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Old 10-02-2023, 04:51 PM   #121
Oil Stain
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GioforPM View Post
A lot of Jack Adams coach bad teams (it's sort of a "you did way better than expected" award) so on a bad team a goalie can make a huge difference.
Hartley had Ramo and Hiller playing .912 and .918 respectively when he won. The next year they played .909 and .879 and the Flames were out of the POs.

Even on non-bad teams: last year the Bruins were by no means a bad team, but they were certainly not as good as their record and a lot of that was Ullmark.
I don't think this point can be emphasized enough. Goaltending has such an outsized effect on results. No skater can consistently have such a massive impact on winning hockey games as a goalie.

When you look at the numbers we have publicly available, the 21/22 and 22/23 Flames were pretty consistent in their defensive metrics from year to year. The difference was that in 22, Markstrom stopped everything and in 23 he stopped nothing. Lots of fans talked about how Sutter had changed the system, and the Flames were playing worse defensively. The numbers say they were about the same though.

I think subconsciously fans will downgrade or attach less meaning to scoring chances that don't score. If the Preds get a 5 bell scoring chance and it is saved, everyone goes "nice" and moves on to something else. If the puck is in the back of the net, everyone is going to seek out the reason for the goal and assign blame on who they think is culpable.

So in both cases the scoring chance could have been equal, but the perception of the play is radically changed by whether the goalie stops the puck or not. That boils down to human nature. Only way to get around that is by breaking down and documenting every scoring chance. Nobody does that except professionals employed by NHL teams because its a full time job. The media and fans just break down the scoring chances that resulted in goals and then craft a narrative using an incomplete picture.
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