Ranking the top-40 goaltenders by Goals Allowed Per Expected Goal Against

[Frank Drebin]

Vasilevskiy, I don't know. His numbers are outstanding but he seems to get hit harder than anyone by team impacts. He's a strange case.

Price and Rask have sucked the last three seasons, so yes. Rask, in particular, has been horrendous. Bad numbers on an exceptional defensive team. I'm honestly not sure what more Rask needs to do for people to stop thinking he's a great goaltender.

No. You're not getting off without an answer.

You're defending the use of these stats so I'm forcing you to commit one way or the other.

Either Smith, Talbot and Halak outplayed Price, Vasi and Rask over the past three seasons,

Or

This statistic doesn't tell us much at all.

On the record, go.

 

[Machinehead]

No. You're not getting off without an answer.

You're defending the use of these stats so I'm forcing you to commit one way or the other.

Either Smith, Talbot and Halak outplayed Price, Vasi and Rask over the past three seasons,

Or

This statistic doesn't tell us much at all.

On the record, go.

I gave you an answer. Those shitty goaltenders have outplayed Price and Rask. Put it on the f***ing record.

 

[Frank Drebin]

Why not compare apples to apples and use the same 5,000 minute filter?

NHL.com - Stats

Price ranks 18th with a SV% of .915. Mike Smith ranks 27th with a SV% of .911. They are not very far apart there. If the guy with a .915 was playing behind a very good defense, while the guy with a .911 was playing behind a very weak defense, I don't think it's crazy to suggest that the guy with a .911 was better. I mean, seriously, that is not a big gap.

Look at the shots price faced over the past 3 years:

At even strength in particular, the high danger areas near the front of the net are all mostly blue, meaning he faces less than an average goalie from those areas. Meanwhile, the red spots, where he faces more than an average goalie, generally come from the perimeter. (The results on the PK are mixed.)

Now compare them to the shots that Mike Smith has faced:


That 2016-2017 Arizona defense in particular was meme worthy, and Smith posted a .914 SV% in front of them.

Can you not at least agree, that from what you see on these images, that the difference in the defense in front of them was clear as day? And can you not agree that if all else was equal, a goaltender posting the same exact numbers in Smith's skates would have performed better than a goaltender posting those numbers in Price's skates? Clearly, you can at least agree there, right? And you can agree that comparing the two side-by-side by save percentage, or even worse, goals against average, would be extremely unfair to Smith?

Now consider that their SV% is only .004% apart. For every 1,000 shots that they faced, Price stopped 4 more. That is 1 goal against per 250 shots, or roughly 1 extra goal against every 10 games.

Why is it so crazy to say that after adjusting for the defenses in front of them, Smith was actually a little better? You keep saying that it's crazy or "wack", but you haven't provided a reason as to why that is.

Have your watched Mike Smith play goal lately? Same goes for Talbot. Any list that has both of them inside the top 20 in the league is wack. They're not good goalies.

As for the filter, Price went from 11/20 to 18/40. Similar placement.

 

[Frank Drebin]

I gave you an answer. Those ****ty goaltenders have outplayed Price and Rask. Put it on the ****ing record.

Nope, Vasi too. Or the stat is bunk. You can't just pick who you agree with and ignore who you don't.

On the record, go.

 

[Bleedred]

Vasilevskiy, I don't know. His numbers are outstanding but he seems to get hit harder than anyone by team impacts. He's a strange case.

Price and Rask have sucked the last three seasons, so yes. Rask, in particular, has been horrendous. Bad numbers on an exceptional defensive team. I'm honestly not sure what more Rask needs to do for people to stop thinking he's a great goaltender.

Rask is just living off a reputation. I think the fact that Boston is still a playoff team (Although they weren't for a couple of the years since Rask hasn't been a .920% goaltender) also helps keep this reputation going. If Boston were out of the playoffs every year, I think people would start thinking ''Hey, they have Rask. He used to be really good 4+ years ago, but he hasn't done shit in years'', minus a few people who would just blame his drop in play on the fact that Boston ''Isn't as good of a team as they used to be''. Which many people keep arguing ever since Rask's drop in play started. Halak played almost as many games as Rask last year in Boston, yet not only did he perform significantly better than Rask, he performed much better than he has in years on any other team he played on. I don't take it seriously when a backup goalie that's not used much has better numbers than the starter that's used heavily, but Halak didn't play that much less than Rask this past year in the regular season.

I think Price had a pretty solid year last season and in 16-17, but his 17-18 season was terrifyingly bad. It looks like it was an anomaly and just a really down/bad year for him, but it also looks like his .920%+ days are (at least for the most part) over. He might have one of these one-off renaissance seasons where he's a .925% or something again.

As someone who is a fan of teams that have really BAD goalies, I would say guys like Rask aren't even that bad, but that's what happens when you're trying to watch Keith Kinkaid used in a starting goalie role, watching Cory Schneider's cremated remains or Mediocre Martin Jones or Aaron Dell leaving the entire net open because he gives too many angles.

And I read the same recency bias regarding Schneider on the Devils forum. ''He was a .920% goalie the last 16 games of the year'' despite the fact that he's like a .907% goalie over the last 3 combined years and last 120 games he's played.

 

[TomasHertlsRooster]

Vasilevskiy, I don't know. His numbers are outstanding but he seems to get hit harder than anyone by team impacts. He's a strange case.

Price and Rask have sucked the last three seasons, so yes. Rask, in particular, has been horrendous. Bad numbers on an exceptional defensive team. I'm honestly not sure what more Rask needs to do for people to stop thinking he's a great goaltender.

Vasilevskiy's team plays a defensive system that is built to flatter a goaltender's SV%, and it has consistently been that way for 3 seasons now.



Every year, on the PK and at 5-on-5, he faces FAR less than league average in front of the net. Tampa has consistently executed that system over a 3-year sample. It's not a coincidence that Vasilevskiy's xSV% of 92.01% over the past 3 seasons is 2nd per Corsica's model. To give you an idea of how high that is, 3rd place Robin Lehner is at 91.68%.

1st place in xSV%? Devan Dubnyk, at an absolutely ridiculous 92.51%.



Dubynk's defense is basically Vasilevskiy's defense on steroids. So it makes sense that despite posting a .921 and .918 SV%, respectively, Dubnyk and Vasilevskiy both grade below average once you factor in the quality of shots that they face.

 

[Machinehead]

Nope, Vasi too. Or the stat is bunk. You can't just pick who you agree with and ignore who you don't.

On the record, go.

Doesn't this decidedly go against the "stats don't tell the whole story" narrative you guys are always shilling?

 

[Frank Drebin]

Doesn't this decidedly go against the "stats don't tell the whole story" narrative you guys are always shilling?

Don't deflect.

Talbot and Smith outplayed Vasi over the past 3 seasons, or the stat is bunk.

 

[Machinehead]

Rask is just living off a reputation. I think the fact that Boston is still a playoff team (Although they weren't for a couple of the years since Rask hasn't been a .920% goaltender) also helps keep this reputation going. If Boston were out of the playoffs every year, I think people would start thinking ''Hey, they have Rask. He used to be really good 4+ years ago, but he hasn't done **** in years'', minus a few people who would just blame his drop in play on the fact that Boston ''Isn't as good of a team as they used to be''. Which many people keep arguing ever since Rask's drop in play started. Halak played almost as many games as Rask last year in Boston, yet not only did he perform significantly better than Rask, he performed much better than he has in years on any other team he played on. I don't take it seriously when a backup goalie that's not used much has better numbers than the starter that's used heavily, but Halak didn't play that much less than Rask this past year in the regular season.

I think Price had a pretty solid year last season and in 16-17, but his 17-18 season was terrifyingly bad. It looks like it was an anomaly and just a really down/bad year for him, but it also looks like his .920%+ days are (at least for the most part) over. He might have one of these one-off renaissance seasons where he's a .925% or something again.

As someone who is a fan of teams that have really BAD goalies, I would say guys like Rask aren't even that bad, but that's what happens when you're trying to watch Keith Kinkaid used in a starting goalie role, watching Cory Schneider's cremated remains or Mediocre Martin Jones most nights.

And I read the same recency bias regarding Schneider on the Devils forum. ''He was a .920% goalie the last 16 games of the year'' despite the fact that he's like a .907% goalie over the last 3 combined years and last 120 games he's played.

Speaking of which, I love when they come at me with the "But LuNdqvIST HAs BAD AnalYtIcS" crap.

Yes, Lundqvist has mostly sucked since like 2015, so glad you're catching on.

 

[Machinehead]

Don't deflect.

It's not a deflection. You're always saying stats don't tell the whole story but here you are saying that if a stat isn't 100% correct in 100% of cases, it's complete garbage.

You've entirely contradicted yourself.

 

[Frank Drebin]

It's not a deflection. You're always saying stats don't tell the whole story but here you are saying that if a stat isn't 100% correct in 100% of cases, it's complete garbage.

You've entirely contradicted yourself.

I haven't. I've said all along that this list was garbage.

You're defending it, so obviously you agree that the Alberta goalies outplayed Vasi over the past 3 seasons.

Or is this just a small part that should be considered when evaluating goalie performance?

 

[Bleedred]

It's so weird. Everyone openly acknowledges that it's the most volatile position ("goalies are voodoo!") but it's also the position where it takes like 7-10 years for opinions to change on a player, more so than any other position.

I think you're right. Rinne had some very BAD years between 2013-2016. I think he had 3 seasons in 4 years where he was really poor, before experiencing 3 straight years of turning back the clock a bit to the pre-2012 lockout Rinne. But people were still calling him an elite goalie during that time. I think he's earned a bit of that back with his last 3 years, but I remember saying the same thing about him in 2016. That he was living off a very dated reputation.

Then there's goalies that really aren't very good (*Cough* Martin Jones *Cough*) but play on a STACKED team and people consider them better than they really are. I don't think you'll see it much after this past year, but Martin Jones would be on so many ''Top 5-10 goalies in the NHL'' lists, everywhere I looked before this year. Whether it was in the media or made by fans on here. Despite the fact that Jones was just a very average goalie, who played on a team where he might not have even been a top-10 player on the entire team, let alone a top-10 player at the position in the entire world.

I think Corey Crawford was the only goalie on a stacked team in recent years who actually experienced the opposite of this. Osgood on the Red Wings back in the day was another. Crawford would get underrated because of how stacked Chicago was and probably because of the fact that Niemi won the cup there as a rookie starter a few years before he did. And all during that same time, Niemi was overrated around the league when he was playing for the Sharks and the fact that he won the cup as a starter probably didn't hurt him.

 

[Machinehead]

I haven't. I've said all along that this list was garbage.

You're defending it, so obviously you agree that the Alberta goalies outplayed Vasi over the past 3 seasons.

Or is this just a small part that should be considered when evaluating goalie performance?

The first thing I said about this ranking is that it isn't perfect.

You're just being obtuse because you're mad that Price sucks.

 

[Frank Drebin]

The first thing I said about this ranking is that it isn't perfect.

You're just being obtuse because you're mad that Price sucks.

Checkmate. Have a good evening.

 

[Machinehead]

I think you're right. Rinne had some very BAD years between 2013-2016. I think he had 3 seasons in 4 years where he was really poor, before experiencing 3 straight years of turning back the clock a bit to the pre-2012 lockout Rinne. But people were still calling him an elite goalie during that time. I think he's earned a bit of that back with his last 3 years, but I remember saying the same thing about him in 2016. That he was living off a very dated reputation.

Then there's goalies that really aren't very good (*Cough* Martin Jones *Cough*) but play on a STACKED team and people consider them better than they really are. I don't think you'll see it much after this past year, but Martin Jones would be on so many ''Top 5-10 goalies in the NHL'' lists, everywhere I looked before this year. Whether it was in the media or made by fans on here. Despite the fact that Jones was just a very average goalie, who played on a team where he might not have even been a top-10 player on the entire team, let alone a top-10 player at the position in the entire world.

I think Corey Crawford was the only goalie on a stacked team in recent years who actually experienced the opposite of this. Osgood on the Red Wings back in the day was another. Crawford would get underrated because of how stacked Chicago was and probably because of the fact that Niemi won the cup there as a rookie starter a few years before he did. And all during that same time, Niemi was overrated around the league when he was playing for the Sharks and the fact that he won the cup as a starter probably didn't hurt him.

Halak is another good example of one that goes in the opposite direction.

"Lol this stat is bad because it has Halak ahead of my favorite team's goalie!" Halak has been a consistently good goaltender since like, 2008. He had one year with the Blues where he absolutely shit himself and has been a meme ever since.

 

[Machinehead]

Checkmate. Have a good evening.

Congrats on checkmating yourself. I'm legitimately impressed.

 

[Bleedred]

Speaking of which, I love when they come at me with the "But LuNdqvIST HAs BAD AnalYtIcS" crap.

Yes, Lundqvist has mostly sucked since like 2015, so glad you're catching on.

The weirdest thing about Lundqvist for me last year was that he started the season GREAT. Like, his save percentage was very high (in the .920's% until early December, if I recall correctly) and the percentage of goals I counted that I thought were stoppable on him was very low.

And what I found with him was that his save percentage dropping seemed to completely coincide with the rate of goals that I was counting stoppable rising.

I remember a lot guys seemed to balance out at some point. Like Grubauer having a very poor save percentage through January, yet having a low percentage of goals I counted as stoppable. I remember saying in December and January that I think his save percentage would increase and I wound up being right. While also predicting Koskinen and Rittich's save percentages would drastically drop. Rittich's did by quite a bit and Koskinen's did even more, but not as bad as I would have thought. Koskinen was a joke.

 

[Frank Drebin]

Halak is another good example of one that goes in the opposite direction.

"Lol this stat is bad because it has Halak ahead of my favorite team's goalie!" Halak has been a consistently good goaltender since like, 2008. He had one year with the Blues where he absolutely **** himself and has been a meme ever since.

And the year where he played in the ahl?

 

[TomasHertlsRooster]

Have your watched Mike Smith play goal lately? Same goes for Talbot. Any list that has both of them inside the top 20 in the league is wack. They're not good goalies.

As for the filter, Price went from 11/20 to 18/40. Similar placement.

Yes, I have. Probably more than you have, since they were both in the Pacific Division. And I do think that both were very bad this season.

That's why it doesn't shock me that by this same exact stat stat, if you use data from only this season and use a 1,900 minute minimum to match the sample size of 40 goaltenders, Smith ranks 30th, and Talbot ranks 38th.

Rank	Player	Goals Allowed Per Expected Goal Against
1	Ben Bishop	0.80
2	Robin Lehner	0.84
3	Thomas Greiss	0.85
4	John Gibson	0.87
5	Jaroslav Halak	0.88
6	Darcy Kuemper	0.94
7	Anton Khudobin	0.95
8	Andrei Vasilevskiy	0.95
9	Curtis McElhinney	0.95
10	Pekka Rinne	0.96
11	Petr Mrazek	0.97
12	Braden Holtby	0.97
13	Corey Crawford	0.98
14	Jacob Markstrom	0.98
15	Matt Murray	0.98
16	Casey DeSmith	0.98
17	Frederik Andersen	0.99
18	Marc-Andre Fleury	0.99
19	Philipp Grubauer	1.00
20	Jimmy Howard	1.02
21	Sergei Bobrovsky	1.02
22	Carey Price	1.03
23	Tuukka Rask	1.05
24	David Rittich	1.05
25	Connor Hellebuyck	1.05
26	Semyon Varlamov	1.05
27	Henrik Lundqvist	1.05
28	Mikko Koskinen	1.08
29	Martin Jones	1.09
30	Mike Smith	1.10
31	Jake Allen	1.11
32	Carter Hutton	1.11
33	Anders Nilsson	1.14
34	Devan Dubnyk	1.14
35	Craig Anderson	1.15
36	Roberto Luongo	1.15
37	Linus Ullmark	1.18
38	Cam Talbot	1.20
39	Keith Kinkaid	1.21
40	Jonathan Quick	1.29

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Of course, these results are going to be vastly different from the results in a 3-year sample. And it makes sense that the 3 year sample ranks these goaltenders much higher, since Talbot was Vezina caliber in 2016-2017, and only somewhat below average in 2017-2018. This was Talbot's worst season, but he also played barely half as many games as he had in the prior 2 seasons, so the results of this season were weighted much less heavily. In Smith's case, he was very good in the two seasons before this one, and once again, he played more games in those seasons than he did in this one. Your evaluations of each players place much heavier weight on their recent performances than their performances in years prior, where as the list in the OP places no more weight on game 1 of 2016-2017 than it does on game 82 of 2018-2019.

Nope, Vasi too. Or the stat is bunk. You can't just pick who you agree with and ignore who you don't.

On the record, go.

That isn't how stats work. At all.

I'm guessing that you don't think points per game is a bunk stat, right?

Well, over the past 3 seasons, Jonathan Huberdeau has a higher points per game than Patrice Bergeron. Does that mean that if you don't agree that Huberdeau is superior to Bergeron, then points per game is bunk? No, it doesn't, because that isn't how stats work.

You can see an immense amount of value in a statistic, and still not rank every single player by that one statistic. That is why I specified in the OP that if I were actually ranking these players, I would take somebody like Frederik Andersen over Philipp Grubauer, since Andersen has a longer track record of consistent performances under a much heavier workload.

Don't deflect.

Talbot and Smith outplayed Vasi over the past 3 seasons, or the stat is bunk.

Again, this is not how it works.

There is not one stat by which you can rank players and decide that every single player is superior to the players ranked behind them. Not one.

That does not mean that there is not one stat that is not bunk. There are many stats that are not bunk.

 

[Bleedred]

And the year where he played in the ahl?

I don't even think he was that bad that year.

That year to me was more about Garth Snow waiving him because he was worried about losing young stud JF Berube to waivers, so they just punted the old guy away.

Not to mention that Thomas Greiss started that year out really hot, got an extension, then faded out the rest of that year, which got Halak called back up into the picture again before year's end.

And for all that Berube nonsense, who they were too afraid to lose, the guy's short NHL body of work was incompetent and his AHL performance last year was equally as bad.

 

[Machinehead]

The weirdest thing about Lundqvist for me last year was that he started the season GREAT. Like, his save percentage was very high (in the .920's% until early December, if I recall correctly) and the percentage of goals I counted that I thought were stoppable on him was very low.

And what I found with him was that his save percentage dropping seemed to completely coincide with the rate of goals that I was counting stoppable rising.

I remember a lot guys seemed to balance out at some point. Like Grubauer having a very poor save percentage through January, yet having a low percentage of goals I counted as stoppable. I remember saying in December and January that I think his save percentage would increase and I wound up being right. While also predicting Koskinen and Rittich's save percentages would drastically drop. Rittich's did by quite a bit and Koskinen's did even more, but not as bad as I would have thought. Koskinen was a joke.

Lundqvist did this in an even more pronounced way in 2015-16. The 15-16 Rangers were worse than the 17-18 and 18-19 Rangers. I will die on that hill. They only made the playoffs that year because Lundqvist was Hasek on meth from October-December and head-started the Rangers with one of the best records in the leage. He spent January-April averaging all the way out to actually one of his least impressive full seasons, so you can imagine how bad that was considering where the season started.

He's never had good technique and has always relied on all-time great reflexes. He's also small. As he gets older, the wear of the season seems to hurt him in particular because he desperately needs his speed.

 

[Frank Drebin]

Again, this is not how it works.

There is not one stat by which you can rank players and decide that every single player is superior to the players ranked behind them. Not one.

That does not mean that there is not one stat that is not bunk. There are many stats that are not bunk.

I will concede that this could be a useful tool when comparing goalie performances. An adjustment factor so to speak.

And I do fully admit that I take issue with Price ranking so low because there is no doubt that he's a better goalie than the Alberta duo for example, but he's had some awful play the past 2 years which would obviously bring his numbers down. He had something like 100 games where he was at .905%.

Anyways, appreciate you being so gracious in your replies.

 

[Machinehead]

And the year where he played in the ahl?

I thought you left?

Anyway, Halak had the best save percentage and goals against on the Islanders that year.

Garth Snow was quoted as saying that he did it to spark the team. When the Islanders desperately needed wins at the end of the season to make the playoffs, he called up Halak. The Islanders beat described the incident as bizarre and everyone involved in it was fired in the offseason.

 

[Frank Drebin]

I don't even think he was that bad that year.

That year to me was more about Garth Snow waiving him because he was worried about losing young stud JF Berube to waivers, so they just punted the old guy away.

Not to mention that Thomas Greiss started that year out really hot, got an extension, then faded out the rest of that year, which got Halak called back up into the picture again before year's end.

And for all that Berube nonsense, who they were too afraid to lose, the guy's short NHL body of work was incompetent and his AHL performance last year was equally as bad.

I remember isle fans were quite upset with Halak at the time of the demotion, poor attitude I believe.

Could be wrong

 

[Frank Drebin]

I thought you left?

Anyway, Halak had the best save percentage and goals against on the Islanders that year.

Garth Snow was quoted as saying that he did it to spark the team. When the Islanders desperately needed wins at the end of the season to make the playoffs, he called up Halak. The Islanders beat described the incident as bizarre and everyone involved in it was fired in the offseason.

No I was just done that conversation with you.

I actually thought I was quoting bleedred with the Halak quote.

I will be sure to be more careful in the future.