(Ed. Note: We’re once again pleased to partner with Dobber Hockey to provide fantasy hockey insight throughout the NHL season. Please welcome Steve Laidlaw, the Managing Editor of DobberHockey, as your new fantasy hockey smarty-pants!)

BY STEVE LAIDLAW

Goaltending is arguably the most important position in fantasy hockey. In standard Yahoo! leagues goaltending accounts for 40 percent of the scoring, yet goaltenders only make up 17 percent of your actual roster. That means you are counting on a substantial output from a small number of players. Locking down solid goaltending is a great way to ensure you will be competitive this season.

Figuring out who to take is the trick. Over the last 10 seasons, only one goalie has managed to produce at a top-five level for more than two consecutive seasons. That goalie was Henrik Lundqvist, and he has since spent the past three seasons ranking 13th overall. Goaltenders simply do not get much time at the top so simply going by last season’s stats may not be the wise choice.

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Goalies are also victims of circumstance. They are intrinsically tied to the fate of their team. Sure, a goalie can usually boast a decent save percentage if getting peppered by over 30 shots per game, but he isn’t likely to win many games or get too many shutouts. Acquiring a goalie on a top team is huge but that requires forecasting abilities no prognosticator is good at. Even in the era of parity, the previous season’s standings do a better job of predicting current standings than anything any individual writer can come up with. Keep in mind last season’s playoff squads as you draft for goaltending.

A very useful strategy to help you rise above the volatility of goaltending is to build tiered rankings. You cannot completely remove the inherent risk in goaltenders, but if you can grab a goalie from each of your top three tiers then you stand a good chance of competing with the rest of the teams in your league. More importantly, it provides a guide for when to consider drafting goaltenders. This means you can sit back and wait for the right moment to strike, while filling your skater stats.

The basic principle is to not draft a goalie from a tier that is still full, but rather to wait until a tier might get emptied out and then strike with a goalie pick out of that tier. Here are my tiered rankings for standard leagues, which you may use as a blueprint:

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Odds are you aren’t getting a top tier goalie unless you are using one of your top two picks on one. You can draft the goalie of your choice as high as round one, and hope that it causes the rest of the managers in your league to panic and start a run on goalies. This could force some managers into taking second tier goalies extremely high and allow some of the stronger skaters to slide to you a little later than they might have otherwise.

The upshot of grabbing a goalie in the first round is that you will likely have your choice of the top tier options. So if you have an affinity for a specific goalie then being the first to act gives you your pick of the litter.

However, if you have no affinity or perhaps for you have a top five pick and don’t want to burn it on a goalie, then the good news is that Schneider is frequently dropping a little lower so you can get him in the late second or early third round. Schneider’s floor is a boatload of starts with a .500 record and great rate stats. If the Devils take a leap, he instantly becomes a candidate for top fantasy goalie.

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