Elite fantasy hockey goalies struggling to start the season

If you selected Andrei Vasilevskiy, Ben Bishop or Sergei Bobrovsky in the early rounds of your Yahoo fantasy hockey draft, chances are you may be questioning your decision.

Those three goalies were the first three off the board given their average-draft position on Yahoo, and none of them currently rank in the top 25 at the position in categories leagues. Not what you want to see from one of your top picks.

But their slow starts aren’t a reason for you to panic. In fact, two of the three have already started to show signs of promise.

There was a ton of hype around Bobrovsky and the Florida Panthers to start the 2019-20 season. The team’s results early on have been good, but it hasn’t been because of Bobrovsky. His 3.36 goals-against average and .882 save percentage are well-below his career averages, but he has shown some encouraging signs recently. The netminder has won three of his last four starts, including a shutout victory Saturday against the Detroit Red Wings. Bobrovsky is too talented for this poor play to persist.

Bishop has already started to turn the corner on his sub-par start with the Dallas Stars. Through the first six games of the year, the goaltender allowed three or more goals in four contests. In his following five appearances, he has yet to do that once. What’s also helped him during this stretch is the goal support, which just wasn’t there for him early in the year. It’s fair to assume everything is back to normal for one of the more consistent puck stoppers of the past decade.

Unlike his elite counterparts, Vasilevskiy really hasn’t demonstrated any signs that a turnaround is looming, but his larger body of work suggests a correction is on the way. A .904 SV% and a 3.12 GAA likely won’t last for long, and the Tampa Bay Lightning seem sure to bounce back from their disappointing start. Betting on a turnaround seems to be the sharp play.

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