Post-Game Talk: Pricer 3:15 -- Habs 3-1 win over Wings!

[Talks to Goalposts]

It's about ****ing time you came back. Where the hell have you been?

Articling. The criminals won't get acquitted and divorces filed without me showing up in a suit to make it happen.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Articling. The criminals won't get acquitted and divorces filed without me showing up in a suit to make it happen.

Blahblahblah... there are more important things man.

Tell us how to evaluate goalies other than just save percentage. Anything out there that can reasonably be looked at?

 

[MasterDecoy]

Check us out the year he sat out I don't think we even made the playoffs. Comes back the following year to a cup win. Unfreakin' believable how underrated Dryden was because of the team in front of him but...

45 win, 24 losses. They made the playoffs

 

[Talks to Goalposts]

Blahblahblah... there are more important things man.

Tell us how to evaluate goalies other than just save percentage. Anything out there that can reasonably be looked at?

When I really want to know I hit up the dude with very good proprietary information that he won't share for his take.

For publicly available stuff, you can look at someone's save percentage for expected goals against save percentage, but I don't think anyone has a good automated expected goals system out in public these days. What really matters for shot quality is more pre-shot puck movement which increases save difficulty rather than shot location or type and I don't think anyone has a good public model.

The key thing to keep in mind is that shot quality against is on the system level dependent on defensive structure, individual players are just one out of five guys for system defense so they individually have minimal control over it. The best research I've seen on it suggests that there is likely something that happens on the team level through a combination of coaching and the 18 skaters in the lineup, but its difficult to reliably measure. And the effect is so nebulous compared to the inherent statistical noise of goal-tending that the underlying effect probably is over by the time you have enough scoring events to reliably track it. So statistically is an extremely difficult problem. It gets a little less noisy when you limit your measurement to just 5 on 5 events, as power plays are extremely dependent on team structure rather than goal-tending skill.

From what I've heard, the NHL front offices aren't working on much better data for goalies either, which is why the goalie market rarely makes much sense. If there are reliably internal metrics out there, I doubt more than 3-6 organizations have it. Some other might think they have better data, but they're probably kidding themselves about some snake oil somebody sold them.

For the purposes of arguing on the internet, you can do far worse than just looking at even strength save percentage over a very large sample size (3+ seasons) for the purposes of assessing overall goal-tending skill. The answer won't be entirely accurate, but it should get you in the ballpark of relative tiers of talent.

Goaltending metrics are very much a hard problem in this sphere. Goal-tending scouting tends not to be much better, going off of observed front office behaviour. For a guy like Price, its not hard to make the case that he is significantly above average over the course of his career compared to an average starter, but how much so is pretty difficult to get a firm and reliable answer on. The best assessment of Price I've seen IMO is that he was one of the best to the best of his particular generation, but for a generation of goaltenders where that meant less than it had in decades.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

When I really want to know I hit up the dude with very good proprietary information that he won't share for his take.

For publicly available stuff, you can look at someone's save percentage for expected goals against save percentage, but I don't think anyone has a good automated expected goals system out in public these days. What really matters for shot quality is more pre-shot puck movement which increases save difficulty rather than shot location or type and I don't think anyone has a good public model.

The key thing to keep in mind is that shot quality against is on the system level dependent on defensive structure, individual players are just one out of five guys for system defense so they individually have minimal control over it. The best research I've seen on it suggests that there is likely something that happens on the team level through a combination of coaching and the 18 skaters in the lineup, but its difficult to reliably measure. And the effect is so nebulous compared to the inherent statistical noise of goal-tending that the underlying effect probably is over by the time you have enough scoring events to reliably track it. So statistically is an extremely difficult problem. It gets a little less noisy when you limit your measurement to just 5 on 5 events, as power plays are extremely dependent on team structure rather than goal-tending skill.

From what I've heard, the NHL front offices aren't working on much better data for goalies either, which is why the goalie market rarely makes much sense. If there are reliably internal metrics out there, I doubt more than 3-6 organizations have it. Some other might think they have better data, but they're probably kidding themselves about some snake oil somebody sold them.

For the purposes of arguing on the internet, you can do far worse than just looking at even strength save percentage over a very large sample size (3+ seasons) for the purposes of assessing overall goal-tending skill. The answer won't be entirely accurate, but it should get you in the ballpark of relative tiers of talent.

Goaltending metrics are very much a hard problem in this sphere. Goal-tending scouting tends not to be much better, going off of observed front office behaviour. For a guy like Price, its not hard to make the case that he is significantly above average over the course of his career compared to an average starter, but how much so is pretty difficult to get a firm and reliable answer on. The best assessment of Price I've seen IMO is that he was one of the best to the best of his particular generation, but for a generation of goaltenders where that meant less than it had in decades.

Cool. Sadly that's what I figured, thanks.

I think it's pretty telling that Price's numbers were .900 before Weber came back and the immediately spiked to .930 aftewards (.923 after the Anaheim game.) But that's a unique case where we actually have the opportunity to see a before/after with a thin defense that gets one of its two reliable blueliners back. I can't help but think that he'd have been at least a .920+ goalie this year with Weber and he'd be higher than that if we had a decent blueline back there.

Also you should post more. Forget articling you're wasting your life.

 

[Talks to Goalposts]

Cool. Sadly that's what I figured, thanks.

I think it's pretty telling that Price's numbers were .900 before Weber came back and the immediately spiked to .930 aftewards (.923 after the Anaheim game.) But that's a unique case where we actually have the opportunity to see a before/after with a thin defense that gets one of its two reliable blueliners back. I can't help but think that he'd have been at least a .920+ goalie this year with Weber and he'd be higher than that if we had a decent blueline back there.

Also you should post more. Forget articling you're wasting your life.

It certainly can't be discarded that the Habs defense is spare parts and hope beyond Weber and Petry. Even given my long standing opinion that Weber is massively overrated, he's worthy of being rated, unlike whoever is #3 on the Habs depth chart.

On the other hand, Julien has made a career based on boosting his goaltenders above baseline, frequently with bluelines that were pretty low on talent behind Chara. I think this helps Price's skillset, which is about technical perfection and ability to shift into position to take shots so flawlessly less than it did for Thomas and Rask who were over commit to the shot goaltenders (Thomas much much much more so than Rask).

If I was looking at Price's season in toto, I'd say he'd been good for a starter, but not a superstar like he was at his peak. Fortunately for Monteal, their forwards at even strength have carried the team with Domi's unsustainable career season, Kotka's dominance of sheltered minutes and the perpetually underappreciated party that is Brendan Gallagher's minutes. Sad that power play completely tanked with Galchenyuk dealt and not adequately replaced, they could be a fringe good team rather than a maybe playoff team and Tampa Bay first round bait with an average PP. 27 was poor defensively, but he had a top notch half-court offensive zone game that the Habs can't replace internally.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

It certainly can't be discarded that the Habs defense is spare parts and hope beyond Weber and Petry. Even given my long standing opinion that Weber is massively overrated, he's worthy of being rated, unlike whoever is #3 on the Habs depth chart.

On the other hand, Julien has made a career based on boosting his goaltenders above baseline, frequently with bluelines that were pretty low on talent behind Chara. I think this helps Price's skillset, which is about technical perfection and ability to shift into position to take shots so flawlessly less than it did for Thomas and Rask who were over commit to the shot goaltenders (Thomas much much much more so than Rask).

If I was looking at Price's season in toto, I'd say he'd been good for a starter, but not a superstar like he was at his peak. Fortunately for Monteal, their forwards at even strength have carried the team with Domi's unsustainable career season, Kotka's dominance of sheltered minutes and the perpetually underappreciated party that is Brendan Gallagher's minutes. Sad that power play completely tanked with Galchenyuk dealt and not adequately replaced, they could be a fringe good team rather than a maybe playoff team and Tampa Bay first round bait with an average PP. 27 was poor defensively, but he had a top notch half-court offensive zone game that the Habs can't replace internally.

Wouldn't Price's .930 stretch from Weber's return to the Anaheim game suggest a superstar type season though? I also think Weber's overrated but without him the club has absolutely nothing back there. How does Price suddenly go from .900 to .930? It's not coincidence.

There was an article produced back in December that showed Montreal giving few shots but being the worst in the league at allowing chances in close. That combination is going to destroy a save percentage. Unfortunately there was no follow up on that article so I don't know what happened on that front after Weber's return. The article did say that Price was saving at 5 points above replacement (a fairly big difference) and that was at a .900 save percentage.

For the life of me I do not understand why you sign a goalie to ten mil and surround him with clowns. It's just mindblowingly stupid.

 

[Talks to Goalposts]

Wouldn't Price's .930 stretch from Weber's return to the Anaheim game suggest a superstar type season though? I also think Weber's overrated but without him the club has absolutely nothing back there. How does Price suddenly go from .900 to .930? It's not coincidence.

There was an article produced back in December that showed Montreal giving few shots but being the worst in the league at allowing chances in close. That combination is going to destroy a save percentage. Unfortunately there was no follow up on that article so I don't know what happened on that front after Weber's return. The article did say that Price was saving at 5 points above replacement and that was at a .900 save percentage.

For the life of me I do not understand why you sign a goalie to ten mil and surround him with clowns. It's just mindblowingly stupid.

The thing is, any guy worthy of being an bona fide starter in this league can string together a few months of .930 play. Modern goalies are really, really good and this make it hard for any of the top 20 in the world to distinguish themselves from the others sustainably.

From what I've heard and seen, Price has been at a legit superstar level recently, but that's a bit different than being a superstar regularly.

But they should totally get him a few non-chumps on the left side of the defense if they want to chase the playoffs. They already found the two hard positions to fill in the two RD and top power play unit defensemen, finding a pair of respectable top 4 spear carriers to slot in there ahead of Mete shouldn't be that hard to do, its no where near the pain that is finding decent righthanded D.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

The thing is, any guy worthy of being an bona fide starter in this league can string together a few months of .930 play. Modern goalies are really, really good and this make it hard for any of the top 20 in the world to distinguish themselves from the others sustainably.

From what I've heard and seen, Price has been at a legit superstar level recently, but that's a bit different than being a superstar regularly.

But they should totally get him a few non-chumps on the left side of the defense if they want to chase the playoffs. They already found the two hard positions to fill in the two RD and top power play unit defensemen, finding a pair of respectable top 4 spear carriers to slot in there ahead of Mete shouldn't be that hard to do, its no where near the pain that is finding decent righthanded D.

I don't disagree on goalies being able to string together a few months of good play. But Price has a large sample size we can compare against:

2014-2016 with Subban/Markov he's in the .927-.934 range
2017 with Weber and some Markov he's .923

2018 without Weber he's .900
2019 without Weber he's .900
2019 with Weber he's .923 (including the Anaheim disaster)

To me that is indicative of a goalie who's been behind trash.

 

[Runner77]

So this was the admonition the ref delivered on a hot mic: "Tomas ... that's interference!"

 

[Runner77]

Anyone notice this filthy-nifty pass by KK as he was heading to the bench?

Here it is in real time:

 

[Doc McKenna]

I'll give Drouin the benefit of the doubt. The team has had at least two members with the flu and injuries pile up. I don't think he'd skip if there wasn't reason to.

That being said, I've been about as patient as I can be with him. Next year I'd like to see him dealt for a number one blueliner on the left side. It's time to end the experiment.

Maybe Tampa has someone for the leftside , or nashville

 

[FormerLurker]

Can't blame him. The owners were making money hand over fist while many hockey players had to get second jobs...

Dryden was not one of those that needed a second job. He was making more money before his holdout 45 years ago than many people make today.

According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian salary in September 2017 was $986 per week. Dryden made 50 percent more than that in the year before his holdout 45 years ago. His holdout came across as greedy and selfish to the average fan. I was a kid and didn't understand the business side of the game then but I remember one of my dad's friends disliking Dryden from then on.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Dryden was not one of those that needed a second job. He was making more money before his holdout 45 years ago than many people make today.

According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian salary in September 2017 was $986 per week. Dryden made 50 percent more than that in the year before his holdout 45 years ago. His holdout came across as greedy and selfish to the average fan. I was a kid and didn't understand the business side of the game then but I remember one of my dad's friends disliking Dryden from then on.

As I said in a later post on this... even at 50 percent more than the average salary, he was getting ripped off. Think about how much money the organization was making. Players today make a heck of a lot more than double the average salary.

Dryden was smart enough to understand this and he could also have made similar or better money practicing law.

 

[Rapala]

45 win, 24 losses. They made the playoffs

My bad memory Didn't raise the cup though.