The question of young goaltenders is one that's been kicking around The Globe newsroom over the past few days, what with Carey Price's struggles for the Canadiens in the second round. I wrote last week about how rare it was for a 20-year-old to progress at all in the postseason, nevermind pulling off the feat Patrick Roy managed in winning the Cup as a starter barely out of his teens. Defining "success" for a goaltender in the playoffs is rather difficult, but I set the benchmark at 10 games played. It stands to reason that, if a netminder carried his team that deep into the second season, he played well enough. Maybe 10 games isn't a world-beating performance, but it does give us a big enough sample size. Between the end of the Original Six era (1968) until last season, in 39 postseasons, 206 different goalies appeared in 10 games or more in the playoffs. Plotting their ages on a graph, you get an idea of just when NHL stoppers generally get to that point:
The ages of the four starters left in the NHL playoffs this season: Marc-Andre Fleury, 23 Marty Biron, 30 Marty Turco, 32 Chris Osgood, 35