nbonaddio
BELLOWS: THE BEST
- Mar 28, 2007
- 900
- 184
Note to mods: please feel free to merge this, but since it ventured off into a different arena, I thought it could stand alone.
So on about a billion different threads, I've been reading how a lot of us think on the basis of Murray in the AHL (and obviously, this year's playoffs), he's somewhat of a sure thing. I was curious about justifying that, so I wrote a little script that gave me all AHL goaltenders with a GAA below 2.20 and a SV above .925%. (For the sake of my own sanity, I ended in 2007.)
This returned 22 results, everyone from Petr Mrazek to a now retired goalie named Karl Goehring.
In order to get a decent idea of how Murray might do moving forward, I then wrote a similarity scoring algorithm which factored in age and draft position in addition to GAA and SV, because age is an obvious factor in development and draft position is a broad enough indicator of that goalie's perceived value as a prospect.
To create the similarity scores, I created z-scores for each statistic, and then looked at each player's different on each statistic to Murray. Since GAA had a much wider range than say, age, GAA is given a higher level of precedence to form the scores.
This gave me:
BASE: Matt Murray 2016 (age 21, 2.10, .931, 83rd overall)
1. Robin Lehner 2013 (age 21, 2.12, .938, 46th overall)
2. Jonathan Bernier 2010 (age 21, 2.03, .936, 11th overall)
3. Fredrik Andersen 2013 (age 23, 2.19, .929, 87th overall)
4. Cory Schneider 2009 (age 23, 2.04, .926, 26th overall)
5. Petr Mrazek 2014 (age 22, 2.06, .927, 141st overall)
6. Jake Allen 2014 (age 23, 2.03, .928, 34th overall)
7. Jaroslav Halak 2008 (age 23, 2.10, .929, 271st overall)
And others beyond there. So at least on the surface, it looks like a pretty strong group. I'm not really all that interested in right now though, I'm interested in what happens in the next three years beyond that performance, weighted by the similarity scores above, where a more similar goalie is given more weight in forming the projection.
Lehner 13-16: .914, 2.85 (82 GP; backup, getting better)
Bernier 10-13: .914, 2.24 (55 GP; backup, now..pretty bad)
Andersen 13-16: .918, 2.33 (125 GP; split net but it's all his now)
Schneider 09-12: .934, 2.08 (60 GP, backup with better stats, now unquestionably elite)
Mrazek 14-16: .920, 2.35 (83 GP, started backup, now starter..first year as 1A looks almost exactly the same as MAF)
Allen 14-16: .916, 2.32 (84 GP, split net with Elliott, who had better stats)
Halak 08-11: .915, 2.52 (136 GP, booted in favor of Price and then Elliott..and Greiss!)
Combining all of them and weighing them, we come up with:
.917, 2.36
This number is probably super bearish to you, given what MM did in the SC finals, and considering you're a Pens fan. I get that. But the numbers are what they are, there's no real massaging them. Murray can either outperform all of his comparables, or he can perform similarly to them, which is to say below MAF's last two years.
Of course, that's in a vacuum; in the real world we have things like salary caps, movement clauses, expansion drafts, and playoff nerves to contend with.
I guess my ultimate point here is to try to preach some sanity, and temper expectations a little bit. There is little to no reason to believe that MM will be a .920/2.20 goalie his first full year in the NHL, unless you believe both that he will outperform all of his statistical comparables and his age..not to mention the initial history of the goalies who are currently elite (Holtby, Price, etc. - see below, caveats).
My personal guess is that it will play out extremely close to Mrazek's arc; act as 1B for the first year, take over the next year. Although it's very likely that MAF will put better numbers than Howard did.
Your ultimate conclusion will vary, as will your personal preference to what kinds of numbers this team requires from a goalie for success. It's very possible that you can conclude that .917 from MM and room to sign Boedker is better than a .921 from MAF. I can't say I wholly disagree.
Notes:
Caveats:
So on about a billion different threads, I've been reading how a lot of us think on the basis of Murray in the AHL (and obviously, this year's playoffs), he's somewhat of a sure thing. I was curious about justifying that, so I wrote a little script that gave me all AHL goaltenders with a GAA below 2.20 and a SV above .925%. (For the sake of my own sanity, I ended in 2007.)
This returned 22 results, everyone from Petr Mrazek to a now retired goalie named Karl Goehring.
In order to get a decent idea of how Murray might do moving forward, I then wrote a similarity scoring algorithm which factored in age and draft position in addition to GAA and SV, because age is an obvious factor in development and draft position is a broad enough indicator of that goalie's perceived value as a prospect.
To create the similarity scores, I created z-scores for each statistic, and then looked at each player's different on each statistic to Murray. Since GAA had a much wider range than say, age, GAA is given a higher level of precedence to form the scores.
This gave me:
BASE: Matt Murray 2016 (age 21, 2.10, .931, 83rd overall)
1. Robin Lehner 2013 (age 21, 2.12, .938, 46th overall)
2. Jonathan Bernier 2010 (age 21, 2.03, .936, 11th overall)
3. Fredrik Andersen 2013 (age 23, 2.19, .929, 87th overall)
4. Cory Schneider 2009 (age 23, 2.04, .926, 26th overall)
5. Petr Mrazek 2014 (age 22, 2.06, .927, 141st overall)
6. Jake Allen 2014 (age 23, 2.03, .928, 34th overall)
7. Jaroslav Halak 2008 (age 23, 2.10, .929, 271st overall)
And others beyond there. So at least on the surface, it looks like a pretty strong group. I'm not really all that interested in right now though, I'm interested in what happens in the next three years beyond that performance, weighted by the similarity scores above, where a more similar goalie is given more weight in forming the projection.
Lehner 13-16: .914, 2.85 (82 GP; backup, getting better)
Bernier 10-13: .914, 2.24 (55 GP; backup, now..pretty bad)
Andersen 13-16: .918, 2.33 (125 GP; split net but it's all his now)
Schneider 09-12: .934, 2.08 (60 GP, backup with better stats, now unquestionably elite)
Mrazek 14-16: .920, 2.35 (83 GP, started backup, now starter..first year as 1A looks almost exactly the same as MAF)
Allen 14-16: .916, 2.32 (84 GP, split net with Elliott, who had better stats)
Halak 08-11: .915, 2.52 (136 GP, booted in favor of Price and then Elliott..and Greiss!)
Combining all of them and weighing them, we come up with:
.917, 2.36
This number is probably super bearish to you, given what MM did in the SC finals, and considering you're a Pens fan. I get that. But the numbers are what they are, there's no real massaging them. Murray can either outperform all of his comparables, or he can perform similarly to them, which is to say below MAF's last two years.
Of course, that's in a vacuum; in the real world we have things like salary caps, movement clauses, expansion drafts, and playoff nerves to contend with.
I guess my ultimate point here is to try to preach some sanity, and temper expectations a little bit. There is little to no reason to believe that MM will be a .920/2.20 goalie his first full year in the NHL, unless you believe both that he will outperform all of his statistical comparables and his age..not to mention the initial history of the goalies who are currently elite (Holtby, Price, etc. - see below, caveats).
My personal guess is that it will play out extremely close to Mrazek's arc; act as 1B for the first year, take over the next year. Although it's very likely that MAF will put better numbers than Howard did.
Your ultimate conclusion will vary, as will your personal preference to what kinds of numbers this team requires from a goalie for success. It's very possible that you can conclude that .917 from MM and room to sign Boedker is better than a .921 from MAF. I can't say I wholly disagree.
Notes:
- Despite being older than Murray, none of these guys were handed the net full-time..which is probably the #1 reason why MAF is still on the roster. Andersen probably the closest, and he was below average (.914, 2.38) in his only 1A season.
- The upside case here is probably Schneider, although in the context of that list, he looks like a big outlier. He was elite in a limited role behind Luongo, whose stats he eclipsed..although not until he was 25. (Worth noting that Luongo ended up being a very valuable acquisition for Florida, and now VAN has neither. Having fun with Ryan Miller, are you?)
- The downside case here is either Lehner or Bernier, which worries me quite a bit because they're the top two comparables. The latter was probably the more touted prospect, and now he's likely headed to a role of career backup after washing out in TOR. Lehner, jury is out, but statistics indicate him getting it together, after a significant amount of time. The larger point is, at one point they were the clear future of that franchise in net.
- I'm sure some of you are going to point to this and just say "Lehner sucks! No way Murray will play like that." Let me just say this: I hope not. He's pretty damn strong comparable though.
Caveats:
- Murray's performance the last two years (ie: not just one) doesn't really have a ton of comparables; certainly not his 2014-2015 performance, nor his Stanley Cup run. The closest is Halak, who made this list twice. Grain of salt needed.
- There are lots of elite goalies that either don't make the list of comparables because of the criteria (Carey Price, Braden Holtby, etc.) or because they were international (Henrik Lundkvist, etc.) so this is certainly not an exhaustive algorithm. With that said, Price had an average-to-below-average start to his career, as did Holtby. Both took until about 24-25 to really put it together. Same with Schneider.
- Obviously teams aren't apples to apples, nor are different eras of hockey. Some teams could be very defensive (STL) whereas some teams could give up a ton of odd-man breaks (us under Bylsma). Defense and opponent adjusting this would take forever, so I'm punting on it and listing it as a known caveat.
- This is done purely on stats, and therefore no comparisons are made of playing style, athleticism, or anything scouting-based. (Not only that it's scope-limited to one season of the AHL, but I did that because people seem to cite it on here as if it's the gospel, and because there just aren't a lot of other things to use.) Therefore, a lot of makes a goalie "NHL-ready" isn't factored in, and thus could be misleading as there are lots of players who put up great AHL stats but can't hack it in the majors, just like there are a lot of naturally gifted goalies who didn't light the minors on fire. Feel free to Murray's nerves/athleticism/bouncebackism or whatever for reasons to feel more confident about him than the numbers indicate.
- While I took a bunch of statistic classes (and founded and currently run a sports analytics company), I'm more of a CS guy and therefore true math/stats guys can probably poke a few holes in my logic. I think the core is pretty sound though.
- It's likely I messed something up somewhere, or that there's a bug in my code. If you want to use that as an excuse to be pedantic and rule out all of the analysis, your call.
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