Khabibulin has a ring, but how much does that contribute to the Oilers winning regular season games?

And if you look at his numbers, his playoffs weren’t good at all (though he did play well against Calgary). The Vancouver series had some of the worst goaltending I’ve seen since the 80’s and the only reason there is any mention of Khabibulin’s conference final is because Luongo just happened to be worse.

We debated this back and forth on Lowetide’s blog yesterday, and I know that we’re at an impasse here.

That said: if you want to make the case that all these guys were signing as #2’s, that menas there were only two places in the league looking for a starter: Colorado and Edmonton. I don’t think that’s accurate (because I believe DiPietro is gone for at least the first half of the year, probably more), but if that’s the tack you want to take than any of the number of goalies looking for starting jobs (Khabibulin, Biron, Roloson, Fernandez, Anderson, Clemmensen) exceeds demand by a factor of three. Which means that the Oilers – even had they chosen to go after Khabibulin, who I’m fine with as a choice – could have taken some time and bargained on money and salary.

I guess what I’m being critical of here is not the choice of Khabibulin (although as you know I personally prefer Biron) but the money and term. I think we can safely say (based on his public comments) that Roloson would have taken the same deal he took in NYI to play for Edmonton. With that in mind, the Oilers should have said to Khabibulin – ‘look, we like you better than Dwayne Roloson, so here’s 3.5MM per season for two years". That’s still the highest contract out there, and given who Khabibulin compares too (Biron, Roloson) it’s a fair offer. After Colorado and NYI signed Anderson and Roloson, respectively, he couldn’t expect to earn that much money with any other NHL team – nobody else was paying for a starter.

That’s the key, really: the options. Khabibulin’s options for a starting job consisted of Edmonton, and umm… Edmonton.

Edmonton’s options for a starter were – at least – Biron and Khabibulin, and if Tambellini wanted to get a little bit braver than some of the 1A types work their way into the conversation too.

He could have offered 3MM/yr for 2 years and waited with confidence that nobody else would exceed that offer.

Dwayne Roloson worksjust as well – his numbers are very, very similar to Khabibulin’s despite the fact that he’s played for an (on the whole) inferior team over these past three seasons.

Who played for the inferior team?

2006-07: Chicago < Edmonton even with the last 20 games.
2007-08: Chicago ~= Edmonton, with Roli spending a good chunk of the year on the bench because he coughed up his job to Garon
2008-09: Chicago > Edmonton

At best, you can argue it was equal and Khabi’s got three years of youth and a longer track record of quality play as a starter than Roli. Oh yeah, and the Stanley Cup ring, though to hear Tyler tell it, only idiots care about that.

That’s the key, really: the options. Khabibulin’s options for a starting job consisted of Edmonton, and umm… Edmonton.

And Chicago — they were still pursuing him, and I swear I read they were offering similar money to the Oilers, but not term. And Colorado, who seem to be running with the two-backup option, though I guess it’s not like they’re winning anything this year anyway. And apparently the Islanders, since even they don’t trust DiPietro’s hips. I would also really question what Ottawa’s got, but I don’t know how Bryan Murray feels about it. Certainly, there were multiple offers out there; he even said so himself. (Curious that Biron never wound up getting or signing any offers while there was still movement on the goalie market. Did he not get them, or was he asking for too much initially, and forced to settle later when he ran out of options?)

He could have offered 3MM/yr for 2 years and waited with confidence that nobody else would exceed that offer.

I’m very much doubt that, but okay.

No one’s saying it isn’t an overpay — I said from the start I’d have preferred one fewer year — I just think all the hand-wringing (and, in my view, cherry-picking of facts — Tyler may not be convinced of ESV%, but I’m not convinced that SV% is of sufficient value without some more context than anyone’s currently applied to it) is entirely over the top for what we’ve got here. I’m still with LT, personally, but to each his own.

Khabby could’ve also gotten a lot of money from the KHL last year when Chicago would’ve been perfectly happy if he repatriated quietly and disappeared before the season started. Maybe not the equivalent of his NHL contract, but given the perks of KHL salaries + being at home + feeling wanted I think most people were surprised he stuck. (Though, he hasn’t been Russia’s international goalie so much as Nabokov has, I would say.)

Also: there’s a thing called shot-quality neutral save percentage that attempts to take the team effect out by factoring how good the scoring chances are in. (Google shot quality neutral.) Depending how much stock you want to put into it, but Khabby actually does surprisingly well by this metric (SQN%), at least better than guys who posted similar numbers like Clemmensen and Miller.

I think it’s obvious that save percentage is an imperfect measure of a goaltender’s ability. That said, I do think it’s quite a bit better than GAA, wins, or the other measures we have.

It’s intended to be a starting point, not a finishing point.

With all this talk about experience and such being valuable, I have one rebuttal: Miikka Kiprusoff. Oh, Im sure experience is of some value…just well behind things like stopping the puck at a good rate, playing behind a good team, getting the bounces, being healthy…

If you haven’t been following Tyler’s take on this subject, it’s well worth reading. Fun baseball quote he included in his latest article:

And the W’s were all the Royals saw. As pitching coach Frank Funk said when asked about Davis’s ERA with Oakland, "We don’t want pitchers with good ERA’s. We want pitchers with wins."

That’s an astonishing statement. It’s the equivalent of the CEO of a publicly held corporation announcing to the world, "We don’t care about making a profit. We care about raising our stock price." The Royals confused the ends with the means. They were obsessed with the product – Davis’s record – while ignoring the process – the fact that Davis owed all those wins more to his teammates’ performance than to his own.

You can almost word-for-word replace Funk’s statement and apply it here: “We don’t want goalies with good save percentages. We want goalies with wins.” It’s a common sentiment, but that doesn’t make it any less wrong.

Speaking as someone whose entire knowledge of baseball comes from Lowetide and elementary school, could there be useful comparisons between goaltending and pitching? I would say probably, but then again I’ve already admitted my ignorance of baseball.

I now officially put my stamp of approval on a SV% comparison of these two goalies over these 3 years

WHEW

To answer that question, I’ve made a list (courtesy of hockey-reference.com) of every NHL goaltender who has played at least 60 games over the past three seasons . . .

Jonas Hiller: 33-22-2, 2.28 GAA, .921 SV%
Steve Mason: 33-20-7, 2.29 GAA, .916 SV%
Dan Ellis: 34-29-7, 2.62 GAA, .913 SV%
Ilya Bryzgalov: 64-64-18, 2.67 GAA, .912 SV%
Carey Price: 47-28-13, 2.71 GAA, .912 SV%
Ty Conklin: 46-24-9, 2.63 GAA, .911 SV%
Mike Smith: 41-42-11, 2.53 GAA, .910 SV%

All these goaltenders do not fit the 60 games each season for the last three, and hence the Bulin wall should #16 not #23. period. Each one of these is a either a young gun (who is yet to prove themselves) or a back-up and should not be compared to Bulin Wall.