I didn't say it was solely because of team defense, but it's obviously a huge factor in goaltending statistical success. As I already mentioned there are exceptions.
Are you really going to tell me that the Kings being an excellent defensive team didn't contribute to them having so much success with goalies?
There's very few goaltenders out there that can sustain good goaltending stats over many years while playing behind a bad defense. And the number is getting fewer and fewer as disparity in goaltending ability has lessened.
Speaking of Vokoun, who I think is excellent, many of the Nashville teams he played for had good tight structural team defense.
Yes--but your original assertion was that the most likely reason those goalies had good numbers here was team defense, yet almost every single one of them going back to Bernier and thereabouts left and immediately had a good or better season elsewhere on a worse--sometimes much worse--defensive team than the Kings.
I'm simply saying there are other factors at play, the constant goalie coaching seems to have had a large effect, and 'team defense' takes a lot of different looks that have different relationships with different goalies. You can't simply dismiss 'exceptions' when there are so many of them; and it only highlights my point that you choose Vokoun from my exceptions, so thank you--you'll notice that the stretch of his career on a 'good' defensive team had lower stats than his further stints in
Florida and ending his career in Washington and Pittsburgh.
I guess the point is actually more goalies are voodoo, goalie counting stats are more contextual than we take them as, and including me we should be careful of making
too many assumptions about quality of season on just save % and GAA.
