If upgrading your goalie situation was at the top of the priority list this summer, we regret to inform you that the conditions couldn't be much worse for that course of action in 2025.
By the time the free agent market opened on July 1, the best available goalies were the likes of Dan Vladar, Alex Lyon, Ilya Samsonov, James Reimer or Anton Forsberg. Jake Allen was shaping up to be the cream of this year's crop, but he re-signed with New Jersey shortly before the market opened.
Even the trade market is thin. After years of being attached to trade rumours, John Gibson was finally dealt by Anaheim, landing in Detroit over draft weekend. He was the only goalie to appear on Nick Kypreos' off-season trade board.
Goalies can be fickle to project, so usually when you have a good one you want to hang on for dear life. This is why Ilya Sorokin, Igor Shesterkin, Jake Oettinger, Connor Hellebuyck and the like were re-signed to significant contracts with their teams.
And yet, goaltending has been a position where teams have tried to pinch pennies and find values before, sometimes to great success. The Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup in 2023 when Adin Hill was making $2.75 million against the cap.
The Toronto Maple Leafs won the Atlantic Division this season with Joseph Woll and Anthony Stolarz splitting the net. Colorado was a Stanley Cup contender that rebuilt its crease during the season by trading for MacKenzie Blackwood (later signed to an extension) and Scott Wedgewood. The Edmonton Oilers have reached back-to-back finals with Stuart Skinner making $2.6 million.
However, when push comes to shove, recent results suggest the more expensive, proven, upper-echelon goalies will more often than not get you through. Sergei Bobrovsky is a back-to-back champ making $10 million against the cap; Oettinger has been to three straight conference finals; Shesterkin got to the conference final in 2024; and Tampa won two Cups and reached three finals in a row with Andrei Vasilevskiy.
There was a time when the Vancouver Canucks were hopeful that Thatcher Demko would fit into that tier of goalie. 'Bubble Demko' became a legend in four appearances during the 2020 playoffs and from there took over the net from Jacob Markstrom. What followed was back-to-back seasons with a .915 save percentage and, in 2023-24, he became a Vezina finalist.
From 2021-22 through the 2023-24 season Demko had a .913 save percentage, which was equal to Oettinger and two points better than Vasilevskiy in the regular season. At his best Demko has flashed that potential. The problem for Demko, and the Canucks, is that the netminder has struggled to stay healthy. After sustaining a knee injury in the 2024 playoffs that carried over to the start of the next season, Demko played only 23 games in 2024-25, posted an .889 save percentage and was slightly better than breaking even in Goals Saved Above Expected.
So when he signed an extension on Tuesday for three years, an $8.5 million AAV, and a full no-movement clause, the initial sticker shock raised some eyebrows. With one year left on his current contract ($5 million AAV), the Canucks chose to lock in Demko, bet on him being healthy, in top form next season, and avoid walking him to free agency. Between Demko and Kevin Lankinen, who was extended in February, the Canucks will be spending a combined $13 million at the position from 2026-27 through 2028-29 and feel this is no longer a position they need to worry about for a while.
With contracts presently in place, when Demko's extension kicks in, he'll be the third-highest paid goalie in the league, behind Shesterkin and Vasilevskiy, and tied with Hellebuyck. But whenever we discuss contract values these days, we have to consider how suddenly the comparables are changing. In Year 1 of Demko's extension the upper salary cap limit will be $104 million, meaning his contract will be 8.17 per cent of the cap -- equal to a $7.189 million cap hit in 2024-25.
So the Canucks believe Demko can still be a difference maker and a No. 1 starter in the league, though cautiously approached the situation with a shorter term look at the cost of a higher AAV.
When you consider the whole picture -- the scarcity of quality available goalies, the rising cap, Demko's play when healthy -- this contract value starts to make more sense. In some ways, Demko is in a salary tier of his own, as we'll show in the following cap comparables:
Jacob Markstrom: $6 million AAV
Why not start with Demko's former battery mate in Vancouver? When Markstrom left the Canucks to sign with Calgary in free agency in 2020, the salary cap was $81.5 million. Markstrom's AAV was $6 million on the new deal, meaning that in the first year of the contract he was making 7.36 per cent of the cap.
Marksrom would turn 31 midway through the first year of that contract and had only been a bonafide No. 1 NHL goalies for three years. Demko -- again who will make 8.17 per cent of the 2026-27 cap -- will also turn 31 after that season starts and if healthy will have been a No. 1 for a longer period of time.
Jordan Binnington: $6 million AAV
Like Markstrom, Binnington also makes $6 million against the cap and the first year of his contract also accounted for 7.36 per cent of the cap. The St. Louis Blues starter was 27 at the time he signed the deal and had won a Stanley Cup, but also saw his numbers dip the two years after winning the title and the Blues were eliminated in the first round twice in a row.
While Demko's cap percentage in Year 1 will be higher than both Markstrom's and Binnington's were in the first year of their deals, there is one more wrinkle to consider: the salary cap rose $2 million total from 2020-21 through 2023-24. But in the second year of Demko's contract, the salary cap is projected to rise by $9.5 million, considerably bringing his percentage down.
Connor Hellebuyck: $8.5 million AAV
When Demko's extension kicks in after next season, his AAV will be equal to Hellebuyck's, which is perhaps not the best visual. But there are key differences. One is that Hellebuyck signed for seven years, which will bring him to the end (or near the end) of his career and likely kept the cap hit down to a degree. Another is that Hellebuyck's cap hit percentage was 9.66 in the first year of his contract, well above Demko.
A 9.66 cap hit percentage against a $104 million upper limit would be equal to about a $10 million AAV.
Jeremy Swayman: $8.25 million AAV
Boston's goalie is in a different bucket in that he was an RFA at the time of signing, but because he extended for eight years, six of those would have been UFA years.
This was a contentious negotiation that carried on into training camp and got caught up in the media, but after the Bruins traded away Linus Ullmark, Swayman's leverage was that he was the team's only starter left. A William Jennings winner in 2023 (along with Ullmark), Swayman was 25 when he signed with immense upside, but he had yet to start more than half a season's worth of games.
In Year 1 of his contract, Swayman's deal accounted for 9.38 per cent of the cap.
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