Anthony Stolarz is No Longer a Hidden Gem

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After helping capture a Stanley Cup for the Panthers as their trusty backup, Anthony Stolarz is ready for the hot, hot lights of Toronto.

The 6-foot-6 netminder delivered career-best numbers across the board with 16 wins, .925 SP and 2.03 GAA. Though he appeared in just one playoff game, stopping 16 of 19 shots, the Panthers wouldn't have made the playoffs without him.

Despite limited appearances with just 83 starts across seven NHL seasons, Stolarz fits the bill for the prototypical modern-day goalie. He's big and covers a ton of the net in the butterfly, and his underlying numbers were also very good.

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Among goalies with at least 20 appearances, Stolarz ranked first with 0.83 goals saved above average per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, per naturalstattrick.com. In case anyone thought it was solely because he played on the Cup-winning Panthers, Stolarz also ranks 14th over the past three seasons with 0.27 GSAA/60, which included two seasons with the woeful Ducks.

Stolarz should be an upgrade on Ilya Samsonov, whose winning 23-7-8 record belied a poor season with a career-worst .890 SP and 3.13 GAA. While Stolarz was consistently good for the Panthers, and whom Paul Maurice never hesitated to turn to when Sergei Bobrovsky was struggling, Samsonov was very inconsistent and often put the Leafs in uncomfortable situations when Joseph Woll was not available.

Related: Feeling Lucky in Vegas? Give Ilya Samsonov a Chance

Going into the 2024-25 season, the Leafs have one of the most intriguing and sneaky good tandems on paper. Woll has been very good in limited action due to injuries and Stolarz has been very good in limited action as a career backup, and combined they have just 117 starts between them.

In an online poll from JFresh, Stolarz and Woll were both big risers in ranking the league's top 60 goalies.

Can Woll or Stolarz handle a much heavier workload in one of the league's hottest markets? There's never any shortage of drama with the Leafs, and it's debatable whether adding an oft-injured 34-year-old Chris Tanev and a 33-year-old Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who was a reclamation project last season, gives them a top four good enough to insulate Woll and Stolarz.

Woll's somewhat worrying injury history, even though he's just 26 years old, can certainly paves the way for Stolarz to be the starter. It's one of the reasons he opted to sign with the Leafs, which makes him a great dark horse pick in fantasy.

It's best to roster both goalies — the Leafs will be a fantastic regular-season team again and win a lot of games — because there's still some risk in rostering only one of them. By rostering both Woll and Stolarz, fantasy managers will get the benefit of (presumably) all 82 games.

Woll and Stolarz should be available in the middle to late rounds of most standard drafts, and in the case of Stolarz, it might not be a bad idea to reach for him as a zero-G option or if Woll is already off the board.

It remains to be seen how the goalie rotation will work out, but expect Woll to at least begin as the 1A with Stolarz as the 1B.

Related: Brandon Montour: Buy or Sell?

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