abo9
Registered User
- Jun 25, 2017
- 9,094
- 7,189
Holtby is pretty elite... and his playoff stats are just amazing
Little bit of column A, little bit of column B. He probably gets an unfair share of the blame, but he's also let in a fair share of softies and has never really outdueled the opposing goalie in a series.Does Bob choke in the playoffs or is it more of a team thing?
wait, since when is Bobrovsky consistently elite? If anything, he's the poster child for outlier seasons and inconsistency.
his career GAAs are:
2.59
3.02
2.00
2.38
2.68
2.75
2.06
2.42
I agree with everything but the last sentence. You're spot on with this analysis regarding the way goaltending has changed. But instead of making goalie's less consistent, it's made EVERY goalie more consistent. In other words, a .910sv% season used to be a great season for a goalie, now it's basically back-up territory. The bar for an elite goaltender has been raised so much that even the smallest changes in performance thrust a goalie behind several of their peers.Goaltenders play percentages and don't rely on reaction now (because they can't, shooters and shooter equipment have gotten way too good for that,) generally.
That means most of what it is to be a good goalie in the NHL is reading the play and being in the right spot to have a high percentage chance the puck hits you. That's the most effective method of stopping pucks now but it also means that sometimes you just get unlucky and even though the puck had a high percentage of hitting you it didn't. So it's just not possible to be consistent now the way it used to be.
Little bit of column A, little bit of column B. He probably gets an unfair share of the blame, but he's also let in a fair share of softies and has never really outdueled the opposing goalie in a series.
Does Bob choke in the playoffs or is it more of a team thing?
When you play a
But the last two years Columbus ended up playing the eventual Stanley Cup winners in the first round. Kind of hard to pad your stats facing that quality of competition.
Growing up, you knew the 5 best goalies were Roy, Hasek, Brodeur, Belfour and Cujo. The order would change some year to year, but that elite level was well-established. If you ask anyone now who the best goalies are, the correct answer is "It depends on the year". A guy will win the Vezina and then not even be in the conversation the following year. The gap IS shrinking. There was a time, not so long ago, you were catching a break if the opposing team put their backup in. Seldom are you catching a break anymore, no matter which goalie you're facing. There's a lot more parity in NHL goaltending.
They also played in the monster equipment era.I think a key point is that they weren't just the best three goalies of the last generation but they are also arguably the top three goalies of all-time.
They appear to be the anomaly rather than the trend, but the fact that their careers overlapped means that people expect another crop like them.
One could also argue that they played a fair amount of their careers in the dead-puck obstruction era which helped out their stats.