If You're Team Doesn't Do Well You Can Be As Cruel As You Want To The Captain And Call For All Kinds Of Punishment Against Them - Blog Posts

As @eightfourone pointed out, goalies are not allowed to be captain under NHL rules (part of rule 6.1 says "No playing Coach or playing Manager or goalkeeper shall be permitted to act as Captain or Alternate Captain."). This is because the official role of captain has nothing to do with leadership, it just designates the player that speaks for their team to the officials. You'll see them at centre ice between games getting the refs to clarify why they made a call, or relaying messages to their bench from the refs (Often when a specific kind of penalty that is coming up too much in the game the refs will ask the benches to pay more attention and cut it out). As such, picking the person who has to slowly lumber to centre ice in all that goalie gear slows the game considerably.

The role has taken on all sorts of other baggage related to team leadership and has become a go-to for teams who can't figure out how to actually fix their problems. Just fire the coach and replace the captain and hey! You did things! It can't be the front office's fault anymore.

These charts do a GREAT job of showing the statistical bias towards the captain being the most skilled player instead. Fan bases and media invent all kinds of narratives about how it would be a snub otherwise.

To bring this back to goalies, this all led to a truly surreal situation back in the day where Roberto Lunogo (who else) was the captain without being the captain in any way:

On September 30, 2008, prior to the start of the 2008–09 season, Vancouver Canucks general manager Mike Gillis and head coach Alain Vigneault named Luongo the 12th captain in team history, replacing the departed Markus Näslund.[5] The decision was unconventional, as league rules forbid goaltenders from being captains.[79] As such, Luongo became only the seventh goaltender in NHL history to be named a captain, and the first since Bill Durnan captained the Montreal Canadiens in 1947–48 (after which the league implemented the rule).[5] In order to account for the league rule, Luongo did not perform any of the on-ice duties reserved for captains and did not wear the captain's "C" on his jersey. Instead he incorporated it into the artwork on the front of one of his masks which he occasionally wore for the early months of the 2008–09 season.[80] Canucks defenceman Willie Mitchell was designated to handle communications with on-ice officials, while defenceman Mattias Öhlund was responsible for ceremonial faceoffs and other such formalities associated with captaincy.[5] Centre Ryan Kesler was chosen along with Mitchell and Öhlund as the third alternate captain.[5]

↳ THE CAPTAINS OF THE NHL: BY THE NUMBERS