Which goalies had the lowest career win thresholds? Win thresholds measure how effective a team is at scoring goals and preventing shots, so a low win threshold means that a team provides a high margin of error for a goalie. Even if they are playing poorly, the other team has a limited number of chances to score, and even if a few pucks end up in the back of the net the rest of the team might just outscore the opposition anyway. It's a nice safety margin to have for any goalie. The problem comes when people try to compare goalies based on win/loss records without taking those situations into account.
I ran the numbers for every goalie with 300+ games played since 1955 (for goalies who played part of their careers before 1955 I was only able to include the portion that came after because of the lack of data). It doesn't take a vast knowledge of hockey history to know that Ken Dryden is going to come out ranked #1, but the identities of the other goalies at the top of the list is of some interest. The numbers are adjusted to a baseline of .900. Here are the 20 goalies with the lowest career win threshold:
1. Ken Dryden, .850
2. Gerry Cheevers, .861
3. Michel Larocque, .868
4. Gilles Gilbert, .873
5. Chris Osgood, .873
6. Mike Vernon, .875
7. Andy Moog, .879
8. Patrick Lalime, .880
9. Jacques Plante, .881
10. Rick Wamsley, .881
11. Tim Cheveldae, .882
12. Pete Peeters, .882
13. Grant Fuhr, .882
14. Roman Turek, .883
15. Ed Giacomin, .884
16. Marty Turco, .885
17. Martin Brodeur, .886
18. Manny Legace, .886
19. Wayne Stephenson, .886
20. Ron Hextall, .887
There are 3 teams that are mainly responsible for the top 6 goalies on the list: The 1970s Canadiens, the 1970s Bruins, and the 1990s Red Wings. All three teams were dominant teams that scored a lot of goals and did not allow many shots at their own end of the ice.
Six of the 20 goalies are in the Hall of Fame or will be when they retire (Dryden, Cheevers, Plante, Fuhr, Giacomin, Brodeur). If we increased the minimum games played to qualify we would catch a couple more (Ed Belfour .887, Patrick Roy .888). A few others, like Vernon, Moog, and Tom Barrasso (who just missed making the list) have been in Hall of Fame discussions or at least have sparked Hall of Fame debate. There are even some crazy Detroit fans out there who will do their best to try to convince you of the merits of Chris Osgood.
Playing on a strong team helps pad a goalie's win totals, and it brings them extra attention. It also sets them up for the postseason success that is an excessively important criteria in the way most people rank goalies (and regrettably, this group apparently includes the Hall of Fame voters). Win thresholds illustrate the unfairness of comparing win totals across goalies, and when combined with other performance statistics they can help us get a better sense of who was driving results on their team and who was just along for the ride.
The goalies with the hardest jobs are coming tomorrow. Stay tuned to see how many Hall of Famers are on that list...
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Team Effects on Goalies
I've been playing around with my win threshold stat lately. Through the Hockey Summary Project and as a result of a new book by Sebastien Tremblay, we now have shots against data for every NHL season since 1954-55. That opens the door for a complete statistical analysis, both at the team level and at the individual goalie level.
Since the primary focus of this blog is team effects on goalies, that was the first area I looked at. Here are the correlation coefficients between each team's win threshold and save percentage (both figures adjusted for league scoring levels):
The Original Six Era (1955-1967): -0.545
The Expansion Era (1968-1979): -0.394
The Open Eighties (1980-1990): -0.306
The Talent Influx* (1991-1997): -0.133
The Dead Puck Era (1998-2004): -0.081
Post-Lockout NHL (2006-2009): 0.014
Over most of the NHL's history, the teams that scored the most goals and prevented the most shots have also tended to have the goalies with the best numbers. It is only over the last two decades that we have seen increasing independence between team results and goalie results. That is not to say that there is none of that in recent years, simply that when looking at the overall picture we would expect more of a team impact on the numbers of a goalie playing in the 1960s or 1970s than on a goalie playing today.
Part of this could have been that the better teams had more of a tendency to develop or acquire the top goaltenders in the past. However, the evidence to me suggests that shot quality effects are mostly determined by differences in skill rather than differences in style of play, and therefore shot quality effects are going to be largest in an unbalanced league with large differences in skill between the top and bottom teams. That is supported by the data above, since in today's salary-capped league we don't see the same degree of goalie/team stat dependence, whereas in leagues that were more unbalanced because of factors like expansion, territorial rights or management competence, the goalie and team numbers are far more intertwined.
I have a few posts coming up on the topic of win thresholds, including which goalies had the lowest and highest career numbers, the importance of goaltending through different periods of league history, and how well win threshold numbers predict playoff results.
(*-I'm planning to look at a few different metrics broken down by era, and I wasn't really sure what to call the transitional period between the high-scoring 1980s and the low-scoring late '90s/early '00s. I'm not aware of any term that is in common use to describe the period, but if there is hopefully somebody can let me know. In my opinion the most defining part of the early 1990s was the migration of new talent into the NHL that really broke the Canadian dominance of the league. More Americans started playing the game at the highest level, while the fall of communism and escalating player salaries also attracted more of the top European players. At the same time, there was an overall improvement in the level of goaltending around the league, with a new generation of goalies breaking in and mostly displacing the generation before them.)
Since the primary focus of this blog is team effects on goalies, that was the first area I looked at. Here are the correlation coefficients between each team's win threshold and save percentage (both figures adjusted for league scoring levels):
The Original Six Era (1955-1967): -0.545
The Expansion Era (1968-1979): -0.394
The Open Eighties (1980-1990): -0.306
The Talent Influx* (1991-1997): -0.133
The Dead Puck Era (1998-2004): -0.081
Post-Lockout NHL (2006-2009): 0.014
Over most of the NHL's history, the teams that scored the most goals and prevented the most shots have also tended to have the goalies with the best numbers. It is only over the last two decades that we have seen increasing independence between team results and goalie results. That is not to say that there is none of that in recent years, simply that when looking at the overall picture we would expect more of a team impact on the numbers of a goalie playing in the 1960s or 1970s than on a goalie playing today.
Part of this could have been that the better teams had more of a tendency to develop or acquire the top goaltenders in the past. However, the evidence to me suggests that shot quality effects are mostly determined by differences in skill rather than differences in style of play, and therefore shot quality effects are going to be largest in an unbalanced league with large differences in skill between the top and bottom teams. That is supported by the data above, since in today's salary-capped league we don't see the same degree of goalie/team stat dependence, whereas in leagues that were more unbalanced because of factors like expansion, territorial rights or management competence, the goalie and team numbers are far more intertwined.
I have a few posts coming up on the topic of win thresholds, including which goalies had the lowest and highest career numbers, the importance of goaltending through different periods of league history, and how well win threshold numbers predict playoff results.
(*-I'm planning to look at a few different metrics broken down by era, and I wasn't really sure what to call the transitional period between the high-scoring 1980s and the low-scoring late '90s/early '00s. I'm not aware of any term that is in common use to describe the period, but if there is hopefully somebody can let me know. In my opinion the most defining part of the early 1990s was the migration of new talent into the NHL that really broke the Canadian dominance of the league. More Americans started playing the game at the highest level, while the fall of communism and escalating player salaries also attracted more of the top European players. At the same time, there was an overall improvement in the level of goaltending around the league, with a new generation of goalies breaking in and mostly displacing the generation before them.)
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Dominik Hasek's Decline
It is very difficult to be a great player for a long time at the highest level of hockey. Aging, the force of competition, and overall evolution of the game usually end up gradually pulling them back to the pack, a process that can be accelerated by injuries, coaching strategies or team environments. We have seen some of the league's best players go from special to ordinary because of injuries, Eric Lindros being one of the most extreme examples. When that happens it is obvious to everyone that the player is a shadow of their former selves.
Sometimes the descent is a little more difficult to pick out. There have been players who went from special to merely very good because of injury. Wayne Gretzky's injury in the 1991 Canada Cup has often been used to explain his late career scoring drop, for example. For Gretzky, a "drop" still meant being among the league leaders in assists every year, but in his later career the Great One was not nearly the same goalscorer or even-strength offensive player that he was in his prime.
I think one overlooked example of this latter type of injury was Dominik Hasek's groin injury in 2000. The numbers suggest the injury was what ended the Dominator's peak. Many people consider the 2000, 2001, and 2002 seasons to be part of Hasek's prime, but I don't believe that is correct.
To demonstrate this point, we need to look at the situational breakdowns. There were a couple of things going on in the early '00s that were inflating Hasek's numbers: A league that was gradually becoming more low-scoring, and a Buffalo Sabres team with improved team discipline that took fewer penalties. Let's look at Hasek's even-strength save percentages:
1998-99: .946
1999-00: .923
2000-01: .924
2001-02: .925
We don't have official even-strength save percentages from before 1998-99, but based on my estimates from Hasek's overall save percentage and the number of power plays the Sabres faced I'm quite sure they were much closer to .946 than .925. In 1997-98, for example, NHL.com has the goals against by situation, although the shots faced totals aren't correct. However, if we assume that Hasek faced the same number of even strength shots against in 1997-98 as he would in 1998-99, his even strength save percentage would have been .938. That assumption is unrealistic, given that Hasek played more minutes and faced more shots per game in 1997-98 than he did in 1998-99. Hasek was probably performing at .940+ in terms of EV SV% in '97-98, and he was likely in or near that range for the entire period from 1993-94 to 1998-99.
If old age was the reason for the drop from '90s Hasek to '00s Hasek, then we would have expected a more gradual decline. There was essentially a sudden drop from a high peak to a lower plateau, which fits the pattern of a player reduced by an injury.
Hasek's even-strength numbers recovered post-lockout to the .930 range. Perhaps that year off allowed him to heal some of the old battle scars and revert to the Dominator of old, at least for half a season. After that, another injury at the Olympics and the effects of old age caught up with him, even though Hasek was still an effective goalie pretty much right up until the end.
I have heard it argued that comparing Hasek's Buffalo numbers with his numbers in Detroit show that it is more difficult to dominate as a goaltender on a strong team, but I think that is wrong. Hasek's numbers dropped in Detroit partly because the Red Wings took a lot more penalties than the Sabres, and partly because he was not the same goalie that he was at his peak.
It is not surprising that Hasek ran into injury trouble, given that his style had to have been one of the most physically demanding styles of any goalie to ever play. He usually played a straight butterfly on the first shot, which applies the usual stress on the groin and hips, and then he also added his special brand of post-save moves and close-save tactics that required extreme agility and flexibility. Unfortunately, injuries often follow athletes who play a style nobody else is able to play (think of guys like Orr, Lindros, Forsberg, etc.), and the same thing was true for the Dominator.
Sometimes the descent is a little more difficult to pick out. There have been players who went from special to merely very good because of injury. Wayne Gretzky's injury in the 1991 Canada Cup has often been used to explain his late career scoring drop, for example. For Gretzky, a "drop" still meant being among the league leaders in assists every year, but in his later career the Great One was not nearly the same goalscorer or even-strength offensive player that he was in his prime.
I think one overlooked example of this latter type of injury was Dominik Hasek's groin injury in 2000. The numbers suggest the injury was what ended the Dominator's peak. Many people consider the 2000, 2001, and 2002 seasons to be part of Hasek's prime, but I don't believe that is correct.
To demonstrate this point, we need to look at the situational breakdowns. There were a couple of things going on in the early '00s that were inflating Hasek's numbers: A league that was gradually becoming more low-scoring, and a Buffalo Sabres team with improved team discipline that took fewer penalties. Let's look at Hasek's even-strength save percentages:
1998-99: .946
1999-00: .923
2000-01: .924
2001-02: .925
We don't have official even-strength save percentages from before 1998-99, but based on my estimates from Hasek's overall save percentage and the number of power plays the Sabres faced I'm quite sure they were much closer to .946 than .925. In 1997-98, for example, NHL.com has the goals against by situation, although the shots faced totals aren't correct. However, if we assume that Hasek faced the same number of even strength shots against in 1997-98 as he would in 1998-99, his even strength save percentage would have been .938. That assumption is unrealistic, given that Hasek played more minutes and faced more shots per game in 1997-98 than he did in 1998-99. Hasek was probably performing at .940+ in terms of EV SV% in '97-98, and he was likely in or near that range for the entire period from 1993-94 to 1998-99.
If old age was the reason for the drop from '90s Hasek to '00s Hasek, then we would have expected a more gradual decline. There was essentially a sudden drop from a high peak to a lower plateau, which fits the pattern of a player reduced by an injury.
Hasek's even-strength numbers recovered post-lockout to the .930 range. Perhaps that year off allowed him to heal some of the old battle scars and revert to the Dominator of old, at least for half a season. After that, another injury at the Olympics and the effects of old age caught up with him, even though Hasek was still an effective goalie pretty much right up until the end.
I have heard it argued that comparing Hasek's Buffalo numbers with his numbers in Detroit show that it is more difficult to dominate as a goaltender on a strong team, but I think that is wrong. Hasek's numbers dropped in Detroit partly because the Red Wings took a lot more penalties than the Sabres, and partly because he was not the same goalie that he was at his peak.
It is not surprising that Hasek ran into injury trouble, given that his style had to have been one of the most physically demanding styles of any goalie to ever play. He usually played a straight butterfly on the first shot, which applies the usual stress on the groin and hips, and then he also added his special brand of post-save moves and close-save tactics that required extreme agility and flexibility. Unfortunately, injuries often follow athletes who play a style nobody else is able to play (think of guys like Orr, Lindros, Forsberg, etc.), and the same thing was true for the Dominator.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Playoff Wins Are a Bad Stat
It has been quite noticeable in the post-lockout NHL that the teams with playoff success have not generally been the teams with the best goaltending. That hasn't made much of a difference for many hockey fans, who continue to consider goalies with Cup rings to be the most clutch in the league. I'm not saying that goalies like Marc-Andre Fleury, Cam Ward, or Chris Osgood have played poorly in the playoffs. Not at all. However, the difference between them and a bunch of other guys is nothing more than the quality of their teammates.
There have been some goalies who have been very good in the regular season, but have not had the same level of recent playoff team success. Three of the best examples would be Roberto Luongo, Martin Brodeur, and Henrik Lundqvist. I decided to compare the numbers since the lockout for each of these three goalies with the supposedly clutch group of Fleury, Ward and Osgood, to see whether that might explain the discrepancy in their win/loss records. The numbers given are goal support per 60 minutes, shots against per 60 minutes, and save percentage:
Osgood: 3.12, 24.9, .928
Fleury: 2.95, 29.1, .916
Ward: 2.61, 28.7, .917
Luongo: 2.06, 29.9, .930
Lundqvist: 2.43, 28.8, .907
Brodeur: 2.56, 30.1, .917
We can use these numbers to calculate the playoff win threshold for each goalie, that is the save percentage they would need to record for their team to score as many goals as they allowed. Not surprisingly, the top three on the list are the guys who haven't been winning, and the bottom three are the guys who have.
1. Luongo .931
2. Lundqvist .916
3. Brodeur .915
4. Ward .909
5. Fleury .899
6. Osgood .875
Chris Osgood's advantage in Detroit is downright unfair. Marc-Andre Fleury is a fine young goalie, but there are not many other teams that would have won the Cup with a .908 save percentage from their starter. On the other hand, Martin Brodeur is not getting much help from his teammates, and somewhat amazingly Roberto Luongo's team has been outscored in the playoffs despite his .930 save percentage.
If I was about to play game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, I'd take any of Luongo, Lundqvist or Brodeur ahead of Ward, Fleury or Osgood. Team records don't matter, only the quality of the individual goaltender.
There have been some goalies who have been very good in the regular season, but have not had the same level of recent playoff team success. Three of the best examples would be Roberto Luongo, Martin Brodeur, and Henrik Lundqvist. I decided to compare the numbers since the lockout for each of these three goalies with the supposedly clutch group of Fleury, Ward and Osgood, to see whether that might explain the discrepancy in their win/loss records. The numbers given are goal support per 60 minutes, shots against per 60 minutes, and save percentage:
Osgood: 3.12, 24.9, .928
Fleury: 2.95, 29.1, .916
Ward: 2.61, 28.7, .917
Luongo: 2.06, 29.9, .930
Lundqvist: 2.43, 28.8, .907
Brodeur: 2.56, 30.1, .917
We can use these numbers to calculate the playoff win threshold for each goalie, that is the save percentage they would need to record for their team to score as many goals as they allowed. Not surprisingly, the top three on the list are the guys who haven't been winning, and the bottom three are the guys who have.
1. Luongo .931
2. Lundqvist .916
3. Brodeur .915
4. Ward .909
5. Fleury .899
6. Osgood .875
Chris Osgood's advantage in Detroit is downright unfair. Marc-Andre Fleury is a fine young goalie, but there are not many other teams that would have won the Cup with a .908 save percentage from their starter. On the other hand, Martin Brodeur is not getting much help from his teammates, and somewhat amazingly Roberto Luongo's team has been outscored in the playoffs despite his .930 save percentage.
If I was about to play game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, I'd take any of Luongo, Lundqvist or Brodeur ahead of Ward, Fleury or Osgood. Team records don't matter, only the quality of the individual goaltender.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Lockout
It seems intuitive that both an excessive workload and an excessive amount of time off would be negative factors for a goaltender. The 2004-05 NHL lockout is an interesting case of the latter. Many of the goalies ended up playing somewhere that season, of course, but few of them played the same number of games that they would have if they had remained with their NHL clubs. There were also some significant changes to the game when they returned, including smaller goalie equipment, a stricter penalty standard, and rules that created a more open game.
Generally goalies have fairly consistent save percentage results, especially when taking team and situational factors into account. There were a number of goalies that had substantially different results after the lockout compared to how they did before, more of them than we likely would expect just to occur at random. Here are some of the most extreme results, with their even-strength save percentages from 1999-2004 compared to 2006-2009:
David Aebischer: .932 before, .908 after
Andrew Raycroft: .932 before, .905 after
Patrick Lalime: .918 before, .900 after
Marty Turco: .931 before, .916 after
Jose Theodore: .922 before, .909 after
Martin Brodeur: .918 before, .926 after
Tomas Vokoun: .919 before, .933 after
Cristobal Huet: .909 before, .926 after
Some goalies seemed to fall off a cliff after the lockout, while others got significantly better. Is there anything that might explain this result?
If an extended layoff has a negative impact, then the number of games played during the lockout is likely to be the significant variable. I decided to compare goalies who played during the lockout with goalies who decided to sit it out. I decided to look only at goalies who had a significant amount of playing time both before and after the lockout, and who were between 26 and 32 years old during the lockout season. This avoids picking out goalies like Sean Burke and Curtis Joseph, who did much worse after the lockout, or goalies like Rick DiPietro or Marc-Andre Fleury, who did much better after the lockout, since all of them obviously had age as a big factor.
I came up with a sample of 26 goalies that met the criteria. I then broke them down by guys who played during the lockout vs. guys who did not:
Played: .917 before, .909 after, -.008
Did not: .922 before, .916 after, -.006
The two groups had almost the exact same average age, so that wasn't a factor. This suggests that sitting out did not have much of an effect.
Some of the goalies played only a handful of games before getting injured or returning home. There was likely little difference between doing that and not playing at all, so I divided them up by goalies who played 15 games or more vs. goalies who played fewer than 15 games:
15 games or more: .919 before, .912 after, -.007
Fewer than 15 GP: .921 before, .916 after, -.005
Again, only a slight difference.
I also took a look at whether the younger guys were affected more than the older guys.
Age 26-28 during the lockout:
Played: .921 before, .918 after, -.003
Did not: .918 before, .910 after, -.008
Age 29-32 during the lockout:
Played: .916 before, .909 after, -.007
Did not: .922 before, .915 after, -.007
We're getting into some smaller sample sizes in the last one, but the results suggest the interesting idea that sitting out a season impacts a veteran less than it does a guy still in his prime. Every single goalie 30 years old or younger during the lockout who did not play that season did worse after the lockout than they did before. The entire list goes as follows: Biron (-.005), Denis (-.010), Esche (-.017), Grahame (-.009), Johnson (-.001), Lalime (-.018), Thibault (-.016), Weekes (-.014). Having said that, some slight decline would be expected for this group because of age factors.
When these results are combined with one of my earlier posts that showed that October is usually the worst month for goalies, I think there is some evidence to suggest that extended layoffs have a slight negative effect on goalie performance.
I'm still not sure why some of goalies were much improved after the lockout while others fell off a cliff. Cristobal Huet looks like the classic late-bloomer who finally got his shot, but both Brodeur and Vokoun were veteran NHL goalies in 2005 who went from good in the early '00s to top 5 guys post-lockout. It seems unlikely that we can point to their teams as a major factor, as both were playing on the same team as before. Nashville might have improved a bit defensively, but New Jersey got worse.
On the other side, Andrew Raycroft had some strong junior numbers, some nice age 21 and 22 AHL results (.916 and .917), and then a terrific Calder year with a .940 EV SV%. He looked set for a promising career, but then he went and played 11 games in Finland during the lockout and was never the same goalie again.
I wonder whether playing for a different team in a different country had an effect on the guys like Raycroft who played overseas during the lockout and seemed to have lost something from their games when the NHL resumed. One theory is that whoever was the goalie coach for the Swedish team Djurgardens in 2004-05 was not very good at his job, considering he had Jose Theodore and Marty Turco pass through that season, both of whom went from pre-lockout stars to post-lockout mediocrity. I doubt that really had much to do with anything, but that's at least an interesting coincidence.
Another theory is that the equipment reduction had something to do with it, but that doesn't really seem to fit the results. There were some athletic, reaction-type goalies who nosedived, like Turco, and some butterfly blockers who got better, like Giguere and Huet.
I'm not really sure what was going on, if anything. I would guess that some of the goalies who struggled post-lockout were guys who didn't stay in shape, but that doesn't apply to all of them (Martin Gerber and Jussi Markkanen were two guys with pretty decent pre-lockout numbers who played 50+ games in the lockout season, and saw their numbers drop substantially in the new NHL). It looks like there are too many variables in play that we can't conclude much at the macro level, other than to say that if there is another labour stoppage in 2011-12 I would likely advise goalies that they are probably a bit better off playing somewhere rather than sitting at home, and that they might want to be a bit wary of what the Swedish coaches tell them.
Generally goalies have fairly consistent save percentage results, especially when taking team and situational factors into account. There were a number of goalies that had substantially different results after the lockout compared to how they did before, more of them than we likely would expect just to occur at random. Here are some of the most extreme results, with their even-strength save percentages from 1999-2004 compared to 2006-2009:
David Aebischer: .932 before, .908 after
Andrew Raycroft: .932 before, .905 after
Patrick Lalime: .918 before, .900 after
Marty Turco: .931 before, .916 after
Jose Theodore: .922 before, .909 after
Martin Brodeur: .918 before, .926 after
Tomas Vokoun: .919 before, .933 after
Cristobal Huet: .909 before, .926 after
Some goalies seemed to fall off a cliff after the lockout, while others got significantly better. Is there anything that might explain this result?
If an extended layoff has a negative impact, then the number of games played during the lockout is likely to be the significant variable. I decided to compare goalies who played during the lockout with goalies who decided to sit it out. I decided to look only at goalies who had a significant amount of playing time both before and after the lockout, and who were between 26 and 32 years old during the lockout season. This avoids picking out goalies like Sean Burke and Curtis Joseph, who did much worse after the lockout, or goalies like Rick DiPietro or Marc-Andre Fleury, who did much better after the lockout, since all of them obviously had age as a big factor.
I came up with a sample of 26 goalies that met the criteria. I then broke them down by guys who played during the lockout vs. guys who did not:
Played: .917 before, .909 after, -.008
Did not: .922 before, .916 after, -.006
The two groups had almost the exact same average age, so that wasn't a factor. This suggests that sitting out did not have much of an effect.
Some of the goalies played only a handful of games before getting injured or returning home. There was likely little difference between doing that and not playing at all, so I divided them up by goalies who played 15 games or more vs. goalies who played fewer than 15 games:
15 games or more: .919 before, .912 after, -.007
Fewer than 15 GP: .921 before, .916 after, -.005
Again, only a slight difference.
I also took a look at whether the younger guys were affected more than the older guys.
Age 26-28 during the lockout:
Played: .921 before, .918 after, -.003
Did not: .918 before, .910 after, -.008
Age 29-32 during the lockout:
Played: .916 before, .909 after, -.007
Did not: .922 before, .915 after, -.007
We're getting into some smaller sample sizes in the last one, but the results suggest the interesting idea that sitting out a season impacts a veteran less than it does a guy still in his prime. Every single goalie 30 years old or younger during the lockout who did not play that season did worse after the lockout than they did before. The entire list goes as follows: Biron (-.005), Denis (-.010), Esche (-.017), Grahame (-.009), Johnson (-.001), Lalime (-.018), Thibault (-.016), Weekes (-.014). Having said that, some slight decline would be expected for this group because of age factors.
When these results are combined with one of my earlier posts that showed that October is usually the worst month for goalies, I think there is some evidence to suggest that extended layoffs have a slight negative effect on goalie performance.
I'm still not sure why some of goalies were much improved after the lockout while others fell off a cliff. Cristobal Huet looks like the classic late-bloomer who finally got his shot, but both Brodeur and Vokoun were veteran NHL goalies in 2005 who went from good in the early '00s to top 5 guys post-lockout. It seems unlikely that we can point to their teams as a major factor, as both were playing on the same team as before. Nashville might have improved a bit defensively, but New Jersey got worse.
On the other side, Andrew Raycroft had some strong junior numbers, some nice age 21 and 22 AHL results (.916 and .917), and then a terrific Calder year with a .940 EV SV%. He looked set for a promising career, but then he went and played 11 games in Finland during the lockout and was never the same goalie again.
I wonder whether playing for a different team in a different country had an effect on the guys like Raycroft who played overseas during the lockout and seemed to have lost something from their games when the NHL resumed. One theory is that whoever was the goalie coach for the Swedish team Djurgardens in 2004-05 was not very good at his job, considering he had Jose Theodore and Marty Turco pass through that season, both of whom went from pre-lockout stars to post-lockout mediocrity. I doubt that really had much to do with anything, but that's at least an interesting coincidence.
Another theory is that the equipment reduction had something to do with it, but that doesn't really seem to fit the results. There were some athletic, reaction-type goalies who nosedived, like Turco, and some butterfly blockers who got better, like Giguere and Huet.
I'm not really sure what was going on, if anything. I would guess that some of the goalies who struggled post-lockout were guys who didn't stay in shape, but that doesn't apply to all of them (Martin Gerber and Jussi Markkanen were two guys with pretty decent pre-lockout numbers who played 50+ games in the lockout season, and saw their numbers drop substantially in the new NHL). It looks like there are too many variables in play that we can't conclude much at the macro level, other than to say that if there is another labour stoppage in 2011-12 I would likely advise goalies that they are probably a bit better off playing somewhere rather than sitting at home, and that they might want to be a bit wary of what the Swedish coaches tell them.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Cause or Effect?
Kurt Overhardt is Ryan Kesler's agent. Kesler will be a restricted free agent at the end of this season, so Overhardt is working on getting him signed to a fat new extension. And either Overhardt is trying to twist the numbers to make his client look good, or he is simply mixing up cause and effect.
As the Vancouver Province reports based on Overhardt's research, the Vancouver Canucks had a better record last year in games where Ryan Kesler had more ice time than either Daniel or Henrik Sedin. That seems surprising on first glance, considering that the Sedins scored a lot more points than Kesler did and also had much better plus/minus numbers (Daniel +24, Henrik +22, Kesler +8). But when you think about it a bit deeper it seems obvious to me that this has more to do with the relative roles of Kesler and the Sedins than their effectiveness as hockey players.
If Vancouver is winning, who is more likely to be on the ice, their best offensive players or a Selke-nominee who is one of the league's best defensive forwards? Similarly, if the Canucks are behind, is the coach going to turn to Kesler, with his career high of 59 points in a season, or to the Sedins, who have each averaged nearly a point per game since the lockout?
In short, I doubt the Canucks win because Kesler plays a lot, it's more likely that Kesler plays a lot when the Canucks are winning. Or perhaps more precisely, since Kesler usually played more than the Sedins did by virtue of pulling more special teams duty, the Sedins weren't as likely to play big minutes except when the team was losing. Either way, it means that attributing the team's record to Kesler is a big stretch.
Good try by the agent, though. However, Mike Gillis seems like a sharp GM to me so I'm not sure he'll buy that line of argument, even though he no doubt sees the value of a great young two-way player like Kesler and will probably end up finding the necessary resources to eventually get the deal done.
As the Vancouver Province reports based on Overhardt's research, the Vancouver Canucks had a better record last year in games where Ryan Kesler had more ice time than either Daniel or Henrik Sedin. That seems surprising on first glance, considering that the Sedins scored a lot more points than Kesler did and also had much better plus/minus numbers (Daniel +24, Henrik +22, Kesler +8). But when you think about it a bit deeper it seems obvious to me that this has more to do with the relative roles of Kesler and the Sedins than their effectiveness as hockey players.
If Vancouver is winning, who is more likely to be on the ice, their best offensive players or a Selke-nominee who is one of the league's best defensive forwards? Similarly, if the Canucks are behind, is the coach going to turn to Kesler, with his career high of 59 points in a season, or to the Sedins, who have each averaged nearly a point per game since the lockout?
In short, I doubt the Canucks win because Kesler plays a lot, it's more likely that Kesler plays a lot when the Canucks are winning. Or perhaps more precisely, since Kesler usually played more than the Sedins did by virtue of pulling more special teams duty, the Sedins weren't as likely to play big minutes except when the team was losing. Either way, it means that attributing the team's record to Kesler is a big stretch.
Good try by the agent, though. However, Mike Gillis seems like a sharp GM to me so I'm not sure he'll buy that line of argument, even though he no doubt sees the value of a great young two-way player like Kesler and will probably end up finding the necessary resources to eventually get the deal done.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Are Shootouts An Indicator of Skill?
With four full seasons of shootout results in the books, we can start to make sense of the results. I wanted to check if better goalies tended to have better shootout results. I calculated the correlation between shootout save percentage and overall save percentage for every goalie who faced at least 50 shootouts against.
Correlation: 0.004
That's about as close to zero as you are going to find in a real life sample. What that suggests is that shootout performance tells you nothing at all about how good a goalie is.
This is reinforced by looking at the leaderboard. Among the goalies who have faced 50+ shootouts in their careers heading into this season, the top 3 were Johan Hedberg (.820), Mathieu Garon (.812), and Jose Theodore (.790). Henrik Lundqvist, Rick DiPietro, Kari Lehtonen and Tim Thomas were all good goalies who had good shootout results as well (all .740 or better). Roberto Luongo (.716) and Martin Brodeur (.715) were both above average, but not by a lot, while Tomas Vokoun was right about at average (.670). Goalies who were below average at stopping shootouts included J.S. Giguere (.652), Cristobal Huet (.604), Miikka Kiprusoff (.600), Ilya Bryzgalov (.597), Niklas Backstrom (.568), and Evgeni Nabokov (.568). The worst goalie was Vesa Toskala (.512).
Conclusion: Shootout skill is distinct from overall goalie skill. Shootout results don't provide much evidence of a goalie's overall abilities. All they do is measure how good a goalie is at stopping breakaways.
For this reason, I don't consider shootout performance at all when evaluating goalies. Other analysts do, and I understand the reasons for it. All things being equal it is better to have somebody who is good at stopping shootouts in the current NHL where shootout success directly leads to standings points. If I was a GM then I'd probably take it into account. For predicting future team success it also makes sense to include shootout skill in your prediction. I just see shootouts as a sideshow that is separate from the actual game, a rare game situation that has little meaning in an overall sense and that is based on a distinct skill set. My objective is to identify the best and the worst goalies at playing hockey, i.e. the game in its most common state with 4 or 5 skaters on each side. Shootouts don't give us much useful information to that end, so to me they don't matter.
Correlation: 0.004
That's about as close to zero as you are going to find in a real life sample. What that suggests is that shootout performance tells you nothing at all about how good a goalie is.
This is reinforced by looking at the leaderboard. Among the goalies who have faced 50+ shootouts in their careers heading into this season, the top 3 were Johan Hedberg (.820), Mathieu Garon (.812), and Jose Theodore (.790). Henrik Lundqvist, Rick DiPietro, Kari Lehtonen and Tim Thomas were all good goalies who had good shootout results as well (all .740 or better). Roberto Luongo (.716) and Martin Brodeur (.715) were both above average, but not by a lot, while Tomas Vokoun was right about at average (.670). Goalies who were below average at stopping shootouts included J.S. Giguere (.652), Cristobal Huet (.604), Miikka Kiprusoff (.600), Ilya Bryzgalov (.597), Niklas Backstrom (.568), and Evgeni Nabokov (.568). The worst goalie was Vesa Toskala (.512).
Conclusion: Shootout skill is distinct from overall goalie skill. Shootout results don't provide much evidence of a goalie's overall abilities. All they do is measure how good a goalie is at stopping breakaways.
For this reason, I don't consider shootout performance at all when evaluating goalies. Other analysts do, and I understand the reasons for it. All things being equal it is better to have somebody who is good at stopping shootouts in the current NHL where shootout success directly leads to standings points. If I was a GM then I'd probably take it into account. For predicting future team success it also makes sense to include shootout skill in your prediction. I just see shootouts as a sideshow that is separate from the actual game, a rare game situation that has little meaning in an overall sense and that is based on a distinct skill set. My objective is to identify the best and the worst goalies at playing hockey, i.e. the game in its most common state with 4 or 5 skaters on each side. Shootouts don't give us much useful information to that end, so to me they don't matter.
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