[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by Inferno

There isn't very many good teams in the list you've provided. I would have liked their chances even with Vladar most of those games.

On that list, only SJ, Chicago, Nashville, Anaheim are offensively challenged teams. The rest aren't. So if we assume Vladar makes all the same saves in those 5 games that Wolf made, ok, those 5 points are salvaged. But it's still an assumption.

And the end of the day, they needed Wolf to be great in those games to win them, and he was. Does Vladar deliver the same results? I'm not convinced.

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

There are so many unknowns. Would Vladar thrive if given a more conistent schedule, or would he fold?

He's an NHL vet with over 100 starts under his belt, so his ceiling has probably already been reached. But if he were to be the team's #1 and play more often, teams across the league would likely spend more time studying him to try and find weaknesses to exploit. That and the increased workload might work against him from a fatigue standpoint. So I'm thinking he either maintains his current level or does slightly worse.

Would whoever the back-up is, likely Cooley, steal a few games?

Possibly. But in any game he's in, he's more likely to give up a bunch of goals than steal the game. Seattle didn't keep him, and he's in the AHL now where his numbers don't jump off the page.

Would the strategy change if goaltending wasn't the center of gravity?

Maybe, but I don't see how a changed strategy would result in more success.

If the team found themselves out of playoff contention really early in the season, would their playstyle and tenacity be different (likely a downward spiral)? Would Conroy have been a seller at the deadline causing the team to get fewer wins down the stretch?

Not likely to have been in the playoff race at any point.

Maybe Andersson would have been dealt. Then again maybe not. Who knows if Conny would have got a suitable offer for him.

Originally Posted by Goriders

A little bit of cherry picking. You could ask the same thing about Kadri.

I’d look at it more as we have Wolf. How do we build around him?

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

Wolf has been awesome but so has the team defence. Where would they be without Weegar, who is somehow a +13 with 41 points while attached to AHL calibre partners all season

True, several players have been instrumental to the Flames winning games this season. Props to Weegar, Kadri, Huby, Vladar, etc. But Wolf is the top guy on that list.

And take nothing away from Huska this season. He's been doing a fabulous job.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Vladar has put above a sv% .920 or higher in 39% of his games.

Wolf has done it in 44% of his.

So you can reasonably expect that Vladar would have met the “very good or excellent” threshold for about 2-3 less periods than Wolf over the bizarre stretch you cherry picked.

If you just look at those two numbers, it may seem that these are two similar goalies who have had similar seasons. But as fans of this team we have watched the games, and the consensus on here is that Wolf has been the far better of the two this season.

Instead of looking at save% stats and drawing conclusions based on that alone, I would rather have a look at each game one by one and see what happened. Quite often, Wolf has stood on his head and secured the win. Other times he's gotten the team to OT where most goalies wouldn't have.

So no, I'm not basing my "very good or excellent" standard on save% alone. It's a combination of save%, the amount of ten bell saves he made, and the crucial times he was making them.

(For what it's worth, Wolf has hit .950 or better in 24% (11/45) of his games this season, compared to 14% (4/28) for Vladar)

Originally Posted by Jason14h

No player is worth 17 points by themselves

This is a few years old (maybe there’s a newer one ) and 7 player in the nhl contributed a WAR above 5 (so 10 pts)

https://hockey-graphs.com/category/war/

So we’re probably realistically talking 6-10 points depending who the replacement goalie is

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

According to Money Puck Wolf has a WAR of 2.05 so that’s 4 extra points.

The WAR stat has its purposes. But it's not a substitute for actually looking at what happened in each game.

Originally Posted by dino7c

Lol, is OP assuming they would have no goalie playing?

Its 4-6 points above an average NHLer...who would also "steal" points from time to time.

I'll try to explain this again. There were many games this season where Wolf was either very good or excellent, and the team only ended up winning by a goal. So fair to say Wolf's play was the difference between winning and losing. So if they got a little bit worse goaltending in each of those games, a game where they're ahead by 1 instead becomes a tied game, which is why I assigned 1 point to each of those games instead of the 2 they got.

Other times, he helped get the team to extra time and salvage a point. A little bit worse goaltending means they would have lost those games in regulation instead, hence getting 0 points instead of 1.

Looking at the Flames OT/SO record, they have 8 wins in 20 games that have gone to extra time. So at a 40% win rate, perhaps I should have assigned 0.6 points per win lost instead of 1 per win lost. That would have brought the actual number of lost points to 11 total. Wouldn't guarantee us a top 5 pick but would put us in the mix.

Originally Posted by Groot

This is an absurdly-biased attempt at "analysis". Here you go. This doesn't even improve this weird attempt to discredit everyone on the team but Wolf

If you interpreted my post as some sort of attack on the team or the coach or anyone else - rest assured, it isn't. My only goal here is to praise Wolf for the tremendous season he's had.

but at least it provides a bit more perspective. Listed next to each game is Flames Deserve to Win, all stats from Moneypuck.com.

I don't really think you can use the Deserve to Win O meter for this kind of thing.

https://moneypuck.com/about.htm#meter
The "Deserve To Win O'Meter" is a feature on our live game pages which shows the each team's chance of winning the game had the game been re-enacted, except with average goaltending for both teams.

In other words, it imagines the game replayed where both teams have average goaltending. This means replacing Wolf with an average goalie, but also means replacing the opposing goalie with an average goalie. In doing so it disregards the actual performance of the opposing goalie on that night. This is a problem because if the opposing goalie has a great night and kept the Flames in check (or the Flames couldn't finish on their chances due to talent deficiency), the Deserve-meter papers over that and imagines the Flames scoring a lot more goals than they actually did.

That's the problem with the Deserve-meter... it makes teams that generate a lot of chances but have trouble burying them, seem like globetrotters.

And the other thing to consider is if both goalies are standing on their heads, it makes it seem like only one or neither goalie was standing on his head. So if the other goalie was facing a lot of shots and having a great night, it doesn't mean Wolf wasn't making huge saves when called upon.

Oct 15 vs Chicago - 53.8%
Oct 22 vs Pittsburgh - 46.% (L)
Nov 5 vs Montreal - 45.5% (L)
Nov 11 vs LA - 56.2%
Nov 15 vs Nashville - 49.1% (L?)
Nov 19 vs NYI - 72.4%
Nov 21 vs NYR - 71.9%
Dec 28 vs SJ - 75.1%
Dec 31 vs Van - 56.4%
Jan 7 vs Anaheim - 64.9%
Jan 11 vs LA - 64.4%
Jan 18 vs Winnipeg - 11.9% (L)
Jan 23 vs Buffalo - 43.1% (L)
Feb 23 vs SJ - 63.2%
Mar 2 vs Carolina - Flames lost
Mar 8 vs Montreal - 37.2% (L)
Mar 12 vs Van - Flames lost

So from your list you have 2 games where Wolf clearly carried the team to a Win. 4 gained points, 2 gained points if it was one more goal scored and went to OT.

Then another 3-4 games where the other team outplayed the Flames yet Flames still won, happens all the time. Hard to attribute it specifically to Wolf. How many games did the Flames outplay an opponent and lose? Both of the last two games.

How many lost points offset the other "unearned" points? Likely a wash. Then apparently 2 games that Flames lost but never should have gone to OT I guess so that's 2 more points.

2-6 points gained is probably realistic. 17 is absurd.

17 was the wrong number. Should have been 11. Sorry about that.

But you're basing your analysis on the Deserve meter which to me is a flawed way of looking at things.