When they worked together in Washington, former Capitals assistant coach Jay Leach shared his philosophy on young defensemen with Bruce Boudreau, current head coach of the Anaheim Ducks: It takes a good 300 NHL games for a young defenseman to figure out what it takes to play in the NHL.

That’s fair.

The harder question is this: How many games does a goalie have to play in the NHL before we know what kind of goalie he is?

On Tuesday evening, we posed this question to Boudreau -- he has a goalie in Frederik Andersen who has started the season 5-0 and is 25-5 to start his NHL career. He has a .927 save percentage through 33 career NHL games.

What kind of sample size do we need to see before we know what we have in Andersen?

“I really don’t know,” Boudreau said. “The goalies that I’ve had that are really good, I’m getting them when they’re experienced. The young goalies I’ve had I never had long enough to know it was real.”

He sees some comparison to what he has now in Andersen and John Gibson to the duo of Semyon Varlamov and Michal Neuvirth he had in Washington. Varlamov ultimately grew into one of the NHL’s best starters last season in Colorado and Boudreau points out that it didn’t work in Washington only because one of the two seemed to always get hurt just as they started playing well.

With better luck in Anaheim, the Ducks could have something special in goal. In analyzing some of the hot starts in the NHL this season and whether or not they’ll continue, let’s start there:

The start: