Goaltending, better now than ever?

[truebladearmy 33]

It's amazing seeing Tim Thomas making .959 Sv Pct, with a 1.37 GAA this far into the season, with 4 shutouts and 10 Wins. And a lot of it isn't really Boston's defense, it's straight up Thomas playing near perfect games every night (And perfect games 4 times out of 10 wins).

Now he would stand alone if not for the fact that you have Garon with a .951 Sv Pct, and a couple shutouts himself. In a league where right now Detroit is averaging damn near 4 goals a game (3.63), and Washington is (3.62), yet there's still 4 goaltenders with GAA's below 2.0

Even Howard, who I would honestly say has looked better for us than anyone since Hasek in 2002 (And right now I'd play Howard over Hasek), is posting phenominal numbers. Yet, even though Howard is posting numbers that a few years back would have had him in the top 5 of multiple categories, he's ranked like 10th overall in Sv Pct, and GAA.

I don't know if I've ever really seen numbers like these from so many goalies in a single year. And mostly they're all young goalies.

What changed? How are goalies getting so good, so fast, so young?

And oddly I think scoring in the NHL is higher than it has been through most of the last decade. It would seem that average goalie numbers would go down.

Maybe because the younger goalies are being trained to adapt quickly to all the post-lockout rule changes faster, and younger. Hockey sped up a lot. Teams didn't use to generally average 30+ shots a game. I think young goalies just simply face more shots in their teenage leagues, and more shots in their minor league teams. Like they come to the NHL with more experience off the bat. I'm high...I don't know if that made sense.

[Off the Post 11]

All i know and/care about is that Jimmy keeps it up

[RyanBarnes! 293]

I disagree. I was actually thinking the other day that there are unusually few top goalie profiles in the league right now. Sure there are a few goalies posting great numbers but overall I think that 10 years back the GAA would be even lower in the top ten. I did a quick check on NHL.com comparing 00-01 to 09-10 and this seemed to confirm my theory. The SA% is probably higher though, perhaps because the goalies face more shots in todays fast paced game. Also the season is still young. The GAA is likely to increase after a full season and the SA% to decrease a bit.

[Buppy 1,720]

...What changed? How are goalies getting so good, so fast, so young?

...

Nothing's changed. It's early in the season. Few goalies have played even 15 games. Six goalies have a save% .930 or higher, and four have a GAA under two. One or two bad games from those guys would pull their stats down to normal levels. There's nothing to suggest that goaltending this year (or the last few years) is significantly different than it has been for a long time.

[eva unit zero 271]

Goaltending on the whole is probably better now than ever. But this is more a result of the fact that over the past 25 years goaltender training, both style and conditioning, has evolved immensely. In 1990, beating the goalie with a good hard slap shot from the point, unscreened, was not considered a "soft goal" by any means. Sometimes the shot would just beat the goalie. Nowadays, the goalie is expected to make that save every time, and pretty much that is what happens.

There have been two major changes in the NHL since Gretzky's prime. Goaltenders started playing at a level comparable to everyone else, and teams around the league began to put a focus on defense as a priority.

[truebladearmy 33]

I disagree. I was actually thinking the other day that there are unusually few top goalie profiles in the league right now. Sure there are a few goalies posting great numbers but overall I think that 10 years back the GAA would be even lower in the top ten. I did a quick check on NHL.com comparing 00-01 to 09-10 and this seemed to confirm my theory. The SA% is probably higher though, perhaps because the goalies face more shots in todays fast paced game. Also the season is still young. The GAA is likely to increase after a full season and the SA% to decrease a bit.

Jimmy Howard is 12th in the league at a .922 save percentage. Last year that was what the 6th place Goalie finished with.

He is also eighth 8th with 2.22 GAA. Last year that would have tied him for 2nd.

Five goaltenders have a Save percentage higher than the highest total last year. Granted, only a quarter of the way into the season. Slot for slot (Ie, if you compared this years 10th best goalie with last years 10th best goalie), 29 of the top 30 goalies have higher save percentages than their corresponding counterpart last year.

That means as of right now, 29 of 30 goalies ranked 1-30 have a higher save percentage than the 1-30 top goalies last year.

Here's the kicker. Number 30 in save percentage this year as of right now, is Jaroslav Halak at .906 The 30th slot last year finished at .907

I go with save percentage, because that's the most fundamental stat of a goalies skill. GAA can be a number of factors, to include shots taken, defense, etc.

What does this mean? Nothing really, except that the top 30 goalies this year are stopping a higher percentage of shots than the top 30 goalies last year, minus number 30 which is Halak.

If, as it's implied earlier in this thread, only the top 4-5 goalies were doing better than goalies last year it would be one thing. To have the top 29 goalies doing it.

Sure, numbers could drastically change as the year goes on. But usually by about a quarter of the way into a season they stay pretty consistent.

Edited November 19, 2010 by truebladearmy

[Guest Shoreline]

Nothing's changed. It's early in the season. Few goalies have played even 15 games. Six goalies have a save% .930 or higher, and four have a GAA under two. One or two bad games from those guys would pull their stats down to normal levels. There's nothing to suggest that goaltending this year (or the last few years) is significantly different than it has been for a long time.

This.

And that is the very reason to always be skeptical of numbers when people give them to you.

[Guest Stolberg]

i think the gap between the high tier and middle tier goalies has shrunk post-lockout

[Hockeytown0001 7,652]

Then:

Now:

Edited November 19, 2010 by Hockeytown0001

[The Secret 304]

It's amazing seeing Tim Thomas making .959 Sv Pct, with a 1.37 GAA this far into the season, with 4 shutouts and 10 Wins. And a lot of it isn't really Boston's defense, it's straight up Thomas playing near perfect games every night (And perfect games 4 times out of 10 wins).

Now he would stand alone if not for the fact that you have Garon with a .951 Sv Pct, and a couple shutouts himself. In a league where right now Detroit is averaging damn near 4 goals a game (3.63), and Washington is (3.62), yet there's still 4 goaltenders with GAA's below 2.0

Even Howard, who I would honestly say has looked better for us than anyone since Hasek in 2002 (And right now I'd play Howard over Hasek), is posting phenominal numbers. Yet, even though Howard is posting numbers that a few years back would have had him in the top 5 of multiple categories, he's ranked like 10th overall in Sv Pct, and GAA.

I don't know if I've ever really seen numbers like these from so many goalies in a single year. And mostly they're all young goalies.

What changed? How are goalies getting so good, so fast, so young?

And oddly I think scoring in the NHL is higher than it has been through most of the last decade. It would seem that average goalie numbers would go down.

Maybe because the younger goalies are being trained to adapt quickly to all the post-lockout rule changes faster, and younger. Hockey sped up a lot. Teams didn't use to generally average 30+ shots a game. I think young goalies just simply face more shots in their teenage leagues, and more shots in their minor league teams. Like they come to the NHL with more experience off the bat. I'm high...I don't know if that made sense.

Howard over Hasek.... Hahaha ya right, what have you been smoking? Howard is doing well on this team, he's improved since last year and that is all we can ask for. To the question if goalie are better now then ever... I'd say no but they are alot bigger and waaaaaay more padded then ever. Goalies years ago had to rely on skill and reflex and now they rely on butterflies and positioning (Thaaank Patty Waaah). Shrink the pads and see where the good goalies are!

[GMRwings1983 8,794]

Goalies are better now than they've ever been in terms of schooling.

That makes it even more obvious that the league needs to mandate goalies to wear less equipment. Protection is one thing, but this s*** we see nowadays is taking it too far.

[cjm502 165]

Goalies are better now than they've ever been in terms of schooling.

That makes it even more obvious that the league needs to mandate goalies to wear less equipment. Protection is one thing, but this s*** we see nowadays is taking it too far.

So you are telling me the circumference of goalies arms is not actually 30in?

[Rivalred 630]

Goalies are better now than they've ever been in terms of schooling.

That makes it even more obvious that the league needs to mandate goalies to wear less equipment. Protection is one thing, but this s*** we see nowadays is taking it too far.

Size of equipment has gotten smaller in the last few yrs, not by much though

Edited November 20, 2010 by Rivalred

[Buppy 1,720]

Jimmy Howard is 12th in the league at a .922 save percentage. Last year that was what the 6th place Goalie finished with.

He is also eighth 8th with 2.22 GAA. Last year that would have tied him for 2nd.

Five goaltenders have a Save percentage higher than the highest total last year. Granted, only a quarter of the way into the season. Slot for slot (Ie, if you compared this years 10th best goalie with last years 10th best goalie), 29 of the top 30 goalies have higher save percentages than their corresponding counterpart last year.

That means as of right now, 29 of 30 goalies ranked 1-30 have a higher save percentage than the 1-30 top goalies last year.

Here's the kicker. Number 30 in save percentage this year as of right now, is Jaroslav Halak at .906 The 30th slot last year finished at .907

I go with save percentage, because that's the most fundamental stat of a goalies skill. GAA can be a number of factors, to include shots taken, defense, etc.

What does this mean? Nothing really, except that the top 30 goalies this year are stopping a higher percentage of shots than the top 30 goalies last year, minus number 30 which is Halak.

If, as it's implied earlier in this thread, only the top 4-5 goalies were doing better than goalies last year it would be one thing. To have the top 29 goalies doing it.

Sure, numbers could drastically change as the year goes on. But usually by about a quarter of the way into a season they stay pretty consistent.

It's still too small of a sample size to make any comparison. Those top 30 from last year averaged 52 games. This year the top 30 have averaged 12. Two of the top three only have five starts. It's still early enough in the season that one good or bad game could move a goalie's save% by half a point or more.

You also can't compare it on a 'slot by slot' basis, as the guys at the top will skew the results for everyone below them. 22 of 30 are within a half-percentage point. Only the top six are more than one percentage point higher. If even half of those six fall off a bit, and a few of the others in the top 30 have a few bad games, then suddenly the comparison looks pretty even.

Think about it, you're comparing to last season. What do you really think could have changed over the summer?

[Doc Holliday 1,888]

Goalies are better now than they've ever been in terms of schooling.

That makes it even more obvious that the league needs to mandate goalies to wear less equipment. Protection is one thing, but this s*** we see nowadays is taking it too far.

Bingo.

Shoulder pads for goalies are way too big. Giguere is a prime example of that.

[Konnan511 1,736]

Say the word butterfly to a goalie 20-40 years ago, they think of the insect.

The hardest and smartest shooters could score from outside the blueline or just inside the blue line back then, with regularity. Now, that rarely happens, maybe even fewer than 3 times a season. Back then, once every other game. The Great One wouldn't have nearly the same amount of goals as he did if he played against these goalies. He'd still have the record, but not by nearly as much. I still think Brett Hull and Pavel Bure, with maybe OV, may be the best goal scorers this league has ever seen.

[Nev 1,085]

There was a great article in the Freep about 8 years ago where they interviewed Shanahan, Yzerman, Hull & Robitaille and asked them biggest reason for scoring going down, and every single one of them said "goaltender equipment". Firstly because there's obviously less room, but secondly because the fear factor for goalies had gone. Hull even admitted that on occasion he'd deliberately tried to hurt goalies in practise and they hadn't even noticed.

So yeah, could that with the far superior technique and coaching these days and its night and day compared to the 80s.

What I do think is that we have fewer high-level goalies in the game right now, goalies that you fear. 10 years ago you had Hasek, Roy, Brodeur, Belfour. Every single one of them was capable of beating you all by themselves, and you knew it. Facing them in the playoffs was a daunting prospect Now, is there really anyone like that around the league? I don't think there is. So many of the "top" goalies flatter in the regular season and deceive in the playoffs.