Jordan Binnington

Jordan Binnington was born July 11, 1993, in Richmond Hill, Ontario. He played major junior hockey for the Owen Sound Attack of the Ontario Hockey League, winning the Hap Emms Memorial Trophy as best goaltender of the 2011 Memorial Cup and the 2013 Jim Rutherford Trophy as the OHL's top goaltender. The St. Louis Blues selected him in the third round, 88th overall, of the 2011 NHL Entry Draft.

After spending seven seasons in the minor leagues — with a single NHL appearance as an emergency call-up — Binnington made his official NHL debut with the Blues in 2015-16, appearing in one game. He posted a 4.69 GAA and a .750 save percentage in that brief look before returning to the minors. Two and a half seasons would pass before his next NHL action. Called up again in December 2018, he became the Blues' starting goaltender within weeks and never relinquished the job.

What followed in the second half of the 2018-19 season entered the record books. In 32 regular-season games, Binnington went 24-5 with a 1.89 GAA, a .927 save percentage, and 5 shutouts. The Blues, who had been last in the NHL standings at the midpoint of the season, won the Stanley Cup. Binnington became the first NHL rookie goaltender to earn 16 wins in a single postseason — the maximum possible in a traditional bracket. He is now the all-time wins leader for both the St. Louis Blues franchise and the Owen Sound Attack.

The 2019-20 season brought questions about whether his debut campaign was repeatable. Binnington appeared in 50 games, going 30-13 with a 2.56 GAA, a .912 save percentage, and 3 shutouts. A 2020 InGoal article examined the statistical debate around that season directly ^[1], drawing on advanced data from Clear Sight Analytics that placed Binnington among the league's top performers despite the modest raw numbers — a deeper look available to InGoal members.

The shortened 2020-21 season saw him go 18-14 across 42 games with a 2.65 GAA and a .910 save percentage. In 2021-22, an injury-shortened campaign of 37 games produced an 18-14 record, a 3.13 GAA, and a .901 save percentage. The 2022-23 season was his heaviest workload to that point: 61 games, a 27-27 record, a 3.31 GAA, and a .894 save percentage, with 2 shutouts. The following two seasons showed improvement in GAA and save percentage — 2.84 GAA and .913 in 57 games in 2023-24, then 2.69 GAA and .900 in 56 games in 2024-25, each with 3 shutouts.

Through the 2025-26 season, Binnington has appeared in 377 NHL regular-season games, going 186-136-43 with a career 2.83 GAA, a .903 save percentage, and 19 shutouts across 21,783:49 minutes of ice time.

InGoal Magazine has covered Jordan Binnington in three InGoal articles.

One area of focus has been how Binnington prepares before games. In a 2020 piece, Binnington described a pre-game juggling habit — bouncing pucks off his pads and his blocker — that he brought from off-ice routines onto the ice itself ^[2]. "I'm always juggling with balls before the game and back of the hand catching it, so it's kind of what I do. I just brought it onto the ice," he said. "Just watching the puck, getting my eyes going and feeling it in my gloves."

His development work with the Blues extends beyond the crease. A 2023 InGoal article detailed how Blues goalie coach Dave Alexander, presenting at an international coaching convention in Gothenburg, had used Binnington's puck-moving game as a central example in his work on skill acquisition ^[3]. Alexander described training Binnington's ability to read plays, draw in forecheckers, and solve problems within game-like contexts — work that goes well beyond positioning and technique inside the paint.

In 2025-26, Binnington is 41 games into the season with a 13-20-7 record, a 3.33 GAA, a .873 save percentage, and 1 shutout, all with the Blues, where he continues to hold the starting position at age 32.