Fantasy drafts are back and you know what that means. Somebody in your league is about to take a goalie in round two and somebody else is going to wait until the very end and act like they invented the strategy. Both of them will claim victory in the group chat by October.

ESPN just put out their goalie draft guide, running through the best picks from the early rounds all the way to the late fliers, and it's worth a read before you're on the clock. You can find the whole thing here.

I'll admit goalie is the position I agonize over the most. I've written before that I love fantasy for the humans, not the projection grinding, and goalie might be the purest version of that problem. Because a starter's value is trust as much as talent. It's the coach believing in him after a bad month. It's a team in front of him that doesn't leave him out to dry every night. You're drafting a relationship as much as a player.

The early rounds are where you pay for certainty. The guys at the top are there because they've got the volume, the wins, and the job security, and ESPN's board lays out who's actually worth that kind of capital. And if you've read anything I've written about fantasy football, you can guess where I stand on reaching. I don't care how pretty the save percentage looks, if you're burning a premium pick on a position this volatile, you'd better be sure.

But the middle rounds are where the guide gets fun. That's the land of the rebound candidate and the new starter, the guy who just got traded into a bigger role or the young netminder about to grab the crease for the first time. Those are my favorite picks in any fantasy draft, the ones where you bet on what a player is about to do instead of paying for what he already did. Dave Morgan and I argue about this every year. He wants the floor, I want the story.

And then the late rounds. The dart throws. I've said it before and I'll say it again, late-round fliers are the best value in sports. A handcuff goalie, a rookie with a shot at the net, a veteran on a team nobody believes in, those picks cost you almost nothing and they can win you weeks. ESPN's late-round names are exactly the kind of guys I fall in love with every September and refuse to drop until roughly December.

The position is chaos. Starters lose their jobs, goalies get hurt sliding into the post, and someone always emerges from nowhere to carry a fantasy team. All you can do is draft a plan and stay loose.

So go read the guide, figure out your tiers, and decide before the draft starts whether you're paying early or hunting late. Just promise me one thing. Whatever you do, don't be the person who autodrafts three goalies in the first six rounds. That person never survives.