The top end goalie mold

[Shindigs]

So a while back I was asking myself, what makes a top goalie in the NHL? Drafting good goalies is a minefield that's very hard to navigate. And wasting 1st rounder after 1st rounder on goalies that have all the PA. But none of the results was starting to get to me. So I decided to create the worst best goalie in the world by taking the lowest attributes value in each attribute from 4 of the best goalies in the 15-16 db: Lundqvist, Holtby, Price and developed Schneider. The worst best goalie has a PA of 158, which means it's nigh impossible for a goalie with a PA lower than that to be good enough to put up .910 or higher on a consistent enough basis. I'd argue that unless all the stars align any goalie with less than about 170 PA is incredibly unlikely to reach all the marks. Unless you personally tailor-made him in the db.

So what does the worst best goalie in the NHL look like?

I am pleased to introduce to you, the one, the only: Cory-Carey Holtby-Lundqvist!
[table][tr][th]Staff Attributes[/th][th][/th][th]Goalie[/th][th][/th][th]Technicals[/th][th][/th][th]Physicals[/th][th][/th][th]Mentals[/th][th][/th][/tr]
[tr][td]Adaptability[/td][td]15[/td][td]Blocker[/td][td]16[/td][td]Passing[/td][td]10[/td][td]Acceleration[/td][td]13[/td][td]Aggression[/td][td]5[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Ambition[/td][td]15[/td][td]Glove[/td][td]18[/td][td]Pokecheck[/td][td]12[/td][td]Agility[/td][td]16[/td][td]Anticipation[/td][td]17[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Determination[/td][td]16[/td][td]One on Ones[/td][td]10[/td][td]Positioning[/td][td]18[/td][td]Balance[/td][td]16[/td][td]Bravery[/td][td]13[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Loyalty[/td][td]13[/td][td]Rebound Control[/td][td]15[/td][td]Stickhandling[/td][td]10[/td][td]Speed[/td][td]13[/td][td]Consistency[/td][td]15[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Pressure[/td][td]15[/td][td]Recovery[/td][td]16[/td][td][/td][td][/td][td]Stamina[/td][td]18[/td][td]Decisions[/td][td]14[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Professionalism[/td][td]14[/td][td]Reflexes[/td][td]18[/td][td][/td][td][/td][td]Strength[/td][td]13[/td][td]Flair[/td][td]14[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Sportmanship[/td][td]14[/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td]Important Matches[/td][td]15[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Temperament[/td][td]15[/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td]Influence[/td][td]11[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td]Teamwork[/td][td]15[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td][/td][td]Work Rate[/td][td]16[/td][/tr][/table]

Obviously a lot of these attributes will be false positives, as well as some false negatives. Because certain very strong attributes can presumably make up for lacking in others. And because all these goalies have such high CA/PA there will be a lot of attribute inflation. Presumably having 15 Adaptability isn't key to being a good goalie. But the lowest of all 4 is 15, because when a player has that high CA/PA a lot attributes that don't need to be high will be just because of the sheer amount of available attribute points. These goalies are hand crafted to be some of the best goalies in the game though, so they also won't have any glaring weaknesses. My personal takeaway from this includes the obvious parts: Looking for high consistency and highish temperament/pressure in the scouting report and making sure the Mentals are within reach for Anticipation, Bravery, Determination, Teamwork and Workrate. The others I prefer if they make the mark. But I won't call a low flair goalie undraftable, nor a low influence one.

On the Physicals side the standout attributes are Agility, Balance and Stamina. The others are low enough that a goalie with high enough PA will hit close enough to those marks as long as they don't start at 6 or less. For Technicals the standout attributes are obviously Reflexes and Positioning. yes glove and blocker are high, but they will be high on any goalie with high enough PA. So I don't really care about how high those are when I draft someone. Because they are key goalie attributes so they can grow by a very large amount from age 18 to age 23. In the case of my Carter Hart both grew by 10 from age 18 to age 23. 10->20 Blocker and 9->19 Glove. And even most fairly poor backup newgens/regens will be sniffing at 16 to 17 in both, even when all the other attributes are in the trash.

If we look at Nino33's huge test of attribute growth in -8 and -9 (primarily) players from way back we can reverse-engineer how high their mentals need to be when we draft them to meet the minimum requirements by the time they are in their prime. In 1.4 there seems to have been a fairly noteworthy change in how mentals grow, especially in high PA players. So I'm not 100% sure those results are accurate anymore. But drafting goalies is more art than science anyways. We just need a ballpark value to help us spot which goalies have a 0% chance of becoming a good starter based on their draft day attributes.

The mental values needed thus ends up being roughly the following:
Anticipation: 17 - 2.96 = 14 to 15 is a reasonable Anticipation range. You will almost never see a newgen/regen with this.
Bravery: 13 -1.26 = 11 to 12 is a reasonable Bravery range.
Determination: 16 - ? = 15 to 16 is a reasonable Detemination range since it almost never grows.
Flair: 14 - 0 = 13 to 14 is a reasonable Flair range, because it never grows. But it's probably not required, just a CA inflated attribute.
Influence: 11 - 4.38 = 6 to 7 is enough due to the massive growth. I'm not 100% sure how the influence of a non-captain affects your team. So ignore as you see fit.
Teamwork: 15 - 1.6 = 13 to 14 is enough. I've seen a 3 point gain from age 18 to 25 in my goalie, since it's affected by training. So as low as 12 could be fine.
Work Rate: 16 - 1.23 = 14 to 15 is a reasonable range.

Most draft years there will be 0 goalies who meet even half these criteria, it's pretty depressing to try and find a good newgen/regen goalie. Because there is always at least 1 massive hole in their mentals or hiddens or positioning or reflexes or agility of balance that makes them fall short. A skater can make up for a hole in his game much easier. NHL goalies have to be so close to perfect that even a single attribute being 1 to 2 points too low just ruins them. Lord knows I have the number of so many top end goalies in my save. Because if their reflexes/ant/agi package isn't flawless you can almost always get them to .900 or less by using low or 5-hole shot targetting. The AI seemingly won't shot target you, but one of these nights all their shots will randomly go low/5-hole anyways and your goalie will single-handedly lose you that game. By trying to hit these minimums you can have a goalie with the most complete game possible. He will still most likely need monster PA to become a Vezina candidate, but with the wrong mentals/technicals/physicals even a 180 PA goalie can be a 1B at best based on performance.

For those that prefer more visual representation, here's my 5x Vezina, 4x Conn Smythe goalie as he looked when I drafted him, and again at age 25. It gives a good idea of how much you can expect things to grow. He's most likely going to gain a bit more in the way of mentals at age 27 and possibly 29 as well, but it's not guaranteed.

Clearly he misses the mark on several attributes. But not in any of the core ones.

Hope this helps you in your goalie drafting!

[nine-o]

Gold I tell ya. Highly relevant info packed into an easy to digest breakdown, bravo! This has been crazy helpful in my burn-em-down-and-rebuild retro rosters Jets save, thanks!

PS: if you aren't a data analyst already... you should be haha.

[Urpå]

I've found myself to be quite bad at drafting a goalie that would match the top end starting DB NHL goalies but finding a 'good enough' on late 1st to 3rd round has been easier. Checking back on my previous game (about 1.1 - 1.3 patch) it seems that my 150-160 CA guys have managed passable numbers with the AI handling the tactics and practice. I've never managed to grow anything close to that incarnation of Hart. Anyway, it's nice to get more info on this voodoo.

[Shindigs]

Yeah, I have no idea what his PA is. But in 26-27 he's currently the best goalie in the NHL as Price has lost his legs. But this game is essentially incapable of creating a goalie that's on par with the pre-made goalies. First of all it doesn't put enough weight into Anticipation, it also undervalues positioning, reflexes, agility and balance. For some reason like 50% of regen/newgen goalies in my save have 1 strength too. Which isn't a key attribute. But 1 means he's pretty much got the leg strength of a fetus. Not ideal when trying to trap the puck against the post.

I already have my insane goalie, so I'm trying an approach where I "fix" the key attributes of every single goalie in the draft. To make sure the AI can get some passable goalies too, because things look pretty bleak in the league right now. And the only goalies who entered the league after the game start that have made it to starter (and deserve being a starter) are ones that I had given attributes according to that mold as an experiment in the db before starting the game. The game meanwhile has had a 0% success rate over 12 years to create a single starter goalie.

It's also not like just because a goalie has that perfect attribute distribution he'll be great. He needs the hiddens to back it up. And he needs to highroll his PA enough to reach at least the mid 150s. I really wish that goalies kept the same "distribution" with only mild randomization as the player had before going into the regen pool again. From my understanding they only carry over very few attributes. Which means that even Lundqvist's regen will be pretty poor. I know, because he's already gone back in the regen pool and been drafted by the Oilers. Who already have one of the very few capable goalies in the league, so that wasn't great. I had to fix so many of his attributes to make him actually good though, despite his PA being flipping 180 or something silly like that.

Even with me doing all this to make goalie quality vastly better than it normally would be, we still have a league average save% closing in on 2% lower than it was in the beginning. It's pretty concerning how bad the game is at creating goalies actually. I'm also pretty certain there is a floor of sorts to how bad an AIs goalie can be. Because some of the AIs goalies would struggle to get a .800 as my goalie. But somehow breeze a ~.890 for the AI with 10 reflexes, 4 determination, 12 Agility and 11 glo/block etc. That goalie should be lit up like a Christmas tree if he even considered getting in net for an AHL game, not to mention an NHL game. Meanwhile my backup with all pre-requisites except recovery and anticipation couldn't get above .870 until his 4th season. That's more than a little bit suspicious. Especially as his save% instantly went up by 2% as soon as I traded him to the AI...

Personally I'd prefer it if the way goalies are generated could be fixed, since clearly the current method doesn't even remotely work. But I wouldn't count on that happening in the forseeable future. I just don't understand how it can be this messed up in the first place. If both me and the db researchers could reverse-engineer how to make a good goalie. How in god's name can the guy who made the game not figure out how to make the game able to create them?! I can literally do it by giving them base 11 in the key mentals and rolling a single d6 to see how much above it they get. It's not exactly rocket science. And no that's not caused a weird flux of tonnes of amazing goalies in the NHL, they still almost all have too low PA anyways and will be awful, but at least they CAN be good. The ones the game creates can't, unless something insanely unlikely happens.

This is all the goalies with .900 or better save% with at least 5 games played in the 2026-2027 season in my save. When I say the game has a 0% success rate. I mean 0%, I only started to edit goalies the last 4 or so seasons. But note how many players on this list aren't premade, edited in db(premades that i made better), edited pre draft (i mass edit them when the 1st ISS report comes in, by draft day I can't remember any values I put in) or edited post draft (when the AI picks them high and they have such bad mentals/consistency they'll never play).

That's right. We got zero .900+ goalies generated in the 8 years preceeding me starting to edit pre/post draft, that's not an acceptable yield considering C. Andersen, F.Andersen, Bishop, Crawford, Darling, Dubnyk, Elliott, Fleury, Halak, Howard, Lehner, Lehtonen, Lundqvist, Luongo, Mason, Niemi, Quick, Rask, Rinne, Schneider, Talbot and probably some more that are at least .900 capable have all retired in that time.

And no Jerry Gagne did not start 33 games, it's the stupid goalie change bug that's been around since 1.2 (i think that's when it started at least).

[Urpå]

I checked back on the game I mentioned and since it's at 2047 there's definetly non-db goalies out there who can infact stop the puck at the current NHL top level but the number is low. The best is a very consistent .920+ and another almost as good, then there's a few between .900 and .910 and a whole lot of sub .900 goalies. I was hoping improvement on latest patch but I'm only a few years in. So far the attribute distribution in drafts looks same though which doesn't bode well.

Here's the best guy. Still has some odd holes in attributes when comparing to the DB guys.

http://imgur.com/a/C4BDo

[Shindigs]

I checked back on the game I mentioned and since it's at 2047 there's definetly non-db goalies out there who can infact stop the puck at the current NHL top level but the number is low. The best is a very consistent .920+ and another almost as good, then there's a few between .900 and .910 and a whole lot of sub .900 goalies. I was hoping improvement on latest patch but I'm only a few years in. So far the attribute distribution in drafts looks same though which doesn't bode well.

Here's the best guy. Still has some odd holes in attributes when comparing to the DB guys.

http://imgur.com/a/C4BDo

Yeah, with that determination he shouldn't be the most reliable come playoffs. But again, certain attributes being low just seems to not matter when the AI has them. Assuming that wasn't your goalie? We have a goalie who's just got the worst mentals I've ever seen, sure his work rate and teamwork is good. But same issue as that guy, horrible determination. But for the AI he's a solid .908 guy. But part of that is also that the league overall just declines so much with time; since a similar issue exists with the skaters, it's not as pronounced there though. This does mean that eventually goalies won't need to be as good as the entire league's quality starts declining. Not by the average CA/PA getting lower (although that happens to a point), but rather because everyone will have horrible consistency and mentals, not to mention how slow most the AI's players are beyond the first half a decade or so. Partially because the AI loves playing players who lost their legs until they are 40, and also just that a lot of roles don't having skating high enough on it's priority for growth. You don't really see well-rounded players any more once the league is all generated players. They pretty much all end up as either pure off or pure def, the guy with no apparent holes but no real outstanding attributes doesn't seem to ever generate.

[Urpå]

I checked back on the game I mentioned and since it's at 2047 there's definetly non-db goalies out there who can infact stop the puck at the current NHL top level but the number is low. The best is a very consistent .920+ and another almost as good, then there's a few between .900 and .910 and a whole lot of sub .900 goalies. I was hoping improvement on latest patch but I'm only a few years in. So far the attribute distribution in drafts looks same though which doesn't bode well.

Here's the best guy. Still has some odd holes in attributes when comparing to the DB guys.

http://imgur.com/a/C4BDo

Yeah, with that determination he shouldn't be the most reliable come playoffs. But again, certain attributes being low just seems to not matter when the AI has them. Assuming that wasn't your goalie? We have a goalie who's just got the worst mentals I've ever seen, sure his work rate and teamwork is good. But same issue as that guy, horrible determination. But for the AI he's a solid .908 guy. But part of that is also that the league overall just declines so much with time; since a similar issue exists with the skaters, it's not as pronounced there though. This does mean that eventually goalies won't need to be as good as the entire league's quality starts declining. Not by the average CA/PA getting lower (although that happens to a point), but rather because everyone will have horrible consistency and mentals, not to mention how slow most the AI's players are beyond the first half a decade or so. Partially because the AI loves playing players who lost their legs until they are 40, and also just that a lot of roles don't having skating high enough on it's priority for growth. You don't really see well-rounded players any more once the league is all generated players. They pretty much all end up as either pure off or pure def, the guy with no apparent holes but no real outstanding attributes doesn't seem to ever generate.

Correct, not my goalie. I never find these guys but then again these absolute best goalies tend to go top 5ish. Surprisingly, he's had similar stats in playoffs despite low Determination but only 3 runs, including a final's loss, so a small sample size. I checked the 2nd best goalie (19 Determination) and he is a consistent playoff performer with 12 runs including a cup (.925 average SV%).

Agreed everything you say here and I'm really hoping to see some change in 1.4.

[Shindigs]

I checked back on the game I mentioned and since it's at 2047 there's definetly non-db goalies out there who can infact stop the puck at the current NHL top level but the number is low. The best is a very consistent .920+ and another almost as good, then there's a few between .900 and .910 and a whole lot of sub .900 goalies. I was hoping improvement on latest patch but I'm only a few years in. So far the attribute distribution in drafts looks same though which doesn't bode well.

Here's the best guy. Still has some odd holes in attributes when comparing to the DB guys.

http://imgur.com/a/C4BDo

Yeah, with that determination he shouldn't be the most reliable come playoffs. But again, certain attributes being low just seems to not matter when the AI has them. Assuming that wasn't your goalie? We have a goalie who's just got the worst mentals I've ever seen, sure his work rate and teamwork is good. But same issue as that guy, horrible determination. But for the AI he's a solid .908 guy. But part of that is also that the league overall just declines so much with time; since a similar issue exists with the skaters, it's not as pronounced there though. This does mean that eventually goalies won't need to be as good as the entire league's quality starts declining. Not by the average CA/PA getting lower (although that happens to a point), but rather because everyone will have horrible consistency and mentals, not to mention how slow most the AI's players are beyond the first half a decade or so. Partially because the AI loves playing players who lost their legs until they are 40, and also just that a lot of roles don't having skating high enough on it's priority for growth. You don't really see well-rounded players any more once the league is all generated players. They pretty much all end up as either pure off or pure def, the guy with no apparent holes but no real outstanding attributes doesn't seem to ever generate.

Correct, not my goalie. I never find these guys but then again these absolute best goalies tend to go top 5ish. Surprisingly, he's had similar stats in playoffs despite low Determination but only 3 runs, including a final's loss, so a small sample size. I checked the 2nd best goalie (19 Determination) and he is a consistent playoff performer with 12 runs including a cup (.925 average SV%).

Agreed everything you say here and I'm really hoping to see some change in 1.4.

It should be noted determination only really matters if you ever end up fighting from behind. If you're always in the lead you technically don't need high determination. But that's a bit too much of a gamble in my opinion. But sometimes in european saves in non-capped leagues you can get a team so dominant that you simply don't need determination any more. You just steamroll enough that it becomes moot. It's arguable I probably don't need it in my current Jets save either, we had a whopping total of 1 game tying goal last season. So we came from behind once in a whole season. But when you can get high determination players you do regardless.

Actually both my top end goalies have gone in the teens, the top 5 goalie has a tendency to be a bust, at least in my save. I've never seen the top 5 guy get above like 160 PA, the really sick ones will go in the teens to 20s.

I drafted this guy 2 drafts ago, he was ranked around 26th, I picked him up at 14th:

and he's just 19 now. He still has two more growth spurts at 21 and 23 left, then after that his mentals will start growing every 2 years. (Most of them can't even grow though, cause he's so busted haha)

Keep in mind that I mass edit the mentals as previously mentioned. The game can't produce mentals like that on a goalie. My memory is really fuzzy, but I'm like 90% sure I only rerolled the Anticipation on him, when I saw him in the 1st preliminary ISS report my jaw just dropped.

This is what he looked like on draft day for reference:

[Urpå]

Looks like a Freddie Andersen regen? I believe I picked one in the last game but he ended up meh... good attributes but couldn't stop the puck very well and ended up trading him. Probably had bad hiddens. This one looks beastly though. Btw, do you set training manually? I've always left it to AI but I've been wondering how much of an effect it might have on development (not just for goalies of course) when compared to DIY way.

My real top goalies have seemed to be top picks, at least as far as I remember. Those two I mentioned earlier were #3 and #5/#6 if memory serves but the sample size is small again. Lot of them do appear to bust though or maybe it's just easier to pay attention to those high busts.

[Shindigs]

Looks like a Freddie Andersen regen? I believe I picked one in the last game but he ended up meh... good attributes but couldn't stop the puck very well and ended up trading him. Probably had bad hiddens. This one looks beastly though. Btw, do you set training manually? I've always left it to AI but I've been wondering how much of an effect it might have on development (not just for goalies of course) when compared to DIY way.

My real top goalies have seemed to be top picks, at least as far as I remember. Those two I mentioned earlier were #3 and #5/#6 if memory serves but the sample size is small again. Lot of them do appear to bust though or maybe it's just easier to pay attention to those high busts.

Yeah I'm fairly certain it's Andersen, not sure if he's that big though. But he's the only good dane since Freddie retired, so it should be him.

My sample size is really small too, but in the years where I know I won't draft a goalie I look at their PA too and if they are too awful I buff them up to help the AI out, because they really need it at this stage; we have so many AHL goalies playing starter in the NHL right now. But since I do go over the top 5 AI picks every year and make sure they are not busts I've got a bit more to go on there, and so far the highest PA goalie picked in the top 5 had 162, the 2nd highest had 152; neither is high enough for a High-end starter goalie in the NHL. Meanwhile in the years where I looked at all goalies and added 3D6 die worth of PA to all of them, I noticed something very close to a bellcurve distribution in goalies with the peak being on the mid/late 1st round ones, the highest rated 2 goalies never had the highest PA, it was always somewhere in the 3-5ish range. The late goalies were generally a lot better than you'd expect. It's kinda common for a ~120th overall goalie to be nearly on par with the ~5th overall one. Because of that weird distribution, and goalies being so reliant on their attribute spread, I pay very little attention to their rank; It's all about having high enough Reflexes, all the right mentals and high enough agility+balance. I just refuse to draft stand-up goalies, because 1st of all I've never ever seen a properly good one. Which means I have absolutely no idea how a good stand-up goalie looks. Secondly it's just so 80s goalie to play stand-up:P

But with with Asger I just saw a guy with perfect attribute spread and my thinking was essentially this: If he's high PA he might be Hart's successor, if he's low PA he's the perfect backup. Either way I win. It's the same as how I draft skaters, I go for players with near perfect hiddens (based on their scout reports) that way if they're a "bust" they will make super good 3rd liners, and since I play with forwards on overload our 3rd line actually get close to normal 2nd line minutes, so even the "busts" are really useful to me, sometimes more so than the real deal.

There are still some goalies that I simply can't explain why they are so bad, Carey Price is a good example. He's obviously not bad, but he *should* be the best goalie in the game by a mile based on attributes, but generally he's never the best. Holtby almost always beats him in the regular season and Lundqvist whips him in the playoffs. Also as long as you have low shot targeting on Price he's given me less grief than Semyon Varlamov has, by a mile. I can't for the life of me tell you why though, since Price has all attributes higher than Varly if memory serves me right. But the general rule of thumb if someone is worse than their shown attributes state they should be is that they have too low consistency, pressure and temperament; if they're a skater add Off/Def role to that. The consistency/role you can't do anything about, but if a goalie doesn't have one of the scout snippets related to high consistency you shouldn't draft him as anything but a backup/third stringer anyways. The other two he will gain through playoffs, so as long as you make those every year they will eventually sort themselves out.

Off the top of my head the consistency snippets are the following(and they are always near the start of the scout report):
excellent focus and concentration (~12+)
very consistent (not sure, but 14+ is my guess)
leaves everything on the ice (~16-20)
doesn't take shifts off (~17+)
brings his A-game every night (high con and big games, not sure about values)
rarely has a bad game (~15+)

I'm sure there are some others I forget, there are also ones that are worded in a very similar way but that actually are telling you about his work rate, an example is "gives his all every shift" which I think is either high average of work rate+bravery or work rate+determination. But it's so easy to mix that up with "doesn't take shifts off" since they are two ways of saying the same thing, but relate to two vastly different things in the game.

As you can tell the wording of the snippets don't really match with how good they are "rarely has a bad game" sound like a very modest amount of consistency to me, but it's the 2nd best one. Meanwhile "excellent focus and concentration" has the word excellent in it but only relates to slightly above average con (if memory serves me right). Some of them are probably also relating to a 2nd attribute being high so the breakpoints I have put in may be incorrect because a 2nd attribute was pulling up/down the average in the players I tested it on, so they are very vague guidelines more than rules. If a player has "needs to improve consistency" it means he's got 7 or less consistency, and since it can't improve; saying "needs to improve" which implies it can improve is really misleading in my opinion. The part about needs to improve is obviously always at the end of a scout report, the only thing that can show up after it is "could have trouble adapting to life in <insert nation>" which just relates to low adaptability.

Another thing to note about scout snippets is that they can never be wrong in my experience, they can only be lies by omission. For example: If you have 10 scout reports on a goalie and in the first report it has "doesn't take shifts off", you don't need to read the other 9. It's impossible for him to have low consistency because a single scout did peg him as consistent, knowing this saves a lot of time when scouting a draft. Same for the traits, like "relaxed", "strong character", etc. that are on the 2nd tab of the scout report. These too can never be lies, and unlike the scout snippets they can't be lies by omission either. Every scout always sees all traits, the two I mention are both linked to temperament, Relaxed may have low aggression as it's secondary prerequisite, I'm not sure. Strong Character is just a high average of "staff attributes" the ones we care about for a goalie specifically are pressure and temperament; so if a player has both relaxed and strong character it's almost guaranteed he's got at least above average temperament and pressure. So for some goalies you only need to read his 1st scout report to see the "<insert high consistency snippet>" then click the 2nd tab and see Relaxed, Strong Character; and then you're done. At that point all you need to do is flip through all the scout report to see which goalies he's being compared to. I personally like to put in the % chance of each goalie he might turn into and add that as a note to the player; then during the draft I have the "Notes" view on and can quickly see which goalie is best (in my opinion) without needing to open their individual scout reports over and over while drafting. I also do the same thing for skaters, but there I add some more notes relating to role values, size, position and mentals. For goalies if their mentals aren't pristine I just don't bother giving them a note, because I won't draft them.

Edit: I've started looking more at what attributes AI goalies that are weak to certain shot targetting has, honestly I see some patterns but a lot of the time it almost seems like a goalie just has a weakness to a certain shot targetting; Rather than having it because of his attributes. But the general though process when I try and nail down the best shot targeting against a new opposing goalie is along these lines:
Is his Positioning, Rebound Control and Agility "package" low? If so I target Low. The biggest contributors seem to be Positioning and Agility, goalies with poor reflexes but 18+ Positioning and 17+ Agility can often be very good against Low targeting despite lacking the "necessary" reflexes for the NHL.

Are his Reflexes low? If so there are two possible options, Either High or 5-Hole. I haven't been able to fully nail down what the other connected attributes are, my working hypothesis includes poor rebound control and poor anticipation for 5-hole. But I don't know yet. As far as High goes, a goalie with 18+ in both glove and blocker but with 14 or less reflexes will often struggle against high shot targetting. Just like a goalie with 20 reflexes and 14 or less in glove and blocker can be great against high shot targetting. If he isn't fast enough to react it doesn't matter how good his hand-eye is. Because it's too late.

When playing single-player it doesn't matter too much since you can just trial-and-error your way to finding the right shot targeting for each AI goalie, and they won't shot target you back. But if you play in an online league, being able to set it up so your starter is strong against low but weak high and your backup is strong high and weak low makes it so your opponent has to guess which goalie you're starting before you sim forward however many days your league sims at a time. This can give you a huge tactical advantage as if your opponent targets the wrong goalie you are very favored to win.

[kennec]

I am now in 2021 with 1.4.1 engine with TBL 9.1 roosters.

There is an issue with the keepers who are created in the game.
-90% of the keepers got low rebound control (4-6)
-The ones not with low rebound control get low recovery insteed. (4-6)
-Some pretty good prospects have high agility but they all got lowish reflexes (9-11)
-In total from draft 2016 two keepesr have played 30+ games, fitzpatrick and parsons but they both have low key attributes

Parsons and fitzpatrick are the only keepers under age of 26 i would consider putting on rooster. The others are not close attribute range for established keepers in the game now

[Shindigs]

I am now in 2021 with 1.4.1 engine with TBL 9.1 roosters.

There is an issue with the keepers who are created in the game.
-90% of the keepers got low rebound control (4-6)
-The ones not with low rebound control get low recovery insteed. (4-6)
-Some pretty good prospects have high agility but they all got lowish reflexes (9-11)
-In total from draft 2016 two keepesr have played 30+ games, fitzpatrick and parsons but they both have low key attributes

Parsons and fitzpatrick are the only keepers under age of 26 i would consider putting on rooster. The others are not close attribute range for established keepers in the game now

Yup, that happens a lot. The way the roles are setup as far as attributes gained from PA are concerned it favors glove, blocker and arguably positioning too much. Positioning and Reflexes are the two most important technicals as far as I can tell, so it's good that Positioning is highly favored when an attribute point is gained from goalie training (and it also gains one from defensive training sometimes). But reflexes on all but the most insanely high PA goalies essentially never hits the bare minimum of 17. If it's below 17 that goalie will be letting in either 5-hole or high shots all day long. Meanwhile even pretty poor goalies will almost always have at least one of glove and blocker at 17+; When a goalie can get away with it being as low as 14 without being in too bad shape against high shots (assuming their Reflexes are good enough). If all the goalie roles has their modifiers for those two attributes dropped in favor of upping it for Reflexes, Recovery and Rebound Control that would be a good thing for the game. If Anticipation was also added as a favored mental attribute that would more than likely be a good change too. Positioning probably needs to get dropped a bit too for two reasons; The first is that players gain +1 positioning from age every 2 years, it's got nothing to do with training or PA (this gain is wasted if all good goalies hit 20 positioning in their early 20s); The second is that you gain Positioning from two training sources (Goalie and Defensive). So there is no reason it should be as highly favored as it is now (although it's good that it is favored), also goalies should have higher consistency than skaters on average; a skater with 8 consistency can still be a 1st line player in the NHL, a goalie with 8 consistency is essentially useless as anything but a stop-gap backup goalie until you can find a better one.

The fact that a 190 PA goalie (Price's regen in my Jets save) can generate with 3 consistency is a freaking joke. That's just wasting over 20 years of the best goalie in the game being completely useless; Until he finally cycles back into the regen pool sometime in the 2050s and probably rolls too low consistency to be usable again. Consistency has to be added as a carried over regen attribute to fix that nonsense from happening. There aren't enough good goalies in the game to waste most of them to rolling poor consistency when they regen. Actually there aren't enough good goalies in the game to waste any of them at all, and that's with me going through all the premade goalie prospects in my version of the db and making them better. Only Parsons, Fitzpatrick, Eriksson Ek and Hart actually became decent (or insane, based on PA) starters. A smattering of the others made the NHL but have just been barely .900 goalies ever since. The one stand-up goalie actually had really solid PA; But he's stand-up so he's just bad regardless. We still have a 0% success rate on game generated goalies in the NHL as starters in 2032. My manual fix to all goalie prospects in the draft is slowly getting the league shooting% back to where it was at the start, but it's taken about 6 seasons to get it done. And I've wasted so much of my time doing something the freaking game should be doing if it actually functioned properly.

[kennec]

Found one more.
Darin brisbois, a 3rd pick from 2017 draft. he got 16 REF and 17 AGL.

None of the regen keepers after will have close to that in in their prime

[Shindigs]

Ref and Agi is still only a small part of all that's needed though. That's kind of the issue. Everything needs to be perfect to get an actual good goalie. And even those will lose you a bunch of games to just feeling like putting up a .667 on that particular day. But that's goalies for you, even in real life. It's just annoying that the game is so horrible at creating competent goalies, to the point that a minor miracle is needed for it to succeed. Finding goalies that are AHL gods is easy enough that you can do it every single draft year without too much issue, but the leap from what's needed to be a .920+ goalie in the AHL, to what's needed to be .900+ in the NHL is just so big. Meanwhile the AI can play low end AHL goalies in the NHL and still get .900+ saves all day long, but only against the player. It's pretty dumb. A goalie with 11 reflexes and 10 agility had a .933 save% against me over all meetings last season. That's completely reasonable, especially when I'm shot targeting his weakness (which is literally anything due to how bad his attributes are, but still).

My rule of thumb is that if a goalie can't reach .940 in the AHL I'll never play him in the NHL unless I absolutely have to.

[nEgativezEro]

I'm in the early/mid-2020s right now in my sim, hitting the described "dead-zone" between the pre-generated players and the regens hitting the draft pool regularly. I've got a pretty strong team right now, having read your (Shindigs) other posts on scouting and practice. I started as the Red Wings, so I got a couple of great players in my first two drafts (being right at the top from being so bad), as well as some luck in free agency (picked up both Seguin and Duchene).

While my team has routinely been a President's Trophy contender, I never had too many blowouts. Starting up the newest season, and multiple times now I've blown out teams scoring between 7 and 10 goals. Each time it's because either a team played a back-up (via starter injury or choice), or is at a point where their pre-gen starter retired and they're forced into using the newgens.

Yesterday I went through and editing the upcoming ranked goalies for the draft, and plan on going through the active goalies in the NHL/AHL now to compensate for the current teams. I've taken to editing the outlined key mentals by 11 + d6 method, although I switched up the method. Since the saved game editor has the 100 point system (aside from determination), I've been using a RPG dice simulator app on my phone and rolling "(5) D20 +15". This gives a pretty reliable 50-80 range with the off chance of an high 80s low 90s. I throw out the 40s when it's that bad of a roll. Overall it's pretty much the same formula, just gives me the exact number a little quicker to input.

Since it's been spread over multiple posts, what's your current editing state for goalies, Shindigs?
11+ D6 for key mentals ?
3D6 added to PA?
Any edits to consistency/reflexes/agility/balance?

[greenwoodguy]

I've had some goalies that seem to fit this mold pretty well but every single one seems to end up not growing at all or only growing very little and never making the nhl. is there a way that i can properly develop my goalies so that this is less likely to happen? I'll have most of my guys compared to top NHL goalies on draft day who are later compared to the worst goalies in the league a year or two after.

[scorndefeat]

Quick question; how do you all go about your mid-game, pre-draft mass editing, from a technical perspective? I keep note of certain prospects that should be edited, then use a RNG through Google and edit through the EHM Assistant. There's no mass edit option, so it's time consuming. Is there a better approach?

[nazolad]

Are goalies still bad in 1.5?

[Tasku]

Are goalies still bad in 1.5?

I'd say goalies are better than before, but I've not played a full season yet.

[nazolad]

Any update?

[Tasku]

Any update?

Not sure who you're asking, but I've now played a full season. My starter, Ilya Samsonov, had a save percentage of 0.910 and an average rating of 7.58. He played almost all of my games and I'm quite happy with his performance. I'd say the goalies are better than they were in an earlier version.

[sappyporpoise77]

I just finished a full season with Alexander Georgiyev (or Georgiev) and he had a .915 save % and a 7.73 rating, which seemed very reasonable for him - if not a little too good!