Is this going to be the third consecutive year where a goaltender is taken in the top-15 of an NHL draft? Could there be, for the first time ever, two goaltenders taken there?
We’ve all heard about goaltenders being risky selections with high draft picks. There’s extra uncertainty, and for every Carey Price, there’s also an Antti Niemi. The 2021 playoffs is the first time I can remember there being four first-round goaltenders starting for their respective teams in the conference finals: Andrei Vasilevskiy, Carey Price, Marc-Andre Fleury, and Semyon Varlamov. Two of them — Price and Fleury — were taken in the top-five, while the others were taken before 25th overall.