Player Discussion: Martin Jones

stator

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He was actually worse in the St. Louis series than he was in the Vegas series and the numbers will back that up, because I believe he had a .905% (or thereabouts) after the Vegas series. I'm pretty sure he was at .910% for the playoffs coming into the WCF and he finished with an .898% over the entire playoffs, so he was probably something like .875%-.880% (or worse) during the St. Louis series, just using lazy fast math.

That sounds about right to me... best series was with Colorado. Best and worst game was the Las Vegas series. Colorado has minimum scoring threats. So Jones did not have a constant, come at him opponent. Oddly, neither does StL, but not to the extend of Colorado.

I thought the best team the Sharks faced in this playoffs was Las Vegas.


I don't know why we should keep Dell around anyway given his cap hit. Move him and try Korenar/Bibeau or even one of the newer guys we signed as FA's earlier this season.

I have doubts going this direction. Looking at the past, Jones has done his best work when he had a legitimate backup goaltender that can take over his job. That was Reimer. Apparently, Jones needs incentive to keep his performance up.
 

stator

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Since 2000, there have been 28 goalies drafted in the 1st round. Of those 28, I'd say six of them have worked out for the team making the pick. Cam Ward, Fleury, Schneider (turned into Horvat), Price, Bernier (two assets from Bernier trade turned into Marian Gaborik for them), and Vasilevskiy.

I think you have to include Rask since he's only played for the Bruins, and Toronto was stupid to trade their 1st round pick without giving him one game.


It's a huge risk taking a goalie in the 1st round.

It definitely is, but it appears to be relative. The percentage of drafted goalies in the later rounds as you describe above is worse.


It certainly doesn't detract having a 1st round goaltender on the roster:
2000 champions - Brodeur 20th overall
2003 champions - Brodeur 20th overall
2006 champions - Ward 25th overall
2009 champions - Fleury 1st overall
2011 champions - Rask 21st overall
2012 champions - Bernier 11th overall
2016 champions - Fleury 1st overall
2017 champions - Fleury 1st overall

We should note there are more 1st round goaltender picks not on the list, then are. But if a team makes a great 1st round pick on a goaltender, they are more likely to reappear in the SCF. We'll have to see if Rask joins that list.

However, browsing the SCF finals since 2000, it appears to me the best balance of risk/reward is 2nd round goaltender picks (guys like Quick and Crawford for example).

I don't believe the Sharks have ever drafted a goalie in the 2nd round since 2000, and only once in the 3rd round (Robinson). They like to draft goaltenders in the later rounds, but that may have to do with DW trading 2nd round picks often.
 
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Pinkfloyd

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I think you have to include Rask since he's only played for the Bruins, and Toronto was stupid to trade their 1st round pick without giving him one game.




It definitely is, but it appears to be relative. The percentage of drafted goalies in the later rounds as you describe above is worse.


It certainly doesn't detract having a 1st round goaltender on the roster:
2000 champions - Brodeur 20th overall
2003 champions - Brodeur 20th overall
2006 champions - Ward 25th overall
2009 champions - Fleury 1st overall
2011 champions - Rask 21st overall
2012 champions - Bernier 11th overall
2016 champions - Fleury 1st overall
2017 champions - Fleury 1st overall

We should note there are more 1st round goaltender picks not on the list, then are. But if a team makes a great 1st round pick on a goaltender, they are more likely to reappear in the SCF. We'll have to see if Rask joins that list.

However, browsing the SCF finals since 2000, it appears to me the best balance of risk/reward is 2nd round goaltender picks (guys like Quick and Crawford for example).

I don't believe the Sharks have ever drafted a goalie in the 2nd round since 2000, and only once in the 3rd round (Robinson). They like to draft goaltenders in the later rounds, but that may have to do with DW trading 2nd round picks often.

I don't include Rask because Rask was picked by Toronto. They traded him the next year to Boston for Andrew Raycroft so they wasted a 1st round pick for one season and change of mediocre goaltending.

As for your second quote of mine, of course it's worse later on. The odds of drafting a starting goalie aren't great at all but the bust potential is greater than other positions and significantly worse on the franchise when that happens than others. The list you're giving is a huge moving of the goal posts and a pretty big leap in logic because there is no real connection to a team making a great pick on a goalie in the 1st round and reappearing in the SCF. Brodeur was drafted in freaking 1990. That's a different era to now. You're talking about a ten team difference in leagues. Rask was a backup when he won that first time. So was Bernier. And Fleury was a backup in 2016 and not a full-fledged starter in 2017. My list was about teams drafting a goalie in the 1st round and how it worked out for that team drafting them.
 

Bleedred

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That sounds about right to me... best series was with Colorado. Best and worst game was the Las Vegas series. Colorado has minimum scoring threats. So Jones did not have a constant, come at him opponent. Oddly, neither does StL, but not to the extend of Colorado.

I thought the best team the Sharks faced in this playoffs was Las Vegas.




I have doubts going this direction. Looking at the past, Jones has done his best work when he had a legitimate backup goaltender that can take over his job. That was Reimer. Apparently, Jones needs incentive to keep his performance up.
I don’t really agree with you on the Reimer thing just because he was a deadline acquisition. Jones had his best Sharks season that first year, but his backup for a majority of the year was a very unserviceable Alex Stalock, who they couldn’t even start at one point.

That was Jones best NHL season, because his really good year with LA was a year where he barely played any games and a .918% in 68 games is worth more to me than a .933% in 23 games or whatever it wasn’t. Including playoffs that year, Jones had over 90 games of .920%-ish goaltending.
 

matt trick

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I don’t really agree with you on the Reimer thing just because he was a deadline acquisition. Jones had his best Sharks season that first year, but his backup for a majority of the year was a very unserviceable Alex Stalock, who they couldn’t even start at one point.

That was Jones best NHL season, because his really good year with LA was a year where he barely played any games and a .918% in 68 games is worth more to me than a .933% in 23 games or whatever it wasn’t. Including playoffs that year, Jones had over 90 games of .920%-ish goaltending.

At first read that as this year. I was like Jesus how many 7+ goal games did he have...
 

Bleedred

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At first read that as this year. I was like Jesus how many 7+ goal games did he have...
As bad as Jones was this year, his season high in goals in a single game was 6, which happened 3 times. One time in OT and the other two times were in regulation in games that he completed and wasn’t yanked. He actually went 1-1-1 in those games.

You could also point to this being because the team didn’t allow many shots. If he averaged 35+ shots a night and still had an .896% on the season, I’m sure he would have had a 7 goal against game or two sprinkled in there.

One of those 6 goal against games was one where he faced 39 shots in a win against Washington in January. The others were a 6 goals on 26 shots game at Tampa in January, just two games before that. I was at that game. Then a 6 goals on 20 shots loss in overtime in Boston in February.
 

OrrNumber4

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In the aftermath of this people are saying the Sharks wasted a great performance from players like Couture, Burns, and Jones. Am I completely off base here to think that Jones was terrible?
 

Doctor Soraluce

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In the aftermath of this people are saying the Sharks wasted a great performance from players like Couture, Burns, and Jones. Am I completely off base here to think that Jones was terrible?
That's a hard question. I feel like when watching the games that Jones played extremely well and made some incredibly difficult stops in all but games 2-4 of the vegas series. They didn't lose to the Blues because of him. Gotta score more than 2 goals over a 3 games stretch in the playoffs. I felt like they continually gave up ridiculous high danger chances that NHL players are going to score on if given enough. That being said, if they had a way to ditch Jones and sign bobrovsky of someone else "better" I wouldn't shed a tear.
 

Sharksrule04

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That's a hard question. I feel like when watching the games that Jones played extremely well and made some incredibly difficult stops in all but games 2-4 of the vegas series. They didn't lose to the Blues because of him. Gotta score more than 2 goals over a 3 games stretch in the playoffs. I felt like they continually gave up ridiculous high danger chances that NHL players are going to score on if given enough. That being said, if they had a way to ditch Jones and sign bobrovsky of someone else "better" I wouldn't shed a tear.


I am a huge fan of Bob, but I also don't like spending that much on a goalie. I'd be ok paying the best goalies what Jones makes but I am not a fan of Jones's contract being that he isn't great. The ideal situation is to have a young goalie playing very well making under 4M. Bob is likely going to get 7M or more and I don't think we can afford that.
 
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Doctor Soraluce

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I am a huge fan of Bob, but I also don't like spending that much on a goalie. I'd be ok paying the best goalies what Jones makes but I am not a fan of Jones's contract being that he isn't great. The ideal situation is to have a young goalie playing very well making under 4M. Bob is likely going to get 7M or more and I don't think we can afford that.
True. I was thinking more of his vezina level regular seasons and finally being good in the playoffs instead of his price tag. If they lose EK65 and decide to move on from Jones (I doubt it) they may need to invest in an elite goalie.
 

StreetHawk

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I’d be cool with a few years of Bob around 7.5M if we got rid of Jones.
Goalies are the one position where they have to be worth their contract cause you simply can’t trade them.

CAn drop a $6 million F or D down the lineup but what can you do with a $6 mill goalie aside from give him fewer starts and this rely on a cheaper goalie for a year or two before they ask to get paid?

There are no outs, not with 5 years left at $5.75 mill cap hit. Be eating $2 million a year on average for 10 years on a buyout.

Term is too long for other teams to consider a reclamation project. Two years would be the max for that.

To me, goalies are the one position where you don’t extend too early like SJ did in 2017. Play it out. You need certainty above all other positions.

But it’s the nature of the position when they don’t play even as a backup until 22-24. Spend 2 years or so doing that before getting a starter role. Then comes time to pay them.
 

Pinkfloyd

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Goalies are the one position where they have to be worth their contract cause you simply can’t trade them.

CAn drop a $6 million F or D down the lineup but what can you do with a $6 mill goalie aside from give him fewer starts and this rely on a cheaper goalie for a year or two before they ask to get paid?

There are no outs, not with 5 years left at $5.75 mill cap hit. Be eating $2 million a year on average for 10 years on a buyout.

Term is too long for other teams to consider a reclamation project. Two years would be the max for that.

To me, goalies are the one position where you don’t extend too early like SJ did in 2017. Play it out. You need certainty above all other positions.

But it’s the nature of the position when they don’t play even as a backup until 22-24. Spend 2 years or so doing that before getting a starter role. Then comes time to pay them.

There's no reason to suspect that they wouldn't give Jones another year to see where he's at. After that, the Seattle expansion gives them an opportunity to move on from him. It's going to be very hard for him to have a statistically worse season than he did. A trade isn't out of the realm of possibility. Yeah he only has three teams but it's not inconceivable that one of his three teams would want him at a reduced cap hit which can be done up to 2.875 mil. Doing something like that for three years assuming he's dealt in some fashion when Seattle comes around is not impossible.

However, I do agree that goalie is a pivotal position to invest in and be as certain as you can be and don't invest term or big money if you don't have to.
 
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Alwalys

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Giving up the first goal is extremely bad in today's league. It allows the other team to play a different game and forces us to play a different game. We were a very different team with the lead all year. We chased way too many games because of Jones including every pivotal game in the 3rd round.

We did what we did this season massively in spite of Jones. He put in a bottom scraping performance this year and if this roster weren't near the best in the league we would have missed the playoffs.
 

Pinkfloyd

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Giving up the first goal is extremely bad in today's league. It allows the other team to play a different game and forces us to play a different game. We were a very different team with the lead all year. We chased way too many games because of Jones including every pivotal game in the 3rd round.

We did what we did this season massively in spite of Jones. He put in a bottom scraping performance this year and if this roster weren't near the best in the league we would have missed the playoffs.

And if they played something resembling defense from puck drop instead of bad turnovers and matador style defense, they would be playing Boston now too. It's not either/or. Both the D and the goaltending need to improve and really the D needs to improve more than the goalies because I don't think anyone can come in here playing behind our D and do much better over the long haul.
 
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Alwalys

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And if they played something resembling defense from puck drop instead of bad turnovers and matador style defense, they would be playing Boston now too. It's not either/or. Both the D and the goaltending need to improve and really the D needs to improve more than the goalies because I don't think anyone can come in here playing behind our D and do much better over the long haul.
is there any hard evidence that our defense is the worst in the league? because our goalie was the worst in the league. if it's going to be blamed on defense, let's see the metrics to back it up.
 

Doctor Soraluce

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is there any hard evidence that our defense is the worst in the league? because our goalie was the worst in the league. if it's going to be blamed on defense, let's see the metrics to back it up.
I don't know about metrics but on a number of those early goals in the playoffs they were odd man breaks, guys uncovered around the net or high slot. Those are tough chances to give up and are solely on the defensive play of the team. I don't remember many early goals that seemed soft. Yeah you'd like jones to stop some but the team in front has to actually show up in the beginning of games as well. After the first couple times they should have adjusted and protected Jones much more diligently in the beginning of games and periods. The one thing I concluded from this teams playoffs is that they have trouble showing up until their back is against the wall.
 
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Pinkfloyd

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is there any hard evidence that our defense is the worst in the league? because our goalie was the worst in the league. if it's going to be blamed on defense, let's see the metrics to back it up.

Well firstly it doesn't need to be the worst in the league for it to be true. Secondly, quite often goaltending statistics are merely reflections of team defense. All you have to do is look back at all those goals and see where they're coming from to understand that it is true. Letting the other team into a prime scoring area before your goalie has even touched the puck is not a recipe for success.
 

Jaleel619

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Not quite sure what all the fuss is/was, if you look back at the kings series in 14 it was incredibly similar. We outscored them by large margins early on, and then towards the end it was low scoring close games. I dont recall the kings fans blaming Quick. That's the nature of a series, with two evenly matched teams. I was actually more disappointed in the fan base for reacting like that, but luckily the guys in that room have such a strong belief system.

To be fair, I was also shocked we were sticking with Jones going into Game 5, but after sleeping on it. He's our #1 guy next year anyway, so hes our guy. Im real happy we have one of those come back series with stunning fashion. Thats there forever, and Vegas probably won't be the same next year. Just like how we kind of fell down in 15 and didn't make the playoffs.
 

Patty Ice

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In the aftermath of this people are saying the Sharks wasted a great performance from players like Couture, Burns, and Jones. Am I completely off base here to think that Jones was terrible?

I don't think so at all. While I will eat crow in my prediction that he will be the reason the Sharks fail this season (he wasn't), he was a leading part of the ultimate failure. He stole one game for the Sharks the entire playoffs and while he made a number of crucial saves, he also gave up some debilitating early goals that resulted in many up-hill-climb games. There were stretches were he was the average goalie the team needed him to be but was Regular season Jones too many times which resulted into too many 7 game series that left the old and injured no time rest. He needed to steal at least a game or two each series and he failed on that front.
 

SJSharksfan39

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I don't think Jones was the reason for the Sharks playoff failure, but I do think Jones was one of the big reasons why the Sharks started the playoffs against Vegas. He was awful down the stretch.
 

Alwalys

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I don't know about metrics but on a number of those early goals in the playoffs they were odd man breaks, guys uncovered around the net or high slot. Those are tough chances to give up and are solely on the defensive play of the team. I don't remember many early goals that seemed soft. Yeah you'd like jones to stop some but the team in front has to actually show up in the beginning of games as well. After the first couple times they should have adjusted and protected Jones much more diligently in the beginning of games and periods. The one thing I concluded from this teams playoffs is that they have trouble showing up until their back is against the wall.

Well firstly it doesn't need to be the worst in the league for it to be true. Secondly, quite often goaltending statistics are merely reflections of team defense. All you have to do is look back at all those goals and see where they're coming from to understand that it is true. Letting the other team into a prime scoring area before your goalie has even touched the puck is not a recipe for success.

I went through the stats and what they do show is that SJ's defense was one of the more porous in the league, but not the most porous. In the playoffs they were by some measures the most porous, certainly the most out of the final 4 teams. However what the stats also show is that Jones underperformed beyond the defense's relative performance. He ranks low on most of the save% lists of each type. He gives up a lot of rebound chances, which we see in games where he does not swallow pucks to kill plays as often as he should.

We actually did check these stats several times during the season that it was true then as well. The eye test showed it as well, with the number of times saying the defense could have been better but Jones has to have that. All the metrics that showed expected saves vs actual saves were very unflattering to Jones. Those as much as possible isolate the goalie's individual performance and it was bad.

All this said, I do wonder if a goalie can improve to deal with a team that deliberately gives up defense for offense. Deboer stated he did that this year and Jones was told that before the season, which was the reason he tried to change his style. Maybe he is a work in progress on that style, and can improve. It is possible to succeed behind porous defense much more than Jones did, Holtby, Gibson, Markstrom and Bobrovsky all faced more HD chances this season and all outperformed him significantly. Price and Howard faced similar and also outperformed him.
 
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hockeyfan55

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I think you have to include Rask since he's only played for the Bruins, and Toronto was stupid to trade their 1st round pick without giving him one game.




It definitely is, but it appears to be relative. The percentage of drafted goalies in the later rounds as you describe above is worse.


It certainly doesn't detract having a 1st round goaltender on the roster:
2000 champions - Brodeur 20th overall
2003 champions - Brodeur 20th overall
2006 champions - Ward 25th overall
2009 champions - Fleury 1st overall
2011 champions - Rask 21st overall
2012 champions - Bernier 11th overall
2016 champions - Fleury 1st overall
2017 champions - Fleury 1st overall

We should note there are more 1st round goaltender picks not on the list, then are. But if a team makes a great 1st round pick on a goaltender, they are more likely to reappear in the SCF. We'll have to see if Rask joins that list.

However, browsing the SCF finals since 2000, it appears to me the best balance of risk/reward is 2nd round goaltender picks (guys like Quick and Crawford for example).

I don't believe the Sharks have ever drafted a goalie in the 2nd round since 2000, and only once in the 3rd round (Robinson). They like to draft goaltenders in the later rounds, but that may have to do with DW trading 2nd round picks often.
This is so disingenuous



I edited the post to include only starting goalies. You have 0 in the last 10 years


2011- Backup
2012- Backup
2016/17 - Backup.

Lol
2000 champions - Brodeur 20th overall
2003 champions - Brodeur 20th overall
2006 champions - Ward 25th overall
2009 champions - Fleury 1st overall
 

Pinkfloyd

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I went through the stats and what they do show is that SJ's defense was one of the more porous in the league, but not the most porous. In the playoffs they were by some measures the most porous, certainly the most out of the final 4 teams. However what the stats also show is that Jones underperformed beyond the defense's relative performance. He ranks low on most of the save% lists of each type. He gives up a lot of rebound chances, which we see in games where he does not swallow pucks to kill plays as often as he should.

We actually did check these stats several times during the season that it was true then as well. The eye test showed it as well, with the number of times saying the defense could have been better but Jones has to have that. All the metrics that showed expected saves vs actual saves were very unflattering to Jones. Those as much as possible isolate the goalie's individual performance and it was bad.

All this said, I do wonder if a goalie can improve to deal with a team that deliberately gives up defense for offense. Deboer stated he did that this year and Jones was told that before the season, which was the reason he tried to change his style. Maybe he is a work in progress on that style, and can improve. It is possible to succeed behind porous defense much more than Jones did, Holtby, Gibson, Markstrom and Bobrovsky all faced more HD chances this season and all outperformed him significantly. Price and Howard faced similar and also outperformed him.

And those teams did worse than the Sharks too. I just don't think that the system is a winning formula for this team and its talents. I also don't think moving Jones is a realistic option. Their best bet is to try and develop goaltenders while also employing a system that covers their bases the best. A team with exceptional offensive talent shouldn't be as loose defensively as this team especially if the goaltending isn't bailing them out. Those early goals don't happen without people blowing their assignments on their first shift. That's unacceptable all around.
 
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