A New Approach: Should the Sens Establish a Dedicated Goaltending Department?
Written By: Luke Muise
Goaltending has been a hot topic among the Sens fandom this season.
Can’t imagine why.
It’s been the achilles’ heel of the 2023-2024 Ottawa Senators, who in many ways have deserved a better fate this season, if only they could get some saves.
The Sens certainly aren’t alone in a search for stability between the pipes, as the position is commonly described as voodoo. It’s also been described as the most important position in hockey, and with good reason. Great goaltending on a mediocre team can cover up a lot of its shortcomings. A bad goalie on a great team can break hearts and championship aspirations. Bad goaltending on a team hoping to take the next step can… well, we’ve been watching what that can do.
As it stands right now, the Sens goaltending pipeline isn’t inspiring a ton of confidence in me. Obviously, the NHL tandem has soured the Sens this season. In Belleville, presumptive goalie-of-the-future Mads Sogaard has lead the way with some solid play, while Leevi Merilainen has been good but not great and Kevin Mandolese has been below average. Sogaard has mostly struggled in his NHL looks and finds himself in a bottom-five spot in Goals Saved Above Expected. It may be a little unfair to judge him based on such a small NHL sample size this season, but the numbers are the numbers. All that said, there are some reasons I still have some faith in the goalie prospects. Sogaard has an amazing toolkit and is a beast in net, while Merilainen has a long track record of simply winning wherever he goes. Goalie development takes time, but I also wouldn't say there are any elite or potentially elite goalies in the Sens’ system.
Let’s not even get into the absolute goaltending carousel the Sens have been on since Craig Anderson left.
The word “elite” gets thrown around quite a bit amongst the skating positions, maybe a little too casually, but that's not the case for goaltenders. There really are only a handful of truly elite goaltenders in the NHL. A few fall into the “good” category, but most teams are working with goaltending that ranges from average to bad, which means most teams will want to improve there. The fact that many teams find themselves in positions where they need to get better in net makes it all the more important for the Sens to make sure they become one of the few teams that aren’t sweating it anymore. That brings me to the crux of this article: The Senators should establish a front-office department that is 100 per cent dedicated to goaltending.
They wouldn't be the first team to do this. Calgary established one in 2020 and they’ve now got Dustin Wolf coming up through the ranks, who has struggled a bit in his first few stints with the big club but still looks to be the Flames’ goalie of the future. Florida established their own in 2023, headed by none other than Roberto Luongo.
I’d like to also point out the Nashville Predators. Nashville doesn’t have an official goaltending department, but what they do have is continuity in their goalie coaches: Ben Vanderklok and two of his former students, Jason Barron and some guy named Pekka Rinne. Rinne is a more recent addition to the coaching side, but he, uh, definitely spent some time with the Predators organization. Their goaltending situation should be the envy of the entire league. Imagine going from Tomas Vokoun (a highly underrated goalie in his time), to Pekka Rinne (who has a statue outside Bridgestone Arena), to one of the few aforementioned elite NHL goalies in Jusse Saros, and now having Yaroslav Askarov waiting in the wings to be the Preds’ next star in net. Nashville has prioritized the position since its inception and the results speak for themselves. I can’t remember a time when the Predators were looking for answers in net, and I’m extremely jealous of that. To me, it's proof positive that goaltending isn’t necessarily voodoo, it just needs to be paid special attention.
Goaltending departments are a trend that seem to be growing and could become the norm, so the Sens should absolutely hop on that train before it leaves the station and they’re left behind. Not only that, they should try to take it further than any other team has before them. The above-mentioned organizations structured their departments in different ways that prioritize different things and have varying levels of influence in the front office. If it were up to me, the Sens would go all-in: a healthy budget, amateur goaltending scouting in Europe and North America, pro goaltending scouting, drafting autonomy, goalie-specific development programs, coaching, training resources, sports psychology, all of it. The general manager would consult the department on all goaltending decisions and preferably defer to them when it came to free-agent signings and trades. At the draft table, the department would be the ones submitting picks for goalies. Who would I tap to lead this department?
President of Goaltending has a nice ring to it. (Josie Lepe/Canadian Press)
As I'm writing this all out, it sounds like too much, but I can't help but want the Sens to try something drastic. The rebuild years were too painful to watch as the competitive years slip by because of deficiencies in net. It might already be too late for such a department to bear fruit for the current core, at least from a drafting and developing standpoint. However, if it worked and the franchise established a rock-solid goaltending pipeline, wouldn’t that be worth it? I think so. It’s too important a position to constantly try and slap Band-Aids on or keep throwing things at the wall every off-season until something sticks. It’s worth a larger investment of money, resources, and expertise to make sure you’ve done all you can to maximize depth in goal. If you want goaltending to stop feeling like voodoo, you need to stop treating it like it is.
