Re: Leafs' Prospect Discussion Thread!
18 yr old goalies are voodoo....I don't think anyone really knows what is, or isn't a good year for goalies on the day of the draft. There's sometimes one really good goalie prospect who is projectable and goes somewhere in the 1st (Samsonov, Vasilevsky) but usually a bag of maybes that start getting picked in the early to mid 2nd (Blackwood, Demko, Fucale). Guys like Hart, Parsons, Sawchenko, Gustavsson or my personal favourite Vehvilainen (because I have a thing for Finnish teenagers who are already plus starters in Liiga...it's a personal bias) are probably worth a 2nd or a 3rd though and definitely belong in a group of prospect goalies taken in the 2nd and 3rd over recent years.
So yeah, it might be a bad year for goalies in that there is no Samsonov or Vasilevsky to get at the 20 spot, but I don't think the quality of the group of 5-8 goalies that will go in the 2nd-4th rounds is worse than in other years.