reckoning
Registered User
- Jan 4, 2005
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- 1,268
This may not interest some, but I know a few people on here like to do work with hockey stats such as comparing players from different eras. When it comes to goalies though, it`s tough because one of the key stats is save percentage and the data is missing for several years. The NHL didn`t start keeping track of it until 1982-83. The 2001 Hockey Compendium listed totals for the last 13 seasons of the Original Six era (`55-`67) ,`70-`71, `74-`75, and `75-`76, as well as all the playoff numbers from `52 to present day. There are unofficial numbers printed for `79-`80 (1980 THN Yearbook), `80-`81 (1981 THN Yearbook) and `81-`82 (the original Hockey Compendium). That still leaves nine missing seasons. I decided to tackle one of those the long way.
That meant going through each game summary for the `78-`79 season from past issues of the Toronto Star, copying how many shots each goalie faced and adding everything up. The good part about it was that I found a ton of interesting articles about the top hockey stories of that season (i.e. Challenge Cup, NHL-WHA merger, the Ballard/Neilson fired-rehired fiasco, etc.). The bad part is going through nearly 700 game summaries can be extremely tedious.
These numbers can`t be considered official because there were some problems: I couldn`t find 7 of the games, plus about 15-20 other games appeared to be typos (the totals for the three periods didn`t equal the final total printed); so for those cases I took the number of shots each team took that season (the league kept track of that), subtracted the totals from all their other games and then used what was left to determine the shots for the missing games. The other problem was if a goalie was pulled midway through a period; I could easily figure how many minutes each goalie played, and used that to split the shots in that period between them, but that may not be exact. Those problems aside however, I`m confident that these numbers are exremely close to what they actually were.
1978-79 Save Percentages (minimum 1600 minutes):
1. G. Resch (NYI) .914
2. K. Dryden (Mtl) .909
3. M. Palmateer (Tor) .909
4. T. Esposito (Chi) .901
5. B. Smith (NYI) .900
6. D. Edwards (Buf) .898
7. G. Hanlon (Van) .897
8. B. Parent (Phi) .893
9. D. Herron (Pit) .892
10. M. Lessard (LA) .891
11. M. Larocque (Mtl) .888
12. D. Bouchard (Atl) .888
13. G. Meloche (Min) .884
14. J. Rutherford (Det) .884
15. G. Inness (Wsh) .880
16. B. Oleschuk (Col) .877
17. B. Sauve (Buf) .876
18. E. Staniowski (Stl) .876
19. G. Bromley (Van) .875
20. J. Davidson (NYR) .874
21. M. Plasse (Col) .870
22. W. Stephenson (Phi) .870
23. W. Thomas (NYR) .867
24. G. Cheevers (Bos) .865
25. P. Myre (Stl) .865
26. J. Bedard (Wsh) .863
27. R. Vachon (Det) .863
28. R. Grahame (LA) .863
NHL Average: .883
This was the end of an era as both Ken Dryden and Bernie Parent would never play again after this season, and apparently their respective teams weren`t confident in handing the reins over to the current backups, as that summer Philly traded Wayne Stephenson while Montreal picked up Denis Herron from Pittsburgh. This was also the year that Detroit signed Rogie Vachon as a free agent to a very lucrative contract (rare in the 70s). To say it backfired would be a bit of an understatement.
That meant going through each game summary for the `78-`79 season from past issues of the Toronto Star, copying how many shots each goalie faced and adding everything up. The good part about it was that I found a ton of interesting articles about the top hockey stories of that season (i.e. Challenge Cup, NHL-WHA merger, the Ballard/Neilson fired-rehired fiasco, etc.). The bad part is going through nearly 700 game summaries can be extremely tedious.
These numbers can`t be considered official because there were some problems: I couldn`t find 7 of the games, plus about 15-20 other games appeared to be typos (the totals for the three periods didn`t equal the final total printed); so for those cases I took the number of shots each team took that season (the league kept track of that), subtracted the totals from all their other games and then used what was left to determine the shots for the missing games. The other problem was if a goalie was pulled midway through a period; I could easily figure how many minutes each goalie played, and used that to split the shots in that period between them, but that may not be exact. Those problems aside however, I`m confident that these numbers are exremely close to what they actually were.
1978-79 Save Percentages (minimum 1600 minutes):
1. G. Resch (NYI) .914
2. K. Dryden (Mtl) .909
3. M. Palmateer (Tor) .909
4. T. Esposito (Chi) .901
5. B. Smith (NYI) .900
6. D. Edwards (Buf) .898
7. G. Hanlon (Van) .897
8. B. Parent (Phi) .893
9. D. Herron (Pit) .892
10. M. Lessard (LA) .891
11. M. Larocque (Mtl) .888
12. D. Bouchard (Atl) .888
13. G. Meloche (Min) .884
14. J. Rutherford (Det) .884
15. G. Inness (Wsh) .880
16. B. Oleschuk (Col) .877
17. B. Sauve (Buf) .876
18. E. Staniowski (Stl) .876
19. G. Bromley (Van) .875
20. J. Davidson (NYR) .874
21. M. Plasse (Col) .870
22. W. Stephenson (Phi) .870
23. W. Thomas (NYR) .867
24. G. Cheevers (Bos) .865
25. P. Myre (Stl) .865
26. J. Bedard (Wsh) .863
27. R. Vachon (Det) .863
28. R. Grahame (LA) .863
NHL Average: .883
This was the end of an era as both Ken Dryden and Bernie Parent would never play again after this season, and apparently their respective teams weren`t confident in handing the reins over to the current backups, as that summer Philly traded Wayne Stephenson while Montreal picked up Denis Herron from Pittsburgh. This was also the year that Detroit signed Rogie Vachon as a free agent to a very lucrative contract (rare in the 70s). To say it backfired would be a bit of an understatement.