DALLAS (AP) The stress of stopping the puck with a game on the line is no sweat compared to what young goaltenders deal with waiting to be taken in the NHL draft.Even the best goaltending prospects usually have to wait through the first round and then some before their names are called. Top-rated Olivier Rodrigue went through that this weekend.”No expectation for the draft Sergei Boikov Jersey ,” Rodrigue said. ”Totally a mystery. We all know it’s difficult for a goalie to be selected early.”It’s nearly impossible now as teams wait until the later rounds to shore up the most important position in the sport. Unlike quarterbacks and pitchers who are often top-10 picks in football and baseball, goaltenders in hockey are so difficult to project that only six have gone in the first round over the past decade – including none this year.No goaltender has been taken in the top 10 since Carey Price went fifth to Montreal in 2005. In the years since, the philosophy has shifted drastically from trying to hit on an elite goaltender early in the draft to hoping for the best in rounds 2 through 7 like 23 different teams did on Saturday.”They’re so up and down and very few of them dominate,” Florida Panthers general manager Dale Tallon said. ”It’s hard. There are very few guys that are first-rounders that you can say at 18 are going to be Price or that type of goalie right off the bat. It doesn’t happen very often.”The first goalie off the board at this year’s draft was Olof Lindbom 39th to the Rangers. Armed with a successful Swedish goalie in 36-year-old Henrik Lundqvist, New York GM Jeff Gorton called taking Lindbom ”an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.”But as Rodrigue knows, teams pass on goalies all the time. His father, Sylvaine, is a goaltending instructor for Edmonton, which traded up to take him 62nd at the end of the second round.Rodrigue was the second of 39 goalies taken in the 2018 draft that followed the recent pattern of the position being in demand but not early. Longtime Los Angeles Kings director of amateur scouting Mark Yanetti believes there haven’t been many generational goalies like Price and Marc-Andre Fleury recently but also points to the long development curve as a reason why they’re so rarely first-round picks.”With the rare, rare, rare exception of like a Carey Price, Fleury, it takes a minimum of probably four to six years for a goalie to develop,” Yanetti said. ”Drafting a goalie very, very high with the success that they tend to have or don’t have, -I think it’s right around 50 percent (odds of) becoming a regular NHL goaltender. I’m not even talking about elite.”For every Price Fleury and Roberto Luongo who have strong NHL careers, there’s a laundry list of top-10 goalies who never panned out. A year after Nashville missed on Brian Finley sixth overall in 1999, Calgary whiffed on Brent Krahn ninth in 2000, and while Al Montoya had a respectable career as a backup, he never lived up to going No. 6 to the Rangers in 2004.Montoya never played a game for New York, which is a common tale for highly touted goaltending prospects.”Most goalies around the league, with the exception of maybe three or four, they don’t really hit their stride until they’re probably 25 years old,” Chicago Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman said. ”That’s seven years down the road and most of those guys have moved on to another organization. Not as many of them make it with the team that drafted them just because of the life cycle.”That uncertain life cycle makes front offices approach goaltender entirely differently than forwards and defensemen. Los Angeles has signed Martin Jones and Cal Petersen as free agents long after they went undrafted. Philadelphia did the same with Sergei Bobrovsky Youth Jake McCabe Jersey , who they gave up on early and traded him to Columbus, where he won the Vezina Trophy twice.”It’s almost like adding a first- or second-round pick to your roster for nothing,” Yanetti said of signing older goalie prospects. ”They’re much closer to a finished product and you’re getting a first- or second-round asset without using a first or second-round draft pick.”GMs like Tallon who aren’t goaltenders find evaluating the position harder and lean on their goalie coaches. To show just how inexact a science drafting a goalie is, nine went before the Washington Capitals took Braden Holtby in the fourth round of the 2008 draft, and he won the Vezina in 2016 before helping them win the Stanley Cup this season.In the past decade, teams hardly even try anymore and often stockpile goalies rather than rolling the dice on taking them with high picks.”People are understanding that the timeline of a goalie’s development path is longer and as the development path gets longer, I think inherently there’s more risk,” Arizona Coyotes general manager John Chayka said. ”I think teams are managing risk and they’re understanding that because of the length of that timeline that goalies move and sometimes are on their second or third team before they ultimately become the goalie that he probably expected when you drafted him that high.”— PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Nolan Patrick scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period and Petr Mrazek made 19 saves in his Philadelphia debut, leading the streaking Flyers to a 2-1 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday night.Claude Giroux had a goal and an assist and Shayne Gostisbehere added two assists for the Flyers, who won their fourth straight game while improving to 8-0-2 in the last 10. The Flyers (32-19-10) began play comfortably in a playoff position, three points behind first-place Washington and two back of Pittsburgh in the Metropolitan Division.Artemi Panarin scored for Columbus (30-26-5), which entered Thursday clinging to the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. The Blue Jackets were just one point ahead of idle Carolina and the Islanders, who played at Toronto.Article continues below ...Mrazek was acquired in a trade with Detroit on Monday night. Philadelphia needed a goalie after backup Michal Neuvirth went down with a lower-body injury on Sunday that will keep him out four to six weeks. Regular starter Brian Elliott already was out with a lower-body injury that will sideline him for five more weeks.Mrazek won 72 games in six seasons with the Red Wings. He made a good shoulder save on David Savard three minutes in and three excellent stops in the second period, including short-handed chances by Alexander Wennberg and Matt Calvert. Mrazek wore red-and-white pads as he waited for new ones to arrive with Flyers colors, and he sported an all-white goalie mask without any design.Patrick scored on a power play with 10:11 remaining. It was his second straight game with a man-advantage goal since replacing injured Wayne Simmonds on the Flyers’ top line. Gostisbehere took the initial shot from the point and Patrick backhanded it home after goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky stopped the drive from the point. Giroux also assisted on the goal, and it was Brandon Dubinsky’s trip of Giroux that led to the power play.Giroux tied the game 1-all 2:34 into the third period when his wrist shot from the slot got past Bobrovsky on his glove side. The Flyers were fortunate on the play as Sean Couturier’s pass toward the center of the ice went off Panarin’s skate and right to a wide-open Giroux.Panarin opened the scoing with 7:09 left in the second after surprising the Flyers’ defense, getting in alone on Mrazek and beating the goalie on the blocker side to up his team-leading point total to 50. Panarin was serving a bench minor for too many men on the ice, and Philadelphia defenseman Andrew MacDonald was unaware of Panarin’s presence when trying to receive a pass from Ivan Provorov at the Columbus blue line. Panarin snuck behind MacDonald and stole the puck on his way to scoring.Gostisbehere upped his point total in February to 16 (one goal, 15 assists), which is tops among NHL defensemen.NOTES: Simmonds (upper body) missed his second straight game in what is expected to be a two-to-three-week absence, while forward Travis Konecny sat out after getting hit in the left foot by a shot in Tuesday’s 3-2 overtime win against Montreal. Their absence means a combined 71 points is missing from the lineup. . After going three straight games without allowing a power play, the Flyers finally went on the penalty kill when Jordan Weal was whistled for interference with 5:19 left in the first period. . Bobrovsky fell to 9-3-1 against Philadelphia.UP NEXTBlue Jackets: Host the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday.Flyers: At the Ottawa Senators on Saturday.