I do think about two scenarios when it comes to how quickly they feel they need to address things. First, the last time the team thought they had a bit of a goalie health crisis during the season, their answer was to sway LaFontaine to leave school early, not get a proven option. There are tons of factors the same and different, and they may handle this differently, but it's food for thought.
Also, it's different because you always have young forwards you can call up and you're less likely (this year with the affiliate especially) to have an endless supply of goalies, but last year when they knew we'd lost a big player in Pacioretty, I think they looked around, got outbid on one or two things, didn't like the price of one or two things, and then just said f*** it and got Puljujarvi as a hail mary. Again, far from a perfect comparison, but we know that they put their own price on things and tend not to budge too far. If the goalie market is "extortion" as Friedman has repeatedly put it, I don't think that we will budge to that level. We'll probably just send some Puistola-level meh to some team for a meh long-shot goalie. I think the part of last year that does resonate is they may not be willing to compromise the future or overspend whatever price they set even if it greatly limits the ceiling of a single year.