It is remarkably difficult to win the Stanley Cup when paying a goaltender market value.
When looking at the past 10 champions, if you take out the generational Sergei Bobrovsky’s and Andrei Vasilevskiy’s massive contracts, the average cap hit of the Cup winning netminder comes out to roughly $2.6 million.
Now, to be fair, a global pandemic certainly impacted those numbers as the salary cap remained stagnant between 2019 and 2022. I also understand that you can’t get away with paying a quality starter under $3 million anymore. The point still stands – if you want to win a Cup, you are more than likely going to need your ace to give you a discount.