GMs vs. Media

There is often a great deal of similarity between voting for the Vezina Trophy, which is done by the league's general managers, and the voting for the year-end First and Second All-Star Teams done by the broadcast media. Last year was an example of a time when they did not agree, however, with Brodeur winning the Vezina and Nabokov getting named to the First All-Star Team. I thought it might be interesting to highlight some of the goalies who have had different results in Vezina and All-Star voting, not in terms of any particular season as in the case of Nabokov and Brodeur, but over the course of their careers to see if there was anyone that the GMs thought highly of but was overlooked by the writers.

Award voting is difficult to compare directly, since the number of voters changes from year to year. The best method is probably the one used at hockeygoalies.org, where the voting share is calculated for each goalie by dividing the number of voting points by the number of points a goalie would receive if he was a unanimous winner. That gives us a single scale that allows us to not only compare from year-to-year, but also between Vezina and All-Star voting. To get a career total, you just need to add up the total award "shares" for each goalie. For example, if a goalie gets 100 points out of a possible 200, that is a 0.50 share. If he has a 0.25 share the next season, and a 0.10 share the season after, his career total is 0.85.

For the well-known goalies there isn't too much difference between the two totals. Here are the results for the 4 most likely recent Hall of Famers, who all have All-Star voting totals between 8-15% higher than their Vezina results:

Belfour: 2.49 Vezina, 2.86 All-Star
Brodeur: 5.19 Vezina, 5.75 All-Star
Hasek: 4.76 Vezina, 5.22 All-Star
Roy: 4.64 Vezina, 5.00 All-Star

It is fairly standard for the well-known goalies that All-Star voting surpasses Vezina voting, since there tends to be more consensus. There are more a lot more writers voting on the awards than GMs, so one or two off-the-wall picks have less of an impact percentage-wise. The writers are also probably at least somewhat aware of each other's articles and published opinions, so that will influence some groupthink. It is also likely that some writers simply don't have a good idea of who the best goalie is, so they pick the most recognizable name.

On the other hand, some GMs don't get to see all the teams play so they may focus primarily on their own conference or division, or might even just throw some support behind their own goalie, which leads to more spread out voting results.

There were a number of goalies that accumulated substantially more Vezina shares than All-Star voting shares, meaning that they were valued higher by general managers than the media. If we assume that general managers have extra inside information from professional scouts as well as their hockey experience and expertise in evaluating talent, we would expect that the GMs should make better picks, and that the goalies that come up on this list should be goalies that are considered underrated.

There were 5 guys who met my threshhold of having Vezina shares that were at least 20% higher than All-Star shares:

Kelly Hrudey: 0.38 Vezina, 0.12 All-Star
Guy Hebert: 0.14 Vezina, 0.02 All-Star
Curtis Joseph: 1.02 Vezina, 0.42 All-Star
Daren Puppa: 0.82 Vezina, 0.60 All-Star
John Vanbiesbrouck: 1.52 Vezina, 1.07 All-Star

I have been less than flattering in some of the things I have written about Vezina voting and general managers, but here I'm going to be quite complimentary. That is a pretty good list.

Kelly Hrudey, Guy Hebert, and Daren Puppa are all guys that have pretty solid save percentage records, and often pop up in unexpected places when I look at various statistical comparisons. Curtis Joseph and John Vanbiesbrouck both have very good save percentage record compared to their peers in both the regular season and playoffs, but never had the team success that attracts recognition.

Curtis Joseph is the goalie who was most consistently rated higher by people inside the game of hockey than by casual observers. In the eyes of many fans, Curtis Joseph is a loser who always choked past the second round of the playoffs and never accomplished anything. Many people consider him to be a borderline Hall of Famer, despite being 4th all-time in the career wins list. Joseph never won a Vezina or was named a First or Second Team All-Star, and he never played in a Stanley Cup Final. However, if you look at insider perspectives on his play, including Vezina voting, he was repeatedly rated among the very best in the game.

Joseph did not have a single season in his career where his All-Star voting share was higher than his Vezina voting share. The GMs always rated him higher than the writers did, and the most extreme example was during the 1998-99 season, when Joseph was the Vezina runner-up and actually received more first-place Vezina votes than eventual winner Dominik Hasek (!), yet finished just 4th in All-Star voting. Joseph was picked to play on Team Canada for three consecutive best-on-best tournaments, and began the tournament as the starter in two of them, despite playing in an era of strong goalie competition. Joseph was always a highly sought after free-agent and inked a series of lucrative deals, including signing for $8 million per year with Detroit in 2002 (the same amount the Red Wings were paying Hasek). Joseph was voted team MVP several times in both Edmonton and Toronto, and according to one source I found he was apparently a Lester B. Pearson finalist in 1998-99, which suggests that the other players around the league seemed to agree.

As I have argued many times before, NHL general managers are not always great at picking the best goalie in any given season, as they can be blinded by wins and shutouts like anyone else. However, the record shows that they are better than the writers at identifying overlooked goalies and rewarding goalies who play on weaker teams.

Ottawa Scoring

I looked up some stats to show the decline in Ottawa's scoring before and after January 1, 2008, to support my claim that is was primarily a decline in offence that caused their tumble in the standings over the last season and a half. Here are points per game stats for the key players on Ottawa:

Dany Heatley: 1.31 before, 0.93 after
Daniel Alfredsson: 1.21 before, 1.02 after
Jason Spezza: 1.37 before, 0.89 after
Mike Fisher: 0.71 before, 0.46 after
Chris Kelly: 0.47 before, 0.31 after
Wade Redden: 0.53 before, 0.33 after
Chris Phillips: 0.31 before, 0.21 after
Anton Volchenkov: 0.23 before, 0.17 after
Other top 4 defencemen: 0.45 before, 0.34 after
All other forwards: 0.32 before, 0.26 after

There was only one key player on Ottawa who had a scoring rate that improved since January 1, 2008. He went from 0.54 points per game to 0.56 points per game. What was his reward for reversing the trend? Getting traded for Columbus' backup goalie. My sympathies to Sens fans, because the future doesn't look particularly bright in Ottawa.

Brodeur Is No Fraud

Mike Brodeur, that is. The Rochester Americans goalie and Florida Panthers prospect is currently 3rd in the AHL in save percentage, and is having a great season that earned him an invite to the AHL All-Star Game.

He has also already accomplished one thing that Martin Brodeur has never been able to do: Massively outplay his teammates. Check out these stats:

Mike Brodeur: 16-7-3, 2.29, .926
Other goalies: 8-26-2, 3.75, .886

Don't think those other goalies are slouches, either, most of the other games were played by former NHLer Chris Beckford-Tseu (OK, so he played 27 minutes, but he still made it to the show) and 2005 2nd round pick Tyler Plante.

The director of player personnel for the Panthers has been quoted as saying, "This guy is legitimately a prospect for the NHL", so that's good news for Mike. Florida has Vokoun and Anderson both playing well, and top prospect Jacob Markstrom on the way, which will make the path a bit more difficult for the lesser Brodeur but if he keeps up his pace he might just earn an NHL shot.

We wish Mike the best of luck as we have nothing at all against Brodeurs. Martin is a nice guy by pretty much all accounts, except for possibly those of his former in-laws, and Richard had a few decent years as well. We just take issue when people undeservedly call them the greatest of all-time. That is something Mike Brodeur probably doesn't need to worry too much about.

Hey Ottawa: Blame the Scoring, Not the Goalie

I don't know why the Ottawa Senators continue to think that their problem is goaltending. Trading Antoine Vermette for Pascal Leclaire and a 2nd round pick is an odd move.

As everyone knows, the Ottawa Senators fell off a cliff somewhere around January 1, 2008. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a dramatic change on a team - if you compare their win/loss record and goal differential before and after New Year's last year, the difference was about the equivalent of this year's Detroit Red Wings turning overnight into the Phoenix Coyotes. In their last 105 games, Ottawa has scored 277 goals and allowed 319, for a goal differential of -42.

The average Eastern Conference team has scored 307 goals and allowed 311 over the same span, meaning that the Sens are slightly worse than average in goal prevention but well below average in goal scoring. Ottawa does need to improve its defensive play, but the big problem seems to be the complete lack of secondary scoring, something that is going to be even worse now without Vermette, the team's highest-scoring second liner both this year and last year.

The Sens' team save percentages over the last 3 years have been .914, .904, and .906. Shot quality numbers have indicated the Sens have allowed slightly more difficult chances than average over that span, which would put the Sens' goaltending around league average. Over the last two seasons, playing on a Ken Hitchcock coached team, Pascal Leclaire has posted a .909. I don't see Leclaire as much of an upgrade over Auld, and why would a team that is going to miss the playoffs anyway not want to give Brian Elliott as much experience as possible?

If you have a team with a well below average offence and OK goaltending, then logic suggests that it might not be the most necessary move to trade your highest-scoring second liner for another team's backup goalie (who only has one good season behind a strong defensive unit to his credit, no less). I give Columbus the clear upper hand in this transaction.

Chart of the Day

The following graph is of the difference between save percentage and league average for Patrick Roy (blue), Dominik Hasek (green), and Martin Brodeur (red). Since goaltending results are often highly variable from year-to-year, I smoothed the curves by averaging the season together with the one before and the one after, i.e. three-year rolling averages. I believe I once referred to Brodeur as having an "upside-down career curve", and this lays that out pretty well.

Brodeur's abnormal career path makes it difficult to project what kind of a decline he will see as he ages. He is already defying the standard projections on aging (check out this post at Mc79hockey from three years ago that outlines how Brodeur should have performed over the last few seasons based on typical averages), and has now come back from a 4 month injury break apparently without missing a beat. I think the observed results suggest that Brodeur is not going to decline in a typical fashion, and he may very well be able to keep up his current level of play for several more seasons.

There are many New Jersey fans that lament Brodeur's lost season during the lockout, as he would otherwise already be the all-time wins and shutouts leader. However, looking at this graph one has to wonder whether taking that time off was possibly a good thing for a guy who played both more regular season and more playoff games than everyone else in the preceding decade. I doubt we will ever know for sure, although there is a lot of research that can be done on the relationship between the rate of decline from injuries and aging and the games played and shots faced by a goalie.

Jacques Lemaire Gets You Paid

The Minnesota Wild signed Niklas Backstrom to a 4 year, $24 million contract. I first saw the news on James Mirtle's site, and I'd say he does a pretty good job outlining the reasons why Minnesota should have ushered in the Josh Harding era, if you aren't familiar with them already.

If I was GM in Minnesota, I would trade my goalies in the last year of their contracts, if anyone was willing to bite. If not, I would kick every last one of them out the door rather than pay for their inflated numbers.

Having said that, Backstrom is a decent goalie and Minnesota should be fine with him for the next four years. It just doesn't make sense in a salary capped league, while facing economic uncertainties that may lower the cap in future years, to pay a lot of money for good but not elite goaltending if you have a terrific defensive team already. Minnesota has had an exellent save percentage for years, and they haven't managed to make the leap to the upper echelon of teams in the NHL. It's going to be even harder now with less money to spend on the guys up front. The Wild would be much better off finding and signing the next Marian Gaborik to upgrade their 26th-ranked offence than overpaying Niklas Backstrom.

Shots Against Effects

I thought of another way to break down shots against and save percentage - by looking at goalies with similar league rankings from year-to-year to see if goalies who faced fewer than average or higher than average shots were likely to have a save percentage that differed from the norm. Even if there is no relationship in an overall sense, there could still be some relationship for goalies with extreme shots against results, whether high or low. After all, when we are comparing say Turco in Dallas to Vokoun in Florida, we are talking about the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of team prevention.

I took a sample of the top 40 goalies in minutes played for each season from 2000-01 to 2008-09, and then looked at the save percentage stats and rank for all the goalies who ranked #1, #5, #10, #15, #20, #25, #30, #35, and #40 in shots against per 60 minutes each season, where #1 was the fewest and #40 was the most.

Here is the breakdown:

1st in SA: .908 save %, avg rank 21
5th in SA: .908 save %, avg rank 24
10th in SA: .909 save %, avg rank 21
15th in SA: .903 save %, avg rank 27
20th in SA: .898 save %, avg rank 30
25th in SA: .911 save %, avg rank 17
30th in SA: .909 save %, avg rank 19
35th in SA: .915 save %, avg rank 13
40th in SA: .916 save %, avg rank 13

Those results are pretty consistent across the board. The only ones that are really striking are the low results for #15 and #20, which wouldn't be expected by any commonly advanced shots against theory, and the high results for #35 and #40, which could potentially indicate an advantage to facing higher shots against totals.

The most obvious factor that can be influencing this analysis is goalie quality. Since any goalie can finish in any one of these spots, one grouping could be Brodeur, Roy, Belfour and Hasek while the next could be Cloutier, Raycroft, Esche and Kidd. The actual groupings weren't that extreme, but goalie quality does explain the weird results for the goalies who ranked 20th, as Vernon, Turek, Grahame, Conklin, Khabibulin, Tellqvist, Ward and Toskala was easily the weakest group of goalies. The goalies who ranked 15th weren't much better (Thibault, Roy, Storr, Weekes, post-lockout Theodore, Ward, Lalime, Price this year). It appears to be just a fluke of a fairly small sample size that those two ranks attracted lesser talent and led to lower save percentages. On the other hand, both the 35th ranked and 40th ranked goalie groups were strong, with goalies like Burke, pre-lockout Theodore, Roloson, Huet, Lehtonen, and Luongo three times, along with a few lesser lights in Rhodes, Hnilicka, Denis, Hedberg, Anderson and Chris Mason.

Here are the numbers adjusted for the average career save percentage for each goalie in the sample and normalized to the league average of .907. This works pretty well for most of the goalies, with the exception of those who have played just 1 or 2 seasons, like Carey Price, or goalies whose careers began in the 1980s, like Patrick Roy.

#1: .901
#5: .910
#10: .911
#15: .903
#20: .902
#25: .908
#30: .911
#35: .914
#40: .913

This list makes it look like it was very difficult to face the fewest shots in the league, but that is not really the case. The adjustment is somewhat misleading, as the average career save percentage is overstating the strength of the group. Dominik Hasek faced the fewest shots against in the league in both 2006-07 and 2007-08, so his .922 career mark is counted twice by this method although he was well past his prime in those two seasons. This year, current fewest shots against leader Steve Mason counts as .920, since as a rookie this season is all we have to go on. Mason may be a good young goalie, but he is unlikely to sustain that mark over an entire career. If we replace these adjustments with average values, then the #1 group improves to a .908 adjusted save percentage, only slightly lower than the others.

The two highest-shot groups finish 1-2 in the adjusted rankings as well, which does seem to indicate that there may be some advantage at work. However, the main reason for these excellent results are that they included the two best high-workload, high-save percentage seasons in the period (Jose Theodore in 2001-02 and Roberto Luongo in 2003-04). Remove those two years, and both groups end up with an adjusted save percentage of .911, which is in line with everything else.

There might be a slight save percentage advantage to facing high shot totals and possibly even a slight disadvantage to facing low shot totals, but it is probably at most a couple thousandths. Otherwise, over an 8 season sample it did not appear to make much difference at all whether goalies faced fewer shots than average or more shots than average. The results were certainly within the margin of error given the sample size, or could be explained by differences in goalie quality. The evidence continues to mount that there appears to be no significant relationship between save percentage and shots against.