On Nov. 6, most NHL teams have played about 14 games and we’re inching closer to the quarter mark when trends and ideas of how things will shake out start to become more defined.
Enough time has passed for us to take a look at goalie situations around the league that are shaping up to be interesting to monitor as we approach and pass that important 20-game mark.
Whether it’s due to injury, a struggling starter, a backup pushing for a greater role, or some other reason, here are some of the goalies we’re keeping an eye on as the season progresses.
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This should be Sam Montembeault’s crease, but a very slow start to the season has led to a split workload. Montembeault made back-to-back starts this week for just the second time this season, and he currently ranks 70th out of 71 goalies in goals saved above expected (Linus Ullmark comes in last).
Jakub Dobes is the younger of the two, just 24 years old, and the 16 games he played last season were the first taste of NHL action he had earned. Dobes was inconsistent in those games, and then in two playoff starts he allowed a combined six goals.
Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis said he doesn’t necessarily believe one goalie needs to be the clear-cut No. 1, but that the position just has to be solid overall. However, he also indicated that he does expect Montembeault to recover and claim a No. 1 workload.
Meanwhile, the Canadiens are 22nd in team save percentage, and Dobes is playing well enough to make a case to be on Team Czechia’s Olympic roster, facing tough competition from Karel Vejmelka, Lukas Dostal and Dan Vladar. But while Montembeault’s start has been rocky, we have to wonder if he can hold the No. 3 job for Canada, move up the depth chart, or if his place on the team falls into jeopardy?
Middle of the league in scoring and bottom-third of the league on the power play, the 7-6-0 Blue Jackets are getting a top-of-the-table performance from an unlikely position. You wouldn’t say Columbus’ goaltending has been excellent in recent seasons. Elvis Merzlikins has been their No. 1 for a few years and hasn’t posted a .900 save percentage or better since 2021-22. Last season, the Blue Jackets ranked 19th in team save percentage.
That’s a different tale in 2025-26, where Columbus ranks sixth in overall team save percentage (third at five-on-five). Merzlikins has been going strong, but is splitting the crease with 24-year-old Jet Greaves, an undrafted netminder with 27 NHL appearances over the past four years.
Merzlikins has been rumoured as a trade candidate for a while, and even asked for a trade out of Columbus mid-way through last season before later rescinding it. He has one more season after this on his contract, making $5.4 million. Greaves, meanwhile, is the goalie of the future here if he can keep playing this well. He’s in the final season of a two-year bridge contract, making less than $1 million.
Though Greaves is coming off a poor outing in a loss against Calgary Wednesday night, here’s something to think about over the course of the next month: With Adin Hill injured and Montembeault struggling in Montreal, is there any way Greaves could wind up in consideration for the No. 3 goalie job on Team Canada’s Olympic entry? It may be too much, too soon for a largely unproven goalie, but at 24 years old, he’s by far the youngest of these choices and might be someone we should have on the radar for 2030.
From the get-go, this crease was designed to be a tandem, and why not? The combination of Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll finished with the fourth-best save percentage overall last season, and second-best at five-on-five.
But with Woll out since training camp, the entire pressure of this workload has fallen on Stolarz, whose 34 games last season were a career-high in the NHL. So far in 11 appearances, Stolarz has an .895 save percentage (down from .926 last season) and a 3.11 GAA (up from 2.14 last season), and while you may want to point the finger at an increased workload, remember that Stolarz’s 10th start came on Nov. 8 last season, while Woll only made three appearances. Stolarz’s start was much stronger a year ago in similar circumstances.
Woll is back practising with the team, and his return to the lineup is hopefully around the corner. When he does return, the team needs him to be on his game right away, as Stolarz could use some security right now, given that Cayden Primeau is proving unready for the NHL spotlight. The Maple Leafs’ October was bumpy, but they have now won three games in a row and are sitting 8-5-1 overall. This early part of the schedule was set up to be a relatively easy go, and having Woll back at his best would help the team immensely.
Can Toronto’s tandem return to the elite level it reached last season, or will this be another area of the roster that will suffer some level of decline in 2025-26? And if it does sag a little, how much can the team absorb and still make the post-season?
When the Devils acquired Jacob Markstrom ahead of last season, the No. 1 goalie was seen as a game-changer in the team’s fortunes as they improved by 10 points and went from seventh in the division to third. And while Markstrom did settle the position after the Devils used five goalies the season before, Jake Allen probably deserves a heap of credit as well.
While Markstrom started 49 games in 2024-25, Allen started 29 and, in some cases, was the statistically better goalie. Allen had a better save percentage and saved more goals above expected, both in total and per 60 minutes. Allen, at 35 years old, got a five-year extension out of it with a $1.8 million AAV.
This season, Markstrom was injured just three games in after a so-so beginning, so Allen ran as the No. 1 for most of October. He finished the month with a 2.39 GAA and won all but one of his games, and the Devils ended the month second in the East by points percentage.
Markstrom is back now, and signed his own two-year extension with a $6 million AAV on Nov. 1. His first game was an 8-4 loss to Colorado, then a 4-1 win over Los Angeles. The Devils have only one more back-to-back situation, which comes at the end of the month. Can Allen carve out an even greater share of starts?
The Red Wings have been in search of a goalie for some time — four netminders made multiple appearances for them last season, and GM Steve Yzerman’s only move at the trade deadline was to acquire Petr Mrazek. Cam Talbot was their No. 1 after he had a great year in Los Angeles, but Yzerman brought in John Gibson over the summer, a long-time trade candidate who was finally moved out of Anaheim.
The mystery with Gibson was how much of his struggles in recent seasons were due to any sort of decline (he’s 32 now) versus playing behind a young, rebuilding Ducks lineup. He showed much better last season, though he was limited to 29 games by injury.
So far this season, while Gibson’s save percentage doesn’t stand out, he’s saving more goals than expected, and his GSAE is better than Talbot’s. But Talbot, too, has been pretty good outside of one horrible loss against the Islanders.
Gibson may have been the expected No. 1 this season, but Talbot is making a case for why this should be a tandem. Together, they have the Red Wings 19th in overall save percentage after the team finished 22nd a year ago. They’re second in the Atlantic right now; will the goalies be good enough to finally get the Wings back to the post-season?
The big concern in Edmonton recently has always come back to the goaltending. Even though this team has had the same starter for back-to-back trips to the Stanley Cup Final, the question that lingers is, can he finish the job? It’s been so far, so good early for Skinner, who hasn’t been an ace per se, but is saving more goals than expected and has a slightly better than league average save percentage.
The Oilers, becoming known for their slow starts through the first two months, have been putting along the playoff cut line early, but have lost more games than they’ve won so far. Perhaps Evan Bouchard’s gaffes have taken some of the focus away from the goalies, but while Skinner is not elite, he’s also not the only reason why the Oilers are slow out of the gates again.
Skinner has been outperforming Calvin Pickard, clearly an NHL backup and not much of a threat to usurp the top job. But in the background, there is one eye on Connor Ingram.
Edmonton traded nothing to acquire Ingram, who has struggled with OCD and spent time in the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program. Mark Spector wrote about Ingram here, as the 28-year-old netminder tries to earn his way back to the NHL by way of AHL Bakersfield.
After a solid first start in the AHL, Ingram has allowed five goals in three straight games, so him becoming a factor in the NHL crease is still a long-term and hopeful project. In the meantime, the Oilers will surely have their antenna up in a dry goalie market, in case an unforeseen opportunity arises.
With Adin Hill injured and out week-to-week, Vegas’ crease has been manned by Carl Lindbom and Akira Schmid. In the two weeks without Hill, Vegas’ team save percentage ranks seventh in the league (helped by Tuesday’s shutout), and they’ve gone 2-2-1, so the schedule hasn’t been too heavy yet.
Hill will eventually return, though that may be a ways off yet, leaving Lindbom, 22, and Schmid, 25, to carry the load in the meantime. However, neither of those goalies will be Vegas’ starter later this season or into the playoffs unless a catastrophe happens.
The wild card here is Carter Hart, a controversial free-agent signing who hasn’t played an NHL game since Jan. 20, 2024 and isn’t eligible to return to the league until December. Hart can begin making AHL starts with the Henderson Silver Knights in mid-November.
From there, it will be interesting to discover how the Golden Knights plan to proceed in the crease. Hill has won a Stanley Cup, was Team Canada’s No. 2 at last season’s 4 Nations and is squarely on the Olympic radar as long as he can get back healthy.
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