Goalies are a different bird, and the fantasy and GVT rankings are no exception. Overall, this is a little bit different analysis because we're working with a much smaller number of player; this is especially true because I still wanted to cut out anybody that played fewer than 25 games (to get funky numbers out). But even with the 39 remaining goalies, I was still finding players being ranked significantly higher in fantasy than GVT.
As I've also done here and here with forwards and defensemen, we're looking at the divergence between popular views of valuable players (via fantasy hockey) versus a stats-oriented look at valuable players (via GVT).
To a degree, of course, it comes down to what's being counted. Yahoo's standard scoring for goalies takes wins and shutouts as positive categories, and save percentage and GAA as comparative ratios. For an explanation of goaltending GVT, go here. With wins as one of only four categories (and really, three categories as shutouts are always pretty fluky), they have increased importance in Yahoo rankings.
Let's take a look at 2009-10:
Largest Gap, GVT Higher Than Yahoo, Top 10
Carey Price 20 GVT Rank | 30 Yahoo Rank | -10 Difference
Jonas Hiller 11 | 19 | -8
Antero Niittymaki 21 | 29 | -8
Cam Ward 19 | 25 | -6
Dwayne Roloson 28 | 34 | -6
Chris Mason 12 | 17 | -5
Marty Turco 15 | 20 | -5
Ondrej Pavelec 31 | 36 | -5
Henrik Lundqvist 3 | 7 | -4
Johan Hedberg 14 | 18 | -4
Largest Gap, Yahoo Higher Than GVT, Top 10
Cristobal Huet 37 GVT Rank | 21 Yahoo Rank | 16 Difference
Brian Elliott 22 | 14 | 8
Antti Niemi 17 | 9 | 8
Martin Brodeur 10 | 2 | 8
Jonathan Quick 23 | 16 | 7
Pekka Rinne 16 | 12 | 4
Tim Thomas 18 | 15 | 3
Semyon Varlamov 25 | 22 | 3
Jose Theodore 26 | 23 | 3
Mathieu Garon 30 | 27 | 3
As per usual last year, Carey Price gets targeted for under-performing when he really shuffles between league-average and pretty good, and I can think of at least one guy who likes seeing Brodeur on the bottom list. A little surprised to see Lundqvist on the top list, but I think that's the low shutout total last year speaking more than anything.
Thanks to Behind the Net, data version, for the numbers, as well as Tom Awad.
If you want to know where any other individual player fell, let me know in the comments and I'll look it up.