This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Juuse Saros
Nashville Predators Goaltender
.8951 across 58 games, the worst season of his career, in the first year of an eight-year contract.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | NSH | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3.10 | 0 | 23 | .870 |
| 2016-17 | NSH | 21 | 10 | 8 | 3 | 47 | 2.35 | 1 | 614 | .923 |
| 2017-18 | NSH | 26 | 11 | 5 | 7 | 61 | 2.45 | 3 | 810 | .925 |
| 2018-19 | NSH | 31 | 17 | 10 | 2 | 74 | 2.62 | 3 | 870 | .915 |
| 2019-20 | NSH | 40 | 17 | 12 | 4 | 98 | 2.70 | 4 | 1142 | .914 |
| 2020-21 | NSH | 36 | 21 | 11 | 1 | 78 | 2.28 | 3 | 1073 | .927 |
| 2021-22 | NSH | 67 | 38 | 25 | 3 | 173 | 2.64 | 4 | 2107 | .918 |
| 2022-23 | NSH | 64 | 33 | 23 | 7 | 171 | 2.69 | 2 | 2099 | .918 |
| 2023-24 | NSH | 64 | 35 | 24 | 5 | 173 | 2.86 | 3 | 1845 | .906 |
| 2024-25 | NSH | 58 | 20 | 31 | 6 | 167 | 2.98 | 4 | 1592 | .895 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 408 | 202 | 150 | 38 | 1045 | 2.68 | 27 | 12175 | .914 |
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
58 games, 20-31-6, a .8951 save percentage and a 2.98 goals-against average with 4 shutouts, on 1,592 shots faced. The club’s goaltending came in 20.1 goals worse than the chances faced, 28th in the league.
That is the worst season of his career by a distance. He had been at .918 or better in four of the previous five years, behind defences no better than this one. The eight-year extension signed in 2024 begins now.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 180 pounds, among the smallest goaltenders in the league, and the game is built entirely on quickness and depth management rather than on coverage. He is exceptionally fast post-to-post, tracks pucks through traffic as well as anybody in the league, and reads a play developing across the slot before it arrives.
The size is the permanent tax. He cannot take away the top of the net by standing in it, so a screened point shot he does not see is a goal in a way it is not for a 6-4 goaltender — and behind a club conceding chances at the 22nd-best rate in hockey there were a great many of them. The rebound control is normally good and was worse last season than it has been.
The Mental Game
The volume has never troubled him. 1,592 shots is a heavy year and he has faced heavier without any drop.
What was different was the nature of the season: a club that finished 9th in shot-attempt share and last in the league at finishing, losing games it deserved to win, from October onward. He did not visibly come apart and the level dropped anyway. Whether that is a 30-year-old goaltender or one season of a bad team in front of him is the question the entire contract rests on.
The Intangibles
A fourth-round pick who became the franchise, a Vezina finalist, and Finland’s first-choice goaltender for most of a decade.
Eight years remain on a deal priced on the assumption that he is still what he was. The honest read is that .8951 is not a level he will stay at. The less comfortable one is that he turned 30 in April, and small goaltenders are not usually the ones who improve after that.