Friday, February 10, 2012

The Hall of Fame Committee

I've often been critical of the decisions of NHL decision-makers in seasons past. But I have found myself being generally less and less critical of their moves and choices in recent seasons (and as my last post shows, it is clear that their perspectives have certainly changed over time). I think NHL teams collectively have a much better sense of the value of goaltending and what makes a good goalie than ever before.

I don't think the general managers from two decades ago were stupid. I do think quite a few of them were uninformed, unaware of the importance of objective analysis of goaltenders and focusing instead on the things that tradition dictated were important (like winning). I'm making that claim based on award voting and based on the number of bad goalies and washed-up veterans that kept getting NHL jobs long after they were deserving of them.

The same logic applies to Hall of Fame voters. I've gotten into a few discussions about the Hall of Fame, both here and in other places, and when people ask me if I think certainly goalies will end up being elected, I generally say that I really don't know. I do know what kind of voting patterns have existed in the past, but I don't think that those historical rules remain valid given how perceptions have changed enough over the past two decades.

Just because the voters may have overvalued Cups and wins in the past does not mean they are guaranteed to do so until the end of time. Some may have that kind of negative, defeatist approach when discussing the really borderline Hall of Famers, but I think that's unfair to the voting group because it implies they haven't learned anything over the last 20 years, and the progression of Vezina voting makes it absolutely clear that hockey insiders have in fact learned some lessons.

Every goalie now up for voting has an entire career's worth of official save percentage numbers and an entire career's worth of Vezina voting done by the league's general managers. Even though it's almost been three decades since those changes were introduced, Ed Belfour was just the second Hall of Fame goalie who played his entire career in the official save percentage and modern Vezina eras, joining Patrick Roy. Both Belfour and Roy would have been slam-dunk picks in any year, and therefore are hardly litmus tests for how the Hall factors in these new developments. We simply have not seen how much those two things have changed the game in terms of rating goalie careers. As such, any attempt to use prior voting results to predict how the voters rate future HOF goalie candidates is probably little more than guesswork.

I know for sure that there is at least one member on the Hall of Fame committee who doesn't care about goalie wins. A long time ago I linked an article by HOF member Michael Farber in which he quoted fellow HOF voter Serge Savard as saying that goalie was not the most important position, since in almost all cases teams make the goalie, rather than the other way around.

In the past a guy like Scotty Bowman may well have been a traditionalist and rated goalies based on wins, I don't know. But he was there when the Red Wings waived Chris Osgood, and he remains a special advisor to the Chicago Blackhawks, who turfed out their Stanley-Cup-winning netminder to save a few bucks. Seems pretty clear he's either been overruled multiple times by his team's management, or else Bowman is using evidence other than merely wins and Cups to rate goalies. If he's able to do that while helping to run a team, there's no reason he shouldn't apply the same logic when debating Hall of Fame candidates.

Any of the currently active writers or broadcasters on the committee have to be aware that teams are spending less money on goaltending, that mediocre goalies are winning Cups, and that save percentage is being used more than ever to rank and rate goalies. With less of a tradition of rating goalies based on winning in Europe, it's also possible that the two European voters would be more open to rating goalies who were good but not "winners" ahead of average goalies with terrific teammates.

All this is pure guesswork, of course, and the secretive nature of the Hall's election process means that we really have little evidence to go on. Maybe Mike Vernon fell one vote short last year, maybe nobody even mentioned his name, I don't know, but it is at least a positive sign that nobody has voted him in yet, and there doesn't seem to be a huge groundswell of support to get that to happen any time soon. I do think over the next few years we will have a lot better idea of how the Hall rates modern goalies. Perhaps surprisingly to some I am actually fairly optimistic that they are going to get the choices more right than wrong, although only time will tell on that one.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good post but I will nitpick your claim that mediocre goalies are winning the Cup. No doubt it's happened, especially in 2009, but I'm not sure if you are counting Niemi or not. If you are, I think the evidence shows that he has really come-of-age in the past two seasons. Maybe his Cup run gave him the confidence to become better, and maybe he was good all along but hadn't fully adapted to the North American game prior to 2010, but I think he is better than mediocre at this point.

The Contrarian Goaltender said...

Fair enough, you make a good point, average would probably have been a more accurate description.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand why Belfour (.502 win %, .906 save %, 2.50 GAA) is an acceptable candidate to the HHOF and Osgood (.539 win %, .905 save %, 2.49) is such a horrible pick in your mind. The only thing that is different between the two is number of GP and Cup wins. It seems like you just hate goalies on good teams because they win a lot without making as many saves - but at some point you will realize that save % is actually correlated to number of shots faced. You can't discredit a goalie simply because he played on a solid team.

The Contrarian Goaltender said...

There is an additional difference between Belfour and Osgood that is pretty important: Belfour saved his teams a couple hundred extra goals against.

The rate stats don't show it mainly because of era and team effects, but if you take something like Goals Versus Threshold, you'll see just how far ahead of Osgood Belfour actually was:

Belfour, career: 340.7 GVT
Osgood, career: 125.9 GVT

Relative to replacement level, Belfour provided his teams with almost three times as much value (playoffs included). The difference of 214.8 goals is roughly equivalent to 36 wins in the standings. That's a huge gap, and it's why Belfour is considered a top 15-20 goalie all-time while Osgood should not be a Hall of Famer. If anything, that gap is probably understated because of Belfour's non-save skills that helped prevent shots against.

save % is actually correlated to number of shots faced.

Citation needed.

You can't discredit a goalie simply because he played on a solid team.

I'm not doing that, I'm focusing on individual effort regardless of what the rest of his team is doing. If a goalie doesn't have great individual stats then I'm not going to praise him even if he does have a high win total. That is unless there is a clear statistical case to suggest his numbers are understated, as could be claimed with someone like Grant Fuhr, for example, but I haven't seen anyone make a compelling argument for Osgood.

Anonymous said...

If Osgood gets in, then Roloson, Mike Vernon, Nikolai Khabibulin, etc. should get in. I don't see anyone arguing that any of those should be in the HHOF.

Host Pay Per Head said...

well I think that sometimes the hall of fame committee does not make the right decisions about who to include in the hall of fame

mostafashaban said...



من الواجب على كل صاحب منزل يقوم بوضع خزان في الأعلى أن يعمل على تنظيفه من الأوساخ والأتربة والطحالب حتى لا تترسب في قاع الخزان تاركة ورائها الأمراض ويمكن الحفاظ على حياة الأسرة من خلال استدعاء شركة تنظيف خزانات بمكة حيث أنها تعمل على توفير خدمة تنظيف كاملة للخزانات سواء الكبيرة الحجم أو الصغيرة .
فخلال ساعات سوف تحصل على عملية تنظيف تحقق لك الأمان أنت وأفراد أسرتك ، فكلنا على علم بأهمية المياه في حياتنا اليومية حيث انه لا يمكن الاستغناء عنها عند القيام بإعداد الطعام أو في حالة التنظيف وراوية النباتات ولا يمكن أن نهدرها خلال الخزانات الغير نظيفة والغير عالية الجودة التي تتفاعل مع المياه وتقوم بالتغيير من خصائصها مما يجعل صاحب الخزان يقوم بالتخلص من المياه المتواجدة فيه ظنا منه بان المياه نفسها الواصلة إلى الخزان غير نظيفة ولكن الحقيقة أن التلوث من داخل الخزان نفسه فعند اختيار الخزان يجب مراعاة الأتي :-
مواصفات الخزان الجيد من شركة غسيل خزانات بمكة
- يجب أن يكون الخزان مصنوع من مواد غير قابلة للتفاعل مع حرارة الشمس .
- يجب أن يكون باب الخزان كبير حتى يتم إدخال العامل إليه بسهولة حتى يتم تنظيفه من الداخل .
- يجب أن يتم اختيار الخزانات المصنوعة من الاستيل أو البولي ايثلين أو الصاج المجلفن ولكن الخزانات البلاستيكية يجب الابتعاد عنها .
- وعند وضع الخزان في مكان يجب أن يكون نظيف تماما حتى لا يجذب الحشرات إلى المياه .
- ويجب إغلاق باب الخزان جيدا حتى لا يسمح بنزول الأتربة أو الرواسب الأخرى .
ملحوظة هامة جدا :-
عند تركيب الخزان يجب أن يتم على يد الفنيين المتخصصين حتى لا تقع في مشكلة الرواسب المعدنية حيث أنه عند تركيب الخزانات بالطريقة الغير صحيحة يعمل على الأتي :-
سوف تتعرض المياه من الماسورة الرئيسية إلى المضخة الموجودة في الخزان فينتج عنها احتكاك بسيط بعد أيام سوف يكون نوع من الرواسب المعدنية داخل الخزان مما يعمل على تلويث المياه وعلية فان الفنيين يقوموا بتركيب أجزاء الخزان بعناية كبيرة .
وتعرض لكم تنظيف خزانات بمكة المكرمة مكونات الخزان حتي تكونوا على دراية تامة بة :
يتكون الخزان من:-
الفجوة :-
هي عبارة عن المساحة الخالية من المياه بين سطح الخزان والعوامة ويجب الحفاظ عليها حتى لا يتعرض الخزان إلى الفيضان .
العوامة :-
هي من أهم الأجزاء التي تتواجد في الخزان فعندما يتواجد عطل فيها فأنها تتسبب في تسربات المياه خارج الخزان مما يحدث المشاكل منها الماس الكهربائي وغيره.
المضخة :-
هي التي تقوم بإدخال المياه إلى الخزان من الداخل .
مزيد من خدماتنا
شركة تنظيف بمكة