The Goaltender Home Page Official HELP!!! Thread (1984-85 edition)

[Doctor No]

This is strange. Going by the differentials in the weekly summaries before and after that week, Micalef played 20 minutes, faced 12 shots and gave up no goals. Yet the summaries for all the games that week only list Greg Stefan, plus there's no periods where the Wings gave up 12 shots and zero goals.

One thing to watch out for if you're comparing the weekly summaries: I've tried tallying save percentages for a couple of seasons when the stat wasn't kept and there would be the odd time when a game's minutes and goals would be charged against the wrong goalie in that weeks summaries, then it would be corrected the following week. I know its not much help, but it may be something to look for. Perhaps Micalef's 20 min. came from the week before, or maybe the Bouchard/Gosselin mix-up occurred in the final week.

Then again, it's entirely possible that an error was made by the NHL's statistics department and nobody noticed it.

Several good points brought up here - well-said!

On the issue of official errors made by the NHL's statistics departments, there are definitely some in 1984-85. Most notably, Pelle Lindbergh officially had seventeen losses in this campaign (his Vezina year). As it turns out, however, one of Bob Froese's losses actually belonged to Pelle (was not too hard to track down because Froese only had two "official" losses all year). The November 1, 1984 loss to Winnipeg was incorrectly given to Bob Froese as the fifth goal was allowed by Lindbergh. From the Gettsyburg Times: "The Jets opened up a three-goal lead at 23 seconds of the third period when Robert Picard took a pass from (Dale) Hawerchuk in front of the goal and went over substitute goalie Pelle Lindbergh."

Additionally, Rick St. Croix was missing a two-save non-decision on January 9, 1985 against the Boston Bruins which is not in the official NHL statistics. I'm so confident on both of these that I've changed the numbers on my goaltender page for each of them.

My guess is that this is the worst period for reconciling numbers for goaltenders - for the longest time, there was just one goaltender on a roster at a time, and for long period after that, very few times did more than one goaltender play in the same game. And of course, more recently, there are so many eyes on the game that it's easier to get the details right. But the early-to-mid 1980s appears to be the "sweet spot" for statistical errors.

 

[Doctor No]

The difference that was taken away from Bouchard's totals was 2 goals and 25 shots. The only game that matches is the 4/6 game against Hartford (2-1 loss). . Bouchard is listed as the goalie in the boxscore. I checked out the news archive search on Google, as sometimes they will give you a sentence from the writeup. Doing a search on "Bouchard" for Apr.7 it said "Paul Fenton sent the puck around the net to Ferraro, who powered a short wrist shot past Dan Bouchard"

I don't know why it was changed to Gosselin

Another thing I noticed looking this up. The 1985-86 NHL Guide takes the 60 min, 2 goals, 25 shots and the loss from Bouchard's totals and puts them in Gosselin's. However, the 1998 edition of Total Hockey only puts the loss and the shots in Gosselin's totals. The minutes and the goals are missing, same with the 2003 edition of Total NHL. So according to the official NHL sources, there's 60 minutes and 2 goals for Quebec's goalies that are simply unaccounted for today.

It just makes you wonder if possibly there was an occasion where a contract bonus was or wasn't paid out due to a clerical error at the NHL's statistics department.

It definitely sounds like this game could be the candidate - I wonder what the Quebec and Hartford media guides say about this one (I've only got seven of the 1985-86 media guides). Thanks!

 

[Doctor No]

The last two are in the same book, published in 1985. That's amazing. Looks like we need a Nords fan on this one.

Hmmm...those differ in Bouchard's numbers by the same two goals and sixty minutes, so we could be onto something here. Thanks!

 

[Doctor No]

I ran through Google news and found 13 losses for Danny Bouchard in 84-85. The only goalie who came up for the Dec. 18 loss to the Caps (4-1) was Sevigny, but it said he was being loaned to the Canadian National team. There was no mention of who was in net. I will try to check it tomorrow when I go to work.

Sweet! I've never tried Google news, although it's going to be fantastic when more newspapers get their archives digitized.

Did you all know that Paper of Record has The Sporting News archived? They've got NHL boxscores through at least 1980 or so (unfortunately not for 1984-85), so I'm pretty excited about that. It's free, by the by.

What I really can't wait for is for someone to get going on archiving all of the The Hockey News issues - particularly since their boxscores were top-notch back in the day.

 

[Doctor No]

Since I'll have Dec. 84 in the queue, I'll look for Micalef as well. On the Web, it says Stefan played on the 9th and lost, then Micalef played the 10th and won (I think it was against Minnesota)

That would be most excellent! I can confirm that Micalef played on the tenth - it's certainly plausible that Polano replaced Stefan with Micalef, and then rode him the next night in Minnesota.

 

[Murphy7]

Stayed home with the kids tonight, will be in the office tomorrow night. Sorry.

 

[Doctor No]

Stayed home with the kids tonight, will be in the office tomorrow night. Sorry.

No worries! I'm grateful for whatever help I can get, whenever I can get it!

 

[Murphy7]

Doc, came up empty. My area is bigger into hockey now than it was 20-plus years ago. The paper only ran capsules, not summaries, and offered no help on the two hanging questions.