Have you ever wondered what an NHL goaltender earns per save? It obviously depends on their salary for the year, but in many cases, as you will see below, it can be thousands of dollars every time they make a save. Nice work if you can get it, am I right?
I took a look at every NHL team’s total money spent on goaltending for the 2023-2024 season.
This is the annual pay for every goalie on their roster who made any saves in the year, so if they are mostly in the minors but came up briefly, then their salary counts, even though it was short term. The theory being that you still had to pay them that year so they were available during that short term emergency.
Here is the final league wide regular season standings and the total dollars that the team paid for goaltending per save.
2023-2024 Regular season League Wide Standings with Dollars per Save
and here is that same list if we list them in order of most cost per save to least cost per save. In other words, which teams spent the most or least money to “buy a save”.
NHL 2023-2024 Goaltending Spend per Save Highest to Lowest
Now here is where the fun really begins. According to these 2 lists, which teams got the most “bang for their buck”?
If the common beleif is that paying more for goaltending should result in higher standings positions, then maybe we will see some correlations. Granted, this is not the be all and end all, and there are a lot of other variables and factors to consider, but I found this to be a fun excercise.
I was curious.
So this chart shows positions up or down, dollars per save vs final actual NHL Standings position.
Simply put, if you finished high and had a great season even though you spent very little on dollars per save, then you did good (green). Conversely, if you spent a lot to “buy” each save but finished lower down in the standings, then you did poorly (red).
Best and Worst Value for NHL Goaltending Spend based on Dollars Spent per Save
My Takeaways
- I’m not sure what to make of this, it seems pretty “all over the place”, but you can find your favourite team and see how they did.
- Edmonton Oilers got some good goaltending value in spite of the Jack Campbell situation
- Dallas Stars got the best value
- New Jersey Devils did the poorest