By Beaker
I’ve always felt the statistics used to judge a goalie in hockey are incomplete. As it stands, the most popular – and useless – measure employed is goals against average. GAA should be outright ignored. It’s misleading. Save percentage is a more reliable albeit imperfect statistic, yet its traction is a recent phenomena.
The problem with SP is it only reflects how many pucks a goalie stops relative to the number of shots faced. It tells nothing else. Still, it’s a helluva lot better than GAA. In turn, GAA is more acceptable than people who think wins/lost are what matters for goalies.
Of course, this is pure idiocy. A goalie can’t score goals and trying to determine with any objectivity how many games a goalie “wins” by himself is impossible and futile. A lot like seeking “Mr. Clutch” stats. The reality is hockey is a team game and winning and losing entails the collective actions (big and small) of each and every player on the ice. To tag a goalie with a win or loss and stigmatize him with it is a human rights crime.
The other thing that drives me batshit is when I hear so-called pundits talk out of their asses by saying, “but he’s never won anything!” or “he’s unproven because he’s never won a playoff series.”
That’s commentary used to fill out air space with fluff. Most of the time, a goalie’s track record, given a large enough sample size, has a pattern and that pattern tells truths. If he’s played well all along it means he can goaltend even if he’s playing on a team that never makes the playoffs. It”s not his fault the organization he plays for is rub by a piece of celery.
I’m telling you, it’s insulting to have to hear about how one great athlete is somehow deficient because he “never won.”
If a goalie plays for a team that wins 45 games a year obviously he will win more games. Unless he’s winning those games by himself, which he isn’t, this is a reflection of a strong hockey club. Conversely, a team that wins 28 games will mean their goalie is winning less games. Duh. But does it mean he’s “shittier” than the goalie on the better team? Of course not. Any reasonable, sane person with a rational bone will concede this.
There resides among observers and commentators too much of a subjective streak in spinning a goalie’s performance. Too often we’re left with a “he shoulda had” that puck routine. According to whose context? In order to say such a thing you need to contextualize and even then, proof it statistically.
Truth is, the sports community is filled with unimaginative individuals who have come to believe in their own divine bull shit which often is pure bunk and that luck plays a larger part in outcome than they care to admit. They seem incapable – or at least unwilling – to admit that it’s entirely possible sometimesmthe best athletes in a particular sport never won a title.
There’s nothing complicated in accepting this premise. If you don’t, and you become the GM of a team, you’re likely to repeat the same mistakes over and over and over. Preconceived notions murder your chances for success.
The only option to weed this evil human flaw is to devise reliable statistics measuring a goalie’s performance.
Inspired by Bill James no doubt, puckprospectus at least explores and expands on incomplete stats.
Anyway.
The Hockey Compendium, a book woefully under valued in my opinion, by Klein and Reif attempted to at least consider a goalie’s “workload” factoring shots faced, shots faced per game and minutes played. They called it goalie perseverance and it basically is save percentage expanded with more information.
It doesn’t consider the defensive unit in front of a goalie, screened or deflected shots or other uncontrollable factors that contribute to a goal, but at least it’s a start.
According to them, and quite frankly it’s not surprising, Dominik Hasek is the greatest goalie of all time.
The Hockey Compendium hasn’t been updated so I’ve taken their calculation and applied it to the present crop of NHL goalies. Obviously, sample size differs from goalie to goalie. For example, we have little on Jimmy Howard at the pro level and more on Martin Brodeur.
I also wanted to check out their AHL and NCAA or Junior stats but there were to many gaps of missing of information and to track them down would be too much work. Maybe I’ll do it down the road. The reason is I wanted to see a goalie’s “track record” and compare it to their pro stats. I’m sure in there we’d find some gem goalies who are overlooked or ignored based on erroneous presumptions.
Here’s the list of top goalie perseverance:
1) Tuukka Rask -.978
2) Jonas Hiller – .972
3) Jaroslav Halak – .972
4) Roberto Luongo – .971
5) Jimmy Howard – .971
6) Thomas Vokoun – .967
7) Niklas Backstrom – .967
Keri Lehtonen – .967
9) Craig Anderson – .966
10) Henrik Lundqvist – .965
11) Ryan Miller – .964
12) Carey Price – .964
13) Ilya Bryzgalov – .963
14) Pekka Rinne – .962
15) Mikka Kiprusoff – .961
16) Cristobal Huet – .960 *
17) Dwayne Roloson – .959
18) Ondrej Pavelec – .959
19) Semyon Varlamov – .958
20) Nikolai Khabibulin – .957
21) Marc-Andre Fleury – .957
22) Steve Mason – .956
23) Mike Smith – .955
24) Marty Turco – .954
25) Rick DiPietro – .954
26) Antero Niittymaki – .954
27) Brian Elliott – .954
28) Michael Leighton -.952
29) Cam Ward – .950
30) Jon Quick – .950
31) Jonas Gustavson – .946
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