blomquist, Nick Malik, Tyler Muszelik, Chase Coward, Reid Dyck, Owen Millward, Croix Kochendorfer, Simon Wolf
Smaller guys (I think one or two of these guys is 6’1”, the rest are shorter) with skill and arguably more upside in some cases, but emphasis on small, which doesn’t usually translate to the NHL: Hugo Havelid, Brett Brochu, Dylan Silverstein, Sergei Ivanov, Thomas Milic, Luca Di Pasquo, Simon Latkoczy, Cameron Whitehead, Vincent Filion, Michael Schnattinger, Lukas Swedin, Maxim Arefyev, Braden Holt
This is just a sorting of every guy I’ve heard about from various sources, but the main thing is that there isn’t really tiers this year. Like last year you had Cossa/Wallstedt as 1sts, then Gaudreau/Lennox around the 3rd, then Boyko as like a 4th, then whoever you like imo. In 2020 you had Askarov as a 1st, then Blomqvist/Clang/Daws/Commesso as 2nd-3rds, then Bednar/Garand as the next best probably going in the 4th, before the field opened up. And I’m talking pre-draft, obviously a couple other guys snuck in because a certain team really liked them, but this was the pre-draft consensus expectation. This year you have just Leinonen/Brennan in that Gaudreau/Lennox tier of guys you’d like to take in the 3rd, then maybe Beaupit in the Boyko tier (basically just comes down to biggest goalie of the rest, and 6’7”>6’5”) as more of a 4th rounder, and then more small goalies than usual as the next best (at least subjectively). For the record I only really like the first two goalies I listed in each tier plus Milic/Silverstein, but only those 8 goalies would be guys I use a non-7th round pick on, and only the top 2 + Beaupit and maybe Havelid would I take before the 5th honestly. Weak class overall imo, anyone else have any thoughts?