When the NHL Network rolled out its top-10 goaltenders for the 2026-27 season, St. Louis wasn’t in the mix. But if Joel Hofer keeps trending the way he did in 2025-26, that omission may not last long.
Hofer’s breakout season put him squarely in line to become the Blues’ primary answer in goal as the club looks to get back into the postseason race. In 46 appearances, he went 24-13-5 with a 2.61 goals-against average and a .910 save percentage.
The surface numbers were strong enough on their own. The deeper numbers made the case even louder.
This wasn’t a sudden jump out of nowhere, either. Hofer has been building toward this for years.
Back in the 2019-20 WHL season with the Portland Winterhawks, he handled the bulk of the work and finished 34-8-5 with a 2.49 GAA and a .915 SV%. That run helped lead to a Gold Medal at the 2020 World Juniors, where he was also named Best Goaltender after posting a 1.30 GAA and a .946 SV%.
That same big-stage edge followed him into pro hockey with the Springfield Thunderbirds and beyond. In the 2022 Calder Cup Playoffs, he delivered a .934 SV% across 10 games and even scored a goalie goal. The next season, he confirmed his place as a top prospect by earning AHL Second All-Star Team honors after going 27-15-5 with a 2.50 GAA and five shutouts in 47 games.
Hofer carried that momentum into the NHL in 2025-26, even after a rough opening stretch. He finished with six shutouts, second only to the New York Islanders’ Ilya Sorokin, and ranked eighth in Goals Saved Above Average (GSAA) while handling a No. 1 workload for much of the year.
That matters because it points to performance, not just structure around him. The numbers suggest he was consistently beating the shots he faced.
He also held up when the pressure changed. On the penalty kill, he posted an .878 SV%.
Short-handed, he was at .889. At even strength, he stopped pucks at a .915 clip despite facing more than 1,000 shots and 182 high-danger scoring chances.
His even-strength save percentage matched the actual goals allowed, 87, against 87.8 expected goals against.
That’s the profile St. Louis is banking on now: a goalie whose rise has been steady, whose track record keeps growing, and whose 2025-26 season made it a lot easier to picture his name on a national top-10 list the next time it comes out.
In Other News...
Cam Fowler Enters A Crucial Season With Plenty On The Line
Cam Fowler arrived in St. Louis two seasons ago after a long run in Anaheim, and for a while the fit looked clean enough. He brought experience, steadiness and some early production to the Blues blue line, the kind of veteran presence a team can use while trying to sort out its defensive mix. But his play dipped in the 2025-26 season, and now he enters the next one with a lot more scrutiny attached to his name than he had when he first joined the club.
The pressure is only heightened by the change upstairs, with Alexander Steen now in charge and a new contract already on the books for Fowler. The Blues also have younger defensemen pushing for larger roles, which makes Fowlers start to the season especially important as the team sorts out potential pairings and decides how much trust to place in a player whose standing has shifted from reliable addition to a more complicated call. [Read more 🡒]
Blues Still Face A Brutal Reality In The Central Division
The Blues spent the offseason trying to answer the issues that sank last years playoff push, most notably the shaky goaltending and the uneven night-to-night play that kept them from getting traction. There were roster moves aimed at tightening things up, and on paper the group looks better equipped to avoid the kind of slide that left them on the outside looking in.
Still, the Central Division is going to make every step feel harder. St. Louis is being viewed as more of a bubble team than a safe bet, which leaves little margin for error if the internal improvement does not come quickly enough. For the Blues, the path back to the postseason may come down as much to player development and how they stack up against the division as it does to anything they added this summer. [Read more 🡒]