The top goaltender of the 2000s
by Bruce McCurdy on Aug 3, 2009 2:30 PM MDT
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Interesting discussion over at the Contrarian Goaltender’s provocatively-named blog "Brodeur is a Fraud" about who is the goalie of the decade (1999-2000 through 2008-09). Not surprisingly the Contrarian Goaltender has decided it’s not Brodeur, and equally unsurprisingly he has decided it is in fact Roberto Luongo, who is clearly his favourite goalie. CG and I have been frequent sparring partners for quite some time now, and while I often fundamentally disagree with his position – in which Save Percentage and its variants, Shot Quality Neutral Save Percentage and Even Strength Save Percentage, rule the day -- I respect the work he puts into his stuff, and have gained many valuable insights through reading his blog and researching my own comments there.
A former goalie myself, I have closely followed the custodians of the cord cottage all of my life and always keep an eye on them during games. At a live game by far my favourite place to sit is behind the net, at least close enough to the middle to be able to see right up both sideboards, which location affords a good sense of shooting angles, screens and so forth.
While there’s no doubt stopping the puck is the goalie’s main responsibility, I maintain that the modern goalie has a significant effect on the flow of play. To try to reduce his contribution to some sort of Grand Unified Statistic, even one as sophisticated as SQNSv%, doesn’t do justice to the goalie’s contribution IMO. I prefer to consider the whole gamut of statistics realizing that there are some aspects of the game which cannot be captured by a number of any sort.
To select "the goalie of the decade" my method was to pick threshold numbers of games played in each of the regular season and the playoffs. To me a goalie, or any player for that matter, should hardly be considered as the best if they are unable to lead their team anywhere meaningful. At first I thought to set the thresholds at 300 regular season games and 30 playoff games, but noted that CG himself had set his regular season standard at 250, in part to make room for Patrick Roy who played 251 games in his last four seasons before retiring in 2003. Those games were quality, and stand up well in percentage categories as we shall see. So sure, let’s give the man his due and make him eligible for consideration.
I wanted to go 250/25, except I noticed that even under this fairly lax requirement Luongo himself with his 22 playoff games wouldn’t make the cut. So I lowered the thresholds to 250/20 so that BobbiLu could at least be considered. 21 goalies qualified for consideration, listed after the jump in order of total GP:
Martin Brodeur ....... 624 + 115 = 739
Roberto Luongo ...... 544 + 22 = 566
Evgeni Nabokov ...... 492 + 65 = 557
Jose Theodore ........ 466 + 44 = 510
Marty Turco ............. 456 + 47 = 503
Chris Osgood .......... 426 + 76 = 502
J-S Giguere ............. 434 + 52 = 486
Curtis Joseph .......... 419 + 58 = 477
Ed Belfour ............... 413 + 53 = 466
Martin Biron ........... 424 + 23 = 447
Nikolai Khabibulin .. 394 + 48 = 442
Miikka Kiprusoff ..... 385 + 56 = 441
Patrick Lalime ......... 382 + 41 = 423
Dwayne Roloson .... 374 + 29 = 403
Dominik Hasek ....... 321 + 63 = 384
Dan Cloutier ........... 317 + 25 = 342
Patrick Roy ............. 251 + 68 = 319
Ryan Miller .............. 264 + 34 = 298
Henrik Lundqvist ... 265 + 30 = 295
Roman Turek .......... 273 + 22 = 295
Felix Potvin ............. 255 + 20 = 275
A couple workhorses like Olaf Kolzig and Tomas Vokoun wind up being omitted because of lack of playoff time. Too bad, but seriously, given their complete lack of playoff pedigree is either guy going to get the slightest consideration as the best goalie of the past ten years? Not a chance, so let’s move on.
Of the goalies who achieved both thresholds, I simply combined all of their regular season and playoff stats to determine their overall performance. I thought about weighting playoff games since they have more significance but cast the idea aside as contrived. Nonetheless, there’s no way I’m going to exclude playoff stats the way the NHL itself seems to when considering statistical performance. (Pet peeve #13291)
While I looked at the accomplishments of all 21 guys, I focussed on five goalies in particular who were consistently excellent: the two retired greats Roy and Hasek, as well as Brodeur, Luongo and Giguere.
It was interesting to see the cream rise to the top in a number of disparate categories. Let’s start with keeping the puck out of the net, which is the goalie’s job over and above making saves. (Sometimes that can best be accomplished by not having to make the save.)
Goals-Against Average
1. Hasek 2.10
2. Roy 2.12
3. Brodeur 2.18
8. Giguere 2.41
15. Luongo 2.55
Hasek and Roy were quality right to the end, no decline years for either of them, which is a testament to their greatness. Indeed it’s tough to argue with the above being, in order, the top three goalies of the Dead Puck Era.
Of course the ultimate goal each night is to win the darn game, and for whatever reason the powers that be have decided to give the most important player on the ice recognition for the decision, the same way they do for pitchers in baseball and quarterbacks in football. It’s simplistic and of course incorrect to recognize one player for a team effort, but nonetheless it is an important measurement of that player’s results. (I wish they’d keep a W-L record for all players)
To keep Hasek and Roy in the conversation, let’s look first at Points Percentage. Sure enough:
Points Percentage
1. Hasek .659
2. Roy .629
3. Brodeur .619
11. Giguere .565
19. Luongo .498
Furthermore the ultimate goal each season is to make the playoffs, and win your way into the later rounds. One way to measure this among our double-threshold group was to determine what percentage of total GP occurred in the postseason. Here we go again:
% of GP in Playoffs
1. Roy 21.3%
2. Hasek 16.4%
3. Brodeur 15.6%
11. Giguere 10.7%
21. Luongo 3.9%
Patrick Roy has a reputation as a playoff performer and here’s another arrow in his quiver. Of course by that stage of his career he was not overused in the regular season but would get every last start in the playoffs, which explains the remarkable percentage above. Luongo is at the other end of the spectrum, 21st and last among the identified group.
Next up is a weird new stat I may have just invented, minutes per GP. Lest you think these small differences insignificant, consider the case of sometimes teammates Hasek and Manny Legace, who played 321 and 320 regular season GP respectively in the 2000s. Hasek played 3.5 minutes more per appearance, which worked out to almost 1200 more minutes. No doubt in Legace’s case many were relief appearances, but that’s not the case with Luongo who gets yanked far more frequently than the likes of Brodeur, Roy, or Hasek.
Minutes/GP
1. Brodeur 60.2
2. Hasek 59.6
3. Roy 59.5
14. Giguere 57.7
16. Luongo 57.4
Same three names at the top yet again, although now Brodeur has clawed his way to the top of the pile. These guys finish what they start, especially Marty, who has recorded decisions in an astonishing 736 of his 739 GP over the 9 seasons.
Non-decisions/GP
1. Brodeur 0.4%
2. Roy 1.3%
7. Hasek 2.6%
8. Luongo 3.2%
12. Giguere 4.1%
We’re now into endurance and longevity, where Brodeur rules the roost. To recap:
Games Played
1. Brodeur 739
2. Luongo 566
7. Giguere 486
15. Hasek 384
17. Roy 319
Even with last season’s major injury, Brodeur is fully 30% ahead of Luongo’s massive workload. (Of course a significant portion of that edge comes in the post-season, a.k.a. “golf season”.) These being full-blown counting stats, Hasek and Roy begin to slide out of the picture, as they played fewer games between them in the 2000s than Brodeur did by himself. Indeed, Brodeur is nearly in a class by himself in workload.
Minutes Played
1. Brodeur 44470
2. Luongo 32503
7. Giguere 28034
16. Hasek 22869
17. Roy 18985
With by far the most GP and with the most minutes per, Brodeur is far out in front, a staggering 37% ahead of second-ranked Luongo.
So what did they do with these minutes? Let’s check out a couple of counting stats:
Shutouts
1. Brodeur 82
3. Hasek 48
3. Luongo 48
9. Giguere 37
12. Roy 31
Employing the concept Jeff Z. Klein and Karl-Erik Reif call “Quality of Victory”, Brodeur had 55% more shutouts than second-place Evgeni Nabokov (53). His edge in results was even wider than his advantage in opportunities (GP).
Then there’s the ever-controversial Wins, which I will list the whole top 10 to illustrate:
Wins
1. Brodeur 420
...
...
2. Nabokov 281
3. Osgood 266
4. Turco 261
5. Luongo 241
6. Giguere 236
7. Belfour 235
8. Joseph 234
9. Hasek 230
10. Kiprusoff 229
Looks like one of those scoring races of the 1980s: Wayne Gretzky in a class of his own ~50% ahead of the pack, which consists of a tightly bunched group of highly competent players who collectively establish the benchmark for normal expectations. Gretzky was a point machine; Brodeur is a win machine.
Not much argument (surely!) about who is #1 in terms of counting stats. Let’s move on into the realm of Sv%:
Save Percentage
1. Luongo .920
2. Roy .919
3. Hasek .917
4. Giguere .916
6. Brodeur .915
Finally, here is Luongo at the top of a list, stopping pucks at a marginally higher rate than the others under study. Unfortunately, he has had many more pucks to stop:
Shots-Against per 60
2. Hasek 25.2
4. Brodeur 25.5
7. Roy 26.3
16. Giguere 28.7
21. Luongo 31.7
In case you’re wondering, #1 on this list is Roman Turek, who over his career posted outstanding low-shots-against numbers in three cities: Dallas, St. Louis and Calgary. The exceptional puckhandler Marty Turco, also a product of the Dallas school of shot prevention, is #3. Meanwhile, Luongo is 21st and last, fully 2.2 shots more per 60 than any other goalie on the list. Much, even most of that is due to playing on a poor team in Florida for 5 years, although the fact Luongo was never able to carry that club to a single playoff berth speaks against his superstardom IMO. It’s also interesting to note that Florida’s shots-allowed total dropped by 453 shots – 5.5 per game! – the year after Luongo left town. His style seems to invite a lot of shots.
Of all the above categories plus a whole bunch more that I spared you, Brodeur consistently ranks among the leaders, frequently The leader. No double digit rankings anywhere for him, unlike all of the other guys we examined. Brodeur’s 6th place rank in Sv% is his weakest category, where he still ranks in the top third of the first-rank group of goalies under review. While difficult to quantify, his shot prevention skills – puck retrieval, handling and distribution; rebound control; crease management – are universally praised as being among the best in the biz; indeed the trapezoid introduced after the lockout to restrict goaltenders’ puckhandling was widely interpreted as being the “Brodeur Rule”. If as conservatively estimated by CG, these shot prevention skills result in a reduction of even 1 shot per game, one can infer an increased Sv% of about .003. Similar adjustments for the likes of Luongo would be in the opposite direction, causing his supposed advantage in this category to melt away.
(Btw, of the 21 identified guys, the anti-Brodeur was Dan Cloutier, whose record is nothing short of terrible – 21st in GAA (2.82; 20th = 2.64), Sv% (.895; 20th = .902), MIN/GP (54.5; 20th = 56.9); Sv% below league average (-.011; 20th = -.004) and on and on. Brian Burke’s worst mistake.)
A final statistical breakdown is home/road splits. Obtained from Yahoo.ca, these show regular season numbers only and over the player’s entire career (or in Roy’s case, from 1989 on), but should serve as a reasonable proxy for splits during the 2000s. I’ll show as a ratio of home minutes to road minutes for our five highlighted goalies, with the player’s GAA in each venue in parentheses:
Home: Road Minutes Played since 1989
Roy 1.267 (2.35; 2.59)
Luongo 1.138 (2.48; 2.67)
Hasek 1.093 (2.07; 2.34)
Giguere 1.021 (2.42; 2.56)
Brodeur 1.016 (2.14; 2.28)
Wow, Roy was like the late-career Jacques Plante in picking his spots, while Luongo and Hasek both showed strong preferences for home cooking as well. All goalies, especially those top three, sported improved numbers at home in GAA. The effect was also felt in Pts%, from Hasek’s large difference of .180 (.704 at home, just .524 away) ranging down to Brodeur’s modest .075 differential (.668 to .593). Home to road Sv% was mostly flat, with two interesting exceptions: Hasek was .0065 better at home, Brodeur .0035 worse. Given that Brodeur’s team cut down its shots against by the largest unit margin (-11.2% fewer shots per 60 at home), Hasek’s clubs by the least (just -3.8%) is very strongly suggestive of a home scorer bias in both cases. Which is just another reason why we can’t put all of our analytical eggs in the Sv% basket.
Finally, there are the lists of accomplishments from 1999-2009:
Stanley Cups
Brodeur 2
7 tied with 1
Best-on-best gold medals
Brodeur 2
Lundquist 1
Jennings Trophies
Brodeur 2 (both as #1)
Hasek 2 (one as #1)
Fernandez 2 (neither as #1)
8 tied with 1
First All-Star Teams
Brodeur 3
6 tied with 1
Vezina Trophies
Brodeur 4
5 tied with 1
I suppose in all the above one can quibble here or there about how to interpret this category or that, but really folks, is there any doubt who has been the top netminder in the game over the past decade? Here’s my ranking:
1. Martin Brodeur
2. Dominik Hasek
3. J.-S. Gigeure
4. Roberto Luongo
... with the tie-breaker for third being Giguere’s far superior playoff performance. Roy gets honourable mention for four excellent years.
But over the last ten years, whether measuring quantity, quality, awards, championships, Marty Brodeur stands alone.
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Apologies
I screwed up somehow on publishing, so I had to delete and re-publish the whole thing. My apologies to those who already voted on the poll and/or posted Twitter links; could I toruble you to do so again? Thanks.
That was a hairy hour-and-a-half or so fixing that mess, I can tell you. I’m still learning the program here. :)
Writer for The Copper & Blue
Great post
…and I didn’t even vote for Luongo.
'Nucks Misconduct - Housing Swedish Millionaires Since 2000.
NM: You’ve probably guessed that I’m not a huge fan of either Luongo or the Canucks, but one thing I will say about Roberto is that him replacing Cloutier between the pipes may be the greatest upgrade at a single position of the last ten years. Of course that is due in at least equal measure to Cloutier’s terribleness as it is to BobbiLu’s greatness.
Damn, I miss Cloutier. :)
Writer for The Copper & Blue
by Bruce McCurdy on Aug 3, 2009 3:33 PM MDT up reply actions
It’s cool, I can see where Luongo gets some of his criticism.
And don’t worry, you have Raycroft to laugh at now (possibly the one goalie with worse stats than Cloutier). Sigh.
'Nucks Misconduct - Housing Swedish Millionaires Since 2000.
by Yankee Canuck on Aug 3, 2009 3:40 PM MDT up reply actions
Interesting post Bruce. Clearly you’ve put in a lot of work. Some quick thoughts on some of the categories and conclusions:
Minutes/GP – I’m not sure about the conclusions you draw from this statistic. It probably reflects how much playoff OT each goalie played as much as anything else which you don’t mention as a factor. Not that this is going to be a defense of Luongo, but I’d imagine that’s why he does so poorly here.
Non-decisions/GP – This seems like it’s coaching more than anything. The majority of the time when a goalie gets pulled he still gets the decision. For the goalie to get a no-decision it’s more likely the coach has pulled the back-up and ended the starter’s night-off early. I don’t think this tells us much of anything about the quality of goaltending each of the starters provides.
As for your conclusions, I have no objection making Brodeur the clear number one when it comes to quantity, awards or championships but in the all-important quality section Brodeur hardly stands alone. My personal choice here is Hasek who has a better GAA, better Sv% (albeit marginally), the best EV Sv% of the period (according to CG) and a great ShutOut% (telling that this was measured against Nabokov instead of the other “profiled” goalies). His numbers would be even better if you take out his final “decline” season with the Red Wings which included a Jennings Trophy in which he appeared in 41 regular season games as the “back-up.”
Whether you prefer Hasek, Luongo, Brodeur or someone else I think it demonstrates some homerism to suggest that any of them stand alone in terms of “quality” in the period.
Hey Scott, thanks for your input. You seem to have a knack to ask those questions of things I left out because of length. But let’s address them here:
Minutes/GP: Playoff OT is a factor, in fact Luongo is #1 in this category due to a handful of long OTs in a small sample size. Looking at regular season only, of the 33 goalies who played 250+ GP, Brodeur ranks #1 at 59.93, next comes a cluster of Lundqvist, Roy, Turek, Hasek, Kolzig and Miller at 58.94 to 59.17. Giguere ranks 18th at 57.3, Luongo 22nd at 57.0, and Cloutier DFL at 54.5. Obviously we are dealing with small differences, but I do think they’re significant. Once again we see the pattern of Brodeur alone, followed by a cluster of other guys in a pack. Since Brodeur’s rate of decisions/start is virtually 100% we know he finishes damn near every game. I extrapolate that extra minutes played in regular season OT (up to 5) are pretty much a saw-off to minutes lost on delayed penalties and empty net situations. The other guys miss a little to a lot. For a guy like Giguere or Luongo who miss on average 3 minutes per game, I again extrapolate that they get pulled moderately often. In many of those games they would already be on the hook for the decision, although certainly it doesn’t always work out that way. It is also a fact that Luongo and Giguere come off the bench slightly more often than Brodeur, so that would have to be factored in.
Non-decisions: I see it as a combination of coaching and the wishes of the first-string goalie. Brodeur hates getting pulled, period. Even on a bad night, he will stand in there and take his medicine, though his stats might take a beating. While I haven’t examinined it in exhaustive detail, there appears to be a strong inverse relationship between Min/GP and Non-Decisions/GP which stands the test of logic.
Quality: Certainly there is a case to be made for Hasek, and I thought I made it, placing him second despite playing only ~ half the number of GP. I was going to make the same point you raised about Hasek’s SO%, wish I had in retrospect. My mention of Nabokov was not meant to be “telling”, just that I measured Brodeur’s Quality of Victory in all the counting stats — 30% more GP than the next ranked guy, 37% more Minutes, 55% more shutouts, 49% more Wins, so he more than covered the bet of those extra minutes in results.
Funny you should mention homerism, if there’s one advantage that Brodeur clearly has over Roy and Hasek it is his superior performance on the road, both in terms of most equal minutes and smallest dip in performance. That carried a lot of weight with me in assessing their performance. Other than that, no homerism involved; I am no Devils fan, I can assure you, and my personal favourite among the profiled group is definitely the Dominator. If we were choosing the best goalie of the last 15 years he’d likely get my vote, although I’d still be looking askance at those home/road splits.
His numbers would be even better if you take out his final "decline" season with the Red Wings which included a Jennings Trophy in which he appeared in 41 regular season games as the "back-up."
If you want to call that last year a “decline” season, be my guest, but I thought he had a splendid final season at 43. Of course as mentioned repeatedly I don’t live and die with Sv%, and the rest of his numberS that season were terrific as usual.
If you don’t like my choice of words above, how about this: Brodeur is the clear #1 in Quality * Quantity.
Writer for The Copper & Blue
by Bruce McCurdy on Aug 3, 2009 5:28 PM MDT up reply actions
I’ll admit that I have a knack for asking all of the annoying questions of you Bruce. You usually do a very thorough job of answering them though and that’s more than half the reason why. I do really enjoy your work and your willingness to address points head on. I usually get a lot out of our conversations and this seems like it will be no exception.
You pretty much addressed any concerns I had with the two statistics I mentioned first. I’m still not convinced they’re much more than “style points” but you’re not putting any tremendous weight on them either so it shouldn’t have much effect on the overall analysis.
I’m actually really surprised that you’re not a big Brodeur fan. Perhaps it’s because most of my reading of you is in the comments section at “Brodeur is a Fraud” where it’s somewhat more natural to come to his defence. That’s good to know though. It shows how much my assumption that you have an “axe to grind” so to speak, colours my reading. Sorry about that.
The comparison to Nabokov on the shut-outs felt off because it was the first time you raised a goalie other than one of the selected five for comparison. It seemed like it was intentional to make Brodeur’s case seem stronger against Hasek. It sounds like you were actually comparing against the #2 finisher for the “quantity-esque” categories which makes logical sense. As such, I’ll take your word that the conclusion did not influence the presentation.
As for Hasek’s decline, I think it’s fair to characterize it that way. I mean, no matter how poorly Hasek played in his prime I’d find it difficult to believe a coach was trying if he was giving the back-up playoff starts. Further, there aren’t too many of Hasek’s seasons where his teammate put up better Sv% and GAA. When that other guy is a 35 y/o Chris Osgood I think it’s fair to characterize Hasek as in decline. His numbers weren’t terrible (as you’ve said), but they were definitely below his usual “best ever” standard.
As for your revised conclusion, I do indeed think Brodeur is pretty clearly the best in a quality * quantity assessment. The decade in question is a pretty ideal timeline for Brodeur (age 26 to 36) of course, but that’s completely out of his (or any of the other goalies) control.
by Scott Reynolds on Aug 3, 2009 7:45 PM MDT up reply actions
Thanks Scott. I too enjoy our exchanges. You’re right I don’t put a huge amount of stock in my two “new” ratio stats, but I do consider them significant enough to be worth mentioning. Besides, I like to come up with a new twist on things occasionally. :)
Certainly I am something of a Brodeur fan, he did after all backstop the only Olympic gold of my lifetime. I greatly admire his career for the sheer volume of its three-dimensional accomplishments: height of the peaks, breadth across the statistical spectrum, and depth of stamina and longevity. I like how he takes a proactive role in the game — I was a big fan of Smoky McLeod way back when he scored 10 assists in 40 games for the Nordiques and Oilers in the WHA, and I love adventuresome guys like Marty Turco today. And goodness knows I’ve argued Brodeur’s case long and hard against those who would belittle his accomplishments, not so much CG as some of the frequent commenters on his blog who clearly have no use for the guy. Brodeur is no fraud, that’s for sure.
But the Dominator has been my favourite for years. Most exciting goalie I’ve ever seen, and a quirky, interesting character besides.
Writer for The Copper & Blue
by Bruce McCurdy on Aug 3, 2009 9:34 PM MDT up reply actions
Olympics
I’m glad you mentioned Brodeur’s Olympic win. It may be a small sample set of games but its a very meaningful tourny for Canadians. We’ll see how Luongo handles himself in 2010. That could be the ultimate deciding factor ;)
Hasek
Hasek, Hasek Hasek.
He was the best player in the league for a dozen years, let alone goaltender.
Contributor to The Copper & Blue, and leader of The Cult Of Hartikainen.
Hasek
The Dominator made a compelling case for sure. If those years had been consecutive, or even if more of them had occurred in the 2000s, I’d be inclined to agree. But there are too many gaps in the current decade to qualify him at the top of the list.
2002-03 retired
2003-04 comeback derailed after 14 GP due to injury’
2004-05 lockout
2005-06 comeback derailed after 43 GP due to injury
2006-07 solid season and playoff run
2007-08 solid season as a 1A, benchwarmer in playoffs
2008-09 retired
One good season, two good half-seasons, and one playoff run since 2002. That he made the short list is testament to his greatness, but Brodeur’s year-in year-out production has him beat in the current decade. JMO of course.
Writer for The Copper & Blue
by Bruce McCurdy on Aug 3, 2009 7:11 PM MDT up reply actions
I’m going to preface this by saying I like an aweful lot of the stuff that Bruce posts, but I found this is be an exercise of limited usefulness. The time frame Bruce selected here has the two goalies that people usually rank ahead of Brodeur steeply down the tail ends of their careers. Haseck and Roy’s glory days were in the 80s and 90s, thus making this sort of comparison obviously favours Brodeur. By the same logic of this thread, Shawn Horcoff is a better centre than Wayne Gretzky since 2000. A true statement but a fairly meaningless comparison.
Thanks CB. I don’t set the calendar, but the decades are somewhat (all right, limited!) useful in defining eras. Please accept what I wrote at face value, i.e. “Brodeur is the best goalie of the current decade”, not “Brodeur is better than Roy and Hasek”. I don’t believe anything of what I wrote was disrespectful of Hasek and Roy, both of whom (like Brodeur) I admire. To wit:
“Hasek and Roy were quality right to the end, no decline years for either of them, which is a testament to their greatness. Indeed it’s tough to argue with the above [1. Hasek, 2. Roy, 3. Brodeur] being, in order, the top three goalies of the Dead Puck Era.”
Writer for The Copper & Blue
by Bruce McCurdy on Aug 3, 2009 9:00 PM MDT up reply actions
For the record I hate these things overall... but..
It’s an interesting read. I agree that Brod’s bodes well on a lot of catagories, but the NJ Brass wouldn’t be doing their jobif they didn’t have one of the best defencive products in the market.
For the sake of this Best in 00’s, I can’t disagree.
However, when you look at the teams that Hasek and Roy played in front of, I believe that also paints a picture for us onlookers. The System that NJ has been using since… god knows when … works well for them, produces great backcheckers, and shot blockers. Brod’s playing as many minutes as he has is purely ego, not that Weeks or Clem were stalworth goalies, but they would have (and have) done well enough for an extra 3-8 games a year.
I just read the last comment from Bruce, so I won’t further this. I acknowledge this bloggin has taken a lot of time and effort and I respect all of it. Thank you for a good read.
by Cruisin4aBruisin on Aug 3, 2009 10:40 PM MDT reply actions
This was definitely a great article. Not to knock Brodeur, because I do believe he is at very least in the top 3 of goalies, but as has been pointed out, the NJ system also deserves a lot of credit for how the stats stack up.
I honestly believe that the performance of Clemmensen is testament to how good the NJ system is. I’ll be interested to watch Clemmensen in Florida this year to see if this theory supports itself.
Managing Editor - HockeyOutsiders.com
How would your rankings apply to this hypothetical?
GP—W—L—-T/OT—PT%—GAA—SV%
68—32—23—11—0.551—1.99—0.926
69—31—29—9—-0.514—2.42—0.922
68—27—30—8—-0.456—2.63—0.910
67—35—24—7—-0.575—2.56—0.910
70—39—21—10—0.629—2.29—0.906
64—25—28—9—-0.461—2.57—0.903
65—20—31—8—-0.369—2.93—0.900
64—26—31—3—-0.430—2.58—0.900
Thanks.
If I rank them for each category (from 1 to 8, where a tie would be e.g. 1, 2, 3, 3, 5,…), then this is the result:
Total
11
15
24
16
10
30
37
33
The guy who was 5th in SV% has the best overall mark (“10”) due to playing the most games, having the most wins & best Win%, & having the 2nd best GAA.
Although intuitively that seems to really penalize the guys who had high SV%‘s (.926, .922) who appeared to play on weaker teams; such that the overall rankings winner would’ve had a lot fewer wins, a lower win % & a higher GAA if he was on the weaker teams… at that point he would then have a much lower overall ranking, no?
Rankings
Hi Gus, thanks for your comments. I used a methodology something like what you describe last fall in this post. Note my attempts at weighting therein to increase the emphasis on Sv% to reflect its relatively high importance while not accepting it as all-important. Various weighting methods served to lessen Brodeur’s advantage over his peers but didn’t come close to eliminating it.
I will admit the method is simplistic, but surely it is less so than just looking at Save Percentage alone as The stat for measuring goalies. Goalies aren’t Shooter Tutors, they are living, breathing, participating players.
This time I used no particular ranking system, but the fact that Brodeur was in the top third of the target (elite) group in every last statistcial category reviewed certainly carried lots of weight in my conclusion. He was top three in the lion’s share of them, while the other guys were all over the map. It is the breadth of Brodeur’s accomplishments which is unique during the period under review.
Writer for The Copper & Blue
by Bruce McCurdy on Aug 5, 2009 12:30 AM MDT up reply actions
Thanks, very interesting. Darn I was hoping you’d plop the hypotheticals into your formula(s) for me! ha Although I have to say, that looking at the numbers I listed over a few times, it seems that Wins, PT% & GAA are driven by SV% & team factors; in other words, that the one thing the goalie can control — making the save — is measured by SV%, & everything else is a combination of team factors & making the save. E.g. the one .910 guy otherwise looks much worse than .906 guy. Anyway, thanks for the reply.
Over a career
For instance, assume we are comparing the .910 guy to the .906 guy… to extrapolate over a career, I’ll pick “13” & multiply that by their figures:
GP——W——L—-T/OT—PT%—GAA—SV%
884—351—390—104—-0.456—-2.63—0.910
910—507—273—130—-0.629—-2.29—0.906
If you ignore the SV%, or just think it’s one of the indicators of goalie quality, it appears that overall the .906 goalie is far better (44% more wins, 30% fewer losses, much higher PT%, 13% lower GAA ). But really it’s the team factors (shots allowed, own team goals scored) that is making all the difference. That’s why I’m thinking more & more that SV% is by far the most important goalie stat. Hmm, I’ll have to think about this some more.
(These single-season hypotheticals are actual NHL goalie stats for one year.)
the one thing the goalie can control — making the save — is measured by SV%, & everything else is a combination of team factors & making the save
With due respect, Gus, I must challenge your assumption of what is the one thing the goalie can control. It’s not all black and white. If the team in front of him breaks down the goalie may have absolutely no chance on the resultant shot. (Happens about 10% as often as John Garrett says “the goalie had no chance on that one”, but the point is, it happens.) Save percentage is itself something of a team factor.
Moreover, the goalie has a degree of control over other things, lots of other things in the case of Martin Brodeur. That New Jersey system that people keep talking about? Who do you suppose has been running that system all these years?
If a goalie makes a play that prevents a shot, for what reason is that somehow less valuable than saving that shot? Sv% credits one, not the other. Both, however, show up equally in GAA, the measuring stick of defensive team defence and goaltending alike long before Sv% was around. While GA is still accepted as a team stat, the yardstick for goaltenders has recently been converted to the metric of Sv% (if you’ll pardon a series of bad puns). I think it is better in some ways and not in others. You may say the goalie’s job is to stop the puck and I will agree that the goalie’s job is to keep the puck out of the net and you’ll have to be paying attention to appreciate the distinction.
Since both GAA and Sv% are (now) readily available, I will use them both, thank you very much, and find shades of context in each. And I’ll use a few of the other stats while I’m at it. Call me old-fashioned, but I think they provide a broader perspective.
Writer for The Copper & Blue
by Bruce McCurdy on Aug 6, 2009 12:42 AM MDT up reply actions
PK time is the killer here
The biggest part of save percentage is that you must break it down by situation. I have no doubt that when you do this, that Brodeur suffers tremendously because the major asset of NJ’s system is that they don’t take penalties.
So since PP SV% leaguewide are always considerably less than at 5v5 or other situations, then we can start to see where NJ is zooming Brodeur’s numbers.
Can you dig up the 5v5 and 4v5 SV% stuff, Bruce?
That should start to sort things out much better.
RiversQ: Sure I can “dig up” the 5v5 and 4v5 Sv% stuff, cuz the Contrarian Goaltender has just done all the heavy lifting in his last two posts.
An important point about “The System” that New Jersey employs — which has been mentioned by you, Cruisin4aBruisin and HockeyOutsider just in this comments section — is that the goaltender is far more than just a passive beneficiary of it. Confidence in Brodeur’s ability to field shoot-ins and crisply move them in the other direction is a critical ingredient in Jersey’s stand-them-up-at-the-blueline mentality. It helps the defence to keep their shape and play the effective zone defence that they do knowing they have a sweeper backing them up. It may — and this is speculative but hear me out — actually contribute to the team taking fewer penalties in the first place.
Hell, for all I know it could be that the team’s emphasis on discipline is such that they’d rather allow the 25-cent scoring opportunity than take a penalty, which would negatively affect the goalie’s Sv% at even strength even while helping produce the desired outcome of fewer powerplays against. I’m sure I don’t watch the team enough to know, but I suspect the costs/benefits of the issue are complex.
Writer for The Copper & Blue
by Bruce McCurdy on Aug 5, 2009 12:14 PM MDT up reply actions
Nice in-depth post, Bruce. We do often disagree but I always appreciate the discussions.
“But over the last ten years, whether measuring quantity, quality, awards, championships, Marty Brodeur stands alone.”
There is no doubt that Brodeur stands alone in quantity, awards, and championships. But I’ve still got a few hang-ups on that quality one, which in my view is much more important than the others combined.
In short, I agree with Gus Columbia that save percentage is underlying every other goalie stat, which is why it is so much more important than all of the other ones. Yes goalies have shot effects, but that doesn’t mean that GAA is an important or useful statistic for comparing goalies on different teams, or that we can somehow identify a goalie’s non-save effects by just looking at his overall win totals.
I’m not backing a guy simply because he happens to rank at the top of one category (i.e. save percentage). I think Roberto Luongo did more to help his team win hockey games than Martin Brodeur did from 1999-00 to 2008-09. I make that conclusion by looking at their results within their individual team contexts, and I can make that argument without even invoking their save percentages. The best goalie is the one that does the most to help his team win, not the guy whose team wins the most (that’s not to say they can’t be the same guy, just that it isn’t necessarily so).
By the way, Luongo isn’t my favourite goalie. He’s up there, of course, because I think he’s the best, much in the same way that I admired Hasek even while not a fan of his teams. But when I play hockey, I don’t wear #1 or #39, but #33.
by TheContrarianGoaltender on Aug 6, 2009 9:04 AM MDT reply actions
33
CG: You’re a Pokey Reddick fan? Who knew?
We’ll have to “agree to disagree” as to who helps his team win more games. Roberto Luongo helped his team win so many games they missed the playoffs 7 times in 9 seasons. Now I’m not one of those guys like the lazy reporters who brainlessly eliminate guys who play for the non-playoff teams before they even begin to think about, for example, the Hart Trophy, but a rule of thumb is that great players contribute to great results, especially over the course of a career.
Brodeur has been the de facto defensive captain if not the team captain of what has been one of the best defensive squads in the league for his entire time there. So while you might point to this stat or that and say “team effects”, as I see it the Devils are HIS team. (And unlike Patrick Roy, Dom Hasek, and to a lessert extent Roberto Luongo, he has never once bailed on his team in his entire career.)
Ultimately though, it boils down to opinion, doesn’t it?
Writer for The Copper & Blue
Ideally it doesn’t come down to opinion, because we would just figure out who was the best. We’re not there yet though, so we do have to use estimates to fill in the gaps and unknowns, and that is based on opinions or limited data. Hopefully at some point we can get close enough to solving the equation that we can break down in more detail exactly who the best goaltenders are/were, which will allow for more of a basis of ranking beyond mere opinion. There will of course always be some differences in opinion relating to various factors like peak vs. career, durability vs. injury-prone, etc.
I go with what the numbers tell me. If Brodeur’s non-save effects are shown to be greater than what I have estimated so far, for example, or if maybe we can isolate some scorer bias or other factors that are influencing the data then Brodeur could certainly move ahead of Luongo in my ratings. But until then I’m sticking with Bobby Lou.
by TheContrarianGoaltender on Aug 6, 2009 2:18 PM MDT up reply actions
Numbers
CG: I too am a numbers guy … if you don’t get that, you didn’t read the post! Where opinion comes in is in interpretation of those numbers, or more basically of determining which number(s) matter(s). It’s in that grey area where we fundamentally disagree and, I suspect, will continue to until the end of time. :) Thanks for reading, though. Hope you also registered your minority opinion in the poll! :D
Writer for The Copper & Blue
by Bruce McCurdy on Aug 7, 2009 12:44 PM MDT up reply actions
CG: You mean a scorer’s bias like this? (Scroll down to the second table and coimments) Seems to confirm the home/road discrepancy I discovered by other means in the article.
Sv% is important, but it’s not entirely reliable.
Writer for The Copper & Blue
Scorer bias (shots)
Interesting scorer bias study. But what about situational differences (PP/PK vs. EV) on the road vs. at home? The situation (PP/PK vs. EV) has got be the #1 determinant of shots, SH% & SV%… so I think before conclusions about scorer bias could be made it needs to be determined whether some teams tend to take more penalties at home vs. on the road, the strength of opposition etc.
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