JojoTheWhale
CORN BOY
- May 22, 2008
- 33,811
- 105,454
You're talking about great defense masking the performance of a mediocre goalie or something like that, which gives the illusion of having a better goalie than you do. In reality the two things (defense, goaltending) are intertwined but it doesn't change the value of the goalie. Like if Carey Price is 12 goals a year better than an average goalie, he's +12 regardless of his defense. If his defense is +20 goals better than the next team, the team allows 32 fewer goals, but that doesn't change Carey Price's value.
If you're determining Goalie value in a frame of +/- Goals vs average then Shot Quantity/Quality in front of him absolutely affects that. We know that Goalies that face more Shots have a higher SVP. We know that Goalie play is more effectively predicted by HDSVP vs M/LDSVP. We can account for some of these things, but that's not a measurement that lends itself to a +/- metric with the current data that we have available.