Dennis Bonvie
Registered User
I didn't have the chance to get involved in last week's thread, where there was a lot of discussion on Carey Price. However, I'm going to structure this post as a response to some of the common objections to the idea of Price being the best goalie of his generation and a possible Top 200 player. I'm not specifically attributing these to any individual poster, so if you feel misrepresented from something you posted don't get offended. I can assure you that these sentiments all reflect opinions which have been voiced many times by hockey fans.
"Isn't Carey Price a one season wonder?"
There probably isn't a single opinion that more fundamentally shows an inability to evaluate goaltending in the modern era than thinking that Carey Price had only one good season.
Best goaltenders, 2013-14 to 2016-17 (min. 100 GP):
Yes, Price had one season where he won the Hart/Vezina double and nothing that approached that in terms of awards recognition. But the problem with over-emphasizing high Vezina finishes in a 30-team league is that you often end up sorting all non-Vezina nominated goalies into the same bucket, when in fact there is a clear gap between a consistent top-5ish goalie and an average starter, and that value becomes massive over the course of a full career. If you look at someone like Roberto Luongo, for example, 60% of his career GSAA came in seasons where he was not a Vezina nominee.[TBODY] [/TBODY]
Goalie GP SV% Price 199 0.928 Talbot 186 0.922 Gibson 118 0.922 Bobrovsky 209 0.922 Holtby 250 0.921 Crawford 229 0.921 Rask 257 0.921 Bishop 225 0.920
Until very recently, Price absolutely had the elite consistency that you want to see out of a great goalie.
"Why do hockey people think Price is so great when his stats aren't that impressive?"
The recent controversy over Price's continued high ranking in player polls is amusing to me, because I find it interesting how everyone gets so offended the one time that a goalie gets reputational credit in the way that defencemen have had pretty much forever.
Among people who are very into analyzing goalie technique, it is not an uncommon opinion that Carey Price is the best technical goalie to ever play hockey. Not by the standard of performance relative to era, of course, just in a vacuum. That is an unfair standard when comparing directly against historical goalies, but it still says something about Price that he is widely seen as the platonic ideal of a modern goalie.
As far as stats vs. reputation, just like I already argued for Grant Fuhr there are hidden injury-related factors that have significantly impacted Price's career. It is noticeable in Price's statistical record that he has a number of periods of extremely terrible play, way worse than you would expect just from random variance given his overall performance level, and they pretty much all have clear links to injuries. There's the ankle injury in December 2008 that derailed Price's initially very promising sophomore season, whatever lower body problem he had in March/April 2013 when observers were widely speculating about his health status and he later wasn't able to finish the postseason, the famous injury in 2015-16 that cost him most of the season and ended one of the greatest goaltending runs of all-time, and the double whammy of his disastrous 2017-18 season (a nagging lower body injury early on and a concussion later on in February).
From 2010-11 to 2016-17 (his age 23 to 29 seasons), a healthy Price had 384 straight regular season and playoff GP at .925, which definitely stands out from the crowd, even in the competitive current era. If it was just a matter of who was the most talented goalie in their extended primes, I'd take Carey Price over every goalie currently available for voting.[TBODY] [/TBODY]
Period Start End GP SV% GSAA Healthy Oct-07 Dec-08 77 0.918 21.9 Injury recovery Dec-08 Feb-09 12 0.870 -12.0 Probably injured Feb-09 Apr-09 19 0.899 -6.1 Healthy Oct-09 Feb-13 205 0.919 36.7 Probably injured Mar-13 Apr-13 27 0.892 -14.7 Healthy Oct-13 Oct-15 158 0.929 69.0 Injury recovery Nov-15 Nov-15 3 0.927 1.0 Healthy Oct-16 Apr-17 68 0.924 21.7 Probably injured Oct-17 Nov-17 11 0.877 -11.1 Probably healthy Nov-17 Feb-18 32 0.913 1.2 Injury recovery Mar-18 Apr-18 6 0.874 -7.2 Healthy Oct-18 Aug-20 134 0.915 20.6
There's actually a pretty obvious comparable for Carey Price, a goalie already voted onto this list who did the following from age 23 to 32:
To be fair, I knocked out the only period I know of where Lundqvist was significantly injured (when he had a hip flexor injury at the end of 2006, which was a key factor in him getting ventilated in the playoffs). Lundqvist is ahead, but the gap is a lot closer than I think most people have them based on reputation. I also think the GSAA number likely flatters Lundqvist a bit (I don't quite trust league average numbers from 2006 and 2007, as it seems clear that some teams adapted much more quickly than others to the new rules environment). To me, Carey Price is pretty much a more injury-prone version of Henrik Lundqvist, with a bit less longevity because he is still mid-career.[TBODY] [/TBODY]
Goalie Age GP SV% GSAA GSAA/GP Healthy Price 23-32 505 0.921 128.6 0.25 Healthy Lundqvist 23-32 727 0.921 226.2 0.31
And just as a quick aside, if you don't think Price's Vezina record is all that impressive, welcome to the reality of playing on a non-elite team in the 30+ team, salary cap era. Fuhr and Smith don't really have better awards records anyway, and they certainly had weaker competition. The talent pool consideration is fairly important here, considering that Price's Vezina record against other Canadian goalies is 1-1-2-2-3-4-4, making him competitive against any historical Canadian goalies he would be up against from here on out in this project.
"Why should international play be considered when Canada is stacked and being the Canadian starting goalie can be kind of random?"
International tournaments can be a small sample size, of course, but the most important thing (particularly when it comes to goalies) is being selected to play in the first place. Starting for Canada at a best-on-best tournament is actually a pretty big deal. Ten out of the 14 starters were guys who made the Top 40 HOH goalies list, leaving just Pete Peeters in 1984, Bill Ranford in 1991, and Price in 2014 and 2016. The early '80s were a down period for Canadian goalies, while without Roy being injured and Fuhr coming off of a suspension it's questionable whether Ranford would have even made the team, much less been the starter. The length of Price's reign as presumptive Canadian international starting goalie is also very competitive against historical goalies, although of course you have to take talent pool into account.
"What about the playoffs? I want to see some signature runs!"
There are two things to note about Carey Price's playoffs:
1. Virtually all of his "underperformance" came during his age 20-22 seasons, when nearly every goalie of his generation would not be starting games in the springtime:
Age 23-32 in the playoffs:
Carey Price: 51 GP, .924
Henrik Lundqvist: 111 GP, .923
2. Playoff team success in the salary cap era is far more dependent on luck than in previous eras
We aren't that far into the salary cap era, but I think it's fair to say that there is a trend developing of elite goalies being much less likely to change teams. The last 12 consecutive Stanley Cup winning goalies all never played a single game for another team prior to their Cup wins. Compare that to 17 of 36 Cup-winning goalies having previously played for another NHL franchise from 1968 to 2004.
If you look at the elite group of goalies in the post-2005 period, Luongo and Bobrovsky are pretty much the only ones to change teams before the age of 33 since the lockout. Guys like Lundqvist, Fleury, Miller, Price, Rinne, Quick and Rask either never changed teams or only did so in their later careers. My money is on that pattern continuing, given that Vasilevskiy and Gibson are already signed through their age 33 seasons. In the past, teams were able to fairly easily go out and get an elite goalie in their prime as the missing piece. Patrick Roy was 30 when he went to Colorado, Ed Belfour was 32 when he went to Dallas, etc. Now, they probably don't have enough salary cap room to do so. In the past, if you're a great goalie on a terrible team (Gump Worsley is both a good and relevant example here), then over a long career you'll still probably get a chance at some point to move to a good team and show what you can do. In the modern era, lots of guys won't ever get that opportunity (or they might get one or two shots at +1000 odds or something like that, whereas in the past an elite team might start the year as +300 Cup favourites). As a result, I think it's very unfair to give somebody no playoff credit just because they don't have any SCF appearances.
There are a lot of really selective numbers used here. When he was healthy. At his peak compared to all other goalies during his peak years. Playoffs when he wasn't young. Regular season until very recently (last 4 years?).
But I think this is the biggest difference in the views on Price:
"Among people who are very into analyzing goalie technique, it is not an uncommon opinion that Carey Price is the best technical goalie to ever play hockey."
As someone who doesn't know a lot about goalie technique, I don't care if Price has perfect technique when the puck goes through his 5 hole or under glove.
