After looking at a plainly visible strategy of Philadelphia Flyers GM Ron Hextall to draft possession-oriented forwards, another strategy unveiling itself is Hextall’s willingness to draft goalies. On that count, Hextall is not following the popular trend among NHL GMs right now.
There is growing wisdom (or alternatively, a fad), that picking out goalies as future starters from high draft positions is usually a futile exercise. Indeed, many of today’s starters for top NHL teams were far from hyped prospects.
The result of this thinking has been teams completely bailing on picking goalies in the high rounds of the NHL draft.