The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 111: Top 10 Goalies

Episode Date: October 28, 2016

Nick Mercadante joins the show to help rank the best puck-stoppers in the game. Here’s a quick rundown of the topics covered: 2:45 Methodology for the rankings 8:30 Win Threshold Percentage and Loss Threshold % 18:30 Andrei Vasilevskiy's rising star 20:15 Roberto Luongo is still good 27:45 Braden Holtby vs. Tuukka Rask 30:30 Jonathan Quick? 38:30 Brian Elliott's sneaky efficiency 40:45 Another Steve Mason diatribe 43:00 The Top 3 This episode is brought to you by Freshbooks, an online accounting service designed to save time and help avoid all of the stresses that come with running a small business. They’re currently offering a free 30-day trial to listeners of our show at Freshbooks.com/PDOcast (just remember to enter “Hockey PDOcast” in the ‘How You Heard About Us’ section). Every episode of this podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher and can also be streamed straight from this website. Make sure to subscribe to the show so that you don’t miss out on any new episodes as they’re released. All ratings and reviews of the show are greatly appreciated. Thanks for listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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My name is Dimitri Pilipovic. And joining is our resident goalie guru. It's Nick Mercodante. Nick, what's going on, man? How's it going, Dimitri? It's going well. You know, when I decided that I would, in fact, rank the top 10 goalies, I knew I had to get you in on this because I just need some advice.

I mean, it's easy to rank the top guys, but as we were discussing off air, like once you get into that sort of seven, eight range, you can basically put like 10, 15 guys and just put their names in a hat just pick them out. Yeah, you really can. And it's just so difficult for me personally because I've got, I've got all this pressure of all these Twitter followers that think I'm a goalie expert. And what they don't realize is that I don't know what I'm talking about after the top five guys maybe. Yeah, you know the really good guys are really good. That's your analysis. Yeah,

really good guys are really good. The really bad guys are really bad. And then there's just this whole mess in the middle. Well, I mean, the good thing is that, you know, if anyone has heard this already, we don't really, like, we've gotten their clicks already. We've gotten their downloads, so it's fine. But, I mean, you're not really selling this podcast as something that's very definitive or enlightening. Well, look, okay.

Hold on. People love lists. They love rankings, right? And they love putting order to things. And I think it will be beneficial to put goalies into a list. and debate over the merits of it, while fully acknowledging that goalies are confusing and difficult. And even those of us who study them have very wide differences of opinion on, you know,

who's good as opposed to who's, you know, maybe a league average guy or slightly below league average. Well, okay. So like I said, I mean, I feel really great up on my first seven. Basically, from 8, 9, 10, I have three guys sort of, like, written in with pencil, but I'm ready to erase them and replace them based on your... I'm kind of excited.

I'm kind of excited because you seem very confident, and that makes it it's going to be more fun when your picks are really bad. Yes, you're going to have a lot more fun tearing it down. Okay, so, okay, the 9-10 spot especially, The two guys I have in there right now are Semianvar-Lamov and Sergey Bobrovsky, and I don't feel good about that at all. But I put them in there just purely based on sort of like the ceiling that we've seen them reach, even though it's been a few years now for both guys. But I mean, all of the other guys I consider, like they have under 100 games in the NHL under their belt. So I didn't really feel comfortable putting them this high on the list.

So I don't really know what to make of these two spots. Well, okay. So let me, let's backtrack a little bit. Let me ask you this. Yeah. What was your, okay, well, so for instance, when I did this list, when you, when you said, Nick, you're the goalie guy, I'm relying on you to make a list, I took it really seriously. And I actually ranked the top 20. And that helped me flesh out a little bit more where I wanted guys in that, yeah, that tough like nine to 12 range or whatever you want to call it.

But what was your methodology on the ranking? I got to be honest with you. there wasn't much of a methodologist. I ranked it based on sort of mostly past performance, but obviously like, you know, if a guy has been kind of looking sketchy for the past year or two, I'm going to take that into heavy consideration as well. Like, for example, I have Ben Bishop fairly high on this list, and I feel weird doing that considering I don't even think he's the best goal in his own team,

but based on the goalie he's been, I can't, in good faith put Andre de Voselowski ahead of him on this list just because of how... Well, right. And Vasselowski had a really tough year last year. He struggled. Everybody remembers obviously the playoff performance, but before that, he really, really struggled. And he had a tough, tough year where they, you know, talked about, hey, maybe he needs more time on the farm to start in the minor. So you're right, yeah, you want to take into consideration past performance, but one of the things you got to acknowledge with gold,

is that, you know, we have a lot of, we've improved our set of descriptive statistics. We haven't crossed the threshold into really good predictive information, except for the guys with a crazy long sample of performance. And those guys are rare. So it makes it really tough. Like with a guy like a Ben Bishop, it even makes it tough. He doesn't have an enormous sample that you can draw on where you, where you could do. definitively say, you know what, next year is going to be just like last year. Next year, you know, meaning this year could be a little bit of a cliff for him. He could be heading down based on, you know, what I've learned about, you know, goalie peak

performance. It's a short window. And it's what I've found is it's that 27 to 29 age range. Well, you know, Bishop is heading out of that. So I don't know. At the same time, though, like, I'd consider myself, especially in years past, I've been a Ben Bishop sort of skeptic, just because, like, especially early on, it sort of seemed like the only thing he really had going for him was that he was really tall. And I can see why, you know, it'd be easy to kind of fall in love with that and just be like, well, the puck will probably hit him more frequently than other guys. But listen, like, in his three full years in Tampa Bay, he started 60 games all three of those years.

And he's like, I think he's seventh or something in the league and say a percentage during that time. And, like, he's been good. Like, he's been good. He's been good. Yeah, I hate to say it too. And a lot of goalie coaches and people that study goalies, they kind of say it begrudgingly as well. Because first of all, none of us have that.

I'm five, six. So I'm looking at him and going, what the hell, man. And then secondly, you know, he's a blocker in every sense of the word. He uses his body to his advantage to block shots. He doesn't really make saves per se, if that makes any sense to you. It's, you know, the difference between like a finish type of goalie who's really making, say, he's got his glove out in front of him, his blocker out in front of him, he's active towards the puck. Bishop is in position and uses his body to his advantage. So that's kind of ugly.

And so goalie experts look at that and they go, ugh. But he's been pretty good. Not pretty good. He's really been, I think, in that top 10 mix. So I think it's fair if you have him in there. Yeah, he's been reliable. And in a lot of these cases, like, you know, being reliable goes a long way just because of how volatile the performance of the position is.

And like when I say that, you know, I have Bobrowski and Varlamov tentatively at 9-10 there, the guys I really considered were like, I really wanted to put Petter-Mrazic in there and then Martin Jones and Jake Allen are guys I considered. But we just like, I don't really know what any of these guys are. I mean, it's very possible that this, like, for a lot of these guys, this is like Jake Allen, for example, this is going to be the first year assuming health that he's going to start even 50 games. So like that's a entirely different animal than when he's starting like 35 games and splitting it with Brian Elliott and

gets all these cushy matchups. Like I think that, you know, this year is going to be really telling for a lot of these guys. So like I've gotten my eye on them, but I just didn't really feel fully comfortable pulling the trigger on having them inside the top 10. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's fair. So, okay, so your methodology is basically feelings. Well, I mean, I'm using it I'm using actual metrics of performance as well. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

All right. That's all right. Most goalie methodology is also feeling. So, all right. So you're 9-10 or what was your number 10? Well, my number 10 was Robowski, number 9's Varlamov. And I want you right now. And you hate both.

I want you to talk me into putting Steve Mason ahead of both those guys. Oh, God. That's easy. Are you kidding me? All right. Okay, so listen. So can I tell you about a new stat that I came up with? Absolutely. That's great. Okay. So I talked about it at RIT. I promise I'm going to write on it. So I don't want to go too crazy in the details, but basically I came up with two stats. I call them win threshold percentage and lost threshold percentage. And what those are, I use Manny Perry's expected goals formula, right?

Mani Perry has also split his expected goals into danger zones. So the shots are in danger zones, just like war on ice, but it's a little bit of a different formula that he does. So what I do is I run that through my adjusted goal saved above average formula. So let's call it expected goal saved above average, right? I look at the league average save percentage in each of those danger zones, and then I compare how many more or fewer goals, a goalie gives up in each of those danger zones

and come to a differential number, which is goal saved above or below average. So what win threshold is, I wanted to look at the impact of a goalie on winning a game or losing a game independent of what the team actually does. So what I did was I looked at what an average win looks like in the NHL at five on five.

An average win in the NHL or an average game in the NHL where there's a win, it's 1.75 goals against in a game given up on average. So you have to do better than 1.75 goals against, right? So one goal. So what I looked at was what is the average goal saved above average in a one goal effort by a goalie, okay? in just a normal five-on-five, about 48 minutes in a five-on-five hockey in a game, normal five-on-five game. And so it's just what is the goal saved above average in a one-goal game?

That average is plus 0.75 goals saved above average, okay? Which makes sense. 1.75, 0.75 goals saved above average. Okay, and so anytime you do that or better, you've met or exceeded the win threshold. Okay? Loss threshold is what does an average loss look like? And what I found is an average loss is negative 0.105 goals saved above average or worse. So what loss threshold percentage is is how many times does a goalie do worse

than that. Okay? Right. And so what each measures, and there's more details in it, but it's not worth getting into. What each measures, win threshold measures

basically how often a goal he steals a game. Okay? Absolutely wins the game for his team, independent of the actual score. He might give up zero goals, one goal, two goals, but he's performed at that threshold goal saved above average,

and he's basically stolen the game for his team, or he's impacted it in a way where they should be winning. Lost threshold is a measure of consistency. How often does a goalie just do well enough or better to give his team a chance to win? So the higher the loss threshold percentage means he's doing pretty shitty and he's leaving his team out to dry often. So I use that in my methodology and that helped me really kind of break up some of these

guys in the middle because what I did find, is there is a big clumping in both. But I really looked at loss threshold as indicative of a true top 10 goalie because that's just pure consistency. And there's a little bit of a break point that comes in around 10 to 12 or whatever you want to call it.

But more importantly, going back to selling you on Steve Mason, Steve Mason over the past three years is amongst qualifying goalies the fifth best in the NHL, in lost threshold percentage, and he is the fourth best in the NHL in win threshold percentage. So he's consistent, and he steals games.

There's no question in my mind. He's a top 10 goalie. So Varlamov, on the other hand, who's on your cusp, he's right in that 10 range. So he's tough to pull off of there. He kind of comes out that way in the past three years, and even last year, he's right around there. Bobrowski, though, doesn't show well.

Yeah. So that's the ones you want to remove. Yeah, Bovroski's been, I mean, he obviously had that sort of amazing two-year stretch, right, when he got to Columbus and he got that contract. And it's been injuries and lack ofuster performance. Yeah, I mean, look, last year he was injured, right? So. And you had Venus Corpusalo just, like, kind of looming in the shadows right now?

Corpusallo was quite good last year. Yeah, he was amazing. Yeah. Okay, so you talked me into it. I mean, I should have had Mason in the top 10 to begin with, but I kind of wanted you to go on this little spiel. If I already had him super high, I knew you wouldn't come with the heat like you just did.

Okay. I mean, you mentioned in those, Mason's basically been in Philly for three full years now, and he's second in the league in five-on-five, say a percentage behind just two car ask. Like, I think people don't really realize how good he's been. I mean, maybe I don't even really, I don't give him credit for how good he's been,

but he's been remarkable in these past three years. And he's only still 28 years old. So he's right in that sort of peak performance that you just mentioned. And it feels like he's been around forever because he sort of has. He came up so young. But it's very fair to posit that maybe right now that's the best we're going to see from him, but it could continue for the next few years. And that's pretty promising for the flyers.

Yeah, I think so. And it's interesting. I mean, it's so tough to, you know, everybody does it. the first five, six games of the season, you're like, oh, my God, start latching on the results in that tiny little sample and then prognosticating on how the rest of the season is going to go. But it's really interesting in Philly. You know, the whole bandwagon jumped onto Noyverth in the playoffs

because of, you know, that little two-game sample where Mason was terrible. And Noyverth was great. Noyverth was otherworldly. And Noyverth was pretty good in the World Cup of hockey, too. So people kind of jumped on that. and said, oh, wow, maybe Noyberth is the guy, not Mason. The start of this season, Noyberth really struggled. And Mason has looked good in spite of the fact that Phillies kind of hung him out to dry.

So it makes me happy, even though it's just a few games, that my guy Mason has come out of the gates and, you know, Philly fans are kind of backing off and saying, okay, I think maybe he is the, you know, the true starter on this team. But it goes back to that Bishop Vasilevsky thing. You got a guy who's performed well for a number of years, and it's precarious. You know, you could not be the starter. Well, I think here's the interesting follow-up question, too.

So you love Steve Mason. He's 28 years old. He's a UFA this summer. So what we know is that you don't really want to be committing many years to these guys just because they could just fall off the table very quickly. But as much as you love Steve Mason, like how many years, if you were running the flyers, would you feel comfortable giving Steve Mason before, like, you sort of had to step away and just go, like, no, that's a bit too rich for my bud.

Yeah, I would always be, with a guy like him, because his public perception isn't as, um, isn't as lofty as how I, you know, hold them out to be. Um, you know, I'd try to throw him a three year deal and keep him, keep him there. I think if you threw him a three-year deal, it was richer than what he has right now. He'd probably be a happy guy. And that would mitigate, I think, all risk, because you'd be getting probably what would be the rest of his peak. Let's say he runs into an injury like a ton of goalies do when they hit that age around 30. Well, then, you know, you've only committed three years.

It's not the end of the world. If you give him four years, you're probably looking at a decline, either in that third or fourth year. And you're going to eat some of that salary, maybe having him in a backup role or trying to find a trade partner. So get him on three years, make it a little bit richer, and then get out of theirs as quickly as you got in. Yeah, I think three years is pretty reasonable. I mean, he's only making like 4.1 or something like that right now. So, I mean, even if you bumped it up to like, let's say, five, I'm sure. You could probably honestly get him as like a three-year-15 million-dollar deal

and that could wind up being some pretty good value without too much risk on the back end. Yeah. And I could see, you know, one of the things that's kind of screwed up, it's screwed up the market is like when the guys like Hiller get, you know, probably richer three-year deals than they deserve. Yep. So, you know, Mason's agent's probably going to be looking for like five and a half over three or four years. If you could get them at five, I think that'd be a steal.

Yeah. Okay. So I'm moving Mason up to eighth. Sorry, I got Mason 9th, Varlamov, 10th, and I'm bump in Alibrovsky. I feel pretty good. I like it. So I had Bishop 8, as I mentioned. I don't love the guy, but I mean, it was hard to argue with the track record he's had in Tampa Bay.

and it'll be fascinating to see what kind of happens the rest of this year and then moving forward with him because it's pretty clear that Vasselowski's going to be their long-term guy. And they didn't really make much of a secret about the fact that they were trying to trade him this summer just because of all the complications with the expansion draft coming up. And it seemed like Calgary really was going to get him. But the demands that he had for his contract extension to push that trade through were just very unreasonable. So I'm kind of curious to see both how he, plays this year and if he has another really good year let's say starts another 55 60 games and

has a 920 say percentage how much that earns him in the in the offseason yeah yeah uh you know big goalies worry me we'll we'll talk i'm i know we're going to be talking about carry price um big goalies worry me as they age they're just so injury prone um you just slamming those knees down underneath you know whatever bishop ways it's just over time the wear and tear on any goalie is is immense but i think when you're when you're a big guy and you're slamming those knees down the way he does i i just think that um you know the timeline for his decline might be sped up a little bit so it'll be interesting to see what he fetches on the open market if if teams are kind of aware of that and say this might not be the

guy that's going to you know carry us for the next three or four years because he might he might simply not be able to play. Yeah. And he's already run into some injuries. Yeah, I'm with you. Okay, so number seven, I have Roberto Luongo, and it's remarkable that, you know, he's turning 38 this spring, but he's still a boss, man.

Like, he's, since he came to Florida, he's sixth and five and five's a percentage. I mean, he's just, he's a rock solid. They brought in James Reimer this summer, and I like that move because, you know, not going to be playing at this level forever, and it's good to have kind of a guy to push him and split starts and make sure that he's not having to start 65-70 games.

But whenever he's out there, I feel like he gives the Panthers a really good chance to win, and that's all you can really ask for. I agree. I think that's a decent pick at that spot, Denetria. Number six, I had Corey Crawford. And listen, I know it's easy to bash him whenever the Blackhawks struggle is, especially a few years ago because whenever they win, it's Patty Kane and Jonathan Taves kind of, you know,

pulling them through. But whenever they lose, it's Cory Crawford's glove side is so weak. I remember that. The Stanley Cup series against the Bruins in particular where it felt like everyone was talking about it all the time. But, I mean, he was really, really good last year. And what people don't really realize is that the Blackhawks started to kind of fall off

as a team particularly at 5-1-5. And, you know, their power play saved them a little bit. And Patty Cain's otherworldly, kind of point production season did, but Corey Crawford, there were a lot of nights where he was easily their best, most valuable player. And I feel pretty good about having him sort of in this upper echel of guys, and six seems like a good spot for him. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's a good spot for him. He, you know, Corey Crawford's interesting because really he's, over the past three years, he's found his game. I like to say, I think, you know, earlier in his career, he struggled

with technical issues. I mean, his glove was always the thing that was getting picked on, but he had real issues just with his positioning and the way that he would get up and down. I think that he's one of those goalies who just worked on his game, and he's gotten better and better.

And over the past three years, it's shown, he's been, you know, according to this lost threshold stat, he's been, over the past three years, amongst qualifying goalies, he's the seventh, yeah, seventh, tied for sixth, most consistent goalie in the NHL, according to that stat. And last year he finished seventh amongst qualifying goalies.

That stat has shown predictivity. I don't think he's going anywhere. So I would imagine that he's going to be right in that range again of being a top five to seven goalie in terms of just giving you a reliable, consistent performance. He usually doesn't blow it out of the water. but last year he did a lot. Last year he actually won the Blackhawks quite a few games. And, you know, this year I think he's going to have to do it even more often

because they just don't have the depth to tear teams up like I think they have in the past. So it'll be interesting to see how things go this year. If maybe with everybody kind of acknowledging that the Blackhawks has maybe taken a step back, if he is more in the in the spotlight and uh and if he does well under that well and i think you know he's been very unlucky so far this season just in the sense that uh he's coming under a little bit of scrutiny because he has like an under 900 say percentage right now and yeah but six games and and but the funny thing is is i mean he's stopping like 98% of the file and five shots he's faced and it's just been that penalty count there's just been

you know obliterated by everyone and yeah people love to say that sort of thing like your, you know, your goalie should be your best penalty killer and all that. But we know that it, the five-on-five performance is much more telling and sort of predictive, especially moving forward of how good the goalie is actually playing. Yeah, I mean, look, there's tons of team effects in all facets of the game, five-on-five, and also on the penalty kill. But I think in the penalty kill, you're so reliant on the structure of your penalty kill in front of you and the ability of the penalty kill to shut down those really, really high danger type of opportunities, and the Black Ox just haven't done it. They've just gotten picked apart. I don't think that Crawford's

a particularly bad penalty-killing goalie. Like I said earlier, he's improved on his ability to move and recover and find his angle lines. So he's come a long way in that regard. I don't think he's a superstar on the penalty kill either. He is a superstar. He is a superstar. He is acceptable to those, you know, when they go, um, uh, point to, uh, offside post. A lot of times he's just not going to get there in time or he's going to be sloppy getting there and it's going to sneak under his pad. Um, it is what it is. But, you know, with that being said, just don't take as many penalties, guys. Yeah. You know, that's interesting you mention, uh, like the idea of a goalie being particularly good at penalty killing, though. Like,

is it just purely sort of like an athleticism thing in terms of being able to read and react really quickly? Are certain guys or certain skill sets more predisposed to being more effective at stopping shots when their teams down in a manner? I do think so. And I'm going totally off the cuff here without penalty kill stats in front of me. But, you know, well, first of all, it's this whole thing that I always say goalies are snowflakes.

You know, they're all different. They come in all shapes and sizes. and some are better at something, some are better at other things. Individual aspects of their game might translate into a penalty kill in particular, but in a five-on-five, there's not as many opportunities for a goalie to go from, let's say, an aggressive depth all the way, shooting back all the way to his post quickly. He might not have to do that at five-on-five as often, but on the penalty kill, he can pull that off, like a John Quick.

So, yeah, I think there are certain attributes to certain goalies that make them predisposed to success in different situations. But I can't, you know, I don't think I could pinpoint one thing being better than another. You know, on the other side of it, so look at Freddie Anderson this year. Freddie Anderson is, he's a conservative goalie. This year he's been playing overly aggressive. And there's all these rumors as to why that is. that it's coaching, that it's this, that it's that. I don't know what it is, but what I'm seeing is that when Toronto's on a penalty kill,

he cannot recover and get to the offside post in time, and he's overreacting to the first shot. That's not his game. If he was back in his net and more conservative, I think he'd make a lot of those saves that are turning into goals. But that's a totally different style than, like what I just said before, John Quick, who can be ultra-aggressive and get to that post in time. So, like, there's just, you know, there's many, many different ways to skin the cat.

I don't think there's one particular attribute that makes you great at a penalty kill. But certain guys have it and certain guys don't. Yeah, I buy that. All right, top five. This is the good stuff. This is where we say that the really good guys are really good and that I feel like our analysis is done at this point. So I kind of deliberated between, like, my, kind of. Top three is set in stone.

Four or five, I had Holt beat Rask, and I can really decide which order to put them in. I felt like Rask for a while. I wound up on Holt Bia's number four in Rask at five, but I think that they're sort of interchangeable at this point. Interesting. Okay, so I love Tuka Rask. He's one of my favorite goalies.

It's so hard for me to say this, but he did not make my top 10. Oh, now that's a hot take. That is a hot take. He has, over the past two seasons, he's really struggled. And I think it's related to injury. I think he, since he got that groin injury three seasons ago, he hasn't quite been the same. It might have been four seasons ago.

But he's been on a steady decline. And it started two seasons ago, and it's gotten progressively worse. Last year, he struggled. And a lot of people are going to say, well, yeah, that also coincides with Boston's defense kind of falling apart in front of them. That's true. I fully acknowledge that. And I fully acknowledge that a lot of goaltending stats is just team effects screwing up everything, right? And we, you know, we haven't been able to separate out everything.

But, you know, I think Mani's expected goals does a pretty good job. And Rask doesn't show well. So I had to take him out of the top 10 and it kills me because I think. love how he plays. He's that perfect finish style goalie. I think he's just, he's on the back nine. That's interesting. I'm a big Rask fan. I think that it is one of those things where, I mean, last year his number has definitely took a dip. And I just think that the defense they're putting out in front of him right now is just such an abomination that I feel like that has to be part of. And obviously, if you're talking about guys this high up on the list, you'd like to think that, you know,

they'd be sort of like matchup proof or sort of team proof in the sense that you just put them out there and they're going to make ridiculous saves consistently regardless of who's kind of standing in front of them. But I don't know. Like I just look at it is for me though. It's the injury thing. Like I really, I really, when I made this list, I really thought about or I tried to think about like, is this guy going to be able to give his team a full season of great performance. And I looked at Rask and I said, I don't think he is. And he's already out. You know, and that's kind of what held him out of the top 10 for me. And he's at 12. It's not like I dropped him to 25th. So how does your like 10 to 5 go? What's the description between what we've done already? All right. So this one's really going to hurt me personally.

My number 10 is John Quick. Oh my God. Okay, explain yourself. I have him tied for 10th with Yaroslav Halak. I thought you were going to say you have him tied for 10th with 20 other goalies. No. So this is just a tough admission. I think that some of my statistical evidence in the past has been good,

like a just-a-goal saved above average per 60. It's been a step in the right direction. But what it hasn't taken into account is, the distribution of performances and how often a goalie does enough to give your team a chance to win. And I always say that Quick is unpredictable and he has in terms of his career. However, in the past season and a half, and especially last year, he found the consistency code. I don't know what happened because all through his career prior, he's been as inconsistent as I I've always said he is.

So I'm not a complete idiot. But last year, he was, according to lost threshold, he was the eighth most consistent goalie in the NHL. At 31% lost threshold, the league average loss threshold, I'm sorry, the average loss threshold amongst qualifying goalies is 37%. So that means that 69% of the time, which is nice,

he's giving his team a chance to win. Okay, I have a philosophical question for you here, and it applies to quick because he's been like a pretty big workhorse over his career in terms of just he's like started when like 70 games a year pretty much and hasn't really dipped as the years gone along any of those years. Do you give a guy extra credit for being able to handle a big workhold like that? or is it one of those things where like when Andrew McDonald used to play 25 minutes a night for the Islanders, people were like, well, he must be at least decent.

He's playing 25 minutes a night. And it's like, well, his coach is just literally sending him out 25 minutes a night. That's all it tells us. Yeah, you know, one of the things that I've found over the past year with the adjusted goals saved above average and now with this is that the guys who are starting the NHL, at least in the top 20 goalies, let's say, they're all pretty deserving. of their starting role, and that doesn't mean that their backup is undeserving of being a starter, but it means that they're giving their team a chance to win. They're putting together good performances most of the time.

So I certainly, I do give some credit to durability. I definitely give credit to durability, the ability to stay on the ice and not be injured. But I do, you know, for a guy who's a workhorse and plays a lot, you know, we haven't found that fatigue is necessarily a factor in performance as far as a total season package, but we do see that, you know, if you run a goalie out for 20 of 22, the last three or four of those,

he seems to struggle a little bit more than normal. So maybe there's short-term fatigue, whatever it is. But, you know, I look at the goalies like Quick and Lung-Quist and those workhorse-type goalies, and I say that's, I think that that's meaningful, that they can be out there as much as they can and turn in serviceable, if not good or great performances, most of the time. But by the same token, I also try not to penalize a guy who is great in a small sample,

and that's all we know of him because he just hasn't had an opportunity to play as much. You know, I don't kill an Elliott because he's had to split time throughout his career. because the numbers are there. Yep. I think it's fair. So, so, okay, so you had Halak and Quick tied for 10. Yeah. So, who do you have?

So disappointing. All right. So we've got at 9, Luongo. I don't think, you had them at what, 8, 7? Yeah, Adam 7. Yeah. At 8, I have Morazic. Mm-hmm.

And I, the Morazic, smaller sample, but he's been phenomenal. And I think he's trending in the right direction. And I think he's going to continue to be phenomenal. I think by the end of this season, he could be, you know, closer to five or six. Yep. I think really highly of Marazic. I mean, the way I like to describe Marzic is I think he really, realistically, could be what Jonathan Quicks' biggest thing for Jonathan Quake is. That's exactly.

That's perfect. Like the crazy athleticism and electricity, but also just like being really, really good at constantly stopping the puck. Well, yeah, and he's got all those things that Quick has, but he is more under control. And he is better at responding to plays that develop laterally or in tight to the net or behind the net, whereas Quick kind of struggles with that part of his game, and that's where he most often gets beat. So it's like he studied Quicks playbook and said, This is great, but if I fix this, this and this, I could be elite as opposed to just a quality or good starter So that's how I look at Marazek. I look at him the same way you do. So at number seven, I have Crawford.

At number six, I have Brayden Holpey. Well, let's talk about Holby now because I have him fourth. Okay. I it's amazing to me like Adam Oates did a lot of things horribly wrong during his time in in Washington and you know it's it's it's kind of laughable to look back at now and look where they are at this point in time and just think about like how close everything was to just completely unraveling but I mean one of the worst things he did was remember that's cameo where they just randomly brought in Yarrow Halak and started messing with Holbe and didn't get him in starts and it's like it's the one blip in the radar on holdby's resume where it's like this is the only. period of time where he hasn't been amazing, including all of his AHL stuff. And it's, it's, I'm glad that it, you know, they right of the ship because it could have gone horribly wrong. But I mean, obviously he won the Vesna last year and he looks like he's going to be really, really good for a long time to come. Yeah. And I gave, you know, I, I went nuts on

the Vesna voting, but it wasn't really about Holpey winning. I was, it's not like a, Holpey winning was necessarily wrong. He just, he was more of a top, top five to seven goalie, as opposed to a clear number one. The issue that I had with the Vesna voting was something entirely different, which was that Lundquist didn't even get a vote,

and he was the clear number one. So that, you know, a lot of people kind of jump, Capps fan just jumped on me and said, well, I don't understand, Holpey's clearly elite. I agree. He is elite. And look, he's, what is he now? He's 27, right? Or 20s? Is he, he, he's 27? Yeah, he's like entering his late 20s now slowly. So he's, he's a guy who's in his prime. He could easily be a top five. I have him at six. No big deal.

Yeah. Who do you have at five? Brian Elliott. Well, let's talk a little bit about Elliot because I know you're pretty, pretty hyped up about the past couple performances by him. Yeah, so I liked how the season started for the flames because it just was fun to watch them immediately crumble as a fan base when they got slaughtered by the Oilers. But, you know, look, Elliot has been really consistently good for years now, for four or five seasons. And it's just been quiet, that's all, because he's on a good. Blues team. He's always had to kind of split time with other guys. And those other guys are also good goalies. Maybe the Blues just know what they're doing with goaltending. You know, he's responded

well to starting less. And there's always that debate of, you know, should a goalie, does a goalie need to get more reps to be successful? Allie, it's a guy. It doesn't matter, apparently. You know, you could have him split time and he'll be fine. I think he's going to be. be fine as a starter. I don't think there's going to be an issue with him, you know, going on a run of, you know, starting 20 and 25 games because he did it towards the end of last year when Alan got injured and then, you know, didn't come back and perform all that well. So Elliot became kind of the workhorse. I think he's going to be really good for the flames. He's already started to kind of settle in.

That last performance he had the other night where he was phenomenal all game. And then just kept it right up through the shootout. Yeah, that was just a beautiful performance of goaltending where guys just, you can see, you don't have to be a goalie expert, you watch the guy, you watch how his head is moving, you watch how his body is reacting to where the puck is. and you just know the guy's locked in. You know, it's like when certain people, when you watch a Kerry Price and you're just like,

well, he's locked in. We're not scoring. That's how Elliot. Elliot can look like that. I truly believe he's an elite goalie. Yeah, that's fair. He didn't make my top 10, but he was like in that next tier, sort of the honorable mention guys.

Who do you have a number four? So, number four. Because I think there's a pretty clear top three. So here's my number four is Steve Mason. Okay, okay, good. And for all the reasons we discussed, Steve Mason, his career trajectory has been funky, started off at the top, he went through this big lull.

I think he benefited from health and good coaching. He certainly didn't benefit from environment because Philadelphia hasn't been good defensively while he's been there. But he's been quite, exceptionally exceptional. And he's one of the most consistent goalies in the NHL. He does have

the ability to steal games. I think his biggest weakness is the penalty kill. He's one of those goalies who just doesn't do well when he's forced to go from point A to point B super rapidly for like a one-timer.

That's where he just gets beat. But if you want to talk about a goalie who makes his life easy for himself, he makes all the saves he's supposed to make. Um, it's funny to say that because some of his gaffs stand out to people, like, uh, letting in a shot from the blue line, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. But John Quick does that all the time too. Why does John Quick get a pass on that? Um, I don't know. You're the clearly the biggest John Quick fan here. So, maybe you can answer that.

You know, I, so I, I think that the, the, the part of the reason the perception of Mason is that he's just kind of a, uh, an average goalie is that he's not flashy. just does things the right way. It's a little bit like Crawford in that way. He makes the first save. He doesn't create a lot of extra work for himself. And he has great rebound control. So it's not exciting. How did we get into another like diatribe about Steve Mason? We already discussed this. He's in and I love Steve Mason. I'll fill up an entire podcast with Steve Mason. I basically did. I have no doubt about it. Okay. So the top three I think is pretty clear and I'm glad that you haven't mentioned Schneider price or Lundquist yet because we'd have a really big issue of those guys those those two guys in some order weren't the top three the question is what order so so this is

I have a Schneider three Lundquist two and price one um and if I did it before the year I would have Lundquist one and price two but I you know I just needed to see carry price like physically in that not looking like a cripple and he looks perfectly fine so and I know it's only been a few games but it's enough for me to kind of feel confident that at least for the time being he's going to be healthy and that's why I happen in number one. How boring. We absolutely totally agree. Well, I think it's the only rational thing that really do. I mean, obviously the order could be different, but I think the three guys are pretty clearly had our head of shoulders above everyone else. Yeah. If we did this in the summer, well, it's like I said before, I consider injury. I consider injury risk.

I do still think that Price is an injury risk because he's a big guy. He's already got any injury. that just doesn't get better over time. It only gets worse. We know that in every sport. So I do think that, you know, it could affect the length of his peak performance. You never know when he's going to push off funny and it's going to pop again, right?

And that sucks because he is the best goalie in the world, in my opinion. I think, you know, I wouldn't say he's head and shoulders above Lunguist, but he really stands out, I think, is the very best when he's on his game. So we're doing this a couple games in the season. We get the benefit of seeing how he looks. He looks pretty damn like Kerry Price.

So I had him as the clear number one. I had Lungwist as the clear number two. What's amazing about Lungwist, so the wind threshold, lost threshold, stat. So over the past three years, he had the highest win throw, wind threshold percentage at 46%. He also had the lowest loss threshold percentage at 26%. And we're talking highest by 5% and lowest by 3%. Schneider is next behind him.

So that's over the past three years. Now last year, everybody said, well, he's in a decline and blah, blah, blah. Last year his wind threshold percentage was 53%. So it went up. his loss threshold percentage was 24% and went down. So he actually was better than he's been at any other time in the past three years. Everybody remembers again, it's recency bias. They remember the last few games of the season,

and the Rangers getting their ass handed to him by the Penguins. But I don't think Lundquist is in decline. Yeah. Well, it's crazy, right? Because a fair question is how does the best goalie of his generation have only one as a trophy. And I think the answer is it's just one of those things where we kind of take for granted how insanely high is baseline performances just consistently year over year. So it's like, you always kind of look for these new guys to be like, oh, maybe he's the best guy. Maybe he's the best guy.

And it's like, I mean, Lundkowitz has seven straight years of over 920 is just insane. Like, he just doesn't have off seasons. And I was looking at it. Like last year, for example, might have been the most impressive thing he's ever really done because he faced the most shots against in the league. And a fun stat that I found was he had 557 high danger shots against, and the second most was Holby with a hundred fewer than him. Like that's insane. Just insane workload. It's insane what the Rangers were asking him to do with that blue line in front of him, and he was up to the task. So I think that, you know, he's pretty clearly right there with Kerry Price, and he's damn good, and I'll just enjoy him while we can. Yeah. And look, like I think I said on your

podcast before. There's going to come a time when he is going to be in decline. And yeah, it might happen. It might start this year. I don't know. But I'm not ready to, you know, the stuff that comes out where they say, oh, no, he's definitely in decline. I feel like those are just based in nonsense. You know, from a statistical standpoint, it's not true. And if you're watching, if you watch the games, he stands on his head. So, I just, you know, I just think he's an all-time great. And, you know, to me, a clear number two behind price. They're pretty close.

And then I think Schneider is right there too. And it's amazing, but Schneider is another guy. He just doesn't get the credit he deserves. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, basically the only year he had a sub-925, say, percentage, was the year that the Devils decided like they'd split the starts 50-50 with him and Broder which was really, I mean, it was funny at the time.

It's even funnier now to look at all in hindsight. And now Schneider's amazing and it's kind of a shame that his prime years are kind of being wasted on this Devils team that isn't going anywhere. But at least with Hall now and guys like Pavlzaka and stuff, they have some promise in terms of just getting him enough goals to win enough games to actually make the playoffs. But yeah, no, I feel pretty good about this.

we've kind of hammered out. I'm glad you talked me to Mason. And yeah, I'll have to look into the Brian Elliott stuff because whenever you know enough about goalting and whenever you say something like that, it kind of makes me wonder what I'm missing and sort of, I kind of want to do a bit more digging myself. Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of a lot of folks that I talk with on Twitter have kind of latched on to a couple of these goalies that, you know, like the Masons and the Elliot's, and even like a Halak, who I think has gone under the radar for most of his career. And it's funny because they, folks will come

back and go, yeah, you know what? I think I kind of see it. So I don't know how, I don't know how, you know, goalies kind of go missed. But you think about it, the same thing happens with players, too. You know, there are players that are underrated. And then, statistical evidence shows that they're very effective. It's just always surprising to me because a goalie plays the entire game by himself. And folks just seem to miss certain guys. Yeah, that's fair. And overranked other guys.

Yes, like John Quick. Like John Quick, the 10th best goal in the NHL, according to Nick Mercanty. Man, that's a headline right there. Hey, Nick, plug some stuff. Plug this article that you'll hopefully write one day. and where the people can find you on Twitter and all that jazz. So I'm going to write about wind threshold and lost threshold on hockey graphs. That's, I'm letting, don't tell me about Hart, Dawson Springs get his war model out.

That's a big venture for him. So he's got about five or six articles to go, and then I'm going to get this win threshold and lost threshold. percentage article written on hockey graphs. But you can also find my stuff on Twitter at N Mercad. And I'll be posting graphs and charts like I did last season that you can follow along and see what I think about different goalies. Yes. Well, listen, man, thanks for taking the time and helping me hammer out this list.

Of course. It was fun. Cool. We'll chat soon. All right. The Hockey PEDEOCast with Dmitri Filippovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Filippovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypedioCast.