This is part two of a five part series breaking down the players selected by the Blue Jackets at the 2016 NHL entry draft. The previous posts can be viewed here:
Calvin Thurkauf
Today the focus turns to one of the most unpredictable aspect of prospects/scouting: goalies. Goalies are extremely difficult to project even at the NHL level. We have a good grasp of who the top the goalies are, the Prices, the Lundqvists etc, but every year there is that one guy who seemly comes out of nowhere whether it be a Devan Dubnyk last year or Joonas Korpisalo this year for the Jackets. If it’s difficult at the NHL level to understand goaltending, it’s nearly impossible at the junior level, which is why many people (myself included) tend to throw our hands up in the air and say “goalies are voodoo.” The common ideology surrounding goalies at the draft is to avoid them early due to that inherent risk but take a gamble late in the draft. The Jackets took exactly that route when they picked Peter Thome in the 6th round.
Thome is a big goalie standing at 6’3, from Minneapolis Minnesota. He was a re-entry player as he has a May 1997 birthdate. He spent the past season playing for the Aberdeen Wings in the North American Hockey League. At the time of this pick I was not a fan as I tend to discredit re-entry players and in general am not the biggest fans of players who play in non-traditional (i.e not the CHL, USHL or NCAA) North American junior leagues. In researching Thurkauf I've started to come around to the idea of re-entry players but the whole idea of projecting goalies remains difficult for me.
I've done some preliminary research on CHL goalies and found three interesting trends. The goalies that were most likely to make the NHL were the ones that were taller than 6’0, had a save percentage above .900 and had a late (after September 15th) birthday. The first two make sense, we have seen large goalies take over the NHL, and odds are if you are successful in junior that makes you far more likely to be successful in the NHL. The last one though stood out, but after giving it some thought it too makes sense. By having a late birthdate it allows a player to have three seasons in the CHL prior to being drafted as opposed to two. That gives scouts three seasons to view a goalie giving them a much larger sample size. Many goalies start their careers as back-ups and have difficulty getting a starting role until they are 18 or even 19 years old. This makes it really difficult for scouts and evaluators as they have such limited information to go on.
Thome doesn’t quite fit that model exactly as he didn’t play in the CHL but it’s not crazy to think these same trends would emerge in other leagues. Thome has NHL size at 6’3. He had a tremendous season in the NAHL, playing in 47 games and posting a .929 save percentage, a total that tied for second in the league behind a player who played just 14 games. The case could be made that Thome was the best goalie in the league. He doesn’t have a late birthday but as a re-entry player he did have that extra year to be seen.
Steve Burtch wrote a
very interesting piece over at NHL Numbers breaking down goalies and their likelihood of making the NHL. He found that the best place to find an impact NHL goalie is in the first two rounds of the draft, which goes against this recent conventional wisdom. The argument he makes is that generational goalies like Carey Price, Tuuka Rask and Corey Schneider were all identified as top prospects and drafted accordingly. The odds of finding a Jonathan Quick or a Henrik Lundqvist late in the draft are slim. Judging by that it’s unlikely that Thome becomes an impact NHL goalie.
However this conventional wisdom didn’t arise from nothing. There have been star goalies to come out of the later portion of the draft and it happens way more often than skaters. Look at the Jackets current group of goalies as an example. Joonas Korpisalo, who was great in the NHL this season, and Elvis Merzlikins, who was strong in the Swiss A League, were third round picks. Anton Forsberg who stole the show in the AHL playoffs was a 7th round pick, Oskar Dansk, who has struggled in North America, was a second round pick and finally Sergei Bobrovsky one of the better NHL goalies, wasn’t drafted at all. Contrary to Burtch’s piece I still stand by the idea that impact goalies more often than skaters can be found outside of the first few rounds.
Will Peter Thome follow down the same path as Korpisalo or Forsberg? We won’t know the answer to that for a while. Thome is going to spend another season in the NAHL before making the jump in 2017-18 to the NCAA to play for the University of North Dakota.
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