How is anyone still making this claim? No, Raanta wouldn’t be an .880 goalie on this team, what the hell are you talking about? You act as though goaltending isn’t even a skill.
Goaltenders numbers do go down on teams with worse defense.
I posted about the implosion of the Columbus defense over the last three years and that has led to their goalies numbers taking a hit.
That said goalies can be bad behind a fantastic team defense. Goalies can be good behind terrible team defense. We’ve had a bunch of non-NHL quality starters and injured starters who played hurt when they probably shouldn’t have.
Detroit has a worse team defense than us. There was an article in Athletic about who should win the Vezina (it was Shayna examining advanced stats and it’s *surprise* Shesterkin).
She had this one list about stolen wins;
You can see poor Ned there, who does have .901 SV after started in 52 games and playing in 59 behind this:
As I said he had .901 SV%. In his 52 starts he did have 28 Quality Starts (.538%) and 10 Really Bad Starts. (Hockey-Reference uses these.) His record was 20-24-9.
Greiss started 28 games (31 GP) has an .891 SV%, 14 QS (.500%) and 7 RBS.
Pickard had 1 start with 3 GP, .875 SV% and 1 QS.
So Detroit got 43 Quality Starts (.531%) and 17 RBS.
I’m not writing out each individual dude for us, I’m done breaking down all their individual performances, but we got: 26 Quality Starts (.321%) and 20 RBS.
And here’s our defense:
Even if you want to argue that the open ice issues shown by the red there made it worse and blah blah blah, Detroit got way better goaltending behind a much worse team defense. That kept them out of the basement when their team defense did everything in it’s power to bury them in it (they have -84 goal differential).
Ruff’s system isn’t particularly kind to goalies (I don’t know if anyone would argue against that statement). There are games where we noticeably don’t play well defensively or dumb shit (like deflections) happen. I don’t think anyone always blames goalies 100% (
@Bleedred talks a ton about goalies and had grown to, uh, really dislike several of ours and comically rails against them but that’s his jam).
However our goalies very rarely helped us win at any point (as can be seen with the quality starts) much less steal 5 games. I think a Ned would have helped us more than he helped Detroit, that’s a much tougher team to play behind. (If we were healthy we would have feasted a bit on that defense when they recently played us at home.)
We’re 2-12 in 1 goal games and Detroit is 4-1. That’s not just about “not knowing how to win” or luck, our goalies needed us to score a lot to win.
We were 1-12 for a very long time. The 1st one was 4-3 W @ Buffalo on 12/29 with Blackwood in net. Hammond won 3-2 in Vegas on 4/18 giving us that second one.
Shayna Goldman provides an in-depth look at goalies who have earned legitimate consideration as the very best in net this season.
theathletic.com
