Being that this is my first blog post on the Morning Skate I’ll state my fantasy hockey credentials. I’ve been playing fantasy hockey for the past 7 years or so on ESPN and Yahoo. I’ve either won my league or been in the finals every year. Even though I’m not much of a gambler, this past year I started getting in on Draft Kings and I pulled in a decent haul. This year I’m going to be bringing you weekly Draft Kings value picks, waiver wire pickups and overall fantasy hockey analysis.

Now on to this years fantasy rankings for goaltenders. Let me just say, there’s nothing better than checking who’s gonna be between the pipes for each game around noon everyday. If a team like the Penguins are playing a team like the Golden Knights, I’m praying the Pens throw their backup at them so I can pick him up for a spot start. There’s also nothing worse than getting beat to the waiver wire by some guy in your league that you know has no chance of winning that week. Below is a video of the best saves from the 2016-17 season.

Now without further ado, here’s my Top 40 goaltenders for the 2017-18 season.

Carey Price MTL Braden Holtby WSH Martin Jones SJS Matt Murray PIT Cam Talbot EDM Jake Allen STL Devan Dubnyk MIN Sergei Bobrovsky CBJ Corey Schneider NJD Ben Bishop DAL John Gibson ANA Tuukka Rask BOS Henrik Lundqvist NYR Pekka Rinne NSH Frederik Andersen TOR Corey Crawford CHI Andrei Vasilevskiy TB Craig Anderson OTT Jonathan Quick LA Mike Smith CGY Antti Raanta ARI Roberto Luongo FLA Marc-Andre FLeury VGK Thomas Greiss NYI Steve Mason WPG Scott Darling CAR Brian Elliot PHI Robin Lehner BUF Jacob Markstrom VAN Connor Hellebuyck WPG James Reimer FLA Jimmy Howard DET Semyon Varlamov COL Cam Ward CAR Petr Mrazek DET Michal Neuvirth PHI Mike Condon OTT Ryan Miller ANA Jaroslav Halak NYI Antti Niemi PIT

A couple quick notes:

Braden Holtby has been the number 1 goalie in fantasy for a couple years now but the offseason moves by the Caps forced me to drop him down a spot.

I think Cam Talbot is poised for a Vezina caliber season. He’s my darkhorse pick for the hardware. The Oilers finally have a solid defense and of course having McDavid doesn’t hurt. The McDavid-Draisaitl 1-2 punch is reminiscent of the young Crosby-Malkin combination.

Teams like Winnipeg, Florida, Philadelphia, Detroit and Carolina are most likely going to be splitting starts with their goaltenders. Take a guy like Brian Elliot- he’s historically slow out of the gates every season, but catches fire in the second half of the year. Steve Mason is also putting on a new sweater this fall and should be splitting starts due to his inconsistency and Hellebuyck being the goalie of the future.

Marc-Andre Fleury is the cornerstone franchise player for the new Vegas Golden Knights, so they will play him about as much as the Devils played Brodeur in his prime, close to 70 games I project. They won’t win a lot of games but he should be a low end No. 2 high end No. 3 tender for your team depending on your league size.

I hope you all enjoyed my inaugural blog post for the Morning Skate. Remember, predicting what other guys are gonna do on the ice is not an exact science but I try and give my best predictions.

Next up, my Top 50 Left Wingers for the 2017-18 Fantasy Hockey season.

Stay tuned!