Written by Robert Luther III[1] & Steven C. Estep[2]
How often do we hear the phrase: “They just don’t have the goaltending to make a deep run in the playoffs”? For some teams that may be true. But is elite goaltending really necessary to contend for the Stanley Cup? While the evidence shows that a hot goalie can take a team deep into the playoffs, it’s just as clear that overpaying for an elite goalie can hurt a team even more than it can help them. Goaltending matters—but it is not the be-all, end-all in the salary cap era.
The Role of Goalies in the Playoffs
In the 25 years leading up to the salary cap era, practically every single Stanley Cup champion team featured either an elite, often Hall of Fame goalie—e.g., Billy Smith, Grant Fuhr, Patrick Roy, Mike Vernon, Tom Barrasso, Martin Brodeur, Ed Belfour, Dominik Hasek—or relied on an above-average goalie who was especially dialed-in for the playoffs—e.g., Bill Ranford, Mike Richter, and Nikolai Khabibulin. A hot goalie can make a difference—just look at the 2012 Kings who won the Cup as an 8-seed behind Jonathan Quick’s staggering 1.41 goals against average and .946 SV%. Or consider the 2011 Bruins and Tim Thomas’ .940 SV% and four shutouts. But in the salary cap era this pattern has abated.
Today, the truth is that for every Jonathan Quick or Tim Thomas performance, there are dozens of Cup champions with goaltending that might not have been great, but did not stop the teams from winning the Cup. Consider the 2022 Colorado Avalanche, who hoisted the Cup behind Darcy Kuemper’s pedestrian 2.57 GAA and .902 SV%. Kuemper finished with a ring and GSAx of -4.2. Or perhaps the 2023 Vegas Golden Knights, who leaned on Laurent Brossoit for eight games during the playoffs. Brossoit finished with a 3.18 GAA, .894 SV%, but a 5-2 record and his name on the Stanley Cup. While Kuemper and Brossoit may be unusual examples of Stanley Cup-winning goalies over the past decade, they also represent a more prominent trend—the teams that are winning are not emptying their pockets for goalies. Rather, they’re distributing the money throughout the roster to reduce pressure on goalies, leaning on stronger offense to give their team a lead, and stronger defense to limit shots on goal.
Goalies in the Salary Cap Era
The salary cap era created a conundrum for NHL general managers (“GMs”), particularly those with homegrown elite goaltending. Salary caps limit the amount of money teams can spend on their rosters. Thus, GMs are faced with deciding whether they should reward elite goaltending and allocate 10% or more of their salary cap to one player who may play less than 2/3 of the games or if they should let a generational talent walk in favor of a deeper team up front? It seems logical that teams would want the best talent available, but are goalies a paradox when it comes to salary cap restricted rosters?
To answer this question, we evaluated the salaries of the goaltending tandems that have made the conference finals over the course of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (“CBA”), which dates back to 2012-13. Looking at the data, the answer became relatively clear: teams allocating less than 9%[3] of their salary cap to their goalies are in the best position to win a Cup, or even to contend for a Cup in the first place. Yes, that is 9% combined for both starters and backups.
First, concerning Cup winners, why were Colorado and Vegas able to win Cups despite their goaltending? For one, their goalies took up only 8% and 4% of their salary cap, respectively. By allocating a small amount of their available cap space to goalies, they were able to build a deeper team up front that limited chances and/or generated more offense. Both teams scored nearly 4 goals per game during their run to the Cup, almost a full goal more than the average Cup champion since 2013 (3.11).
While Vegas and Colorado used their available salary cap space to generate offense, others built stifling team defenses. In 2020, the Lightning were able to take advantage of Andrei Vasilevskiy’s relatively inexpensive $3.5 AAV cap hit and put together a team led by Nikita Kucherov (7 goals, 27 assists in 25 games) and Brayden Point (14 goals, 19 assists in 23 games). Vasilevskiy’s low salary allowed the Lightning to build a team now remembered for the extent of its depth, including an unusually strong third line. The 2020 Lightning limited opponents to only 26 shots per 60 min throughout the playoffs.
Since the beginning of the current CBA in 2013, the team allocating more of their cap hit to goaltending, among the two teams in the finals, has won the cup just four times: the Blackhawks with Corey Crawford in 2015, the Penguins with Matt Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury in 2016, the Lightning with Andrei Vasilevskiy in 2020, and the Panthers with Sergei Bobrovsky in 2024. Ironically, Vasilevskiy was the higher paid goalie in 2020 when he made only $3.5 million (or just 4.3% of the Lightning’s salary cap), but not the following year when he made $9.5 million (or 11.6% of the cap), thanks to Carey Price’s $10.5 million cap hit. Of course, the Lightning’s strategic use of Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTIR) to field a playoff roster $18 million over the salary cap did not hurt, either.Second, this phenomenon routinely extends to whether teams can contend for the Cup in the first place. In analyzing the highest paid goalies over this CBA’s term, teams with one of the top 10 highest paid goalies in any given season made the playoffs just 50% of the time. In no season did more than 6 of the 10 highest paid goalies make the playoffs. This excludes teams with a goalie on LTIR, such as Montreal and Carey Price the past few years. Furthermore, teams with the highest-paid goalie over the past 13 years only made the Playoffs at a measly 58% rate, and have won only one Cup since 2013 (the 2024 Panthers).
When evaluating individual goalie contracts, the aforementioned 9% goalie allocation threshold becomes even more important. Of the 104 goalies that have made the conference finals since 2013 (starters and backups), only 13 of them individually made 9% or more of the team’s cap. Of those 13, only 4 won a Cup: Quick in 2014 at 9%, Corey Crawford in 2015 at 9%, Vasilevskiy in 2021 at 12% (however, with an inflated rosters), and Bobrovsky in 2024 at 12%. The other 91 were all paid less than 9% of the teams’ cap.
Conversely, the goalies absorbing valuable cap space have not experienced playoff success. For example, when Pekka Rinne’s 7-year, $7 million contract began in 2013, Rinne was the highest paid goalie in the NHL. During the first two years of the contract the Predators missed the playoffs each year.
In other instances, goalies have won a Cup while taking up a relatively small portion of the team’s cap space but have failed to yield consistent results after getting paid. For example, the St. Louis Blues’ Jordan Binnington won a Cup as a rookie with a $658K cap hit. Even combined with Jake Allen’s cap hit, the Blues’ goalies took up just 6% the team’s cap space. On the flipside, since his 6th year in 2021, when a $6 million extension took effect, the Blues have been to the playoffs only once and lost in the second round.
Finally, perhaps the best example of the goalie cap allocation paradox is Henrik Lundqvist. For 8 straight seasons, Lundqvist’s contracts occupied 10-12% of the Rangers’ cap space. While the Rangers made deep playoff runs with Lundqvist’s contract on the books, their lone Cup finals came prior to his $8.5 AAV contract kicking in. Further, they made deep playoff runs mainly because of Lundqvist. During the King’s reign in New York, the Rangers averaged only 2.04 goals for during Lundqvist’s playoff starts while surrendering over 31 shots against per game. For comparison, Cup Champions since 2013 have averaged 3.11 goals for and surrendered just 28.5 shots against per game. Lundqvist willed the Rangers deep into the playoffs multiple times, but did his contract hinder the team’s ability to make it over the hump and hoist a Cup?
All this is not to say a team with expensive goalies can’t be competitive. In fact, some of the teams that made the Cup finals but ultimately lost have had some of the highest goalie-cost allocations: 2014 Rangers (12%), 2017 Predators (11%), 2019 Bruins (12%), 2021 Canadiens (18%), 2022 Lightning (13%), and 2023 Panthers (17%). In many of these cases, their expensive goalie may be the reason those teams made the Finals, but may also be the reason they ultimately failed to win.
How Do Teams Win Championships with Expensive Goalies?
Indicatively, there are few such teams to analyze. We’ll go chronologically beginning with the 2014 Kings. As previously mentioned, the Kings devoted 10% of their salary cap to goalies ($5.8 million to Quick and just $352,564 to the backup, Martin Jones). This is on the lower end of what we consider a high percentage for goalie, and worth noting that Quick made up nearly all of it. All the Kings’ top players performed well in the 2014 playoffs, especially their more expensive players. Drew Doughty, Anze Kopitar, Jeff Carter, and Justin Williams, accounted for a combined 35% of the Kings’ cap space and they accumulated 40% of the Kings’ points. Meanwhile, trade deadline acquisition Marian Gaborik led the team with 14 goals, including 11 at even strength. While Gaborik’s post-deadline cap hit accounted for just 1.2% of the cap, he scored 16% of the Kings’ playoff goals.
The 2015 Blackhawks tread even closer to the 9% threshold with Corey Crawford checking in at 8.7% of the cap ($6.0 million) and Scott Darling at just 0.32% of the cap. Like the Kings, the Blackhawks received peak playoff performances from all their highest paid players. Patrick Kane (11G, 12A) and Jonathan Toews (10G, 11A) led the way on the front end, while Duncan Keith put up an impressive 21 points and a +16 over the course of 23 games. Depth scoring from Andrew Shaw and Brad Richards also helped. The Blackhawks had some additional help though.
On Feb. 24, 2015, Patrick Kane fractured his collarbone, leading to the Blackhawks placing him—and his $6.3 million cap hit—on LTIR. Chicago utilized the space to add Kimmo Timonen ($2.75 million), Antoine Vermette ($2.75 million), and Andrew Desjardins ($800,000). Kane returned for game 1 of the playoffs and the Blackhawks proceeded to win a Cup a few million dollars over the cap. With the extra cap space, their goalies fell below the 9% threshold.
History repeated itself in 2021 when the Lightning won the Stanley Cup. Vasilevskiy had just signed a new 8-year, $76 million contract, which single-handedly ate up 12% of the Lightning’s cap space. While he put up remarkable numbers in those playoffs, including a mind-blowing 1.149 GSAx/60, one would be remiss to not mention the fact that the Lightning played the playoffs $18 million over the cap.
Finally, we have the true anomaly: just last year, the Florida Panthers broke through and won the Cup in their second straight finals appearance. The Panthers achieved this goal with Sergei Bobrovsky’s $10 million AAV contract and the other goalie contracts eating 17% of the cap and no LTIR overages during the playoffs. Remarkably, they won while receiving less than average goaltending from their $10 million man. Bobrovsky finished the playoffs with a mediocre .902 save percentage and just .296 GSAx/60. The team’s success can be attributed in part to outstanding team defense that limited opponents to just 24.6 shots per 60 minutes. For context, that is nearly four fewer shots per 60 minutes than the average champion since 2013. When compounded for the 24 games that Bobrovsky played, he ultimately faced about 94 fewer shots over the course of the playoffs. He didn’t need to be great though as the team in front of him limited shots against/60 to just 24.6, nearly two shots lower than any other Cup champion since 2013 and four shots lower than average. The Panthers may simply be the one true example of a team signing a very expensive goalie and proceeding to assemble the perfect team around him piece by piece.
2025 Stanley Cup Playoff Predictions
So, what does this mean for teams in the 2025 playoffs? Let’s apply this theory to the teams in playoff contention to identify the teams that have utilized lower cap allocations for goalies to build a deeper roster, making them more likely to win the Cup.
For a visual representation, the table below illustrates where the teams have allocated their cap space according to capwages.com.[4] In addition to the allocations for goalies, defensemen, and forwards, we’ve included dead cap space, which represents salary cap penalties teams incur when a player who is no longer on their roster is still owed a portion of their salary.
Right off the bat, we’ll eliminate the three teams that exceed the 9% threshold. The Jets, Lightning, and Panthers check in at 11%, 12%, and 15%, respectively. As the Panthers proved last year, we should not count them out—but we’re trying to make a point here.
As we work our way down the list, we’ll look for a combination of Stanley Cup experience and cap space allocation. Keeping your goaltending budget low doesn’t matter if you overinflate your cap space in another position. The remaining teams have median cap allocations for defense and forwards of 32% and 58% respectively.
Of the teams with no Cups during the current CBA (Senators, Wild, Devils, Hurricanes, Stars, Oilers, Canadiens, and Maple Leafs), we’ll eliminate the teams that veer too far away from the medians: Wild (23% to D and 42% to F), Devils (26% to D), Stars (25% to D), Canadiens (18% to D, 63% to F), and Maple Leafs (26% to D, 69% to F). The Hurricanes, and Oilers survive.
Next, we’ll look at the teams that have won a Cup during the current CBA (Blues, Golden Knights, Kings, Avalanche, and Capitals). Perhaps not surprisingly, all five teams have near perfect roster allocation. We’ll keep all five teams, plus the Canes and Oilers. Now let’s see how they line up in the playoff picture.
First in the East, we have the Caps and the Canes, both in the Metropolitan Division. Because of this, they will play each other in the second round. This will likely be a very tight matchup, and it’s a shame it will come in the second round. However, based solely on their cap space allocation, we’ll pick the Canes. The Canes have invested more in their goalies, only 1% less in their defensemen, and 2% more in their forwards.
The West is a bit trickier.
First, we’ll look to the Central where the Avs and Blues are the only teams remaining. Utilizing their savings in net, the Avs have built a more robust offensive and defensive team than the Blues. We’ll give the nod to the Avs for this one.
Again, to make our pick from the Pacific, we’ll look to their cap allocation:
The Golden Knights, despite allocating more to their goalies than the other teams, also allocated more to their defensemen and forwards, indicating a deep team with multiple scoring lines and defensive depth that should limit chances going the other way. Unfortunately, for the Golden Knights, our methodology has them falling to the Avs, who used their savings in net to allocate 35% to defense and 59% to forwards.
Predicted Stanley Cup Final, based solely on cap space allocation: Canes vs. Avs.
Finally, we’ll give the nod to the Avs in the Finals. Not only do they have the Cup winning experience, but they also utilized their savings in net to invest more in both defensemen and forwards.
These predictions may not be perfect, but the trends are clear: teams allocating less cap space to goalies are building deeper and more talented rosters that do not rely on a hot goalie to make a playoff run. Elite goaltending can still be a gamechanger in the playoffs, but when it comes time to pay up, NHL GMs should think twice about where they want to spend that money.
[1] Distinguished Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University; Founder, Constitutional Solutions PLLC, where he advises clients around the game of hockey on sensitive issues.
[2] Law Student, Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University; Goaltender, Colgate University (2011-12).
[3] Salary cap data throughout the article was pulled from puckpedia.com, spotrac.com, and capwages.com and manually calculated to determine percentages, averages, and other cap related analysis.
[4] Cap space may not add to 100% due to roster management decisions. The salary cap is an upper limit, not a requirement. Teams often reserve cap space for injuries not requiring Long Term Injured Reserve usage.
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