Eleven Goalies Hit NHL Waivers in Sunday's Cutdown and the Backup Jobs Are Still Moving

Twenty-two NHL clubs placed a combined 71 players on waivers Sunday in the largest single-day cutdown of the preseason, with claims due by 2 p.m. ET Monday and cap-compliant 23-man opening rosters due to the league three hours later at 5 p.m. ET. The season begins Tuesday.

Eleven of the 71 were goaltenders. That list includes David Rittich from New Jersey, Dylan Garand from the Rangers, Laurent Brossoit from Anaheim, Kaapo Kahkonen from Montreal, Matt Tomkins from Edmonton, Georgii Romanov from St. Louis, Mads Sogaard from Tampa Bay and Nikita Tolopilo from Vancouver, among others.

For fantasy hockey, the goalie portion of a waiver wave is the only portion that reliably matters, and this one landed the day before opening night.

Why goalie waivers move fantasy value

Goaltending is the most concentrated position in fantasy hockey. A starter who plays 55 games is worth many times a backup who plays 25, and the difference between those two outcomes is frequently decided by whether a team adds a competent veteran in late September.

A club that claims an experienced backup off waivers is signaling two things at once: that it was not comfortable with its internal option, and that it intends to protect its starter's workload. Both of those reduce the projected starts for the incumbent starter and raise the projected starts for the new arrival.

That is a direct, measurable hit to the fantasy value of the starter in question, and it happens without a single injury.

Who was looking

Teams with unsettled goaltending were the logical claimants, and Winnipeg and Ottawa were both mentioned in the reporting as clubs that might submit a claim before Monday's deadline.

The Winnipeg situation is the most acute in the league. Connor Hellebuyck is suspended, and Stuart Skinner has been operating as the Jets' starter. A team missing its franchise goaltender to a suspension has an obvious, immediate need for depth behind the replacement, and adding a veteran on a waiver claim is the cheapest way to fill it.

If Winnipeg claimed a goaltender, the fantasy implication is a reduced start share for Skinner in the opening weeks and a genuine streaming option appearing on waiver wires in season-long leagues. Managers who drafted Skinner on the assumption of a full starter's workload should recalibrate.

The forwards and defensemen worth noting

The non-goalie names on the list include a handful of former high draft picks and established NHL regulars, among them Alexander Holtz, Ville Heinola and Henri Jokiharju. Ryan Barron and Jeremy Poirier were among the players claimed.

Waived NHL regulars are rarely fantasy relevant on their own. They matter because of what they reveal about the roster underneath them. A team waiving an established defenseman is a team that has decided a younger player has won a job, and that younger player is the actual fantasy target.

The practical instruction is to work backward from every waiver placement. When a veteran goes on the wire, look at who is above him on the depth chart, because that is where the opportunity lives.

The Verdexed model take

The model treats goaltender start share as the single largest input in fantasy goalie projections, ahead of save percentage and well ahead of team quality. Start share is also the most predictable input, because it is driven by depth chart structure rather than by performance variance.

That framework produces a clear rule for waiver season: any starter whose team adds a veteran backup in late September should be projected for four to eight fewer starts than the preseason baseline. Over an 84-game schedule, which is the new length of the NHL regular season, that is a meaningful chunk of a goaltender's fantasy value.

On the other side, a veteran backup who lands on a team with a shaky or suspended starter is one of the highest-value late-round additions available, because his projected starts can double overnight and his cost is nothing.

Betting angle

Goaltending changes are the most underpriced information in the early-season NHL market. Totals and moneylines in the first two weeks are built heavily on the previous season's team results, and a club that has changed its goaltending tandem is priced on a sample that no longer describes it.

The specific opportunity is in games where a backup starts and the market has not adjusted. Confirmed-starter information typically posts on game day, and lines move after it, but the move is frequently smaller than the actual difference in expected goals against between a starter and a replacement-level backup.

Winnipeg's early schedule is the clearest place to look for this. A team without its franchise goaltender should be priced meaningfully worse than a team with him, and the size of that adjustment is worth checking game by game.

What to do in your league

Check your goaltenders against Monday's claim results before setting your first lineup. Any starter whose team added a veteran is a candidate for a modest downgrade. Any claimed veteran landing behind an uncertain starter is a free add worth a roster spot in leagues that count goalie categories.

In deeper formats, stash the backup on a team whose starter is unavailable. That is the single highest-expected-value roster move available on opening week, and it costs nothing.

What's next

Claim results were finalized at 2 p.m. ET Monday and opening rosters at 5 p.m. ET, so the full picture is public before Tuesday's five-game slate. Confirmed starters post Tuesday afternoon. Check both before your lineups lock, because the goaltending picture that existed on Friday no longer describes the league.