The Great Goalie Usurpers: Five NHL backups who could steal No. 1 jobs this season

Credit: Akira Schmid (© Dennis Schneidler-USA TODAY Sports)

What do Filip Gustavsson, Ilya Samsonov, Stuart Skinner and Adin Hill have in common? Each ranked in the upper half of the NHL in goals saved above average per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 last season. Each finished 2022-23 as his team’s clear starting netminder. And none began the season as the No. 1.

Hockey goaltender is arguably the ficklest position in major pro sports. There’s a reason why we’ve seen six consecutive first-time winners of the Vezina Trophy. It’s not that good goalies grow on trees per se; it’s that, when the world’s top league has only 32 starting gigs up for grabs, the 33^rd or 43^rd or 53^rd best netminder on the planet is still damn good.

We can thus expect to see more goalie usurpers in NHL creases this season. Which ones have the best chances to steal starting work from their counterparts? Consider these names, listed alphabetically.

Jack Campbell, Edmonton Oilers

Can the usurpee turn usurper this season? The Oilers handed Campbell a five-year, $25 million contract in summer 2022, but when he struggled under the weight of expectation, they turned to rookie Skinner last year, who started 48 games, posted a .913 save percentage and finished second in the Calder Trophy vote. The momentum started to turn started when Skinner struggled in the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, pulled by coach Jay Woodcroft four times in his 12 starts, posting an .883 SV% and saving 6.9 goals below average. The shift continued this fall in the pre-season when Campbell sparkled with a .971 SV%, prompting Woodcroft to declare the net an open competition. So far in 2023-24, the Oilers are alternating starts between the two. After each struggled in his first appearance, Campbell sparkled in Tuesday’s win over the Nashville Predators. The Oilers were never going to completely mothball their $5 million annual investment, so we could see a hot hand situation play out all year.

Lukas Dostal, Anaheim Ducks

Remember when John Gibson regularly popped up in “best goalie in the world” discussions? It feels like an eternity ago. He hasn’t been a league-average goaltender since the 2018-19 season. The eight-year extension at a $6.4 million AAV he signed in 2018 has taken on water and made his contract one of the toughest in the league to trade, creating an annual offseason news cycle in which word leaks that he wants out, no teams bite, and his camp has to save face insisting he wants to remain a Duck.

The Ducks are saddled with Gibson for four more years, but that doesn’t mean they have to keep him installed as their bellcow starter. No goaltender has faced a more difficult workload over the past three years, with Gibson easily leading the NHL in expected goals against playing with a porous Ducks D-corps in front of him, and it seems to have worn him down. It’s an annual fight for him just to keep his save percentage north of .900.

But you know the stat about difficulty of workload? I lied. If you include goaltenders just with 20 or more NHL games, one goalie has faced an even tougher workload on an xGA per-60 basis: Lukas Dostal, Gibson’s teammate. Despite being blitzed for an NHL-high 36.22 shots per 60 at 5-on-5 in his first 23 NHL games, Dostal saved 0.15 goals above average per 60, grading out in the 71^st percentile. Dostal, a Czech import, is the Ducks’ top puck-stopping prospect and, after cutting his teeth in the AHL with small NHL stints sprinkled in over the past few seasons, he won the backup job outright in camp. When the Ducks paid big money for veterans Radko Gudas and Alex Killorn this summer, it sent a message that GM Pat Verbeek wants his rebuilding team to start ascending. It’s possible Dostal, 23, gives them a better chance to win in the present, not just the future.

Joel Hofer, St. Louis Blues

If you map out Jordan Binnington’s save percentages since his magical, Stanley Cup winning 2018-19 campaign as a rookie, it’s like staring at a slide: .927, .912, .910. 901, .894. The mercurial puck-stopper has struggled to maintain his standard of play – and his composure – as his career progresses, and it doesn’t help that the Blues team in front of him seemingly gets weaker defensively by the year.

Two seasons ago, Binnington was usurped by a streaking Ville Husso only to wrest the No. 1 job back during the playoffs. Husso’s temporary takeover did serve as a reminder that the Blues under GM Doug Armstrong and coach Craig Berube run their crease as a meritocracy. They were fine handing the keys to Husso when he was hot. Heck, Binnington as a rookie was a usurper, too, stealing the net from Jake Allen. So if youngster Joel Hofer continues to show promise, we can’t rule out the Blues shifting to him. He has a big, rangy frame at 6-foot-5, and he was excellent in AHL Springfield and at the World Championship with Canada last year. Hofer also outplayed Binnington in a six-game NHL sample last season. Binnington graded out as one of the worst starting netminders, if not the worst, in the league a year ago. The Blues hope to return to the playoffs this season, so the leash could be short if Hofer continues to impress in spot starts.

Akira Schmid, New Jersey Devils

Schmid technically already usurped Devils starter Vitek Vanecek last spring. After Vanecek struggled early in New Jersey’s series against the New York Rangers, Schmid parachuted in for a torrid five-game run in which he went 4-1 with two shutouts and a .951 SV%. He wasn’t nearly as good during New Jersey’s Round-2 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, however, opening the door for Vanecek to re-emerge as the team’s starter for 2023-24 and beyond. Vanecek, after all, delivered quite a solid first regular season after the Devils traded for him, placing top-10 in the league in wins and goals-against average. The 1A job still feels like his to lose, but Schmid has graduated from prospect in need of more AHL reps to a legitimate 1B and threat to Vanecek’s playing time. He holds a .921 SV% in 25 regular-season games, including 19 starts, since the beginning of last season.

Joseph Woll, Toronto Maple Leafs

Ilya Samsonov quietly overtook Matt Murray and delivered actual top-10 goaltender numbers last season. Seriously. Samsonov ranked among the league leaders in GSAA/60 and posted a career-best .919 SV%. But he left a weird aftertaste following a shaky and inconsistent postseason and ended up going to arbitration, where he was awarded a one-year contract that takes him to free agency. That hardly connoted confidence from new GM Brad Treliving and the Leafs brass.

Woll, meanwhile, long Toronto’s best goaltending prospect, was a star at the AHL level last year then looked like a star at the NHL level down the stretch, going 6-1 with a .932 SV%. He looked calm, confident and athletic in relief of an injured Samsonov during Round 2 of the playoffs, too. Early this season, Woll looks smoother in the crease than Samsonov. It almost feels like it’s a matter of time before the 1A/1B roles flip and Woll starts trending toward eventual playoff starter status.

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