Vezina Trends

"First, he leads the NHL in the one stat that trumps all others: wins." (Scott Burnside, ESPN)

Going after Scott Burnside on goalie analysis is not dissimilar to shooting fish in a barrel, but my real beef is with how he is parroting the conventional wisdom that people within hockey consider wins to be extremely important. It might be Burnside's opinion that wins are the most vital stat, which is obviously misguided but he is allowed to personally believe whatever he wants. The problem is that when he explicitly claims to be handicapping the Vezina race, then at a minimum I would expect that he should be aware of what stats have actually been considered to be important in past voting.

Here is how the last 20 Vezina winners have ranked in five key goalie stats (GVT is Goals Versus Threshold):

Year	Goalie	Sv%	GAA	Wins	SO	GVT
1991	Belfour	1	1	1	2	1
1992	Roy	1	1	3	1	1
1993	Belfour	2	1	2	1	2
1994	Hasek	1	1	6	1	1
1995	Hasek	1	1	5	1	1
1996	Carey	8	1	2	1	7
1997	Hasek	1	2	2	6	1
1998	Hasek	1	4	3	1	1
1999	Hasek	1	1	9	2	1
2000	Kolzig	2	4	3	4	1
2001	Hasek	3	2	3	1	2
2002	Theodore	1	2	14	2	1
2003	Brodeur	11	3	1	1	12
2004	Brodeur	8	2	1	1	9
2006	Kiprusoff	1	1	2	1	1
2007	Brodeur	1	2	1	1	3
2008	Brodeur	3	3	2	9	1
2009	Thomas	1	1	6	10	1
2010	Miller	1	1	4	7	1
2011	Thomas	1	1	9	2	1

Some readily apparent observations from the above table:

1. It is very rare for the consensus best goalie to win the most games. Only 4 of the last 20 Vezina winners led the league in wins. In contrast, for each of the other four stats, the Vezina winner was more likely to lead the league than not. Wins are in fact easily trumped by save percentage, GAA, shutouts, and GVT.

2. The data suggests that the emphasis on shutouts may be decreasing as well, although that could just be variance.

3. The 1996, 2003 and 2004 decisions stand out quite starkly relative to the others. The unwillingness of voters to rank non-playoff goalies as the best in the league was a big factor in the '96 and '04 votes, which is at least somewhat understandable although I disagree with the logic. That leaves the '03 Vezina as the most unusual result of the last two decades. Voters overlooked a playoff goalie that had 1-1-10-5-1 ranking based on the above table, a pattern that much more closely matches the overall averages than that year's winner.

4. The historical pattern that goalies require an excellent GAA to win a Vezina has continued. I would suggest that a low GAA on a strong defensive team seems to be the biggest source of error in the current voting, as those goalies appear on ballots much more frequently than average goalies that rack up a lot of wins on strong offensive teams.

Grant Fuhr and Effort

One of the things people like to say about goalies on dynasty teams is that they didn't try as hard when it didn't matter, and as a result their stats were understated. I think the evidence generally suggests that while there are some score effects from changing team strategies, goalies usually do try to keep the puck out of the net at all times. With only 30 starting jobs available goalie competition is fierce, which makes less likely that goalies would be willing to slack off while in the game. Even good teams have to fight to make the playoffs these days (see the '10-11 Chicago Blackhawks as an example), which means that there can be major team consequences for a netminder with a habit of trying to coast though a game here or there. Finally, in today's low-scoring environment there is not a lot of garbage time so goals against in blowouts simply will not have a material impact on a goalie's stats.

However, while those things may be true at the moment, they don't necessarily apply to results from several decades ago where the competitive balance and scoring level was much different than it is in today's salary capped NHL. I do think it is probably worth checking truly dominant teams to see whether there are some kind of unusual effects at play, since the incentives for players on those teams are not exactly the same as they are for everyone else.

For example, I suspect that some members of the 1980s Edmonton Oilers may not have been playing much of a 200 foot game during the second half of the regulation schedule during the peak of their dynasty simply because they were already dozens of points in front of everyone else in the standings. With 16 of 21 teams making the playoffs in those days, there was really nothing to left to do by that point in the season other than pad their offensive stats while trying to stay healthy and in good shape for another attempted Cup run.

From 1983-84 to 1987-88 (numbers from the Hockey Summary Project and Hockey Reference), there is a noticeable downward trend in Grant Fuhr's save percentages by month as the season wore on:

Oct: 1121 SA, .898
Nov: 1288 SA, .889
Dec: 1181 SA, .870
Jan: 1286 SA, .890
Feb: 1128 SA, .871
Mar: 1158 SA, .880
Apr: 232 SA, .871

It could be argued that Fuhr was experiencing fatigue, but that seems unlikely as a factor (other than potentially in 1987-88 when he played in 75 games) because he was usually used in a platoon scenario together with Andy Moog. On top of that, Fuhr's numbers jumped back up again to October levels as soon as the playoffs started.

To summarize:

Oct-Jan: 4876 SA, .887
Feb-Apr: 2518 SA, .875
Playoffs: 2268 SA, .899

By the end of January, the Oilers were always sitting very comfortably in the standings.

1983-84: 38-9-5, 41 pts ahead of 5th
1984-85: 36-9-6, 45 pts ahead of 5th
1985-86: 36-11-5, 40 pts ahead of 5th
1986-87: 34-14-11, 36 pts ahead of 5th
1987-88: 29-17-7, 26 pts ahead of 5th

The only season the Oilers were not ranked first overall in the league was 1987-88, where they sat in third place but were still far above the playoff cut line. In all five seasons the team had more wins at the end of January than the last place team in their division would finish with at the end of the season, meaning they could have lost every game they played after January 31 and still made the playoffs. In short, the Oilers had very little to play for as a team from February onwards in any of those seasons.

Looking at Andy Moog's monthly numbers, there is some reason to believe that the rest of the team was having a big impact on the late-season statistical slide:

Andy Moog, 1983-84 to 1987-88:
Oct-Jan: 3363 SA, .890
Feb-Apr: 1572 SA, .876
Playoffs: 343 SA, .866

Moog showed a very similar save percentage decline, suggesting that the Oilers as a group were less committed defensively once they had the division well locked up. Either that or Moog and Fuhr both had a similar lack of focus late in the season when the games became less meaningful. However, given that the two were mostly alternating starts, and were at least in some level of competition for the starting job come playoff time, I would guess that team defence may have been a more significant factor than the effort level of each individual goaltender.

I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that Grant Fuhr's true talent in terms of save percentage was understated by his regular season numbers in the mid-1980s. From 1983-84 to 1987-88, his overall regular season save percentage was .884, a decent mark given the league average of .876 over the same period of time. However, if his February to April numbers are excluded as not being representative of a team giving 100% defensive effort in front of him, with his playoff numbers substituted instead, Fuhr's save percentage would jump to .891, nearly doubling his advantage relative to league average. That rate would also rank Fuhr up near the top of the league over that period of time, rather than merely the upper middle of the pack.

It is still worth pointing out that Moog would be at .888 based on the same assumptions. That suggests that Edmonton's shot quality against was probably not nearly as bad as some suggest, at least when the team felt the game mattered and wanted to play defence, although Moog was an above-average goalie in his own right.

Other goalies may have suffered slightly from this effect as well during the unbalanced '80s, but it seems likely that it would have had the biggest impact in Edmonton given their prolific offence and incredible team success. Fuhr may still be a bit overrated by some fans who rate him as one of the main keys to the Oilers' championships, but this is at least some evidence that supports the contention that he had Hall of Fame talent in his prime.

Anything Can Happen in One Game

As Canadian world junior fans learned yet again yesterday, anything can happen in a one game playoff. By now the more reactionary fans are well into their usual routine of blaming the goalie and/or the coaching staff, but all that really needs to be said is that the format of international tournaments works against the best teams and creates a high degree of randomness. The recent history of world junior and Olympic tournaments speaks to that, with some of the huge upsets that have taken place, together with the oft-repeated story of teams that looked like world-beaters through four or five preliminary games (as Canada did in this year's tournament), before unexpectedly falling to an inferior foe because of one bad outing in an elimination game (and as far as poor games go, it's certainly possible to do much, much worse than outshooting the opposition 56-24).

The international tournament format caused me to think of an interesting hypothetical: What if the NHL postseason was a series of one-and-done showdowns? Obviously it's not possible to replay those postseasons based on that counterfactual, but it is possible to just look up the results for the first game of each playoff series. It's not a given that things necessarily would have turned out the same way if both teams knew it was do-or-die, but it's probably a fairly reasonable approximation.

It turns out that having a single game elimination format would almost completely alter NHL history. Out of the last 22 Stanley Cup champions, only one of them never found themselves trailing 1-0 in a series at any point in their postseason run. The 2008 Detroit Red Wings are the only Cup winner to win all of their series openers in a single playoff season since Edmonton traded Wayne Gretzky. Every other Cup champion since then lost an opening game, meaning that if they were playing a one game series they would have been eliminated and would never have earned the chance to drink from Lord Stanley's mug.

It would have been a similar story, although not quite as extreme, if all series had been best-of-three affairs. In that scenario, the clear majority of winning teams would still probably not have made it all the way through to win as they did. Fifteen out of the 22 teams lost 2 out of the first 3 games in at least one series on their way to a Cup. Even if the format was changed to a best of 5, that would still have a major impact on the final results, as somewhat amazingly half of the eventual champions trailed 3-2 after five games at some point during their Cup run.

In total, based on these assumptions, Cup winning teams since 1988-89 would have won 61.4% of one game playoffs, 76.1% of three game playoffs, and 87.5% of five game playoffs.

That supports the obvious fact that the larger the sample size, the more likely it is for talent to win out over luck. At the world juniors, it's obvious that Canada routinely has the most talent. Over the past five tournaments, Canada has a record of 26-5 with a goal differential of 185-65. Some portion of that is from pounding on the minnow nations, but even against the traditional top five hockey nations (USA, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Czech Republic) Canada still went 15-5. That's a .750 winning percentage, and the goal differential suggests that the team's record was fully earned (the Canadian juniors scored 99 and allowed 56 against the same opponents for a Pythagorean expected winning percentage of an even slightly better .758).

That's an incredibly dominant record, but it still leaves the simple reality that if Canada is a 75% favourite in back-to-back playoff games against two solid opponents, that still leaves them with only about a 56% chance to win any given tournament. Given the talent of some of the American, Russian and Swedish squads in recent years, that's almost certainly overstating the odds of even a truly dominant team getting through two single elimination contests unscathed. The odds drop even further if the team did not secure a quarterfinal bye by finishing first in their pool.

This is not a simple attempt to justify a loss. Winning a single elimination tournament is also less meaningful, for the exact same reasons. Sometimes a weaker team wins, sometimes a good team plays poorly but gets the breaks anyway. The longer the series, the less variance and the more confidence that the better team ends up triumphant. All Canadian hockey fans would like to claim that the 2010 Olympics win proved that Canada is the world's best hockey nation, for example, but that tournament alone is not enough to prove that assertion. A better argument would be to look at Canada's overall record in winning three of the last six best-on-best tournaments, but even that analysis would show that it is relatively close between the top nations. At the end of the day, many Canadian fans need to have more reasonable expectations about how much success to demand from the teenagers representing their country internationally.

The international format is what it is, it's certainly exciting and it's not going away any time soon, but it's still important to not try to draw too much significance from such a short tournament. If you are tempted to do so, just remember that if the same rules applied to the NHL playoffs, a different team would probably end up winning well over 90% of the time.

40 Year Old Goalies

There was a discussion in the comments to a post over at Arctic Ice Hockey a couple of weeks ago about whether Tampa's goaltending (current team mark: .896) will regress back towards league average over the rest of the season. Over time goalie save percentages will nearly always move towards a goalie's career average. At the moment, Mathieu Garon is playing at close to his established level (.907 this season, .904 career) while Dwayne Roloson's seasonal rate is well below his career mark (.883 and .909 respectively). It looks like it is reasonable to expect major improvement from Roloson, which should boost Tampa's numbers the rest of the way.

However, while I am confident that Tampa's team save percentage will continue to move upwards towards league average, I do not believe this will be because Roloson's numbers will get a whole lot better. It will instead occur as the team shifts more playing time to Garon, who started 11 games to Roloson's two during the month of December, or perhaps through bringing in another goaltender if GM Steve Yzerman decides to address his team's crease situation. Roloson's numbers will probably improve, if nothing else playing in more of a backup role against weaker opponents may help slightly, but the reasonable expectation is that at 42 years old he is simply too old to expect him to produce anything north of .900.

Looking at the career records of goalies in the save percentage era past the age of 40, it is impressive how much the top two on the list stick out both in terms of quantity and quality of performance:

Hasek: 3366 shots, .914

Roloson: 3602 shots, .907

Everyone else: 4899 shots, .891

Hasek and Roloson each have two of the top four seasons among the 40+ crowd. Other than them, Ed Belfour is the only one who managed to keep his starting job past the age of 40, although his numbers were much lower. Everyone else had numbers that were below league average, in most cases well below.

1. Hasek, 2005-06: 43 GP, .925

2. Roloson, 2010-11: 54 GP, .914

3. Hasek, 2006-07: 56 GP, .913

4. Roloson, 2009-10: 50 PG, .907

5. Joseph, 2007-08: 9 GP, .906

6. Belfour, 2006-07: 58 GP, .902

7. Hasek, 2007-08: 41 GP, .902

8. Burke, 2006-07: 23 GP, .901

9. Belfour, 2005-06: 49 GP, .892

10. Roloson, 2011-12: 17 GP, .882

11. Joseph, 2008-09: 21 GP, .869

12. Esposito, 1983-84: 18 GP, .859

Based on those comparables, a good bet on Roloson's current save percentage talent is probably in the .895-.900 range, although with perhaps 15-20 starts remaining Roli's actual performance could still vary quite widely.

Assuming Garon keeps up his current level of performance and keeps getting the majority of the starts, Tampa's save percentage will probably improve by something like .010 the rest of the way. For example, if Garon keeps his .907 through the end of the season while Roloson plays at .895 and the shot split between them moves from the current 57/43 to 67/33, the Lightning should end up with a save percentage of .903 over their last 50 games. That's still well below league average, which is why the team should certainly consider making a move if they want to make a stronger playoff push this season. History suggests their current goaltending will be unable to perform at a league average level, which will make it difficult for the Lightning to catch up in the standings.

Good Enough to Win

One thing that is often discussed about goalies by hockey fans is whether they are "good enough" to win a Stanley Cup. This is usually based on things like gut feel and extrapolating huge amounts of significance from small sample sizes; I have rarely seen anyone try to quantify what good enough to win a Cup actually means.

First of all, winning is obviously a team result. The talent and luck necessary for a goalie to win a Cup on the Detroit Red Wings is a lot different than what is required on the New York Islanders. The historical record shows that only strong regular season teams win Cups, so we need to look at the kind of numbers goalies put up on those teams. That said, hot goaltending does have an impact. At some point even a good team is going to run against other strong opponents in their quest for the Cup, and in those games superior goaltending can become a tiebreaking factor (e.g. the 2011 Cup Finals).

Here are the save percentages for each Cup-winning goalie in the save percentage era, adjusted to league average and normalized to the current average save level (.911):

1984: Grant Fuhr, .933

1985: Grant Fuhr, .925

1986: Patrick Roy, .946

1987: Grant Fuhr, .932

1988: Grant Fuhr, 913

1989: Mike Vernon, .930

1990: Bill Ranford, .934

1991: Tom Barrasso, .937

1992: Tom Barrasso, .926

1993: Patrick Roy, .945

1994: Mike Richter, .933

1995: Martin Brodeur, .934

1996: Patrick Roy, .931

1997: Mike Vernon, .932

1998: Chris Osgood, .923

1999: Ed Belfour, .933

2000: Martin Brodeur, .933

2001: Patrick Roy, .940

2002: Dominik Hasek, .923

2003: Martin Brodeur, .936

2004: Nikolai Khabibulin, .933

2006: Cam Ward, .928

2007: J.S. Giguere, .927

2008: Chris Osgood, .932

2009: Marc-Andre Fleury, .911

2010: Antti Niemi, .910

2011: Tim Thomas, .939

Those numbers are quite consistent. Twenty out of 27 goalies had an adjusted save percentage between .923 and .937. The average was .930 on 582 shots against. The only goalies to win the Cup with average save numbers were Fuhr in 1988, Fleury in 2009 and Niemi in 2010. Patrick Roy was the only Cup winning goalie to record a number of .940 or better, which remarkably he managed to do in each of his three Conn Smythe winning performances.

The overall averages for Cup Finalists were very similar, with an average of .927 on 572 SA. The distribution was different however. Eight of 27 had an adjusted save percentage of .939 or better, which reflects the fact that there have been a number of weaker teams that needed strong goaltending just to make it to the Final. Eight other Finalists had adjusted save percentages of .917 or worse. Some of those simply benefitted from strong teammates, while others were mostly good for three rounds and then saw their numbers nosedive as results starting going against them during the Finals.

This analysis gives the rough historical rule of thumb that to win a Stanley Cup, you need a goalie capable of putting up a .930 save percentage over 600 shots. That level of statistical performance doesn't guarantee a Cup, a number of goalies have played at an even higher level than that only to see their teams fall short at the final hurdle, but it makes a ring very possible if other variables (scoring, defence, injuries, opposition, etc.) also happen to break right.

Because of variance, nearly any goalie who makes it to the NHL could put up a .930 on 600 shots with enough luck, although it is not very likely to happen for a replacement level goaltender. According to the binomial probability function, a .900 talent goaltender would have a 0.7% chance of putting up that target number on any given 600 shot stretch. That means that even if they saw 600 shots against in every playoff season, they would still need to play in 99 of them to have a greater than 50% chance of going over .930 in one of them. Unless they happen to be astronomically lucky or find themselves playing for a complete powerhouse, I think it is fair to say that in general a .900 talent goalie is not good enough to win a Stanley Cup.

For a .905 goalie, the odds increase to 1.9%, still not even once every 20 times which is the usual cutoff point to determine statistical significance. The point where the probability moves above 5% is when the goalie's talent is .911, which is right about league average. The chances are much greater for one of the league's elite goalies. A .920 talent goalie would play at .930 or better over 600 shots about 20% of the time.

That shows that a top goalie on a contending team would have a reasonably good chance to win a Cup, but that it is still far from a sure thing. Goalies have short careers and often only a short window of opportunity to compete in the playoffs with a true contender. That is why it is not surprising that some elite goalies who conclusively proved their talent over hundreds of regular season games still never managed a deep playoff run. It was not because they weren't good enough to win a Cup, it was because they didn't get the breaks that are required to win a championship.

The idea that most starting goalies in the league are capable of .930 over 600 shots is also backed up by the actual statistical record. There are only seven teams who do not currently employ a goaltender that has put together at least one stretch of consecutive games with a save percentage of .930 or better on at least 600 shots against since 2009-10. Even among those seven, five of them have goalies who very narrowly missed the cutoff:

Reimer, Toronto: .929 on 622 SA

Theodore, Florida: .929 on 608 SA

Lehtonen, Dallas: .929 on 581 SA

Varlamov, Colorado: .931 on 563 SA

Brodeur, New Jersey: .929 on 603 SA

Some might quibble with the relatively unproven Reimer or Varlamov, or even the aging Brodeur, but I'll count all five as being close enough. That leaves just Columbus and Tampa Bay. Steve Mason's best stretch since '09-10 was .923 on 571 shots, while Roloson's best in the last two and a bit regular seasons was .926 on the same 571 SA. However, these numbers are from the regular season only; if playoff numbers count then from March 29 to May 19 Roloson had a .931 on 623 shots against.

Despite his hot spring last year, I think Roloson's age makes it unlikely that he will regain that form, and Mason's recent track record is simply not very good at all. I think it is probably fair to say that the Blue Jackets and Lightning may not currently have goaltending that is good enough to win a Cup. Other than that, every other team has a goaltender that has shown they can play at a high enough level for a long enough period of time that while they may not be a good bet to provide that level of goaltending during a playoff run, they would at least have an outside chance at winning a Cup if they were fortunate enough to be a member of a contending team.

This discussion should make it quite clear that evaluating a goalie's ability to win a Cup based on their past history is a woefully inadequate method. Nearly every starting goalie in the league is good enough to win a Cup in the right situation, and for a typical playoff team any netminder that is average or better should probably be considered good enough to win if they can just get on a hot streak at the right time. However, in any individual playoff season the odds would still be very much against them, even for an elite goalie on a contending team.

The only caveat to this analysis is that it seems likely that the threshold for a Cup winning goalie has dropped even further since the lockout. As Copper 'n Blue pointed out recently, there haven't exactly been huge gains in parity even with the salary cap system. As a result, goaltending performance has become less decisive than in previous seasons. Four out of six post-lockout goalies have been below .930, with two of them well below that mark. The numbers have dropped for Cup Finalists as well, who have averaged .923 since 2006. I'd estimate that the threshold is probably closer to .925 than .930 in today's NHL, which would leave only Columbus as a team without a goalie with the proven ability to perform above that level.

The Value of a Quick Start

I was one of a number of hockey observers who thought that by this point in time Jonathan Bernier would have mounted a serious challenge for the Los Angeles' Kings starting job, if not taken it over outright from Jonathan Quick. However, there hasn't been much of a goalie controversy at all, and there is no doubt that the 3rd round pick from Connecticut is the currently the clear #1 ahead of the highly-touted first-rounder from Quebec.

Is Quick a better goalie than Bernier? At the moment that seems obvious, based on their play over the last season and a bit and the way the team has distributed the playing time between them. However, it should be noted that Quick has a significant advantage in the battle between the two young goalies, having been born two years earlier. At the moment, Quick is 25 and Bernier is 23. For the sake of comparison, Jaroslav Halak was 25 and Carey Price was two months away from turning 23 when Montreal made the controversial move to trade their 2010 playoff hero away at the end of the postseason and bet on their younger goaltender. Quick is considerably more experienced, with an extra 180 regular season and playoff games in the NHL under his belt. That raises the reasonable question of whether Quick is the better goalie, or whether he is merely the more developed talent for the moment.

In addition to being a higher draft pick, Bernier had also had a better minor league career. If you compare the two of them by age, Bernier's progression was well ahead of Quick's through his early twenties.

At 19, Quick was still in high school, although he put up very good numbers. Bernier was recognized as one of the best goaltenders in the CHL, made the Kings out of camp and ended up with a brief cup of coffee in the NHL (4 games), before joining Manchester at the end of his junior season and starting 3 out of the team's 4 games in the AHL playoffs. Bernier also made Canada's under-20 national team for the world junior championships, while Quick was not selected to Team USA.

For his age 20 season, Quick went to UMass, where he would spend two seasons. At 20, Bernier was already a solid pro, posting a .914 save percentage in 54 games played as an AHL starter. The next year Bernier was even better with a spectacular .937 save percentage in 74 regular season and playoff games, earning the AHL's top goaltender award.

At the age of 22, Bernier joined the NHL seemingly for good as the Kings' backup goalie. He did fairly well as a backup (.913 in 25 games), although he didn't exactly take the league by storm as he had in the AHL. Compare that to Quick, who turned pro for his age 22 season which he split between the ECHL (38 GP, .905) and AHL (19 GP, .922), plus a trio of brief appearances in the NHL.

To summarize:

19: Quick in high school, Bernier AHL playoff starter
20: Quick in NCAA, Bernier AHL starting goalie
21: Quick in NCAA, Bernier AHL goaltender of the year
22: Quick ECHL starter/AHL backup, Bernier NHL backup

Up to that point in their careers, Bernier's development was clearly surpassing Quick's. However, things turned around in their age 23 seasons. Quick started the year in the AHL, but was called up to Los Angeles in December. When he arrived he made the most of his chance, playing very well early on in stopping 94.6% of the shots against and recording two shutouts in his first six starts. With Erik Ersberg and Jason LaBarbera both playing poorly, Quick ended up quickly taking over the Kings' starting job. Over the remaining 37 games he would play in that season, Quick's save percentage was .909, almost exactly league average (.908).

In his 23 year old season, Bernier also managed to record pretty average numbers in the NHL (.913 in 25 games), but he started very slow, losing 5 of his first 7 starts with a mere .889 save percentage. Bernier's early season struggles were magnified by the fact that Quick did very well out of the gate in the same 2010-11 season (7-1-0, 1.84, .936 in October of 2010), further solidifying his claim to the starting job.

This season Quick yet again began red-hot, going 6-1-2, 1.52, .947 in October, before quite naturally tailing off a bit since November 1. That was the third time in the last four NHL seasons that Quick was almost unbeatable in the first month he played, leading to some fairly extreme splits for his young career: so far:

Quick since 2008-09:
First month played: 23-8-4, 2.02, .928
Rest of season: 89-74-12, 2.72, .911

Compare that to Bernier, who for the second year in a row is off to a slow start.

First 7 games in 2010-11: 2-5-0, 3.30, .889
Remainder of 2010-11: 9-3-3, 2.13, .923
First 7 games in 2011-12: 2-4-0, 3.10, .883

Games at the start of the season often take on extra significance because they help establish a team's pattern of distributing starts between their goaltenders and the impact on a goalie's seasonal statistics is more noticeable. Look at how many fans around the league were either pronouncing their team's #1 as a Vezina candidate in November because of a strong early run of form or were panicking because their team's goalie took a while to discover their usual game. A hot or cold start takes longer to average out, whereas a slump in February or March has much less of an effect on a goalie's seasonal numbers to date because they may already have 40-50 games played by that point in the season.

The first few games can also be quite critical in terms of establishing a reputation for a young goalie trying to crack the NHL. It took all of five Jon Quick starts in 2008 before Los Angeles traded Jason LaBarbera to Vancouver and pretty much anointed Quick the starter. If those early starts had included a couple of blowout losses, then the team may very well have decided that LaBarbera wasn't actually that bad after all while Quick was in need of more seasoning in the minors. There is no doubt that Quick's hot streaks were almost perfectly timed to advance his career. The only way he could have timed them any better was if he managed to get on a real roll in the postseason.

I think there is a fair chance that Quick and Bernier are not that far apart in true talent, even disregarding the age gap between them. In the AHL, Quick put up a .923 on 1033 shots, while Bernier recorded a .928 on 3937 shots. Minor league success does not always translate to the big leagues, but it is at least evidence that the two were in a similar ballpark, even though Bernier was doing it at a younger age.

In the NHL, Quick's career regular season save percentage is .914 compared to Bernier's .906. However, if we exclude Bernier's four games at age 19, where he quite naturally struggled like the majority of teenagers do in the NHL at that age, and we add playoff numbers to increase the sample size, suddenly the career NHL save percentages for the two goalies converge quite a bit:

Quick: .913 on 6026 SA
Bernier: .911 on 925 SA

Quick's sample size is much larger, which means we are far more confident in our estimate of his true talent level. In addition, given that the majority of goalies are below average, it is safest to assume that a young goalie who hasn't proven much in the NHL is below average until he has faced a few thousand shots against. Bernier's pre-NHL track record makes it somewhat more likely that he is a real talent, but it is best to remain conservative at this point. Nevertheless, I will be very interested to revisit these numbers after the end of this season to see if they remain similar.

One thing that could be argued in Quick's favour is that his numbers have been trending upward over the last three seasons. However, I'm not sure how much to credit him for that given that his improvement has come almost entirely on the penalty kill.

2008-09: .926 EV, .869 PK
2009-10: .919 EV, .853 PK
2010-11: .921 EV, .903 PK
2011-12: .928 EV, .922 PK

Quick is a better goaltender today than he was in 2008-09, but he has also probably been very lucky on his last 435 shots against while shorthanded as .910 is an unsustainable PK SV%. For comparison's sake, Bernier's career numbers are .916 at EV and .890 on the PK (again, excluding his 19-year old season). Bernier may also have gotten a bit of luck on special teams, or perhaps the Kings' penalty kill has been unusually strong as of late, although his PK sample size is very small.

Looking at the progression and career numbers of the two young Kings goaltenders, it is hard not to wonder about the size of the impact of hot starts as well as Quick's opportunity to compete for the starting job in 2008-09 while there was not already an established starter, when Quick's two year head start in terms of age really turned into an advantage. Bernier is currently on pace to end his age 23 season with a career total of 49 games played. Jonathan Quick got into 116 of them in his age 23 and 24 seasons while competing mostly against Erik Ersberg, who was probably never more than a replacement level goaltender. Even if he starts playing better than Quick right now, Bernier will probably never get anywhere near that much playing time over this season and next.

If the crease didn't open up for Quick and he didn't have hot starts to begin nearly every season, it is certain that he would have played in fewer games, potentially many fewer games. The Kings brought Bernier along slowly, and it is possible that his development may have stalled somewhat given his infrequent usage as a backup goalie this season and last, whereas Quick went from an AHLer to an NHL starter in one season, and as a result his extra games played in the show at age 23 and 24 were likely very significant in helping him close the early career development gap against his teammate. That said, it is also possible that Bernier was never going to fulfill his earlier promise anyway. Even highly rated draft picks sometimes don't pan out.

This comparison reminds me of an article I wrote a while back which discusses the impact of opportunity on another Kings goalie, Jamie Storr. Storr was sort of the anti-Quick in that he was never able to put together a good run when it seemed like the starting job was available to be won, even though his overall save numbers were actually pretty good.

It's always hard to separate talent and luck early in a young goalie's career, when we really don't know enough about them to properly assess their true ability at the NHL level. Right now Quick is solidly ahead of Bernier, but has that been because of talent or opportunity? It may never be possible to figure that out with any degree of confidence, but the years ahead will give some additional information that will help make a more accurate estimate. For now, I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility that Bernier is either as good Quick right now or that he will still eventually turn out to be better when both are in their primes. Los Angeles may be facing a Halak/Price type of decision at the end of next season when both goaltenders become free agents, and it will be interesting to what choice they will end up making.

What Does a Clutch Goaltender Look Like?

One of the most common goaltending cliches is, "It's not how many saves you make, it's when you make them." Colour commentators tell us this over and over again in their rush to credit goalies for wins or blame them for losses, and many hockey fans agree with them. Not every save is the same, they say. Saves that keep a team in the game or allow them to hold on to the lead are more important, and what happens when the game is already decided really doesn't matter so much.

Following that logic, a clutch goalie will make a higher percentage of saves when the score is close, giving their team a "chance to win". As such, we would expect them to have much better numbers in close games than in garbage time.

After the 2011 postseason, I don't think the people saying this kind of stuff really believe what they are saying. Either that or they simply don't recognize it when they see it. The reason for that claim is simply this: Strictly based on the above definition of clutch play (a goalie who performs better when the score is close than when it isn't), I doubt there are many goalies who have ever had more "clutch" numbers over the course of a single playoffs than Roberto Luongo in 2011. Yet, needless to say, Luongo didn't exactly get a whole lot of praise as someone who "made the key saves at the key times."

First, let's look at Luongo's stats at the series level:

Series tied: 7 wins, 1 loss, 0.97 GAA, .968 save %

VAN up 1: 6 wins, 4 losses, 2.56 GAA, .909 save %

VAN up 2+: 2 wins, 5 losses, 4.59 GAA, .868 save %

The Canucks never trailed in any series throughout the playoffs, and a big reason for that was their ridiculous goal prevention record when a series was tied. Luongo was particularly sharp in opening games, posting 3 shutouts in 4 tries.

On the other hand, when the Canucks went well out ahead of their opponents in the series they repeatedly suffered meltdowns. That's not particularly admirable, but the same logic that rates some saves are more key than others could be applied to rate some games as more important than others. And, if you do that, then any reasonable definition of those "key games" would have to include games where the series was tied, since a team that always wins when the series is tied could never be eliminated.

For the sake of comparison, here are Tim Thomas' numbers:

Series tied: 7-4, 1.39, .955

BOS up 1: 1-3, 3.11, .909

BOS up 2+: 2-0, 1.00, .967

BOS down 1: 4-2, 2.84, .921

BOS down 2+: 2-0, 1.50, .961

With the series tied or their teams up one game, Luongo's numbers were better than Thomas'. The main difference was that Thomas was great at closing out the Flyers series and he was also great in the two games where the Bruins faced 0-2 deficits.

Let's move on to the game level. Here are Luongo's numbers broken down by game score:

Lead by 5: 0 saves, 1 shot, .000 save %

Lead by 4: 0 saves, 1 shot, .000 save %

Lead by 3: 18 saves, 19 shots, .947 save %

Lead by 2: 56 saves, 60 shots, .933 save %

Lead by 1: 154 saves, 164 shots, .939 save %

Tie game: 257 saves, 276 shots, .931 save %
Down by 1: 84 saves, 92 shots, .913 save %

Down by 2: 24 saves, 32 shots, .750 save %

Down by 3: 41 saves, 45 shots, .911 save %

Down by 4: 14 saves, 17 shots, .824 save %

Down by 5: 2 saves, 3 shots, .667 save %

Down by 6: 0 saves, 1 shot, .000 save %

What's obvious from that chart? If the game was close, Luongo made a high percentage of the saves. But if it was a blowout, then everything went in. Down by 2 or more goals, Luongo had an .827 save percentage on 98 shots, which is almost unbelievably bad. In garbage time, Luongo made very few saves at all - with either team leading by 4 or more goals, he stopped just 16 out of 23 shots for a mere .696 save percentage. If I was a member of Vancouver's coaching staff, I'd be somewhat concerned by that number and what it could indicate about Luongo's compete level. That said, if it is only "when you make the saves" that counts, then his performance in blowout games should be considered meaningless anyway.

Copper 'N Blue also tracked scoring chances for all of Vancouver's playoff games. Because it is possible for goals to be allowed on non-scoring chances (which Luongo did four times in the Nashville series and six times in the playoffs overall), I calculated scoring chance save percentage as (scoring chances against minus goals against) divided by scoring chances against.

Lead by 5: 2 chances, 1 goal, .500 save %

Lead by 4: 1 chance, 1 goal, .000 save %

Lead by 3: 5 chances, 1 goal, .800 save %

Lead by 2: 29 chances, 4 goals, .862 save %

Lead by 1: 76 chances, 10 goals, .868 save %

Tie game: 127 chances, 19 goals, .850 save %

Down by 1: 50 chances, 8 goals, .840 save %

Down by 2: 19 chances, 8 goals, .579 save %

Down by 3: 26 chances, 4 goals, .846 save %

Down by 4: 5 chances, 3 goals, .400 save %

Down by 5: 2 chances, 1 goal, .500 save %

Down by 6: 1 chance, 1 goal, .000 save %

The numbers are pretty similar, although Luongo's numbers with the lead come down slightly relative to his trailing numbers, likely because of score effects. With the Canucks leading, the opposition took 2.2 shots for every scoring chance recorded. When Vancouver trailed, the ratio dropped to 1.8. Still, the overall conclusion is the same: Luongo's problems were not with the game close or Vancouver in the lead, but rather with the Canucks trailing by more than one goal. And in blowout games he apparently wasn't even trying (7 goals against on 11 scoring chances with either team leading by 4 or more).

Not surprisingly, Vancouver did a lot better in close games than in blowouts. Excluding empty net goals, they were 12-4 in games decided by one goal, 2-0 in games decided by two goals, and 1-6 in games decided by three goals or more.

Having said all that, let's compare Luongo's save percentages by score to those of his Stanley Cup goaltending counterpart, Tim Thomas:

Score within 1 goal: Luongo .931, Thomas .940

Up by 2 or 3 goals: Luongo .937, Thomas .944

Down 2 or 3 goals: Luongo .844, Thomas .957

Luongo was knocked for his ability to hang on to leads, especially during the Nashville series after giving up a couple of late tying goals, but his numbers while leading actually weren't too far off what Thomas was putting up for Boston. With the score close, Thomas again had an edge but not nearly as much as one would think based on their overall numbers. By far the biggest difference in performance between the two goalies was that Luongo was blown out repeatedly and did far worse when his team fell behind by two goals or more.

Did Luongo's awful play in blowouts have much of an effect on Vancouver's win/loss record? Maybe, maybe not. It would certainly be possible to argue that the Canucks would have been unlikely to come back in those situations anyway, especially with how anemic their offence was at times during the playoffs. On the other hand, Boston came back twice from two goal deficits, once again Montreal and once against Tampa Bay. If Thomas hadn't made the saves in those situations, the Bruins would quite possibly have never have made it to the Finals.

To me, the implications of these numbers are pretty clear. On one hand, you can choose to cling to the "key saves at key times", "the only thing that matters is clutch play" logic and praise Roberto Luongo for elevating his game in key situations with the score close in last year's Stanley Cup playoffs. Alternately, you could consider that most of the game is a "key situation", realize that effort and desire don't correlate perfectly with success, and understand that most goalies have the mindset to keep the puck out of the net at all times. That would cause you to reject the "key saves" logic, and instead rate goalies based on their overall performance. In that case, you would be perfectly entitled to knock Luongo's playoff performance, particularly relative to that of Tim Thomas.

That's assuming people are being logically consistent, however. In reality, there isn't an awful lot of logic involved in either hockey fandom or hockey reportage. When most people say "clutch goaltending", they usually simply mean "good goaltending". If not that, then they mean "goaltending behind excellent teammates". Another tactic is to move the goalposts, narrowing the sample size to focus on a few particular games (e.g. game sevens or Stanley Cup Finals games) as the only ones that qualify for the "clutch" distinction. I disagree with that logic since a team that didn't win in the earlier rounds would not have made it to the Finals at all, and similarly without winning three out of the first six no team would still be alive to participate in a game seven.

I've been in the camp that focuses on overall performance all along, so I'm not defending Luongo here. I think that throughout the 2011 playoffs, factoring in both his good and his bad games, Luongo was pretty ordinary. I do think that his play was better in close games, and I'm quite confident that if there was a hockey metric similar to baseball's win probability added, Luongo would rate much better according to that than he would based on overall save percentage. Whether that is a significant observation depends on your perspective on clutch goalies.

At this point I think it's also impossible not to accept the theory that Luongo has a higher-than-normal propensity to melt down when things turn against him. I used to agree with Tyler Dellow that it was essentially media narratives driving the perception, but the repeated blowouts involving Luongo and the above save percentage splits by score make that position tough to hold. I would still argue that Luongo's overall career playoff performance is reasonable relative to his true talent level, but has he ever had some forgettable single game performances on the way.