Goalies

What a tandem is, and what the label on each card means

A tandem is simply the two goalies a club dresses. One of them starts most nights and the other covers the rest, and the share between them runs from a near even split to one goalie taking almost everything. The card for each club shows its rostered goalies ranked by starts, the starter first, with each one's starts, his share of his club's games while he was on the roster, his record, his save percentage and his goals-against average, all from last season's game logs. The bar under the names is the same split drawn to scale. A starter who took 65 percent of his club's games or more is labelled a workhorse; a club whose starter took under 60 percent is labelled a true tandem, because the backup on that club is a real fantasy asset and not an insurance policy; anything between the two leans to the starter. Where a goalie changed clubs over the summer, the numbers on his row are his own from wherever he played, which is the honest reading of what he did and a reminder that his new club may use him differently. Goalies in camp with no NHL games last season are counted but not ranked.

Starts are the category that matters

Wins, goals against, save percentage and shutouts are the four goalie categories in most leagues, and three of them are counting categories that only accumulate when the goalie is in net. A backup with a better save percentage than his partner still loses the week for you if he plays once. That is why the draft note on each card is written in starts and wins rather than in rate stats: our projection of how many games each goalie starts this season and how many he wins is the number to compare across clubs. In a points league the arithmetic is even blunter, since a start is worth a fixed number of points before a single save is made. Rank goalies by projected starts first, sort within that by the club in front of them, and treat last season's save percentage as a tiebreaker. A goalie who starts 55 games behind a strong club is a first-round asset in most formats; a goalie who starts 35 behind a great club is a late pick, however good his rate stats look.

Back-to-backs, and why the second night belongs to the backup

Every club plays a run of back-to-backs across the season, two games on consecutive nights, often in two cities. Almost no club starts the same goalie on both nights, so the second night is where the backup earns most of his starts. The habit line on each card counts the club's back-to-back sets from last season, how many times its top starter took both halves, and who took the second game, named where the directory still knows him. That last detail matters at the draft: a club whose backup took eleven second halves last season will give the new backup roughly the same, whoever he is, because the habit belongs to the coach and the schedule rather than to the goalie. The schedule planner shows where the back-to-backs fall in the coming weeks; a starter on a club with three of them in one matchup week may give you three starts instead of five, and your second goalie needs to cover that gap.

How the expected starter rule works, and where it stops

The chips at the bottom of each card name an expected starter for every game in the next seven days. The rule is short. The tandem is ranked by starts, last season's until the club has played ten games this season and this season's from then on. A goalie designated out, on injured reserve or suspended is removed from the rotation; a day-to-day designation is shown on his row and not applied, because most of those goalies play. A game with a day or more of rest goes to the starter. The second half of a back-to-back goes to the backup, unless the starter took both halves more than half the time last season over at least three sets, in which case it stays with him. With one healthy goalie on the roster he gets every game. Where the rule stops is at the morning skate: an illness, a hot backup, a goalie pulled the night before, a coach resting his starter before a road trip, none of that is in the schedule, and so none of it is in the rule. Treat the chip as the default and check the club's own announcement on game day when the start is the difference in your matchup. Before the first game of the season the seven-day window is empty and each card names the opener instead.

When to draft a backup

Draft a backup for one of two reasons and never for a third. The first is a true tandem: when the split is close to even the backup starts 35 to 40 games, which is a starting fantasy goalie in a two-goalie league and a bargain at his usual draft position. The second is the handcuff on a workhorse you have already drafted, but only when his club is good, because a backup's value when the starter goes down comes entirely from the club in front of him, and a backup on a weak club is a bad goalie playing more often. The third reason, taking the backup on a good club because he is on a good club, is the one to avoid: a workhorse's backup on a strong club starts perhaps 25 games and most of them are the second half of a back-to-back on the road, which is the worst start in hockey. Read the filter chips with that in mind. True tandems is the list of clubs where the second goalie is worth a roster spot on his own; workhorses is the list where the starter carries the whole workload and the backup is a handcuff at most.

Starts, records and save percentages are read from the league's published game logs for every game of last season and refreshed on our own feed; injury designations come from the injury report; the projected starts and wins are our own model's. If the feed is not available the page says so rather than showing a stale split.