Post-Game Talk: Devils 3 - Islander 0: The Bernier and Hedberg Story

[Bleedred]

Moose (in an admittedly tiny sample size) has been lights out this year.

We are at the point where I legitimately feel safer with him in net.

Marty was lights out in his first two games also. Both allowed just a goal in their first games of the season, and each got a shutout in their second game of the season too.

I felt safer with Moose in net earlier in 2011/2012 too. I also feel now though if we play Moose as much as Marty you won't be as impressed.

 

[MasterofGrond]

Not attacking you or saying Hedberg has played weaker opponents. You're comparing Hedberg's save percentage to Marty's last year though. Hedberg did not start as many games as Marty, and I bet if he did he would have had as low of a save percentage. Was he playing better than Marty early last season when they had the same number of starts? Sure I think that's fair to say that. If Hedberg had started as many games as Marty does he get a 918 save percentage for the year? Doubt it highly.

Over Moose's career, there is a very slightly positive correlation between games played and save % (ignoring seasons below 19 games played). Marty's correlation is admittedly higher (though still fairly similar .16 vs. .25 I believe), but since there's not that many samples for lower games played for him and since he obviously played more games per season in his prime years than he did as a young or old guy, I think it's fairly biased.

 

[Bleedred]

Over Moose's career, there is a very slightly positive correlation between games played and save % (ignoring seasons below 19 games played). Marty's correlation is admittedly higher (though still fairly similar .16 vs. .25 I believe), but since there's not that many samples for lower games played for him and since he obviously played more games per season in his prime years than he did as a young or old guy, I think it's fairly biased.

Marty is conditioned to playing 70+ games a year in his career. He definitely shouldn't be playing that much anymore. He had a hard time with less starts early last year, and had an easier solid time with more.

Why do people always bring up save percentage too as if last year was his worst? from 98/99 to 01/02 Brodeur had a 906 save percentage for 3 of those 4 seasons. For some reason people always forget about other times in his career when he struggled. Like the first half of the 05/06 season. He had an 895 save percentage the first half of that season too. Or how about his craptastic SCF performance vs Roy, and the Avs?

 

[MasterofGrond]

Marty is conditioned to playing 70+ games a year in his career. He definitely shouldn't be playing that much anymore. He had a hard time with less starts early last year, and had an easier solid time with more.

Why do people always bring up save percentage too? from 98/99 to 01/02 Brodeur had a 906 save percentage for 3 of those 4 seasons.

Yeah and Brodeur wasn't why those teams were winning. But we don't have that kind of defense or forwards anymore.

Those teams had shot differentials of 7 to 8 per game. Seriously. You could probably roll out Toskala those years for the Devils and they're still easily in the playoffs.

 

[MasterofGrond]

The actual numbers point to Hedberg being a better goalie right now. You can explain/hand wave them away however you want, but unless somebody presents some compelling evidence to me, the only acceptable reason to choose this goalie split is "Marty is more important to the Devils than winning a couple more games this year."

If that's something you're willing to say, that's fine. I accept that as an argument.

 

[Bleedred]

Yeah and Brodeur wasn't why those teams were winning. But we don't have that kind of defense or forwards anymore.

Those teams had shot differentials of 7 to 8 per game. Seriously. You could probably roll out Toskala those years for the Devils and they're still easily in the playoffs.

Eh that last part reminds me of an anti Brodeur main board post. Brodeur was voted by his teammates for like 8 years straight including those years the teams MVP. I also remember 95/96 he would have won the Vezina, and should have won the Hart if we had made the playoffs. We missed the playoffs, and Lloyd Christmas won the Vezina.

I'm just gonna stop right there. You're entitled to your own opinion, and I'm not attacking you. Just saying if you really wished to see them split time, then I'm feel confident you're not gonna like the result. I feel you would be even more frustrated with Marty.

 

[Bleedred]

The actual numbers point to Hedberg being a better goalie right now. You can explain/hand wave them away however you want, but unless somebody presents some compelling evidence to me, the only acceptable reason to choose this goalie split is "Marty is more important to the Devils than winning a couple more games this year."

If that's something you're willing to say, that's fine. I accept that as an argument.

Alright this is going too far. The actual numbers point to Hedberg being the better goalie right now? FFS he's played 2 games! Marty has played 5! Marty had similar stats his first two games of the season.

 

[MasterofGrond]

Alright this is going too far. The actual numbers point to Hedberg being the better goalie right now? FFS he's played 2 games! Marty has played 5! Marty had similar stats his first two games of the season.

"Right now" looking at stats from the last 3 seasons.

There's a little more sample size behind my argument than 7 games.

 

[Bleedred]

Right now being the last 3 seasons.

There's a little more sample size behind my argument than 7 games.

What games did we lose because of poor play from Marty last year? I can remember 3. That horrible Toronto game last year after he came back from injury (Moose may have been able to win that) that Calgary game where he got pulled (Moose came in and continued to **** the game up and got the loss) and that Toronto game where he didn't even flinch in the shootout late in the season.

The other games Marty played bad in were blowouts where the team was held to a goal.

 

[Banana Sandwiches]

I've just come to the conclusion that power plays and new jersey do not mix

We've blamed MacLean, Oates, etc for the bad PPs, well guess what? All of the PPs under their watches sucked so what does that say? Our players just aren't getting it done

I just want to see the day when they move the puck on the PP, they're aggressive on the PK and look what its done - whenever its come to the PP, they're more passive

I actually thought the PP under Oates last year was the best for NJ in a long time.

But you're right about this team and PP not mixing. They were beyond awful in 2003, but were able to make up for it with a sick PK.

I've sort of accepted as a fan that they'll probably not have a good PP possibly ever, but I rather have a good PK since we apparently can't have both!

 

[kiwidevil]

I think the Isles PP was the best in the league until today's game. Now it's 5th. Awesome.

 

[Bleedred]

At least the PK is back to normal after that suckage we witnessed in the playoffs. We've only given up three 5 on 4 goals this year, and all of them were to the Islanders.

We're also still a threat to score on the PK which is awesome. We're also using a lot of different forwards on the PK. Which is why I think there is no need for Kovy to get so much PK time.

 

[kiwidevil]

We also lead the league in SHG's but are 5th most in penalties against. That needs to change. PK is 8th in the league.

 

[Bleedred]

We also lead the league in SHG's but are 5th most in penalties against. That needs to change. PK is 8th in the league.

Our PK was actually 4th until yielding 3 PP goals on 4 tries to the Isles on Thursday. It was probably even lower than 8th coming into today, because didn't we have to kill off like 6 penalties? 5th most in penalties against? I didn't realize we were that bad, but yeah that needs to change.

 

[MasterofGrond]

Hedberg had an even strength save percentage .08 higher than Brodeur in 11-12 and 10-11 and .03 worse in 09-10. (PP and PK sv% vary pretty wildly and show little correlation year to year, implying they have more to do with the team than the goalie).

Things point to him simply been stopping pucks better than Marty lately, though I would obviously love more data to confirm this, especially from Moose.

 

[MasterofGrond]

We also lead the league in SHG's but are 5th most in penalties against. That needs to change. PK is 8th in the league.

I think this will go down, it's small sample size I hope. Devils have traditionally been one of the most penalty adverse teams in the league virtually every season going all the way back to the 90s.

 

[Capt Nico Poo]

Who wouldnt want to play Moose after games like these? I think its just common sense. But Marty is our #1 and we stick with him.

 

[MasterofGrond]

Who wouldnt want to play Moose after games like these? I think its just common sense. But Marty is our #1 and we stick with him.

And that's absolutely fine as long as you accept that currently stats are pointing to that being a decision about team dynamics and history rather than one absolutely decided by winning.

 

[Volodya Krutov]

And that's absolutely fine as long as you accept that currently stats are pointing to that being a decision about team dynamics and history rather than one absolutely decided by winning.

Marty needs to play a lot to get into the groove. Hedberg needs time between his starts to remain effective.

A perfect combination, that's not complicated.

 

[Bleedred]

Marty's been saying for 20 years that the more he can play, the better he will play. This is not a new revelation.

I only brought it up to point out that if you are disappointed with Marty now, then you will be even more disappointed with him when he plays only half the games. He'll be very inconsistent. The off week last year before the playoffs started even showed that as he was very inconsistent during the Florida series. In 07 he sat for a week, and wasn't good in the Tampa Bay series. Even the first game back from all star break last year I remember him not being very good during regulation.

 

[MasterofGrond]

Marty would not be the first athlete to believe something about his play that wasn't entirely truthful. I see very little evidence to support his claim, and even less to support 65-70% being a good split. I'm not convinced a drop to 50% is going to kill his mojo. That's what, 6 games over 4 months?

And if anecdotal evidence is going to suffice, he sure started like gangbusters having having not played in 7 months and having a very short training camp. Then he kept playing, which should be advantageous, and has played 75% of our games and has not played as well (although with small sample size + some bad team play). I'd love to take an actual look at this issue so we don't have to deal with the same arguments, but i'm going to have to find the time and remember my stats classes.

Basically, if marty plays better with more games, then why 65%? He clearly has been under performing the last two seasons receiving such a workload. If he needs to play more to be better, play him more. If he needs to play more to be better but this is counteracted by fatigue, then we have an issue and maybe having a 41 year old goalie is a problem because right now we're receiving below-average goaltending from him (our starter) and have for the last 123 games (10% of his career).

 

[Techno Devil*]

i am going to save up all of my outlandish assertions until this team has played at least 20 or so games. some teams are playing like their hair is on fire while others still think they are playing pre season and we are almost a quarter of the way through.

not to take anything away from moose, but some guys are better back ups than they are starters. moose is a very hard working goaltender and it has shown when he is called upon to step up, but i think there is more of a method to the madness that the guy does pretty good when he has to play less than 40 games a year on a talented team rather than 40-60 on some pretty poor hockey teams in the early 2k PIT and mid 2k ATL squads.

it seems to be just the opposite for marty.
if he ever had a sub 30 gp season we would toss the numbers aside as an outlier anyway. the guy can still play 50 or 60 games a year when guys half his age cant go back to back and others get tired going into the 3rd period. (I remember lehtonen was a huge culprit in his ATL days.) Ive always thought that was quite a large piece of the allure marty has brought to the table regardless of his puck stopping ability.

nothing seems to be too broken. i dont understand why there is such polarization in a situation that has literally zero volatility, animosity, or implicit whatever-whatever-else-you-want-to-assert.

 

[MasterofGrond]

And even IF Marty plays ****** as a backup (which I do not think he will), so what?

If he plays 10 theoretical games in this shortened season (we have 10 back to backs) and puts up a save% of .880 (laughed out of the league, this is toskala is his worst ever season bad) WE STILL BREAK EVEN unless Moose plays worse, which is something I do not believe stats support (His best NHL season before 09-10 is terms of sv% was actually the one he played the most in + the correlation I pointed out earlier).

I'm not asking people to hop on the Moose over Marty bandwagon (though I may form one). I'm just asking everyone to evaluate your views and acknowledge that maybe the guy with less than a third of the mileage on his tires may be the "winning choice" and playing Marty may be a team dynamic and "heart" choice. Taking player opinions on themselves (or anything else) at face value is horrendously dangerous when egos are involved. Marty loves to play, and I will never begrudge him that, but I cannot possibly imagine him ever saying "I don't need to play all the time" because it's simply something that would never come out of his mouth. He can believe it with all his heart, but that doesn't make it true.

And I think i'm done ranting about this issue for the night, the booze has worn off and I'm tired, and HF Devils probably isn't the place to find people who like the message.

 

[hlaverty06]

Anyone got a YouTube of Hedbergs save on Grabner

 

[Billdo]

We're also still a threat to score on the PK which is awesome. We're also using a lot of different forwards on the PK. Which is why I think there is no need for Kovy to get so much PK time.

This... that cuts his ice time down by probably 2 minutes a game and I'd much rather him playing 23-25 minutes a night than 25-27 minutes a night. Plus with Gionta, Carter, Josefson, Henrique, Elias, Zubrus all capable of killing, there is no need to use him in that role.