The goaltender is the single most important player on a hockey team. You spend the entire game protecting your goaltender from the puck, and when you can’t protect him, he had better be able to protect it more times than he doesn’t. The outcome of the entire game is solely based upon either team’s goaltender coming to play.
A few goalies just got themselves a nice pay raise this last season and this summer. Jimmy Howard, Corey Crawford, and Mike Smith all got nice contracts recently and will be coming into the season with a number to live up to.
I’m going to go ahead and dive into all 30 teams and their situations in net going into the season. I’m going to break this up into three posts and do ten at a time. And just to keep thing interesting, I’ll put them in order of who I believe to have the strongest nets in the league.