OK brethren, we are halfway through the draft and let me point this out... NO one has drafted a goalie yet.
OKP noted in his league address sitemail that we might discuss shortening goalies' careers, well I'm about to start it up.
Why is no one drafting goalies? No one NEEDS to. I am the ONLY owner in the history of this league who has yet retired a "#1" goalie. Sour grapes? No; allow me to point out that when I retired him I didn't even need to replace him!
Point 1. We all have all the goalies we need, none of them need to retire.
Point 2. We are obviously looking at the draft pool, not seeing a 90/90 guy, and feeling no need to go grab a goalie unless he's an obvious immediate superstar.
Point 3. We all have seen that their ratings may not necessarily make all that much of a difference (unless they suck). I had a goalie go on a six game shutout streak last season. He has a 52 stamina rating and 76 saving. The guy I retired was 100/100 and he never did anything like that.
So what are we doing? Stockpiling at other positions. At this point all drafting a goalie would do is use up a roster spot. All the top tier defencemen were cleaned out in the first round. (No surprise.) Two-thirds of the LWs are gone. Two teams have drafted three players at one position; another three teams have stocked up on wingers only. Yes we all have different needs, but it seems like every season we get to the halfway point and the draft pool looks picked-over.
IF we shorten goalies' careers, it might do three things:
1 - redistribute the talent pool somewhat, as owners would be compelled to actually USE a draft choice on a goalie instead of a 10th or 11th defenseman.
2 - "redistributed" players might actually become starters on another team instead of depth chart or warehousing replacements, thus helping competitive balance for the league.
3 - possibly, possibly, possibly enhance a bump in scoring, as some of the "Haseks" of our league get on with the rest of their lives.
As usual, this is me, just throwin' it out there.