Goaltenders: The Cup starts here
This week I’m going to provide some food for thought around the critical element of goaltending in the league. It’s next to impossible to ultimately win the Champion’s Cup without excellent goaltending, so let’s take a look at how some teams stack up in this department for the run to the Cup.
If you look at the NLL goaltender stats on Pointstreak.com, the goaltenders are primarily ranked according to their goals against average (GAA).

I prefer to rank them primarily according to their save percentage (SV%). A team with a weak defense can give up a lot of shots and ultimately a high number of goals. But even though the GAA number may be high, a goaltender can still have a very good SV% which, to me, is a more relevant indicator of the quality of the goalie.
Of the goalies who have played a significant number of minutes, Ken Montour of the Buffalo Bandits is easily the best tender to date in the league. He sports a spectacular .819 SV%, which is 41 percentage points better than his next closest competitor. His main goaltending partner Mike Thompson sits around 17th in this group at .742 but Daniel Sams has tossed in 60 minutes of action at an unbelievable .882 clip. Buffalo has a good defense so if Montour continues to perform at his current pace, the Bandits should continue to flourish.






