Found the interview, and Vollman said, based on the last three seasons he ranks 23rd in Save %, 25th in adjusted Save %, and 26th in Home Plate Save %. He said it's a pretty big risk for the Leafs, but that, unless you have a top-tier goalie teams should take a chance on a cheaper goalie, and spend the savings on a d-man.
Cheaper goalie like Bernier? Andersen's contract is worth $5M per season, $850k more than Bernier. Andersen is ranked 17th in goalie salaries, and that's including Luongo who is only making $4.53M (front loaded).
http://www.spotrac.com/nhl/rankings/cap-hit/goaltender/
Last time I checked, quality dmen are very, very hard to come by.
Golgoski just signed for $5.475. Yandle signed for $6.35.
Let's take the Leafs cap situation. They have a bit less than $7M in cap after the signing. There are 2 RFA forwards and 1 RFA dmen to sign.
That's about $3M, so that leaves $4M of cap. Add back Andersen's salary. That would leave $9M.
So if the leafs signed Yandle to the same contract (note that it would be actually less money in Yandle's pocket because of taxes), that would leave $3.5M to sign a goalie. I don't know any decent starter that you could sign for that sort of money.
And based on FSV% and CSV%, Bernier ranks 30th.
Yandle's iCorsi rank is 27th, iFenwick is 31 for dmen over 750 min. last year. In comparison, Gardiner is ranked 26th for iCorsi, and 34th for iFenwick.
Gardiner's contract is $4.05M.
Demers is a UFA and is comparable to Yandle and Gardiner in Corsi and Fenwick numbers. He only made $3.65M.
So if you signed the RFA and offered $4M to Demers, statisically, you'd be getting the same production out of Yandle, and improve your goaltending to Andersen.
And since it usually matters, Yandle is a LHS. So is Reilly and Gardiner. There aren't any top RHS dmen available as UFA, and a late 1st certainly isn't going to fetch you one in a trade. Do you think that Leafs didn't inquire about Vatanen? Ducks chose to sign him instead.
