Why Aren't There More Brodeurs?

One of the pro-Brodeur arguments is that if it is so easy to rack up huge numbers on a great defensive team, why don't lots of goalies do it? Brodeur's career wins and shutouts will soon surpass every other goalie who has ever played in the NHL. So in a sense Brodeur is a rare breed. Having said that, however, what exactly is rare about him? Does he possess rare goaltending skill? Has he played for a uniquely dominant team? Does he possess any unique characteristics, such as perhaps longevity, loyalty, etc.?

Certainly a goalie's situation is a major factor. Wins and losses are determined by two components - goals for and goals against. Goalies have little impact on goals for, and goals against are largely determined by the number and quality of scoring chances the goalie has to face. Even the best goalies can't singlehandedly save a bad team - Dominik Hasek, Patrick Roy, Jacques Plante, and Glenn Hall have all missed the playoffs in their careers. Without playing on a good team, a goalie will have a much more difficult time making it among the leaders in GAA or piling up a lot of wins and shutouts.

With only a handful of great defensive teams in the league in any given season, the odds are long that any given goalie will end up drawing one of these choice assignments. And even if they do get there, they have to be good enough and durable enough to play lots of games to be able to rack up the huge counting numbers. They also have to stay with that team, which is both a combination of the player being loyal to the franchise as well as the franchise remaining loyal to the player.

So which teams had this type of situation? The two key indicators of strong defensive teams are low goals against and shots against totals. Here are the top 10 teams in goals against during the Dead Puck Era that Brodeur spent most of his career in (say, 1995-96 to 2003-04 to keep league effects roughly constant), with their average shots per game totals in brackets:

1. New Jersey (24.7)
2. Dallas (25.4)
3. Philadelphia (25.0)
4. Detroit (26.3)
5. Colorado (28.0)
6. Buffalo (29.5)
7. St. Louis (24.7)
8. Ottawa (26.0)
9. Washington (27.8)
10. Montreal (29.7)

The effect of really good goaltending becomes obvious in the cases of Colorado and Buffalo. The most similar teams to New Jersey are Dallas, Philadelphia, Detroit, St. Louis and Ottawa. Detroit had the most wins with 431, while New Jersey had 400, Dallas 388, Philadelphia 384, St. Louis 367 and Ottawa 350. All of those teams had seasons when their goaltending was league average or worse in terms of save percentage, so clearly a decent goaltender who started most of the games for any of those franchises would end up "winning" a lot of games.

Here are the total goalie stats for all the teams:

DAL: .596 win %, 2.27 GAA, .910 save %
PHI: .600 win %, 2.27 GAA, .908 save %
DET: .650 win %, 2.32 GAA, .911 save %
STL: .566 win %, 2.44 GAA, .900 save %
OTT: .576 win %, 2.37 GAA, .906 save %*

(*-I chose not to include 1995-96 numbers for Ottawa. The Sens were still an awful expansion franchise and that one season really skews their numbers for the period. Now it is true that if Brodeur broke in with Ottawa he would have had to suffer through the painful early years, but since we are dealing here with "right time, right place" what-ifs let's just say the Ottawa goalie would start in 1996-97).

What were Brodeur's numbers? .626, 2.13, .913. So, expressed in rate stats, he was just slightly better than the goaltending received by Dallas, Philadelphia and Detroit in those years. However, this is comparing Brodeur to all the goalies on the other teams. If another team was going to copy New Jersey's goalie-handling style, they would rely heavily on their starting goalie. So comparing him to the starters only is a fairer comparison.

If you take all the starting goalies (definition: the goalie that played the most minutes in each season) for each of the strong defensive teams, and pro-rate their numbers to Brodeur's level of minutes, here is what you get:

Dallas: 344 W, 60 SO, 2.17, .912
Detroit: 379 W, 54 SO, 2.33, .911
St. Louis: 324 W, 43 SO, 2.42, .903
Ottawa: 311 W, 62 SO, 2.34, .907
Philadelphia: 355 W, 64 SO, 2.13, .913

Brodeur: 355 W, 69 SO, 2.13, .913

Compare those last two lines: Philadelphia and New Jersey had basically identical starting goaltending, the Devils just got more of it. If Philadelphia had played their starter for 70-75 games per season for that entire period and got a similar level of production, they would have matched what New Jersey got out of Brodeur. Now it is probably unrealistic to expect exactly the same performance level with an additional 15-20 starts per season, but I'm not convinced that goalie performance tends to drop off significantly with extra starts (a previous post dealt with this issue). Furthermore, Philadelphia's backups generally did worse than New Jersey's did, yet only one Flyer goalie cracked the 60 game mark in this span. The breakdown:

New Jersey: 649 games for starters at .913, 129 games with backups at .904
Philadelphia: 469 games for starters at .913, 316 games with backups at .901

It looks like New Jersey and Philadelphia simply had differing philosophies on how to handle goaltenders. I think there is little doubt that New Jersey's method is better for both the team as a whole as well as the starting goalie's counting numbers.

St. Louis (Fuhr/Turek/Osgood) and Ottawa (Rhodes/Tugnutt/Lalime) had bad goaltending more often than not, so a good goalie playing on those teams would have likely have surpassed the above numbers. Roman Turek's 1999-00 season (1.95 GAA, 42 wins, 7 SO) and Patrick Lalime's 2002-03 campaign (2.16 GAA, 39 wins, 8 SO) show the kind of numbers a strong goalie could have been expected to put up every season playing behind Pronger/MacInnis or Redden/Chara.

St. Louis in particular was really a wasted opportunity for a star goalie - the Blues allowed the fewest shots of anybody except for New Jersey during the period, but fouled it up by trotting out a line of subpar netminders. If Mike Keenan didn't run Curtis Joseph out of St. Louis in 1995, Joseph could have stayed and won 350+ games over those 9 seasons for the Blues. And in that scenario, as long as he had at least one or two good playoff runs in there, Cujo might be mentioned today in the same breath as Hasek, Roy, and Brodeur in all the best goalie debates. Of course, Joseph would probably still have bolted for a big payday with his home-town Maple Leafs, which just underscores again the rarity of Brodeur being a one-team guy for his entire career.

So was Brodeur really such a special goaltender? The overall quality of his performance was not particularly unique, as the rate stats of the starters for other good defensive teams were very similar to Brodeur, although on the whole Brodeur was certainly a good goaltender with a net positive effect on his team. However, Brodeur really sets himself apart in terms of the quantity of his performances.

Brodeur's career win totals are largely a function of his high number of games played. If Brodeur played a typical starter's workload of 55-60 games per season, he would have likely ended up with 20-25% fewer career wins. His workload was partly a reward for his play, but Brodeur still far surpassed other goalies around the league, even goalies on similar calibre defensive teams who were putting up very similar numbers. Philadelphia, Dallas, Detroit, St. Louis or Ottawa would have produced a goalie with Brodeur-type numbers if they had acquired a decent goalie and given him a heavy workload for a decade or so.

The results show that a strong defence does not necessarily ensure team success or great goaltending (e.g. Ottawa and St. Louis). That Brodeur provided stable enough goaltending to allow a great team to win over a long period of time is certainly a plus, and provides significant value over replacement, even if Brodeur's performance sometimes was barely even above average. Brodeur has never scuttled his team's season like other goalies have, and his performances in the playoffs have been generally good. There have been a few dismal playoff performances in there (including even arguably costing his team the 2001 Stanley Cup), but that is typical of nearly all goalies with a similar length of tenure. Playoff series are short and a lot of luck and randomness is involved. I have probably underrated Brodeur in the past by failing to fully value this type of contribution. Having said that, Brodeur benefits from playing a lot of games, something I tend to believe is more a measure of opportunity than talent, which allows him extra chances to rack up wins and shutouts.

When you allow less than 25 shots per game, you don't need a great goalie to win. But you can still lose with poor goaltending. Brodeur helped prevent the Devils from suffering the repeated playoff failures of the Blues or Senators (Brodeur vs. Lalime was the #1 reason Ottawa did not win the Cup in 2003). On the other hand, he would have never approached his success if he played in somewhere like Long Island or Florida. It is likely that any goalie would have done well in New Jersey between 1994 and 2008 (just look at the backup goalies), but it is unlikely that most other goalies would have been able to stay there that long without getting traded or replaced. The difference between Martin Brodeur and a guy like Patrick Lalime is that Brodeur is a much better goalie, because Lalime had every opportunity to succeed but didn't. But I think the difference between Brodeur and someone like Curtis Joseph or Ed Belfour still comes down more to team factors than individual ones. If you want to rank Brodeur ahead of those guys because he actually did accomplish all those things, while they only hypothetically could have, I don't have a problem with that. But Brodeur is in many ways more of a Joseph with better teammates or a Belfour with more games played than someone who is up there with Roy and Hasek and the greatest who have ever donned the pads.

So in summary, the main reasons for Brodeur's success can be outlined as follows:

1. He is a good goalie, mostly above-average throughout his career and at times great
2. He was drafted by the premier defensive team in the league
3. He played the most games of any goalie in the league
4. He remained a one-team guy, allowing him to play nearly his entire career behind a great defence
5. He played in a low-scoring era, which makes his numbers look better in an all-time context

The $6.25 Million Man

Evaluating goalies is very important, because you don't want to end up paying superstar dollars to a guy who is an average-level talent. Which is exactly the mistake the Sabres made over the off-season when they resigned Ryan Miller to a 5-year, $31.25 million deal.

Miller has a reputation as one of the league's better goalies, but the perception isn't quite in tune with reality. Since the lockout, Ryan Miller is 5th among all goalies in wins, but tied for 23rd in shutouts, 18th in GAA, and 18th in save percentage.

In the playoffs over the same period, Miller has the most games played and the most wins, but he is just 10th in GAA and 11th in save percentage, as well as tied for 12th in shutouts.

What about his team? The Sabres score a lot of goals, does that mean they often leave their goalie out to dry? Apparently not. Alan Ryder has measured the Sabres to be a better-than-average team in terms of shot quality in each of the last three seasons. According to his marginal goals from goaltending measurement (which includes shot quality), Buffalo's goaltending ranked 17th in 2006, 11th in 2007, and 24th in 2008.

Although they regressed last year, the Sabres have generally been a strong team in front of Miller. With their backup goalies in the net, Buffalo is 38-20-6 over the last three seasons, for a .640 winning percentage. Miller's win percentage? .635.

Ryan Miller has done little in his career to prove that he is anything other than an average starting goalie. The Buffalo Sabres overpaid substantially for his services, probably mostly as a result of his high win totals. Having said that, there is a possibility that the 28-year old Miller could improve over the next 5 years, but he would have to improve quite significantly to earn his hefty paycheque.

The Unknown Who Outplayed Sawchuk in His Prime

We've had a heated debate lately in the comments about wins and a goaltender's contribution to a winning team. I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at one of my more interesting findings since I started doing this blog, because it is another case of matching a goalie with a poor record against a goalie with a great record and trying to identify whether the second guy is actually better or not.

Most hockey fans know who Terry Sawchuk was, but few of them know who Al Rollins was. I have posted about Rollins before because he came out very well in my studies comparing goalies to their backups, and I wanted to revisit his case. I have received a fair amount of feedback about that type of study, and a number of concerns have been raised. However, this is one of those situations where a comparison is very easy to make since we can avoid the major drawbacks of the method. Both Sawchuk and Rollins were preceded by Harry Lumley and succeeded by Glenn Hall, two Hall of Fame goalies, so by restricting the comparison to how just those two other goalies did on both teams we are truly comparing apples to apples. Also I took only full seasons played for all the goalies in the sample to avoid any potential strength of schedule advantages for part-time backup goalies. I isolated a time frame (1947-48 to 1957-58) that was both a period of futility for Chicago and a period of excellence for Detroit, so it makes a good point of comparison with fairly constant team effects. I believe this is therefore a good test of which goalie was a bigger difference maker. I have six full seasons for Sawchuk in Detroit, five full seasons for Rollins in Chicago, five full seasons of Lumley/Hall in Detroit and three full seasons of Lumley/Hall in Chicago, which gives us a good bit of data to work with.

So what do the numbers say? Here are how our two goalies made out:

Al Rollins in Chicago: 81-171-56, 17 SO, 3.03, .354 win %
Terry Sawchuk in Detroit: 224-107-77, 59 SO, 2.11, .643 win %

Looks pretty decisive in favour of Sawchuk, doesn't it? That is, until we bring in a bit of context:

Lumley & Hall in Detroit: 165-97-61, 36 SO, 2.30, .605 win %
Lumley & Hall in Chicago: 53-124-26, 12 SO, 3.39, .325 win %

Now we just have to compare the numbers to see which goalie was more dominant compared to his peers, Rollins or Sawchuk.

Rollins: -0.36 GAA, +.029 win %
Sawchuk: -0.19 GAA, +.038 win %

In that comparison, I'd take Rollins. His GAA outperformance is almost twice as large as Sawchuk's. This was partly because he faced more shots per game, however Rollins allowed 11% fewer goals per game than Lumley/Hall, while Sawchuk allowed 8% fewer. Sawchuk did win a higher percentage of games, but Sawchuk had slightly higher goal support than his peers (2.96 per game for Sawchuk, 2.92 for Lumley/Hall) while Rollins had lesser goal support (2.25 compared to 2.34 for Lumley/Hall). In addition, the farther a team gets away from .500, the more difficult it is to be a difference-maker. For example, on a team that scores 8 goals a game or 0 goals a game, a great goalie will have the same record as a terrible one. But on an average team that plays a lot of one-goal games, a great goalie will have more chances to change the result. The other goalies were farther under .500 in Chicago than they were above .500 in Detroit, so Rollins' opportunity to impact the results was probably not as great as Sawchuk's. Even being conservative, I don't think we can say Sawchuk was any better than Rollins in that period. On the other hand, the Red Wings were certainly better than the Black Hawks.

I think Terry Sawchuk's peak is overrated, and his numbers had a good deal to do with the team he was playing on. Sawchuk was more of a consistently good goalie than somebody who was ever really dominant, except maybe in 1950-51 and 1951-52. Other than those two seasons he was never the best goalie in the league. Rollins, on the other hand, only had six full seasons as a starting goalie, but not much of a playoff career (such was the reality of playing on Chicago, although Rollins was a Stanley Cup winner with Toronto in 1950-51). He had to deal with the difficult goalie competition of the Original Six era, and was likely overlooked in his post-Chicago days because of the lack of team success in his early career. Rollins is famous for winning a Hart Trophy in 1954, an award decision that likely was as much a make-up decision for his 1952-53 season and playoffs as an award that was earned in that season, but otherwise he attracted very little recognition and was never named a season-end All-Star. Rollins isn't an all-time great, but merely a goalie who made the most of a less than ideal team situation and for a brief period of time played as well as one of the most celebrated goalies of all-time in his prime.

What Makes A Great Goalie?

"Terry Sawchuk has been unanimously considered the greatest goaltender ever, but Patrick Roy has surpassed everything that he did. In the four Stanley Cups that Roy won, he was the Conn Smythe Trophy winner three times. When his team needed him, he was a difference-maker. He was a superstar in longevity, wins and championships, and that's why he'll be known as the greatest."
Darren Pang, May 28, 2003

I am continually fascinated that only career numbers and team success seem to matter to a lot of people when ranking goalies, even to former NHL goalies like Darren Pang. Notice that Pang never mentioned MVP voting, Vezina Trophies, First Team All-Stars, save percentage, GAA, or the number of times Roy led the league in various categories. The only things he focused on were career length (longevity) and team success (wins and championships).

If players were ranked according to similar criteria, Mario Lemieux and Bobby Orr would be replaced by Henri Richard and Red Kelly in the all-time rankings lists. All kinds of other weird results would follow, like Scott Stevens (1635 games, 3 Cups, 1 Conn Smythe) being better than Ray Bourque (1612 games, 1 Cup, 0 Conn Smythes), Mark Messier (1756 games, 6 Cups, 1 Conn Smythe) ranking ahead of Wayne Gretzky (1487 games, 4 Cups, 2 Conn Smythes), and Ron Francis (1798 career points, 2 Cups) coming out ahead of Bobby Hull (1170 career points, 1 Cup).

There is simply a different standard for goalies. It becomes even more frustrating when the same person who argues that Brodeur was better then Hasek because he was more durable and more reliable will turn around and take Bobby Orr over Gordie Howe and Eddie Shore over Ray Bourque.

The excess focus on goalie longevity makes career records far more prized than single-season records among goalies. Terry Sawchuk's 103 career shutouts is one of the most famous records in hockey, but I doubt many people could identify George Hainsworth as the single season record-holder, much less how many shutouts he had that one season (22). On the other hand, ask someone to name Gretzky's career goal total and then his single-season goal scoring record, and far more people will get the second one right than the first.

This has led to the perception that Martin Brodeur will be some kind of Gretzky-like record breaker (this view is illustrated by a commentor on NJ.com Sports who claims that "Marty will have shattered every goaltending record known to man"). Actually, Martin Brodeur will almost certainly never set or hold any record for either goals against average or save percentage, including career, seasonal, playoff career, playoff season, or number of times leading the league in either one. Even if you look at just results in the modern era, Brodeur would still be shut out of all of the above.

Out of the dozens of major goalie records out there Brodeur will likely end up holding 7 of them, 6 of which are for either wins or shutouts and the last one for the most regular season games played. That is still impressive, to be sure, but implying that Brodeur is completely wiping the slate clean of everyone else past or present is way overstating it.

It doesn't make any sense to take into account both peak and career when evaluating players, but then rely exclusively on longevity and team success to rank goalies. Both peak performance and longevity should be factored in and team success should be secondary to individual performance to arrive at the best possible ranking for both players and goalies.

Did Ftorek and Robinson Affect Brodeur?

There was an interesting comment posted recently by Bruce in the ongoing goalie fatigue debate that I thought deserved a closer look:

As one who doesn't put all my faith in a single column of goaltending statistics, what it indicates to me is that the Devils of 1998-2002 were a different team than the notorious "trapping" teams of the Lemaire years. The Devils of Robbie Ftorek and Larry Robinson played more offensively, took more chances, gave up more chances, and relied on their world-class goalie to limit the damage....But for those three seasons in they were a puck-possession, outscoring type of team. Such teams may or may not allow bunches of shots, but in my observation they do tend to give up a better quality of scoring opportunity when their players are tending towards the other end of the rink. One predictable result of this altered team philosophy is a lower Sv%, and Brodeur's were indeed merely "average" throughout those years.

Sounds plausible. However, all evidence indicates that it is nevertheless wrong. Brodeur's numbers did not appear to suffer from a team that took more chances. Here are his even-strength save percentage numbers from 1998-99 to 2003-04 (along with the league average):

1998-99: .915 (.916)
1999-00: .912 (.912)
2000-01: .919 (.914)
2001-02: .917 (.916)
2002-03: .921 (.918)
2003-04: .924 (.922)

That looks like the same guy doing exactly the same thing. Brodeur's performance relative to the rest of the league was very similar throughout the entire period. The only thing changing is that the league average is gradually rising. If his team was taking a lot more chances between 1998-99 and 2001-02, you would expect Brodeur to do worse relative to the league in that period, and better in 2002-03 and 2003-04 when the Devils were by all accounts a defensive powerhouse.

The main reason for the drop in Brodeur's save percentage under Ftorek and Robinson appears to be his poor play on the penalty kill, a situation that hardly seems to be affected by a team's offensive philosophy. Here are Brodeur's PK numbers (again compared to league average):

1998-99: .864 (.872)
1999-00: .908 (.866)
2000-01: .839 (.862)
2001-02: .849 (.872)
2002-03: .866 (.869)
2003-04: .878 (.867)

Note the particularly poor results in 2000-01 and 2001-02. It seems pretty unfair to blame Brodeur's team for it either - New Jersey's penalty killers were Stevens, Niedermayer, Madden and Pandolfo. In 2002-03, even with a below-average penalty kill save percentage from Brodeur, New Jersey led the league in penalty kill efficiency.

The Devils scored a lot of goals from 1998-99 to 2000-01 (their offence ranked 2nd, 2nd, and 1st in the league). But they still were excellent at preventing shots (allowing the 4th, 4th, and 2nd fewest shots in the league). It might have been a little bit more challenging to play goal for New Jersey in this period because of an increased offensive focus, but it seems unlikely that there was a large difference. Brodeur's even-strength results are pretty consistent through the period, and his save percentage variances can be explained by his performance on the penalty kill.

Goalie Fatigue

I have argued for a long time that games played for goaltenders is an overrated stat. A goalie does not become better than another goalie simply because he played more games. He could potentially be described as more valuable, but there are many factors that determine games played and nearly all of them are out of the goalie's control. That is not to say that the games played stat is useless - it helps us determine whether a performance was likely to be a fluke or not. For example, if we are evaluating whether Ty Conklin is likely to repeat his 2007-08 performance where he posted a save percentage 20 points above his career average, we know the fact that he did it in only 33 games implies that it is much more likely it was a lucky season rather than a true measure of his skill.

The justification for the importance placed on games played seems to be that it is more difficult to play more games. I remain unconvinced that playing additional games is significantly more difficult. I think that virtually every goalie in the NHL is capable of handling the workload. If they weren't, then they would have failed on some lower level (junior, college, minor-league) when they were asked to play 70-75 games a season.

But what do the numbers say about it? Yahoo Sports provides breakdowns of month-by-month stats, so I thought it would be interesting to see if goalies tired as the season went on, which is what would be expected if fatigue is an issue. To ensure that I had a full selection of statistics and that era issues wouldn't come into play, I chose a group of goalies that have played a lot of minutes in recent years and that began their careers relatively recently (e.g. late '90s or later).

Here is the list of goalies in the sample: Roberto Luongo, J.S. Giguere, Marty Turco, Tomas Vokoun, Evgeni Nabokov, Miikka Kiprusoff, Jose Theodore, Nikolai Khabibulin, Rick DiPietro, Marc Denis, Ryan Miller, and Henrik Lundqvist.

I broke down their statistics by month to see what the results were (minutes, win %, GAA, save %, shutouts):

October: 543 GP, 2.71, .905, .497 win %, 28 SO
November: 730 GP, 2.53, .912, .531 win %, 53 SO
December: 774 GP, 2.48, .914, .547 win %, 54 SO
January: 768 GP, 2.58, .910, .521 win %, 53 SO
February: 653 GP, 2.56, .912, .535 win %, 53 SO
March: 817 GP, 2.53, .913, .539 win %, 53 SO
April: 242 GP, 2.52, .913, .566 win %, 14 SO

What do the data show us? That the goalies tended to start slowly in October, and after that kept up a similar level of play the rest of the season. Their best month was December while their worst month was January, but there was only a .004 difference in save percentage and a 0.10 difference in GAA between the two. Even though these goalies played big minutes all throughout the season, they did not get worse as the season went on.

Not only that, but the goalies played the most games and minutes in March, late in the season, and their performance did not deteriorate. In fact, they were more likely to win games and stop the puck in March and April than in any month except for December. The correlation between save percentage and games played was essentially zero.

However, there could be some goalies that deviate from this trend. Perhaps some iron man goalies improve as the season goes on and get better when playing big minutes. If anybody fits those criteria it would be Martin Brodeur, who year after year plays more games than anyone else. However, Brodeur's splits are are virtually identical to the splits of his goaltending peers. October is easily his worst month (2.45/.904). He peaks in January (2.09/.920), and also does well in April (2.08/.919). The rest of the months are pretty similar, ranging from 2.12-2.22 in GAA and .911 to .916 in save percentage (gaps of .10 and .005 respectively, again virtually exactly the same variances as the larger group).

So goalies apparently do not get worse as the season goes along, and Martin Brodeur is no different than anybody else in terms of monthly splits. This suggests that goalie fatigue is not really a major issue.

To look at this a bit further, I looked at the goalies who took on large workloads (75+ games in a season) to see if they tired late in the year.

I compared how well they did in games 71 or later compared to games 1-70. Here is the breakdown of the average results:

Games 1-70: 2.54 GAA, .910 save %, .567 win %
Games 70+ 2.59 GAA, .903 save %, .571 win %

So the goalies did slightly better in the earlier games, however it was not by much. And if there was a fatigue effect, it was again apparently something that affected Martin Brodeur just as much as everyone else - after game 70, Brodeur slipped from 2.18/.918/.595 to 2.20/.913/.588.

So it appears that fatigue may have an effect on goalies, but if so it appears to be a very small one. Furthermore, goalies who routinely play a lot of minutes like Martin Brodeur have not been better at maintaining their level of play late in the season than other goalies facing heavy workloads. The fact that goalies did far better late in the season than they did in the month of October implies that playing a lot of games may actually be beneficial to goalies, in that it is harder to overcome a summer off than it is to overcome playing 70+ games in a season.

This means that playing a lot of games is probably more accurately characterized as a choice, rather than a skill, at least for the large majority of NHL goalies. If this is correct, that means that Vezina Trophy voters have placed an inappropriate weighting on games played in recent years, as they have repeatedly voted for goalies that played more games over others that played fewer games at a high level.

Reviewing Tony Esposito's Playoff Record

I have to issue a mea culpa here - in light of further evidence presented by Bruce in the comment thread to my last post on Tony Esposito, I think it is clear that Esposito did play poorly in the playoffs in the early 1970s and most likely contributed to his team's underachieving playoff record. The key here is the contrast between Chicago's record against Boston and Montreal in the regular season and in the playoffs:

Chicago vs. Boston and Montreal in the regular season (1970-1974)

25-24-11, 175 GF, 177 GA

2.92 goals per game
2.95 goals against average

Chicago vs. Boston and Montreal in the playoffs (1970-1974)

7-16, 71 GF, 101 GA

3.09 goals per game
4.39 goals against average

Boston and Montreal were both outstanding offensive teams, but something must have gone very wrong with Chicago for them to allow that many extra goals compared to their seasonal rates. The Hawks were good enough to hold their own during the regular season, but were shellacked in the playoffs 4 times in 5 years. I doubt this was entirely Esposito's fault, but given that unusually high GAA number it is hard to see how he couldn't have contributed to it.

We have one season of save percentage data from the early 1970s (1971), where the numbers indicate that Esposito faced an average of 28 shots per game. Let's say that Chicago allowed an average of 30 shots per game in their regular season games against Boston and Montreal, since they were strong opponents. That would put Esposito at a .902 save percentage, which according to the Hockey Analysis Group was the average save percentage from 1970-1974. Even if Chicago was badly outplayed in the playoffs and allowed an extra 10 shots per game against the same opponents, Esposito's save percentage would still drop to a mediocre .890. If they allowed an extra 5 shots per game, he would be at .875, and if he was still facing the same 30, the stat would be a horrific .854. Of course Esposito didn't play all of those games and there may be some empty netters involved, but the numbers indicate that the goaltending was probably subpar.

Later in his career, Esposito's teams were weak and didn't provide much goal support, which is why he suffered through a string of playoff sweeps and early exits. But the early 1970s Blackhawks were Cup contenders, and could have won a Cup or two with strong goaltending. Esposito had some great games (2nd in playoff shutouts during the period) and series (Chicago twice upset strong Rangers teams), but never played well for an entire series against Boston or Montreal, which is where the Blackhawks repeatedly saw their Cup dreams dashed.