Yep, and I believe Bobrovsky in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season is the only time the Vezina Trophy has been won by a goalie whose team didn't make the playoffs. If the Bruins win the Presidents' and Jennings Trophies, and Rask can keep up his current pace, then he should win.
I've seen Vasilevskiy thrown out at as the favorite (he just won the NHL.com writer poll), and while he has played 10 more games than Rask, he's got a much worse SV% and GAA.
The GMs vote for the award, and if they care about advanced stats, they'd see that Vasilevskiy has actually underperformed on his expected goals against/save percentage. I'm not going to lose my mind if Rask doesn't win it, but Vasilevskiy absolutely shouldn't.
Agreed. I think Vasilevskiy is the best goalie in the league when he's in good form - when he's on he's really on - but he struggles to sustain it and he's had a very inconsistent year. He's had a couple of runs of very poor games, and you can see that in his stats, while Rask has had the odd poor game, maybe 3 or 4 in total, but never had a bad stretch.
I find the playoffs factor interesting. There's no arguing with the past winner's list, but it doesn't seem quite fair. Imagine Rask played for the Red Wings, with the exact same performance as he's shown for the Bruins this season. Detroit's pathetic win-loss record would be better as a result, but there's no way it would propel them to a playoff spot on its own. So should Rask be discounted in this scenario simply because he plays for a bad team? It happens, and you can see why, but it's not really a fair or full assessment of everything that determines a goalie's performance.