Analyzing the goaltending matchup in the Stanley Cup Final

A curious thing happened throughout the 2025-26 regular season.

The Vegas Golden Knights were regularly losing despite having a star-studded lineup, slowly but surely decaying the public’s confidence. It wasn’t supposed to go down like that, not after they continued to go all-in on getting elite talent. They were hoping to push back on the Edmonton Oilers, who had more recently established themselves as the top-dog in the Pacific Division. 

They had lost internal confidence too, becoming what’s rumoured to be a quiet dressing room and a more generally frustrated team, to the point they fired their Stanley Cup-winning coach with eight games left in the regular season and replaced him with John Tortorella. 

Desperate times called for the most desperate of measures.

All the while, as I was using the back-end of the Sportlogiq database throughout the season, I was always struck by that curious thing I mentioned off the top. When you open the site there’s a graph that simply plots each team’s logo by expected goals for and expected goals against. In terms of expected goals against, the struggling Golden Knights were usually the second-best defensive team, and by the time it was all said and done, no team in the league was stingier when it came to allowing expected goals against. 

Say what you will about Vegas under Bruce Cassidy this season, you can’t claim their defence was porous.

But as we know, they still got scored on a ton thanks in no small part to the sixth-worst goaltending in the NHL. Usually teams that defend so well aren’t fringe playoff teams as it seemed like Vegas was. I kept waiting for their defensive prowess to show up in real results with some sort of wildfire-like hot streak, but the limp in their stride never really went away.

They got into the playoffs and are now four wins from winning the Stanley Cup. It’s funny how taking that same regular season team and putting it in front of the second-best playoff goaltending has led to a totally different perception of the Golden Knights. Yes, those numbers are aided by the mediocre strength of their opponents (Utah, Anaheim, and an injury-plagued Colorado), but regardless it all snapped into place at the right time.

So, Vegas got some saves and kept playing good defence, swapped out the coach, accumulated wins, and suddenly the vibes are high. Amazing what a little goaltending will do.

The Canes, on the other hand, were good at keeping expected goals down too — they were ninth-best in the league — but they were quite a bit better on the offensive side of things.

Vegas was 13^th in expected goals for (14^th in real goals), while Carolina was third in expected goals (and second in real goals).  

So on paper you’ve got a Vegas team that’s stingy defensively, laden with veteran experience, and with enough star power to break through to score in big moments. In Carolina, you’ve got a possession-dominant team that creates a ton of action to the opponent’s net and can also keep you away from theirs (in the playoffs, the Canes are first in both expected goals for and against, thanks in no small part to their cartoonishly one-sided series against Montreal).

The math on the way the Canes play is particularly interesting, and shines the spotlight even brighter on Carter Hart, the Vegas keeper who wasn’t in the league last year as he went to trial for sexual assault allegations along with four other members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team. He was eventually acquitted.

Vegas signed Hart and his initial return to the NHL wasn’t great with an .891 save percentage, but Tortorella – who also coached Hart in Philadelphia – stuck with him and Hart now has a .924 save percentage in 16 starts this post-season. According to Real Kyper and Bourne goaltender analyst Stephen Valiquette, the way Carolina plays can make opposing goalies look great, so it’s likely the spotlight will turn even brighter on Vegas’ goalie this series. 

The Canes fire just about everything on net, including pucks from low- and mid-danger spots, which can jack up shot totals and “warm-up” goalies with more routine saves. And they do this without having the type of elite superstars who create uniquely challenging saves. 

Think about how that all adds up: The Knights defend well and lately that’s allowed their goalie to look great. But the true workload is coming, as the Canes create a high rate of action at the net so Hart’s going to be called upon time and again while Carolina tres to create tips and rebounds and chaos in the crease. He’ll be at the centre of it all, but there’s a chance the type of shots he sees allows him to keep posting strong numbers.

The question still hangs out there: has Hart found his early-career game when he was an above average netminder, or has the small sample of playoff games just inflated some numbers for a run of play before he reverts back to how he looked earlier this season?

At the other end, Freddy Andersen will also be a focal point of the series. The big Dane’s run to the Stanley Cup Final has been narrative-changing in its own right, as he sits with a .931 save percentage. He left Toronto as a guy who people had question marks about in the post-season, but check out this stat:

The Montreal Canadiens weren’t even close to getting to Andersen outside of Game 1 of that series, where the entire Canes team looked coated in a level of rust we rarely see past 1970s pick-up trucks. Andersen has been generally solid this year, but surely he’s also been a product of his environment, and a better opponent could demand more from him, too.

Andersen’s done his job, but to this point that’s been very doable. For now, his big question hangs out there too: Does the “softie goal in a big moment” show up, the way Leafs fans of old have been promising it will?

For all the ways we can twist this series to evaluate it, this year’s Stanley Cup Final is a prime example of the age-old quip by Harry Neale about how goaltending is 75 per cent of hockey, unless you don’t have it, and then it’s 100 per cent.

Will Hart or Andersen answer the bell as the lights get brighter?

From there, the series will hinge on the usual follow-up questions, including “which team stays healthier?”

Good goaltending has always been crucial in a run to the Stanley Cup, and this year will be no different. But it does feel like both goalies in the 2026 final are under unique – and wildly different – types of pressure. The series should be close, so if you’re looking for an expected tiebreaker, start in the crease.