Is goalie experience overrated in the playoffs?
BUFFALO – Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen looked like a goalie who had never started a playoff game. For a while, at least.
In a first period 15 years in the making, with Buffalo Sabres fans amped to the max over the end of their playoff drought, the adrenaline seemed to affect their No. 1 goaltender. Luukkonen fought the puck. He was down too early and in the middle of recovering when Morgan Geekie one-timed a loose puck past him, giving the Boston Bruins an early lead and sucking the air from KeyBank Center. Retreating deep in his crease, ‘UPL’ looked more 5-foot-10 than his actual 6-foot-5. The netminder who went 11-2-1 with a .918 save percentage after the Olympic break was MIA.
But he settled down. He wasn’t perfect by any means Sunday night, but he thwarted two partial David Pastrnak breakaways during the second period and did just enough to outduel Bruins netminder Jeremy Swayman, a veteran of 19 playoff starts, and help Buffalo to an improbable 4-3 comeback win.
“I thought he played great for us – he gave us a chance to get back in the game,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said after Game 1. “They didn’t have a lot of opportunities, but we gave them a couple big ones.”
Every goalie who starts a playoff game was once, of course, a goalie who had not started a playoff game. Even the all-time greats were inexperienced until they were experienced. And Luukkonen now has that first start crossed off – as do 10 other Buffalo teammates who played their first postseason games Sunday night.
“It just removes uncertainty from their experience,” veteran Sabres right winger Alex Tuch told reporters Monday following an optional practice. “It gives them that one game under their belt where, ‘I know what to expect, I know what it’s going to take going forward.’ ”
While Game 1 was happening in Buffalo, rookie Jakub Dobes held his own for the Montreal Canadiens in his third career playoff start, besting the Tampa Bay Lightning’s future Hall of Famer and Conn Smythe Trophy winner Andrei Vasilevskiy in a 4-3 overtime road win. Hours earlier, the Colorado Avalanche’s Scott Wedgewood stopped 24 of 25 Los Angeles Kings shots to win his first career playoff start. The day before that, rookie Jesper Wallstedt made 27 saves and led the Minnesota Wild to a win over the Dallas Stars in his first playoff start, while Dan Vladar’s first career playoff start yielded his Philadelphia Flyers a win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, whose starter Stuart Skinner had been to the past two Stanley Cup Finals as an Edmonton Oiler.
Hours from now, Lukas Dostal will start his first career postseason game as his Anaheim Ducks visit the Oilers, whose No. 1, Connor Ingram, has three career playoff starts.
The 2025-26 playoff goaltending landscape is absolutely littered with untested masked men, many of whom have already started strongly. Is it possible experience is overrated for goalies in the playoffs?
For every Vasilevskiy or Sergei Bobrovsky who leads a team to a championship, we also get a Cam Ward, a Matt Murray or a Jordan Binnington, and they’re just the recent high-profile examples. Ken Dryden led the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup as a rookie in 1970-71. The Flyers’ Ron Hextall won the Conn Smythe Trophy in a losing cause as a rookie in 1986-87. The Ducks’ Jean-Sebastien Giguere had never started a playoff game before his unbelievable 2002-03 run to the Conn Smythe Trophy.
In the salary-cap era, a goaltender has won at least 10 games in a postseason 53 times. Among that group, nine had never started a playoff game before the year they won 10 playoff games, and 11 had started five or fewer playoff games in their careers. The group also yielded five first-time starters who backstopped their teams to the Stanley Cup: Ward, Antti Niemi, Binnington, Matt Murray and Adin Hill.
Perhaps there’s something the newbies actually have over their veteran counterparts: a lack of baggage. It doesn’t typically apply to the established winners who have fought through many postseasons but, for certain stars who struggle to win the Big Game again and again, the memories seem to pile up. Look at what’s happened to the Winnipeg Jets’ Connor Hellebuyck on the road in his past couple postseasons. And after the Stars’ Jake Oettinger ended his 2024-25 being pulled in the first period of an elimination game, he got torched for five goals this past Saturday in his first playoff start since.
The UPLs and Wedgewoods and Wallstedts and Vladars of the world don’t yet have that history following them around. Maybe the clean slate offsets the feeling of knowing what to expect, as it can work against a goaltender who has struggled and suddenly finds himself expecting to.
And if we look at the bigger sample size in 2025-26 regular season play, among the 66 goalies who played 20 or more games this season, the top three in goals saved above expected per 60 were goalies with no playoff starts, and 13 of the top 20 were goalies with five playoff starts or fewer in their careers. The position has never been more physically taxing to play, with east-west puck movement reaching an all-time high in the past half decade, and perhaps that’s why the greener, fresher puck-stoppers are shining.
So if teams with experienced goaltenders are hoping to exploit a lack thereof on the other side, it’s no shoo-in to work. The better plan is the same as it would be no matter which netminder you’re up against: high chance quality and high chance volume.
_____
POST SPONSORED BY bet365
_____