NHL Trade Deadline Primer: Are you a playoff team in need of a goalie? Well that is too bad

The goalie trade market, as usual, is slim.

The NHL Trade Deadline (March 6) is approaching, and until it arrives we are going to take a look at some of the significant players and teams that could be making moves. We continue today with the goalie market. It is slim.

There is not a single position in the NHL — or hockey in general — that has a bigger impact on the success of a team than goaltending. You just do not always know when or where you are going to get it.

Great goaltending makes bad teams competitive. It makes competitive teams contenders.

Bad goaltending does a pretty similar same thing, just in the reverse order. Contenders become only competitive. Competitive teams become bad teams.

It is an extremely important, yet also extremely volatile position.

That volatility and unpredictability also makes it a really difficult position to trade and acquire. Even the people that know what they are doing and know what they are looking for have a difficult time with it, and you simply never know when somebody is going to just put it all together at the most random time. It is the one position where a player can be stuck on the bench or in the minor leagues for years, get a chance in their late 20s or early 30s, and run with it.

Good luck figuring it all out.

It is largely because of those factors that goalies never really have the trade value people think they do. Even the best, established goalies that get traded typically only go for a first-or second-round pick. I remember when the Pittsburgh Penguins were dealing with the Matt Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury situation and there being a discussion about keeping Fleury and trying to trade Murray because of how much he could have potentially brought back in a trade. I just did not see it. Nobody is giving up multiple firsts or top prospects or key players for any goalie.

Just look at some of the more recent goalie trades involving prominent players at the position over the past five years.

• Linus Ullmark, one year removed from being a Vezina Trophy winner, was traded from the Boston Bruins to the Ottawa Senators for a first-round pick, Mark Kastelic and Joonas Korpisalo.

• Logan Thompson, an above league-average goalie in Vegas for a few years, was traded to the Washington Capitals for two third-round picks.

• Darcy Kuemper was traded from the Capitals to the Los Angeles Kings in a dueling salary dump that saw Pierre-Luc Dubois go the other way. It turned out to be a great trade for everybody involved, but the contracts were the thing that mostly made it possible.

• The Calgary Flames traded Jacob Markstrom to the New Jersey Devils for a first-round pick and defenseman Kevin Bahl.

• Earlier this season the Pittsburgh Penguins and Edmonton Oilers swapped Tristan Jarry (Pittsburgh to Edmonton) and Stuart Skinner (Edmonton to Pittsburgh) with Brett Kulak and a 2029 second-round draft pick also going to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh then swapped Kulak for defenseman Sam Girard and an additional 2028 second-round pick.

• Spencer Knight was traded with a first-round pick from the Florida Panthers to the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for defenseman Seth Jones.

• Jake Allen went from the Montreal Canadiens to the Devils for a third-round pick.

• MacKenzie Blackwood was traded a couple of times before settling in with the Colorado Avalanche this season. He went from the Devils to the San Jose Sharks for a sixth-round pick, and then from San Jose to Colorado for a second-round pick, a fifth-round pick, goalie Alexandar Georgiev and Nikolai Kovalenko.

Most of these trades involved goalies that were going to play at least one full season with their new team, and not necessarily rentals. They were were also, for the most part, pretty established goalies that were at least league-average to above league-average starters. While a first-round pick in some of these instances is not nothing, it is also not a ton on its own. A first-round pick should be the secondary piece to a big trade. It is what teams trade for high-end rentals at the deadline even when they know they are not going to be able to re-sign them. If it is the only major piece going to a team for a player that has at least one full year remaining on their contract, it is just not THAT impressive of a return.

Looking at the potential NHL playoff teams right now I see a handful that have major goaltending questions.

• The Oilers rank 28th in all-situations save percentage this season, and the early returns on the aforementioned Jarry trade are looking … well … not great. He has been benched in two his past three starts, including in a tie game in the third period, and has managed only an .863 save percentage in his first 12 appearances with the team. Big game performances and consistency have never really been his thing.

• The Golden Knights are 29th in the NHL in all-situations save percentage and have tried four different goalies this season. None of them have worked. None of them have a save percentage higher than .895 for the season. This is a potential Stanley Cup contending team that is getting absolutely crushed by its goaltending.

• The Senators are probably a lot better than their record indicates, but a league-worst save percentage is seriously holding them back. But is it worth it for them to add somebody? Should they just wait to see if Ullmark can bounce back? Are they close enough to playoff contention to even consider buying anything?

• The Montreal Canadiens have one of the best young cores of talent in the NHL and look to be on their way back to the playoffs for the second year in a row. They still lack a consistent No. 1 goalie and are 24th in the NHL in all situations save percentage.

While these teams might need somebody, the list of potential options is slim.

So what exactly are they?

Let’s talk about it.

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