This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
David Rittich
New York Islanders Goaltender
A .8859 in 34 games with Los Angeles, signed to be the backup who lets Ilya Sorokin play sixty times.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | CGY | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3.00 | 0 | 10 | .900 |
| 2017-18 | CGY | 21 | 8 | 6 | 3 | 49 | 2.92 | 0 | 512 | .904 |
| 2018-19 | CGY | 45 | 27 | 9 | 5 | 109 | 2.61 | 1 | 1228 | .911 |
| 2019-20 | CGY | 48 | 24 | 17 | 6 | 138 | 2.97 | 2 | 1478 | .907 |
| 2020-21 | CGY/TOR | 19 | 5 | 8 | 2 | 46 | 2.86 | 1 | 463 | .901 |
| 2021-22 | NSH | 17 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 49 | 3.57 | 0 | 431 | .886 |
| 2022-23 | WPG | 21 | 9 | 8 | 1 | 50 | 2.67 | 0 | 506 | .901 |
| 2023-24 | LAK | 24 | 13 | 6 | 3 | 49 | 2.15 | 3 | 621 | .921 |
| 2024-25 | LAK | 34 | 16 | 14 | 2 | 88 | 2.84 | 0 | 771 | .886 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 230 | 108 | 71 | 26 | 579 | 2.79 | 7 | 6020 | .904 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
34 games with Los Angeles, 16-14-2, a .8859 save percentage and a 2.84 goals-against average, on 771 shots faced. No shutouts. He signed with the Islanders in the summer.
A .8859 behind a good defensive club is a poor number. The 16 wins are the reason it was overlooked and they are not a goaltending statistic.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 200 and he plays an aggressive, athletic game rather than a structured one — out at the top of the crease, challenging, and relying on quickness to recover when the play moves.
The consequence is predictable: he is beaten by lateral movement more than a positional goaltender would be, and a second shot in a sequence finds him out of position. The puck-handling is genuinely good and useful to a club that wants to break out quickly. The rebound control is ordinary.
The Mental Game
Eight NHL seasons and five organisations, almost all of it as a backup, and the record is of a goaltender who plays well cold — which is the specific skill the job requires and the one most never acquire.
He does not appear to carry a bad night into the next one, and on a club with a starter playing sixty games, that is the entire brief.
The Intangibles
Undrafted out of the Czech league, signed at 24, and a decade of being the man who plays twenty-five games so that somebody better plays fifty-five.
He is 33 and he is here to protect Sorokin’s workload, and nothing about last season suggests he will do more than that. On a club with no goaltending depth behind him, the floor matters more than the ceiling.