Jim Carey

[Nalyd Psycho]

I know there was some problems pointed out with it, but was it completely dismissed? Because the basic premise seems reasonable.

I'd say it's fact. Context requiring, but fact. There is the rhythm factor. Then there's the fact that a team peppering a goalie with shots is more likely shooting every chance rather than trying to make every shot count.

 

[seventieslord]

I know you're someone who has done a lot of research into this, so I'm wondering if you could go a little more in depth into it. (I guess I'm kind of derailing the thread)

While I realize that SV% and GAA are both based on GA, I don't see how it's "double counting" so much as giving context to each other. I think this could be amiss in something like Cy Young voting, where if you looked at two ways of calculating runs against, if would unfairly stack it against other things such as WHIP, SO/9, BB:SO, etc. However, with goaltending, we don't really have any other stats.

You caught me at a real bad time. I just got out of a lengthy goaltending debate with a friend in real life and don't feel like rehashing the same concepts.

The Contrarian Goaltender explained in great detail why he uses sv% above all else and I agree with that in full. It was long before this post came out that I was reminding people that GAA is just 1-SV% times shots against per game:

http://brodeurisafraud.blogspot.com/2010/03/one-stat-argument.html

As you said, GAA is just 1-SV% times shots against per game. But, this way of determining it basically serves for the shots to cancel each other out of the equation. GAA doesn't take into account shots. Obviously, this is why Sv% is a better statistic. However, it also doesn't directly tell you how many goals they're giving up per game, and I don't see how that isn't important in giving some context to the performance.

For example, if a goaltender gives up 2 goals on 20 shots, where his team was frequently controlling play in the other team's zone, which limited the total shots, but some bad pinches, or bad bounces led to a high number of 2 on 1s and breakaways, it would be a good goaltending performance despite a pedestrian .900Sv%. Would having 3 or 4 more weak shots from outside the circles really have made him have a better performance?

I know this is only one game, but it seems to me that guys with a GAA near 2 that have lower save percentages are somewhat criticized, when it seems that they may be hindered in a way by their team being good defensively. Even the best teams usually give up a couple good scoring chances a game, and it's fairly unreasonable to expect them to give up much less than 2 goals per game (since Kipper's 1.69 is the modern record), which should generally be enough for your team to win. I remember a poster a couple months ago had an argument that lower shots naturally led to a lower SV%. I know there was some problems pointed out with it, but was it completely dismissed? Because the basic premise seems reasonable.

- The premise appeared to work on the surface but did little to distinguish between cause and effect.

- Some teams are just plain better at preventing all shots, dangerous and otherwise. It's not often I would look at a 25-save performance versus a 35-save game and say "that 25-save game was much more impressive than the 35-save game because those shots were just more difficult." 100% of the shots your team prevents, don't score.

- Shot quality adjustments as well as PP/ES normalization have shown that there are even better ways to view sv%. But as far as official, readily avaialble stats go, sv% is the best one.

Sorry that I'm not in a real arguing mood here.

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One other thing about Carey's amazing 9 shutouts, though - suppose he had zero shutouts and those were all one goal games instead, and to balance it out, he allowed one fewer goal in each of 9 random games. Chances are, he turns a couple ties into wins and a couple losses into ties, for four more points in the standings. But his personal numbers are just as good. Same sv%. Same GAA. In all likelihood, better W/L record. No shutouts though. He doesn't sniff the Vezina at that point, but he's the same goalie.

 

[jkrx]

The best goalies of 95-96 were Hasek, Puppa, Hebert and Potvin. Best backup would be Hackett. Bottom line is Jim Carey were a fluke who got the vezina purely because of hyp and age.

 

[sr edler]

Bottom line is Jim Carey were a fluke

you can score a fluke goal or make a fluke save, but you can't have a fluke season or two, that's not the word for it ... you can have a season that's anomalous but that doesn't make it flukey

 

[jkrx]

you can score a fluke goal or make a fluke save, but you can't have a fluke season or two, that's not the word for it ... you can have a season that's anomalous but that doesn't make it flukey

What was anomalous about careys season? Because he had 9 shutouts?

 

[seventieslord]

It was a good season, it just wasn't among the six best that year. He deserved credit for being a good goalie and having a good season, fluke or not. But shutout hype got him the vezina.

 

[Wet Sprocket]

I wanna know what made him so wierd? Any examples?

 

[Rizer]

I wanna know what made him so wierd? Any examples?

I asked this earlier. Someone said he made their 'skin crawl' as in he was creepy or something...

I've read all the articles posted on him and got nothing of the sort from anything I've read.

I'm still waiting for any sort of example to justify a statement like that.

 

[jkrx]

I asked this earlier. Someone said he made their 'skin crawl' as in he was creepy or something...

I've read all the articles posted on him and got nothing of the sort from anything I've read.

I'm still waiting for any sort of example to justify a statement like that.

I dont know if he was strange but coaches and players reported that he was a loner who didnt fit with the team. He also started blaming everybody else when he fell off. For example he told Sinden in Boston that he had a bad goalie coach. Then Pat Burns came in and apparently destroyed the young goalies career as he didnt like him and demoted him to back up and later on to AHL. After that Carey got a bad reputation in the league and no one wanted to sign him. After that he just disapeared and nobody not even Bill Howard (a close friend who has a hockey school in Wisconsin) knew where he was. Jim Carey cut the media off and havent done an interview since then.

 

[Rizer]

I dont know if he was strange but coaches and players reported that he was a loner who didnt fit with the team. He also started blaming everybody else when he fell off. For example he told Sinden in Boston that he had a bad goalie coach. Then Pat Burns came in and apparently destroyed the young goalies career as he didnt like him and demoted him to back up and later on to AHL. After that Carey got a bad reputation in the league and no one wanted to sign him. After that he just disapeared and nobody not even Bill Howard (a close friend who has a hockey school in Wisconsin) knew where he was. Jim Carey cut the media off and havent done an interview since then.

That is pretty much what the article and every other source I've read about him has said. But that behaviour (being introverted, lashing out when things go bad etc) would be typical of a player so young and inexperienced at handling the pressures of major league hockey.

I don't find anything so odd about him not wanting to do interviews either. He made a lot of money in a short time, invested it well and is taken care of for life. He's left hockey behind and started over in business and doesn't want to be reminded of it. That isn't really weird, it's quite normal for someone who is truly moving on.

Based on what others were saying earlier about him, I was expecting people to post actual incidents where he was like serial killer creepy or said insane stuff, but apparently all 'weird' and 'made my skin crawl' chalk up to is a guy exhibiting normal behaviour after having a bad experience in the major leagues.

 

[HoweInUrFace]

Wow, that is extremely generous.

Along with Blaine Lacher, he took the league by storm in 1994-95. He was 7th with a .913 sv%. In 1995-96, he was definitely a very good goalie but his sv% of .906 was 15th in the NHL, nothing too special. It was the 9 shutouts that seduced the voters.

Surely you mean "he was above average for two years".

Carey's Vezina is highly suspect. Hasek had an off-year but was clearly the best goalie in the NHL. As usual, he led the NHL in sv% but had only two shutouts. Think about this: If one goalie is .906 with 9 shutouts, and one is .920 with 2 shutouts, what are their sv% in non-shutout games? Scary.

Carey also had a highly effective Washington defense of Johansson, Tinordi, Cote, Gonchar, Reekie, and Johnson, with 20-year old Brendan Witt as a #7. Hasek's defense corps was Zhitnik, Galley, Astley, Wilson, Huddy (at 36), Houda, and Boughner.

This. The Capitals had a great defense in front of him. Pretty much the opposite team of their team now: great defense, solid system of forechecking, hard working, but lacking the top-end talent to get over the top. Johanson, Tinordi, Cote and Gonchar was a fantastic top 4*. Hasek should have won that year.

*Nashville this year is like the exact carbon copy courtesy of David Poile

 

[sr edler]

What was anomalous about careys season? Because he had 9 shutouts?

i didn't say his season was anomalous, but it wasn't flukey ... a fluke is something that happens in a moment, and a whole season is more than a moment

 

[jkrx]

i didn't say his season was anomalous, but it wasn't flukey ... a fluke is something that happens in a moment, and a whole season is more than a moment

No fluke is a lucky or improbable occurrence, with the implication that the occurrence could not be repeated. Which Careys season were.