All purpose goaltending thread

[DeluxeMoustache]

I originally got to thinking about this when perusing the trade rumours thread which discussed Holtby’s contract situation

It made me think there could be a thread where we could discuss goaltending in general.

First topic I would like to look at is what goalies are worth, and how you go about establishing that.

Good teams can win cups with good old fashioned solid goalies, in my opinion. Crawford, Osgood, guys like that. Guys who are not in the Vezina conversation, and not in the 9-10 M contract conversation.

I also treat goalie stats that people like to cite, like wins and sv%, with a huge grain of salt.

- Wins are at least partially a team stat - Teams can outscore horrendous goaltending (see Smith, Mike 2018-19 Flames).

- Sv% is also at least partially a team stat - A bad goalie can certainly torpedo his own save percentage by letting in too many crappy goals playing behind any team (see Hiller, Jonas) but a good goalie also can sometimes put together an average save percentage on a crappy defensive team (see Kiprusoff, Miikka, under coach Keenan, Mike).

There has to be context considered in evaluating goalies because the common stats aren’t enough.

Now, you basically have maximum 31 teams with #1 goalies. Some of those teams are paying goalies handsomely now.

You know what? Let’s look at the goalies making greater than $5 M and see how that is working out.

Price - 10.5 - 16-15-4 3.01 .902
Bobrovsky - 10 - 15-12-5 3.33 .894
Lundqvist - 8.5 - 9-9-0 3.10 .910
Fleury - 7 - 18-9-2 2.84 .908
Rask - 7 - 16-4-2 2.29 .924
Gibson - 6.4 - 13-16-1 2.95 .906
Hello yuck - 6.17 - 20-12-3 2.69 .919
Holtby - 6.1 - 18-8-0 2.99 .901
Crawford - 6.0 - 7-12-1 3.10 .906
Schneider - 6.0 - 0-4-1 4.59 .852
Quick - 5.8 - 11-17-2 3.02 .895
Jones - 5.75 - 13-15-2 3.19 .890
Howard - 5.1 - 2-14-1 4.04 .884

So if you are a GM, and a goalie asks you for money, what do you think is a good answer and why?

(Just a side note for Flames fans. This list should make you feel pretty darn good about the Flames goaltending!)

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

...So if you are a GM, and a goalie asks you for money, what do you think is a good answer and why?

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

"Hello yuck."

Filler!

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

Filler!

^ Haha, well played

* That was an autocorrect that I thought improved on the original

[powderjunkie]

UFA goalies don't win cups. Unless you're Osgood returning to the Red Wings.

Highest cap hit ever was Holtby IIRC. Quick, Tim Thomas, and MAF were close (Thomas probably higher % of cap). You win the cup with a homegrown goalie (or at least acquired very young like Giguere) on a reasonable deal.

In Rittich we trust. If not him, Parsons, etc.


You can add Vasilevsky 9.5 starting next year to that list, too.

[Erick Estrada]

God that Carey Price contract is just a disaster with a $10.5 million cap hit until 2025/26. He barely looks like a capable backup goaltender this season.

[Hockey-and_stuff]

Kind of nuts that despite the poor play of Rittich recently, his 2.81 GAA and .911 sv% would be top 4 minimum in both GAA and % for roughly half the price of some of these "top tier" goalies.

[DeluxeMoustache]

^ not only that, all of the goalies on that list above Howard individually make more than both Talbot and Rittich combined !

[DeluxeMoustache]

In the Game Takes (not sure if you all read them), Bingo took a nice look at Rittich and Talbot. Excellent and interesting

Originally Posted by Bingo

Flames 2 Wild 1


With Talbot getting roughly half of the starts in the last 15 games it’s interesting to dig into their stats a bit and look for differences both in the goaltenders and how the team plays with each guy in net.
Talbot has the edge over David Rittich with a .917 save percentage over .911.
Talbot has saved 3.82 goals above average, edging Rittich and his 3.59. That number appears to be close, but when you take into account the disparity in minutes played it’s a much greater gap; 0.29/60 vs 0.11/60. Talbot is 15th league wide in this stat.
When it comes to high danger shots, the Flames have a tendency to look after Talbot more so than they play sound defence when Rittich is in the nets. Talbot has the lowest high danger shots / 60 of any of the 60 most used goaltenders in the league this year at 5.78/60. Rittich faces 7.44/60, or almost two more per game.
Rittich is the second best stopper in the circuit when it comes to high danger save percentage at .863, while Talbot is way down the list at 48th with .787.
Talbot’s average shot length is 37.91 feet (8th longest), while Rittich has an average distance of 35.64 feet (40th). Both goaltenders have been beat at a distance of 24 feet.
The Flames play better in front of Talbot, but Rittich is able to handle the mistakes. Rittich leaks his save percentage in medium and low danger (easy ones) chances.

Bingo, where did you get this info? I’d be interested to see how some of the guys who get paid well stack up

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

^ not only that, all of the goalies on that list above Howard individually make more than both Talbot and Rittich combined !

I think it is a simple conclusion to make looking at your list that it is a mistake to commit a lot of money to goaltending. I don't know that I agree—I remain convinced that positionally speaking, goaltending is the most randomly volatile in hockey, and a "good" goalie will also experience plenty of bad seasons.

But I am curious about what you think the takeaway from this is about big-money goalies? Is there a correlation between what they are being paid and how they perform?

Something that I think is missing from this is the correlation between performance and playing time: I see that eight of the top-ten highest paid goalies are also in the top-fifteen of game-starts, and only four of the top-twenty have a SVP over 0.914. It is of course understandable that a team with a lot of money committed to one player playing the position will also want him playing a lot. But I remain sceptical that ANY goalie should be starting more than 66% of the games, especially from one season to the next—Martin Jones and his 342 game-starts in five years is the poster-boy for avoiding this situation.

[Ford Prefect]

I think the issue with making you goalie your top paid player is two-fold. One, it leaves pretty much zero budget for a competent backup, which leads to your star starter playing too many games. And two, it also eats up too much cap at the cost of icing a solid defensive team in front of your star goalie.

Looking at the Flames roster, we have Rittich, Talbot and any one of our D-men other than Gio for the cost of Price/Bobro/Vasilevskiy (next year). So overpaying your starter causes load management and roster composition problems that aren’t conducive to winning in the salary cap era.

[DeluxeMoustache]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

I think it is a simple conclusion to make looking at your list that it is a mistake to commit a lot of money to goaltending. I don't know that I agree—I remain convinced that positionally speaking, goaltending is the most randomly volatile in hockey, and a "good" goalie will also experience plenty of bad seasons.

But I am curious about what you think the takeaway from this is about big-money goalies? Is there a correlation between what they are being paid and how they perform?

Something that I think is missing from this is the correlation between performance and playing time: I see that eight of the top-ten highest paid goalies are also in the top-fifteen of game-starts, and only four of the top-twenty have a SVP over 0.914. It is of course understandable that a team with a lot of money committed to one player playing the position will also want him playing a lot. But I remain sceptical that ANY goalie should be starting more than 66% of the games, especially from one season to the next—Martin Jones and his 342 game-starts in five years is the poster-boy for avoiding this situation.

I am really not sure what a clear cut takeaway is.

I know that when I saw people suggesting Holtby may be looking at 10 M, I thought it was nuts.

I personally don’t think you should pay a goalie more than about 7. Admittedly somewhat arbitrarily chosen.

I don’t see how an agent makes the case for an extra dollar in that 7-10.5 range.

What I liked about Bingo’s stats and comparison is that it tries to compare what goalies are playing behind. Also interesting the difference behind the same team

I would be curious how you can go about evaluating goalies and establishing fair salaries in light of the data and comparables available

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by DeluxeMoustache

I know that when I saw people suggesting Holtby may be looking at 10 M, I thought it was nuts.

I personally don’t think you should pay a goalie more than about 7. Admittedly somewhat arbitrarily chosen.

I don’t see how an agent makes the case for an extra dollar in that 7-10.5 range...

Yeah, I get it, and I agree. However, I think there is an inherent and unavoidable flaw in the NHL economy, which shows up in goalie evaluations and transactions. Simply put, it's the most valuable position on the team—ESPECIALLY in the playoffs, so theoretically a GM should be happy to pay for quality at the position. Unfortunately, it seems to me that goalie skill is apparently not altogether very important for winning a championship. It certainly pales in comparison to the smaller sample-size of play: the goalie who will win the Stanley Cup each year seems to be the one who 1) plays a relatively light NHL schedule, and who 2) enters the playoffs with very strong performance numbers.

These are elements that cannot be controlled, but with how desperate every team is for good goalie performances there will always be a market for goalies to make big money on the basis of unrepeatable past performances. So, that means that Holtby will get +$9.0 m from a team this summer. He and his agent can make that case on the imperfect arguments that he has won a championship, a Vezina trophy, and is just as good as Bobrovsky, who was paid $10.0 m last year, AND Team X badly needs a goalie.

What I liked about Bingo’s stats and comparison is that it tries to compare what goalies are playing behind. Also interesting the difference behind the same team

I would be curious how you can go about evaluating goalies and establishing fair salaries in light of the data and comparables available

I don't think you can because of how different the position is from any other on the roster. My bold prediction for this year is that the Stanley Cup winning goalie is the one we least expect to win today—probably someone like Pavel Francouz or Tristan Jarry. I don't know—maybe the best plan for a GM is to cycle through his RFA goalies every three or four years to maximize these uncontrollable elements as much as possible.

[GreenLantern2814]

We've had this conversation before, but Chris Osgood is a Hall of Famer. He has the numbers, he has the hardware, and if the Hall treated goalies the way they treat guys like Dave Andreychuk, he'd be there.

Goalie contracts #### teams when they're too long. There's only two of them per team, you can't hide that like you would a forward.

Pay a goalie, fine. Unless they're in their mid 20s, don't ever go longer than 5 years. They're witches.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

God that Carey Price contract is just a disaster with a $10.5 million cap hit until 2025/26. He barely looks like a capable backup goaltender this season.

And because it's mainly bonuses the cap hit on a buyout is still $9.5 though 25-26 and then they get a hit of $555K for 6 more years.

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

And because it's mainly bonuses the cap hit on a buyout is still $9.5 though 25-26 and then they get a hit of $555K for 6 more years.

I mean, I think you always hold out that a goalie of Carey Price's calibre can turn things around. Especially when the team gets better around him.

Like, I don't know what people are expecting from Montreal. That team is Carey Price, 34 year old Shea Weber, and a bunch of ####ing nobodies. I heard Scott Rintoul the other day talking about how much they miss Brendan Gallagher. Fine player, don't get me wrong. Never scored 60 points in his life. Maybe he could, if he wasn't the best forward on his team.

And Price still has save percentage above .900. Barely, but technically.

In no market but Montreal would people be wondering if Carey Price is still a good goalie.

We should all be screaming at Montreal for putting such dreck in front of that man year after year. Fire Bergevin and prioritize hiring someone for their knowledge of hockey and not French.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

I mean, I think you always hold out that a goalie of Carey Price's calibre can turn things around. Especially when the team gets better around him.

Like, I don't know what people are expecting from Montreal. That team is Carey Price, 34 year old Shea Weber, and a bunch of ####ing nobodies. And Price still has save percentage above .900. Barely, but technically.

In no market but Montreal would people be wondering if Carey Price is still a good goalie.

We should all be screaming at Montreal for putting such dreck in front of that man year after year. Fire Bergevin and prioritize hiring someone for their knowledge of hockey and not French.

Fair. But it's still an awful contract. It goes until he's 38. Perhaps part of the reason there's dreck in front of him is that they've spent a big piece of their budget on him (and Shea Weber and Karl Alzner).

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Fair. But it's still an awful contract. It goes until he's 38. Perhaps part of the reason there's dreck in front of him is that they've spent a big piece of their budget on him (and Shea Weber and Karl Alzner).

Price costs what he costs - he's not a bad goalie. And Weber makes less than a lot of other defensemen in the league, and he's still very productive. He'll continue to be productive, well into his late 30s, barring injury. Maybe he won't be $7.8M, but players like Weber are effective for a long time.

Alzner was a stupid signing, but even that isn't what cripples them. It's the rest of their team.

Look at their roster. It's easily the worst group of forwards in the NHL. When your big guns areMax Domi, Drouin and Gallagher, you do not have a chance. That they're even remotely involved in a playoff discussion is a testament to how good Price is.

What Montreal asks of Carey Price would be like Calgary fans expecting Kiprusoff to win us a Stanley Cup, except do it without Iginla.

It's ridiculous. Montreal is Connor McDaviding Carey Price, and it's a goddamn shame. As soon as Price gets the national team in front of him, he's Dominik Hasek. Confidence is a helluva drug, and I don't know who could be confident with the Habs in front of them every night.

Price probably spends every second that Shea Weber's off the ice in a cold sweat.

Most importantly, I'm glad Price got his money. He deserves it for putting up with this ####. Truly dazzling that Montreal has allowed Bergevin to do this for 8 years.

[Strange Brew]

Maybe the issue with some of these goalie contracts isn't the AAV, but the term.

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

Maybe the issue with some of these goalie contracts isn't the AAV, but the term.

It's always term. Term is deadly.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

Price costs what he costs - he's not a bad goalie. And Weber makes less than a lot of other defensemen in the league, and he's still very productive. He'll continue to be productive, well into his late 30s, barring injury. Maybe he won't be $7.8M, but players like Weber are effective for a long time.

Alzner was a stupid signing, but even that isn't what cripples them. It's the rest of their team.

Look at their roster. It's easily the worst group of forwards in the NHL. When your big guns areMax Domi, Drouin and Gallagher, you do not have a chance. That they're even remotely involved in a playoff discussion is a testament to how good Price is.

What Montreal asks of Carey Price would be like Calgary fans expecting Kiprusoff to win us a Stanley Cup, except do it without Iginla.

It's ridiculous. Montreal is Connor McDaviding Carey Price, and it's a goddamn shame. As soon as Price gets the national team in front of him, he's Dominik Hasek. Confidence is a helluva drug, and I don't know who could be confident with the Habs in front of them every night.

Price probably spends every second that Shea Weber's off the ice in a cold sweat.

Most importantly, I'm glad Price got his money. He deserves it for putting up with this ####. Truly dazzling that Montreal has allowed Bergevin to do this for 8 years.

LOL Price today is not Hasek regardless of what team he's playing in front of. He's not had a great season and that's now two bad seasons in the last three. You make it sound like he's playing behind the worst team in the history of the NHL or something which is totally false. Habs are 3rd best overall in shots differential, 5th in Corsi, and 2nd in Fenwick. I realize advanced stats aren't the be all end all but it doesn't support your argument at all as Montreal has played well but they lack finish and goaltending has been poor.