Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason14h
He's 24th in GAA (Behind Talbot)
21st in SV % (Behind Talbot)
7th in Wins
5th in GP and Saves
He was amazing last night but has moments where he has struggled. Really a perfect situation of see what he evolves into over the next year and a half.
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I think every goalie in the league, even the ones near the top in SV%, will have a bad stretch of games at some point. i remember the year Carey Price won the Hart and Vezina and Pearson... and he got lit up in the playoffs nonetheless.
A better question is this - when Rittich does give up goals, what is the game situation? This is my subjective take - though I could probably look up the data later - but Rittich has a knack for keeping games close. Whether that's keeping a tie as the team is getting peppered, or keeping a lead in a one goal game, or keeping the team in games just enough for them to tie it. I'm not denying that numbers have their value - far from it - but I do find a lot of Rittich's goals against - perhaps moreso in previous years than this - tend to come when he has enough of a goal cushion that he can afford to give up a 3rd goal.
Now - did Rittich have a stretch recently where he was letting in poor goals? Yes, and the SV% surely reflects it. But he's also had a heavy workload and it was probably to be expected that his play would dip. If the team had any ability to outscore an offnight from its goalies (as last year's team did for Softie Smith) he'd probably have more points. Despite that - this year's team is on pace for 100 points when Rittich starts and that's indicative of his ability to get points in close games.
One stat I'll toss out there, though, is quality starts. Why does it matter? Because you can have 7 great games plus a poor game and still end up with the same SV% as someone more mediocre. QS% is a measure of consistency more than SV%. The other thing I like about QS% is that it isn't skewed for goalies who see lots of rubber the way SV% is. I am of the opinion that stopping 17 of 19 shots isn't always easier than stopping 35 of 38 - but SV% would harshly ding the former goalie more whereas QS% would consider both to be quality starts - which they both are. This is doubly so when you consider context - the goalie who saw 19 shots may have seen more PP shots and 5v5 breakaways than the goalie whose team was playing collapse defense and allowing tons of perimeter 5v5 shots at the expense of other factors (offensive zone time).
This year Rittich has a mediocre QS% of .543, but his career QS% is .591 over 93 career starts and with Talbot able to soak up some workload we should probably see Rittich be a bit closer to his career trend. For some comparision to starting goalies currently in their prime:
Braden Holtby has a QS% of .582 over his career (RS+PO)
Carey Price has a QS% .578 over his career
Ben Bishop has a QS% of .607 over his career
Andrei Vasilevskiy has a QS% of .562 over his career
Overall, I think it's easy to get myopic about your own team's goalie's percieved consistency. But all goalies have up nights and down nights. Up seasons and down seasons.We just don't notice from afar.
I trust Rittich on average. He seems to have a knack for winning - 54-26-13 is essentially 107 point hockey over his career and it's not as if we've been a high scoring team in 2017-18 or 2019-20 nor a necessarily well-defending team for much of 2018-19.