Ranking all 32 NHL goalie ‘tandems’ for 2024-25

Credit: Apr 30, 2024; Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; New York Islanders goaltender Semyon Varlamov (40) and goaltender Ilya Sorokin (30) greet each other after the loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in game five of the first round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs at PNC Arena. Mandatory Credit: James Guillory-USA TODAY Sports

A couple decades ago, ranking NHL goalie “tandems” would’ve seemed silly. In the 2003-04 season, for instance, four goalies started more than 70 games, 12 cleared the 60-start mark, and 19 exceeded 50 starts. Backup goalies were glorified bench ornaments who stepped in once or twice a month.

As the game became faster in the New NHL era beginning in 2005-06, with East-West play on the rise, the goaltender position became more taxing. Teams began to load-manage their starters, particularly when playing back to back games. By 2013-14, no goalie started 70 games, yet 35 started at least 30 games.

Today: not even the word “tandem” suffices. For the sake of headline brevity, I’m ranking the NHL’s 32 “tandems” for 2024-25, but plenty of teams are carrying or anticipating they’ll need three or more puck-stoppers this season. Last season, only 12 goalies even started 50 games, but a whopping 62 started 30 or more, while 72 goalies, more than two per team, started 10 or more games.

With that understanding in mind, here are my rankings of every NHL goaltending tand– ahem, goaltending battery as we approach the season.

In terms of how to weight the starter vs. backup value: I’m rating the expected quality of goaltending for 82 games. If one team has a workhorse starter who will play 65, that matters. If another team has two excellent goalies who will split the load, that also matters.

1. NEW YORK ISLANDERS: Ilya Sorokin & Semyon Varlamov

The best way to summarize the season-long comfort level the Islanders have in goal: Sorokin may have to be load managed a bit to open the year as he returns from back surgery, and…it’s fine. He can take all the time he needs. Because the Isles have a starter-caliber 1B in Varlamov, who posted the third-best save percentage in the NHL last year among qualified leaders at .918. Sorokin remains one of the best pure goaltending talents in the world, but Isles bench boss Patrick Roy has a trust level with Varlamov, whom he previously coached in Colorado. Roy gave Varlamov starting duty to open the playoffs last spring. Hopefully, a healthier Sorokin can return to the all-world standard at which he played in his first three seasons from 2020-21 through 2022-23.

2. NEW YORK RANGERS: Igor Shesterkin & Jonathan Quick

Shesterkin belongs in the discussion for best goalies in the world – and you wouldn’t get a big argument from me if you ranked him No. 1. He’s the most athletic player at his position, blessed with incredible lateral reflexes. And while he needs to work on his consistency, there’s no one better when he’s on one of his heaters. That said: because Shesterkin’s style puts a lot of strain on the body, he requires more rest than the other bellcows. He has yet to start 60 games in a season. So Quick, who was a similar goalie in his prime to Shesterkin, plays an important role. At 38, Quick has still shown the ability to excel in short stretches, which is all you can ask for from your backup. He ranked top 10 in the NHL in goals saved above expected per 60 last season.

3. NASHVILLE PREDATORS: Juuse Saros & Scott Wedgewood

Saros had a relatively down 2023-24 by his standard, but an uncertain future no longer weighs on his shoulders now that he’s signed long term. Before last season, he graded out among the league’s truly elite stoppers. He also will be in Nashville’s net a ton; no goalie in the league has started more games over the past four seasons. When Saros does need a rest, he has a quality backup in offseason signing Wedgewood. He wasn’t as good last year as he was the previous couple years, but he proved to be a capable safety net behind Jake Oettinger and should be the same for Saros.

4. Winnipeg Jets: Connor Hellebuyck, Kaapo Kahkonen and Eric Comrie

Hellebuyck is the best goaltender in the game today, poor 2024 playoff performance be damned. He’s the reigning Vezina Trophy winner, and he has won it or finished top-four in the vote in five of the past seven seasons. At the ficklest position in pro spots, Hellebuyck is a throwback in that he’s reliable year to year. With Laurent Brossoit leaving as a UFA, however, the backup options behind him feel shakier than we’re used to. Kahkonen languished on some awful San Jose teams but did flash a bit as a New Jersey Devil late last year. Comrie was injured or ineffective as a Buffalo Sabre excelled as Hellebuyck’s backup in 2021-22. Will one of them do a decent Brossoit impression this year?

5. DALLAS STARS: Jake Oettinger & Casey DeSmith

We keep waiting for Oettinger to deliver that legendary, Vezina-worthy season. It still feels like he will at some point. He has the size, talent and team to do it, he’s still just 25, and he has been a monster in the playoffs in more than one spring. But he underachieved for much of last season and had to contend with a groin injury. The Stars want a Stanley Cup this season and need to keep their stud stopper fresh, so a seasoned backup is important. DeSmith should be a perfectly adequate Wedgewood replacement, carrying a .909 career SV% across 163 games.

6. NEW JERSEY DEVILS: Jacob Markstrom & Jake Allen

While injuries played a part, goaltending, more than anything else, torpedoed New Jersey’s 2023-24 season. Before the March 8 trade deadline, when they acquired Allen, they sat 31^st in team save percentage. General manager Tom Fitzgerald made sure to fix that problem. Markstrom was up and down in his last few seasons with Calgary, but he was stopping pucks for a rebuilding team crumbling around him. The last time he played for an actual contender version of the Flames in 2021-22, he finished second in the Vezina vote. This is a grizzled tandem with both tenders 34 years old, but that’s what the Devils need. This duo has a high, stable floor.

7. BOSTON BRUINS: Jeremy Swayman, Joonas Korpisalo & Brandon Bussi

Don’t panic, Bruins fans…I think. It was more than a little alarming to hear Don Sweeney express optimism they’d get Swayman, their star RFA, signed by the December deadline. With the Bruins’ season opener just 12 days away, it’s less and less likely Swayman will be in uniform then. Once he is, he’ll give Boston elite goaltending. He has yet to post a SV% below .914 in his career and was incredible in the 2023-24 playoffs. As for the insurance behind him: it’s better than people may think. Korpisalo has rarely played for competitive teams in his career. The last time he did was in the home stretch of the 2022-23 season, when, as a trade deadline rental, he was excellent for the L.A. Kings, going 7-2-1 with a 2.13 goals-against average and .921 SV%. While the Bruins aren’t what they were defensively a few years ago, they are still better than what he had to work with in Ottawa. If Korpisalo doesn’t get the job done as a stopgap, Brandon Bussi has been one of the AHL’s best goalies two years running and is ready for a look in the NHL.

8. ST. LOUIS BLUES: Jordan Binnington & Joel Hofer

After seemingly declining every year following his legendary, Stanley Cup winning debut in 2018-19, Binnington finally found his game and played arguably his best hockey since that season last year. Maybe it was the emergence of Hofer that pushed Binnington? Hofer didn’t get a lot of fanfare but was quietly one of the league’s best goaltenders as a rookie. He sat eighth in goals saved above expected per 60, right behind Swayman. The Blues should get quality goaltending no matter who tends the crease from game to game. I was tempted to rank them higher for that reason, but I’m factoring in that Hofer’s sample size is small at 35 career games.

9. CAROLINA HURRICANES: Frederik Andersen & Pyotr Kochetkov

Even if Andersen has repeatedly failed to deliver in the playoffs, he’s been an excellent regular-season goalie more often than not in his career. He was unbelievable upon returning from his blood clot scare last season. It still feels like it’s only a matter of time before Kochetkov gets an extended look as the No. 1. He has elevated his SV% in each of his three NHL seasons and has an unflappability to his game. While the Canes’ tenders need to prove themselves in the postseason, goaltending feels like more of a strength than weakness for this team.

10. FLORIDA PANTHERS: Sergei Bobrovsky, Spencer Knight & Chris Driedger

Hey, ‘Bob’ is the reigning Stanley Cup winning starter, so we owe him the respect of top-10 placement. On top of the championship, he finished third in the 2023-24 Vezina vote in what was easily the best of his five seasons to date as a $10 million man in a Panther uniform. But I can only place the Panthers’ battery so high given how unpredictable the support will be behind him. Anthony Stolarz was statistically the best backup in the NHL last season, and he left as a UFA. Former top prospect Knight, working his way back after seeking help for obsessive compulsive disorder, returned from the player assistance program to play for AHL Charlotte last year. Driedger was returning from a torn ACL last season. He excelled with AHL Coachella Valley but played two games for the Kraken. So the backups behind Bobrovsky have played a total of two NHL games over the past year.

11. WASHINGTON CAPITALS: Charlie Lindgren & Logan Thompson

The Capitals are hellbent on proving they aren’t simply building a team that can get Alex Ovechkin the goals record. They added a lot at forward, but they fortified their defense with Matt Roy and Jakob Chychrun and upgraded in net by landing Thompson to pair with Lindgren. Don’t sleep on this duo; Lindgren tied for the NHL lead with six shutouts last year and carried a team with a minus-37 goal differential to a improbable playoff berth. The Golden Knights thought highly enough of Thompson that they started him to open the playoffs over Adin Hill, who had won the Stanley Cup as their No. 1 a year prior. Lindgren has earned Washington’s 1A job, but Thompson arguably has a higher ceiling and will play plenty, too.

12. OTTAWA SENATORS: Linus Ullmark & Anton Forsberg

The Sens finally have a horse to start the majority of their games for the first time since Craig Anderson’s late-career peak. If we’re judging goalies on how often they stop the puck and how well they play above the average at their position: Ullmark has been the league’s top netminder over the past three years. Will he be exposed moving from a great team to a middling one? Not so fast. The Bruins were merely OK defensively last season, post-Patrice Bergeron retirement, and Ullmark remained excellent. Forsberg struggled last year but was working his way back from double knee surgeries. He showed a lot of promise a couple years ago, when he posted a .917 SV% across 46 games, and could thrive as a clear backup facing realistic expectations.

13. TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING: Andrei Vasilevskiy & Jonas Johansson

We aren’t ranking all-time tandems, remember. Vasilevskiy is a Future Hall of Famer but, returning from back surgery midseason, wasn’t even an average goaltender last year, sitting near the bottom of the league in goals saved above expected per 60. He had never finished below a .910 SV% in his first nine seasons before his .900 in 2023-24. That said, I’m expecting a rebound, which is why I’m keeping Tampa in the top half of the rankings. Not that I’m high on Johansson; he was the chosen stopgap when Vasy was out last year but was actually one of the worst goalies in the league. Across five seasons and 61 games, Johansson has a -30 goals saved above average. Translation: he has allowed 30 more goals than a league average goalie would have across those 61 games.

14. BUFFALO SABRES: Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Devon Levi & James Reimer

It wasn’t some crazy upset when Luukkonen seized the starting job with an excellent 2023-24 and earned himself a five-year, $23.75 million extension. Yes, Devon Levi is a great prospect, but so was UPL when he rose up the ranks. His pedigree suggests he’s here to stay as a goalie Buffalo can trust. That said: Levi quietly was way better than his surface stats (3.10, .899) indicated last season. Among 73 goalies who played at least 10 games, he sat seventh in goals saved above expected per 60 – right between Vezina winner Hellebuyck and Vezina runner-up Thatcher Demko. Levi was stellar for AHL Rochester, too. Reimer provides some insurance, but Buffalo’s two young netminders are ready to be difference makers. If there’s one ranking on the list that could prove far too low, it’s this one.

15. VANCOUVER CANUCKS: Thatcher Demko, Arturs Silovs & Kevin Lankinen

The Canucks are easily the toughest team to rank. If we know Demko can fight through the injury to the popliteus muscle in his knee and remain elite, we bump Vancouver up 10 spots. But there’s no current timetable for him to return, meaning the Canucks will rely on Silovs, who was their third-stringer last season, and journeyman backup Lankinen to hold the fort. No result between great and poor would surprise me in the range of outcomes here.

16. VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS: Adin Hill & Ilya Samsonov

Hill earned a Stanley Cup ring with a dominant 2022-23 playoffs. He’s also enormous. He has the goods to be a superstar goalie. But he has also yet to exceed 35 starts in a season and physically broke down a bit even under that modest workload last year. Translation: though Hill should set another career high in starts this season, Samsonov is going to play. Samsonov can be unstoppable for months at a time but can also lose his confidence and become an AHL-grade goalie for months at a time. The talent level of this duo is high, but we have to price the volatility into the rank, too.

17. EDMONTON OILERS: Stuart Skinner & Calvin Pickard

I wouldn’t call myself the world’s biggest Skinner Stan. Save percentages by month last year: .863, .888, .915, .953, .887, .917, .893. By playoff round: .910, .833, .922, 909. The human roulette wheel may be the game’s least consistent starting goalie. That said: he was still good enough, most of the time, to help Edmonton reach Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. When he’s on his game, he’s quite good. Pickard was also pretty solid behind him last season, going 12-7-1 with a .909 SV%. So while I don’t consider goaltending a feature for Edmonton, it’s not a bug, either. It can’t be if it was good enough to get you within one victory of a championship.

18. MINNESOTA WILD: Filip Gustavsson, Marc-Andre Fleury & Jesper Wallstedt

This group should rank much higher, right? Gustavsson is a season removed from elite play, Fleury is a future Hall of Famer and Wallstedt is one of the best prospects in hockey at any position. But if we zoom in: Gustavsson’s amazing 2022-23 was sandwiched between two sub-.900 seasons and is thus an outlier so far; Fleury is entering the final season of his amazing career and, forgivably, is in decline at 39; and Wallstedt is blocked and relegated to AHL duty as long as the other two remain with the Wild, as he needs to play and play a lot. The good news is that there’s room for Minnesota to drastically turn its goaltending fate around. It starts with Gustavsson’s performance.

19. DETROIT RED WINGS: Cam Talbot, Alex Lyon & Ville Husso

Talbot was one of the NHL’s best goalies for much of last season. He also played with a stingy Kings defense in front of him. It will be interesting to see how he fares with the leaky Red Wings. He’s the presumed 1A, but Lyon had his moments in spurts last season and, weathering a storm of opposing chances, graded out above average in goal saved above expected. Husso, on the other hand, did not. He’s clearly the tertiary option right now.

20. TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS: Joseph Woll, Anthony Stolarz & Matt Murray

I could be bang on or off by 10 spots in either direction here. Woll looked like a true star against Boston in the playoffs last year but has a devil of a time staying healthy. Stolarz had the best season of his career in 2023-24 but had the Stanley Cup champion roster playing in front of him. Neither goalie has exceeded 24 starts in a season. The skill level is high here, but it’s equally possible that this duo gets exposed with the biggest workloads of their careers. Murray remains in the background as a “break glass in case of emergency” option, which Toronto will probably need given Woll’s health history.

21. COLORADO AVALANCHE: Alexandar Georgiev & Justus Annunen

Georgiev is the NHL wins leader two years running, but last season the Avs were winning games in spite of him, not because of him. Playing the most minutes of any goalie in the league, he wilted. His resume consists of five seasons as a backup, one as a great starter and one as a bad starter. He’s a pending UFA, so the Avs will give plenty of opportunities to Annunen to see if he’s the long-term answer. The sample size was only 14 games, but he flourished last season, posting a .928 SV%. Annunen was considered a decent but not elite prospect going into last year; will he continue to shine with a bigger role or will he regress?

22. CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS: Petr Mrazek, Laurent Brossoit & Arvid Soderblom

Toiling on a tanker team last season, Mrazek was quietly good. That he posted a 907 SV%, four points above the league average of .903, was a minor miracle on the team that allowed the second-most scoring chances and high-danger chances in the NHL. He’ll get some quality help behind him once Brossoit is recovered from his knee surgery. Brossoit was stellar backing up Hellebuyck last season; among goalies with 20 or more appearances, only two saved more goals above expected per 60.

23. MONTREAL CANADIENS: Sam Montembeault & Cayden Primeau

Hot take: the Habs’ goalie duo might be the league’s most underrated. Sometimes the performances go unnoticed on teams nowhere near playoff contention, but Montembeault and Primeau both graded out as slightly above average last season. If you think I have them too low, my arm can be twisted. It’s possible that their numbers begin to sparkle in the next year or two as the team around them improves and allows fewer high-quality chances.

24. PITTSBURGH PENGUINS: Tristan Jarry & Alex Nedeljkovic

Jarry tied for the NHL lead in shutouts last season, and Nedeljkovic earned the team’s trust in a starting role down the stretch, but the net result between the duo was average at best. This is an experienced tandem with a fairly high floor and low ceiling. Jarry is being paid starter money at $5.375 million annually. He needs to meet expectations if the Penguins want any chance at a playoff berth following a quiet offseason in which they made mostly depth transactions.

25. LOS ANGELES KINGS: Darcy Kuemper & David Rittich

Kuemper hasn’t been the same goaltender since winning the Stanley Cup with Colorado in 2021-22. Based on recent performance, he’s a clear downgrade over Talbot year over year. ‘Big Save Dave’ Rittich was excellent in limited duty last year. It’s tough to say if he could sustain that performance in a larger sample size, but if he can stay in the 25-game range he should be an adequate backup again. It would be fun to see L.A.’s top netminding prospect Erik Portillo get a look at some point this year, too.

26. UTAH HOCKEY CLUB: Connor Ingram & Karel Vejmelka

Ingram was an amazing story last year, taking home the Masterton Trophy for perseverance and dedication to the sport after overcoming obsessive-compulsive disorder to become Utah (then Arizona)’s starting netminder. That said: he was great in the first half and subpar in the second. So we don’t actually know if he’s even a safe long-term No. 1 for Utah. His underlying metrics were strong overall, so it’s possible his play just sagged as the team fell out of contention. But with his sample size still small and Vejmelka’s play falling off, it’s tough to know exactly what Utah has here.

27. SEATTLE KRAKEN: Joey Daccord & Philipp Grubauer

Grubauer is supposedly Seattle’s starter given he’s signed for three more seasons at $5.9 million per year. But since he signed his deal with Seattle in the summer of 2021, 39 goalies have played 100 or more games, and he has the lowest save percentage among them at .893. There’s no excuse not to roll with Daccord at this point. He sat in the top half of the NHL in goals saved above expected last season. His .916 SV% was sixth in the NHL. That said, he’s streaky; most of his best starts came in December and January when Grubauer was out due to a lower-body injury. If the Kraken are wise, they’ll give Daccord the lion’s share of starts this season whether Grubauer is hurt or not.

28. ANAHEIM DUCKS: John Gibson & Lukas Dostal

Gibson is many years removed from the star form he showed when the Ducks were last competitive. He’s still chained to the team because of his $6.4 million AAV, but Anaheim needs to continue giving Dostal work to see if he can emerge as their goalie of the present and future. So far, he has not. While the narrative claims he’s the heir apparent, he played about as well as Gibson last year – as in, not great. Dostal has upside as Anaheim’s top netminding prospect, and Gibson’s talent is still in there somewhere, but the Ducks aren’t making the playoffs if their goalies repeat last year’s performance.

29. SAN JOSE SHARKS: Mackenzie Blackwood, Vitek Vanecek & Yaroslav Askarov

Blackwood actually held his own pretty well on the NHL’s worst team last season – he averaged more goals saved above expected per 60 than Oettinger and Sorokin, believe it or not. So maybe Blackwood can keep San Jose in games here and there again. Vanecek completely imploded last season playing on a superior team in New Jersey. We’re just waiting for Askarov to push him out of the way and take a step toward becoming San Jose’s star between the pipes. Given his trade request came because he wanted to play more, it wouldn’t make sense to let him marinate in the AHL for long. On the other hand, he was dinged up to open camp and is waivers exempt, so we may not see him in a Sharks uniform right away.

30. CALGARY FLAMES: Dustin Wolf & Dan Vladar

Will we rank the Flames significantly higher a year from now? It all depends on what Wolf shows. He owned major junior. He owned the AHL. Finally, the highly regarded prospect gets an open runway with Markstrom traded. But Wolf, undersized at six-foot, didn’t perform great in his 17-game look last season. With the Flames in rebuild mode, he isn’t going to get a ton of help. Given backup Vladar is also coming off a terrible year in which he ranked dead last in the NHL in goals saved above expected per 60, this duo has a lot to prove in 2024-25. And yet: betting against Wolf, who has defied expectations at every level, doesn’t usually end well.

31. COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS: Elvis Merzlikins & Daniil Tarasov

It’s a rock-bottom feeling when a player wants a trade but simply doesn’t attract sufficient interest for one because he hasn’t played well enough. That’s where we sit with Merzlikins, who had such a promising start to his career in 2019-20. Tarasov at least played at a league-average level last season and deserves to start more games than Merzlikins in 2024-25 – unless Columbus wants to give Merzlikins a long leash in hopes of him finding his game and reigniting his trade value.

32. PHILADELPHIA FLYERS: Ivan Fedotov & Sam Ersson

The Flyers were willing to commit two years at $3.25 million per to the towering Fedotov after seeing him play three NHL games, during which he posted an .811 SV%. Maybe he can be a star given his KHL prowess. But we really have no idea who he’ll be in North America, and Ersson’s play faltered badly in March and April under increased responsibility once Carter Hart was removed from the equation. I thus can’t confidently predict effective puckstopping from these two in 2024-25.
_____

POST SPONSORED BY bet365