The NJ Devils Goaltender Thread

[My3Sons]

It probably is somewhere in between.

I don’t think the odds are very favorable that Cory is a .925% goaltender over a full season (say 50 games?) like he has been for 16 games now.

He clearly isn’t as bad as he was to start the year and I don’t think he’s as good as he’s been since he came back.

But like Stafford, I realize many here base things off recent sample sizes.

I typically use the word competent for the goaltending. It’s unrealistic to demand or expect elite puck stopping. If he can provide 45 games of .920 tending that would be great and while not elite gives NJ a chance in most of those games. Even if he is just a couple of points above league average that is enough to give the team a chance most nights.

The clutch factor is also important. Making a save in the first period rather than giving up the defaulting goal maybe allows the team to get into the game and believe in themselves for a chance to win even if a meh goal goes in that doesn’t impact the outcome.

Again, he’s over 30 and coming off a significant length of time nursing one or more injuries. If he can play 80 games over the next two years above league average I’d think that’s a realistic target for him.

 

[None Shall Pass]

As opposed to a whole summer of having to hear he’s back and good again and how I should eat crow because of a 17 strong games after the worst 25-30 game stretch a goalie has had in I don’t know how many years? And 3 consecutive seasons of .90-somethinf goaltending? “He’s elite again bro!”.

But this is the land where recent trends are more indicative of where you are currently as a player. Even Drew Stafford is creating buzz over his recent hot streak....

I was talking about people arguing over goalies (A critique of this thread), not your specific crusade about inventing things people said (Show me more than one person saying Cory is "elite again" and then we'll talk) and posting the same thing over and over and over.

But then you invented a thing that someone said and made the same argument that you made over and over and over.

So yeah, I guess you inadvertently proved the point that you thought I was making but I truly wasn't.

And if we're being honest, with your hot takes all season, you (And to be honest, a few others) SHOULD be eating entire flocks of crows.

It was obvious to anyone with functioning eyes that dude was playing hurt for the first half of this season and all last year. Now he's healthy and every test - eyes, stats, wins - shows that he's playing very well. I have not seen one person calling him elite, nor would anyone with common sense say that he is or will be. But you manage to invent this argument so that you can argue with, literally, yourself about it, and spam every GDT in a game he plays in saying that there are legions of fans who will excuse him giving up a goal by your ridiculous "stoppable goal" standards and spending post upon post in this thread pretending that there's a non-negligible amount of people saying that Cory is elite again. He isn't, and no one is saying that he is.

He appears to be better than serviceable, and that's all he needs to be, and it's a breath of fresh air for everyone who has been saying that he will be fine once he's healthy, rather than having to read all these ridiculous (And frankly illogical) suggestions all season that he'd be waived or bought out.

 

[Bleedred]

I was talking about people arguing over goalies (A critique of this thread), not your specific crusade about inventing things people said (Show me more than one person saying Cory is "elite again" and then we'll talk) and posting the same thing over and over and over.

But then you invented a thing that someone said and made the same argument that you made over and over and over.

So yeah, I guess you inadvertently proved the point that you thought I was making but I truly wasn't.

And if we're being honest, with your hot takes all season, you (And to be honest, a few others) SHOULD be eating entire flocks of crows.

It was obvious to anyone with functioning eyes that dude was playing hurt for the first half of this season and all last year. Now he's healthy and every test - eyes, stats, wins - shows that he's playing very well. I have not seen one person calling him elite, nor would anyone with common sense say that he is or will be. But you manage to invent this argument so that you can argue with, literally, yourself about it, and spam every GDT in a game he plays in saying that there are legions of fans who will excuse him giving up a goal by your ridiculous "stoppable goal" standards and spending post upon post in this thread pretending that there's a non-negligible amount of people saying that Cory is elite again. He isn't, and no one is saying that he is.

He appears to be better than serviceable, and that's all he needs to be, and it's a breath of fresh air for everyone who has been saying that he will be fine once he's healthy, rather than having to read all these ridiculous (And frankly illogical) suggestions all season that he'd be waived or bought out.

I’ll eat crow when he has a season of better than .90-something goaltending. Something he hasn’t done since the season he turned 30 years old.

Until then, he’s a below average goalie. Period.

And I highly doubt he plays here for the remainder of this contract. I still maintain that before his contract ends in 2022, he’ll be either bought out, traded for a bad contract with salary rentention or LTIR’d.

 

[Nubmer6]

Cory's back bro just embrace it

Ya know, I'm not quite convinced just yet, but if it riles @Bleedred and his OCD tendencies, I'll just have to say it all summer...

Cory's Back!

*dodges pre-emptively*

 

[I Hate Tie DOMI]

I’ll eat crow when he has a season of better than .90-something goaltending. Something he hasn’t done since the season he turned 30 years old.

Until then, he’s a below average goalie. Period.

And I highly doubt he plays here for the remainder of this contract. I still maintain that before his contract ends in 2022, he’ll be either bought out, traded for a bad contract with salary rentention or LTIR’d.

Another option is to keep him for the expansion draft and hope Seattle takes him. Seattle will need to make the cap floor.

 

[Bleedred]

Another option is to keep him for the expansion draft and hope Seattle takes him. Seattle will need to make the cap floor.

He’ll have just one year left by that point, but like I said, I won’t speculate as to the how right now, but I don’t see him finishing his current contract here as a player.

 

[Bleedred]

Ya know, I'm not quite convinced just yet, but if it riles @Bleedred and his OCD tendencies, I'll just have to say it all summer...

Cory's Back!

*dodges pre-emptively*

I’m already riled up with the Stafford stuff after last night. Especially with HF boards spy Abbey Mastracco asking Hynes ifntheuve discussed retirement with him yet v

 

[MartyOwns]

I’ll eat crow when he has a season of better than .90-something goaltending. Something he hasn’t done since the season he turned 30 years old.

Until then, he’s a below average goalie. Period.

And I highly doubt he plays here for the remainder of this contract. I still maintain that before his contract ends in 2022, he’ll be either bought out, traded for a bad contract with salary rentention or LTIR’d.

just throwing this out there- you could avoid eating crow altogether if you stop making wild and repetitive claims/predictions

 

[Bleedred]

just throwing this out there- you could avoid eating crow altogether if you stop making wild and repetitive claims/predictions

Funny but one thing I didn’t rule out around the all star break/bye week was that I could see Cory having a .920% stretch the remainder of the season to boost his save percentage up to where it probably should be and it looks like that’s actually happened.

I remember doing the hypothetical math and that if he had a .920% over 29 games while averaging 30 shots faced per game, it would bring him up to a .903%-.904% for the season.

He’s asking me to eat crow because he’s “Bounced back” over a 16-17 game stretch. What’s such a wild claim about saying he’s below average though? The numbers would say he’s been below average for 3 years now. His regular season save percentage just using all 3 of the last regular seasons combined is .907%. League average has been .914%, .912% and .910% in those years.

Were they injury related? Well obviously they were, as elite players with low miles don’t fall off at 30 years old without injuries.

 

[NjDevsRR]

Can we all just look forward Mac and Cory have been good for the last few months and what matters is continuing that play into next season, thats it.

 

[Call Me Al]

maybe just pump the brakes on repeating so many times how cory is finished and won't be good again when you don't know the future any better than anyone else. we're all aware of his terrible year and how bad he looked in the beginning of the season. he was injured and recovering and it showed. he's looked much better the past few months completely irrespective of the stats, just from a confidence and mobility standpoint, and given his age it's not crazy to think he will perform well enough to be our starter or 1B goalie next year. he deserves that chance if for no other reason than his contract and blackwood showing he is capable of stepping in

 

[NJDevs26]

Let's be honest, we all thought Cory was finished. Or at least 95% of us did by December. You can only use the injury excuse for so long, considering how historically bad 2018 was for him. Heck that's still part of the challenge for him, staying healthy. And god forbid he starts next year poorly, nobody's going to care he had some good games in junktime this year.

 

[Better Call Sal]

You all can still join the Ginger Ninja Army.

There's plenty of time. And no better time than the present.

 

[MadDevil]

You all can still join the Ginger Ninja Army.

There's plenty of time. And no better time than the present.

Join? I never left.

 

[None Shall Pass]

Let's be honest, we all thought Cory was finished. Or at least 95% of us did by December. You can only use the injury excuse for so long, considering how historically bad 2018 was for him. Heck that's still part of the challenge for him, staying healthy. And god forbid he starts next year poorly, nobody's going to care he had some good games in junktime this year.

Please speak for yourself.

 

[Camille the Eel]

As to Stafford last night, I wasn’t arguing to resign him, nor did I read a lot of other people as advocating that. What I read and thought was admiration for how hard and well he’d played lately and over a long and distinguished career. He’s burnt out at a relatively young age; no Zdeno Chara here going to be playing to 43. But he’s consistently been a hard nosed two way guy and once had pretty good hands and better wheels.

But I didn’t really see many people saying keep him around.

Coming back to Corey - and this is a goal tender thread, the issue is that we don’t know what we’re going to get next year. The level of predictability has to be a little sketchy after the wild swings of the past 2 seasons. It’s just not a very high degree of confidence. Just whether he can stay healthy is an issue. Again based on the last several years. And how much we may have to rest him to keep him reasonably healthy is also something that will have to be adjusted as time goes by.

It’s therefore prudent for Shero to add depth at goalie in the offseason. Whether it’s a proven AHL guy like from Wilkes Barre as some suggested; or an older NHL guy, we need to be deeper here just to be safe. I like Blackwood a lot. But if Corey gets hurt at some point, or if his play deteriorates again, or if Blackwood falters too at some point, we should have more than Cam Johnson and Lack in the wings. This season should teach us the wisdom of that.

 

[Better Call Sal]

Feels appropriate here too.

 

[Bleedred]

What good was the goals against review if I don't share my results? Final results are in

MacKenzie Blackwood: .918% save percentage - 55 goals against. Goals counted stoppable - 15. Percentage of goals I counted stoppable: 27.27%. Carter Hart had a higher percentage of goals I counted stoppable than Blackwood did and had a save percentage of 1 point lower. Blackwood was better than average on both my eye test and on paper in save percentage. Out of all the young goalies that debuted this year, I think only Binnington was better and Binnington is already 3.5 years older than Blackwood is. Blackwood wasn't one of the lowest percentages overall that I counted, but he was better than average by a bit.

Cory Schneider: .903% save percentage - 70 goals against. Goals counted stoppable - 21. Percentage of goals I counted stoppable: 30% exactly. I think 13 of them came before he came back the last time from injury. So the first 13 were in November and December.

Keith Kinkaid: .891% save percentage - 129 goals against. Goals counted stoppable - 41. Percentage of goals I counted stoppable: 31.78%. Believe it or not, Kinkaid did not have the highest number of goals I counted stoppable in the league, but I'm pretty sure he did at the time he last played or he was tied. Koskinen (53), Jones (53) and Hellebuyck (51), all broke 50. Nor did he even have the highest percentage of goals I counted stoppable this year. Koskinen, Mike Smith, Jonathan Quick, Cam Ward, Phoenix Copley, Brian Elliott and Linus Ullmark all finished with a higher percentage. As did Garret Sparks and maybe a few other guys that were very sparsely played, either because they were AHL call ups, sheltered backups or were demoted to the AHL for poor play. Michael Hutchinson and Mike McKenna probably also make that list. Calvin Pickard was high up there in percentage of goals I counted stoppable, but didn't play many games, despite being on both Arizona and Philly. Only Quick had a lower save percentage out of that bunch. I think Mike Smith at 38% was the highest percentage of goals I counted stoppable, not including maybe a few guys that only played a few games or only one game, like Eric Comrie from Winnipeg.

I fully expect a throwing of the molotov's over these results.

 

[MadDevil]

I respect the time and effort you've put into this, even if I don't always agree on what you consider stoppable.

 

[Bleedred]

I respect the time and effort you've put into this, even if I don't always agree on what you consider stoppable.

Thanks and I do appreciate it. Everything is appreciated. Even the criticism, as long as valid and constructive and not ''LOL'' or ''The defense is bad for this team and that team''. Funny enough, there are goals that other people faulted the goalie for (like the Zacha goal on Luongo the other night) that I didn't mark as stoppable, even though I understood the criticism and thought it was fair.

I expected the numbers for Blackwood (and even Cory to an extent) to be a bit less conclusive, as they played a lot fewer games than most goalies this year and far fewer than Kinkaid. It was kind of like how in December, I noticed goalies with good save percentages, having a high count of goals I counted stoppable and vice versa. Like I said, Vasilevskiy had a higher count of goals I counted stoppable through the first month. Even Carter Hart had an above 30% count until his last game of the season, where he allowed 4 goals and I counted none stoppable, which lowered his percentage. There's more fluctuation with fewer games played and fewer goals allowed, just like actual save percentage. And Matt Murray allowed 3 goals I counted stoppable out of 4 allowed in his final game of the season. I had him as one of the lower percentages in the league, but that game raised it to above 26%.

I believe I counted 28.2% (Something like that) goals stoppable this year. Price, Khudobin, Lehner, Vasilevskiy, Fleury (the most surprising, since the save percentage was above average, but not great), Andersen, Gibson, Grubauer and Halak and maybe a couple other guys (I'd have to break it down, I have it all down on file still) were all at 25.x% or lower. Kuemper was just over 26%. Halak was a guy that I had been touting for most of the season as an overachiever. His percentage was up near 30% for the first few months. His save percentage did drop from about .930% down to .922%, but so did the percentage of goals I counted stoppable down to 24.44%. I still think Halak probably overachieved this year (and underachieved last year), but unlike Koskinen, Rittich and Ullmark, his save percentage and stoppable goal percentage were pretty congruent for me.

One of the bigger discrepancies between goalies on the same team, despite a save percentage that wasn't too far apart was Carter Hutton and Linus Ullmark on Buffalo. For Hutton I counted 38 goals stoppable out of 142 allowed. .908% (below league average by 2 points) save percentage, but just a little over 26% in percentage of his goals that I counted stoppable. Which was lower than the league average count. For Ullmark, I counted 35 goals stoppable out of 109 allowed. .905% save percentage (not much lower than Ullmark's) but percentage of his goals that I counted stoppable was over 32%.

For Florida, Luongo had an .899%, but I only counted 34 of his 122 goals allowed as stoppable, for a percentage of just under 28%. But for Reimer, I counted 28 out of 93 goals stoppable for 30%. Not surprising, as Reimer always failed the eyetest.

As far as bad teams making goalies look worse, Jimmy Howard and Jonathan Bernier (Bernier a really high percentage count for much of the year though, before his finish at the end), were a little better than the average number of goals I've counted as stoppable around the league, but Howard had a one point below league average save percentage and Bernier was a little bit lower than that.

Craig Anderson was at 30% and had a .903% save percentage (just like Cory in both). He probably would have led the league in stoppable goals counted if he hadn't gotten injured and they didn't get Nilsson and play him, even if a lot of that was because Ottawa gives up a lot of shots by far. Anders Nilsson was slightly better than my league average. His save percentage on Ottawa was pretty good, but it was terrible in Vancouver and just below league average on the year. I never did a separate count to differentiate his games between Vancouver and Ottawa.

Jonathan Quick was horrendous, while Jack Campbell had one of the lower counts and a very high save percentage. The only good I'll say for Quick is that he wasn't as bad on my eye test as Koskinen, Smith, Copley and a few others.


Lundqvist was one of the lower percentage guys early in the season, but fell off a cliff in December. I started counting a higher volume of goals stoppable on him even before his save percentage took a huge dive. He might have been up there with Koskinen and Jones if they hadn't played Georgiev more often down the stretch. Georgiev was above league average in both save percentage and better than my league average.

Hellebuyck and Dubnyk were both worse than their save percentages, but not by terribly much. A lot of advanced goalie stats seem to agree with me that Dubnyk isn't great, but this was a low in save percentage since he's been in Minnesota. David Rittich was also worse than his save percentage. I was calling for Rittich and Koskinen to both drop in save percentage months ago, and both eventually did.

 

[MartyOwns]

holy shit

 

[DerekDevils30]

@Bleedred

You're the man. Loved reading your reviews all season

 

[Bleedred]

@Bleedred

You're the man. Loved reading your reviews all season

Thanks! And I appreciate everyone who does read them. They’re long, especially on those 10-15 game nights, so unless anyone has a really bad night, I try not to elaborate a whole lot on each goalie and game.

I will be continuing for the duration of the playoffs. I’m going to save all the regular season results and start over with all the goalies in the playoffs. Once the playoffs end for each goalie, I’ll collect the data separately for their each guy’s results in the playoffs and one for the regular season, then maybe do one where I add them up.

I’m looking forward to doing them again next year too and comparing each goalie and their 18-19 results and 19-20 results.

 

[My3Sons]

It was interesting seeing the various ratios of stoppable goals. I had no idea there were so many. I realize it’s an opinion but since you applied he same standards to all the goalies it was intellectually honest. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Bleedred]

It was interesting seeing the various ratios of stoppable goals. I had no idea there were so many. I realize it’s an opinion but since you applied he same standards to all the goalies it was intellectually honest. Thanks for sharing.

Before I started doing this, I figured the average would be about 25%. It was a little bit higher than that. I wonder if I did this same project in 2017-2018 before the reduction in chest protectors, if the figure would be slightly lower. One area I noticed a lot more pucks going in this year, especially in the first half of the season was around the arms, either in between the arm and body or just barely to the outside of them. I’d have to believe that more of these ended up clutched and squeezed between the goalie’s arm or side of his chest or possibly even off his blocker or arm, as I’m pretty sure the chest protector was decreased in actual width. And in doing my reviews, a lot of people asked me if the goalie made an error if I counted it as a stoppable goal, even if the way it went in wasn’t stoppable and that’s a yes. I count it as a stoppable goal if the goalie turns the puck over and his team doesn’t gain possession of it between his turnover and the goal or even if he pushes the puck back into traffic with his stick and back into play and it leads to a goal. I did that on a goal against Fleury last week. Even though he had no chance on the shot that went in. I feel like if you give the puck away, that’s worse than just not stopping a shot that you could have. As you then create the goal and the shot that led to it.

I do appreciate your comments and I’m glad some people were receptive. I think doing this project this year seemed to annoy some people or just make them downright angry. Particularly when their favorite goalie (Kinkaid, Schneider, Jones, all below my average by quite a bit) would not have such favorable results on my eyetest. The people on the main board seemed to be receptive to it. I think there were more people who just didn’t care than people who were annoyed or mad. I did a mainboard thread that hasn’t been bumped in months. I’ll be bumping that sometime soon with my end of season results.

I’ve actually been doing this for Devils goalies for years and Sharks goalies for a decent amount of years too. Occasionally I would post my results. With the way the NHL has their condensed game highlight videos these days, it’s easier than ever to go watch all the goals around the league every night. If I had tried doing this 12 years ago when the analytics boom had started, it would have been impossible with how poor the resolution and highlight videos were back in those days.