Quality goaltending is the most difficult element to predict year-over-year and the Toronto Maple Leafs made a smart, calculated bet on small-sample excellence for the next two seasons. Unless your team has Connor Hellebuyck, Ilya Sorokin, Igor Shesterkin, Sergei Bobrovsky and a half-dozen others in consideration under contract, it’s very likely that any given team’s goaltending performance is subject to wild fluctuation.
Joseph Woll and Anthony Stolarz have excelled with relatively low volume throughout their careers and the Maple Leafs are clearly betting on their upside. Perhaps Woll and Stolarz can become the new Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman — perhaps one can dream, but Stolarz saved 20.1 goals above expected in all situations last season via MoneyPuck, the third-best total in the NHL among goalies with 25 games or greater. GSAA is a cumulative measure and you could make the case that Stolarz was the second-best backup goalie in the NHL last season, while Sergei Bobrovsky took the lion’s share with the champion Florida Panthers.
In Anthony Stolarz, Toronto adds the regular season’s 2nd best goaltender by GSAx per game (+0.56) to a tandem with the Playoff leader in GSAx per game (Joseph Woll, +1.09). pic.twitter.com/b5TYZmuJji
— Meghan Chayka (@MeghanChayka) July 1, 2024
Stolarz isn’t lacking confidence either.
“I know that I’m one of the best in the world, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity. I’m excited,” Stolarz said during his introductory press conference, after signing a two-year contract worth $2.5 million annually.
Woll was running away with the No. 1 role for the Maple Leafs during the first half of the season — perhaps accelerated by Ilya Samsonov’s horrific run of play from October-December 2023 — and appeared poised to be the team’s nominal starter for the foreseeable future. The 26-year-old suffered a SI joint sprain — a lower back injury — during the final seconds of Game 6 during Toronto’s first-round series against Boston, after submitting two phenomenal efforts that effectively kept his team’s season alive. Samsonov returned to the pipes for Game 7 and though he wasn’t the issue, Toronto ultimately lost in overtime with Woll ruled out.
It’s deeply unfair to blame a player for injuries, and we’re not doing that with Woll. If he can remain healthy, Woll appears more than capable of becoming a genuine NHL-level starter, with flashes of star potential. For the first time in several years, the Maple Leafs have developed a home-grown goaltender that is locked on a team-friendly, three-year extension worth $3.66 million annually. Woll is cool, calm, composed, he’s one of the most compelling guys on the team to talk to about subjects outside of hockey and has the talent and demeanour to become a Curtis Joseph-esque star in Toronto.
There’s some inherent risk attached to the Woll-Stolarz duo and that’s namely about sample size and health. Stolarz and Woll have never started more 28 games in a given NHL season. Are there concerns about durability? Will either goalie face some inevitable decline that usually occurs with a greater volume of starts? This isn’t a risk-free set-up, but it’s a clever bet by the Maple Leafs on the league’s most unpredictable and important position. For the next two seasons, Stolarz and Woll’s small-sample excellence will be now tested tenfold with larger scale and importance and it may be the component that defines how the next two Maple Leafs seasons are ultimately remembered.
