tl;dr
Wolf and Vladar good, team defense bad, team offense unchanged
__________________________________
Continuing my sporadic analysis of team performance based on one HF poster's (mostly?) objective view of Stoppable Goals.
Continuing from my last post on this
here:
%SGA=% stoppable goals against (what percent of goals against are stoppable by the Flames goalies)
USGA/gp=Unstoppable goals against/game played (how many unstoppable goals are the Flames D giving up)
USGF/gp=Unstoppable goals for/game played (how many unstoppable goals for are the Flames O generating)
P(PG)/gp= Extra Points (Perfect Goalie)/game played (how many extra points achieved per game played if Flames goalies were hypothetically perfect)
year--------------%SGA----USGA/gp----USGF/gp---EP(PG)/gp
2021-2022-------29.1------1.7----------2.29--------0.3
2022-2023-------34.1------1.89---------2.12--------0.46
2023-2024-------43--------1.81---------1.71--------0.57
2024-2025------24------2.16--------1.70-------0.35
(21/22 is for 80 gp, 22-23 is for the first 57 gp of that season, 23/24 is for only the first 21 games of that seaon, 24/25 is for the first 37 gp this season, this is very manual unfortunately)
Through 37 games, only 24% goals against Flames netminders this year have been stoppable goals that they should have been able to save. League average is typically around 28-30%. This is pretty good!
The team defense has been allowing about 19% more unstoppable goals this year compared to the sampled games from previous seasons. The effect of no more Tanev perhaps? Overall, the worst aspect of the team relative to how it had been the last couple seasons.
The offense hasn't really moved from last year. This isn't a big surprise, this team struggles to score. Still a far ways off from 2021-22 and 2022-2023, but to be expected given the relative lack of talent on this team currently.
This last stat EP(PG)/gp is kind of galaxy brain math (read the explanation for this in the link), but it shows that the goalies have been giving away points at a pretty ok rate, very comparable to 2021-22. Overall the goalies have been strong. (for the curious, the data so far has Wolf conceding 8 points vs if he had been perfect and Vladar only 5. The first Columbus game, the St. Louis game on Dec 5, and the Boston game on Dec 17 were listed as winnable with perfect tending.)
Opposing netminders have been about league average against the Flames so far this year, with 88 total GA and only 25 of them stoppable, for a 28% rate.
Judging by this, I think the Flames are a good bet to miss the playoffs and fall down in the conference. Through 37 games, the overall balance of skater play has been leading to an average deficit of almost half a goal per game. I don't think great goaltending can overcome that. At the end of the day, a positive goal differential is pretty much what you need to make the playoffs, the Flames are pretty significantly negative on this.
__________________________________
Surprisingly, no goalie has been pulled by either team in any Flames game this season so far.
In terms of a comparison between the goalies themselves:
In 19 starts Wolf has 50 GA with 13 SGA for 26% stoppable. (4 of these came in the previously mentioned Columbus game, I don't think the focus could have been there that night, ignoring that one he's at 46 GA, 9 SGA, 19.6% stoppable)
In 18 starts Vladar has 55 GA, 12 SGA for 22% stoppable.
Despite the disparity in SV% and GAA so far this team Vladar has been right there with Wolf in terms of stopping the goals that he can stop which roughly matches my eye test. Overall, the team has been playing much more low event hockey with Wolf in net, only scoring 1.57 USGF/g and conceding 1.95 USGA/g compared to 1.83 USGF/g and a wild 2.38 USGA/g with Vladar in net.
__________________________________
Feel free to ask me about this analysis. It is subject to the bias of having essentially one guy assign every goal as stoppable and unstoppable of course but if we can assume that they are fair, then I think the analysis can be treated as sound. As well, I haven't been very thorough in compiling the data, there are some gaps over the last couple seasons.
