The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 137: The NHL’s Back-Up Goalie Problem

Episode Date: February 6, 2017

Nick Mercadante joins the show to discuss the downtick in league-wide goaltending this season, the especially uncharacteristic individual performances, and how to fix the NHL's back-up goalie problem. Here’s a quick rundown of the topics covered: 1:35 Weird Individual Goalie Performances 9:05 Average Shot Distance 17:25 The Wonky Schedule 21:20 Ben Bishop, Steve Mason, and Brian Elliott 28:00 Carter Hutton, Curtis McElhenney & "The Proven Back-Up" 43:30 The Juuse Saros Blueprint 49:45 The Problems with Results-Based Analysis Every episode of the podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, and Stitcher. All past shows can be found here listed in chronological order. Make sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new episodes as they’re released. All ratings and reviews of the show are also 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 Filipovich. and joining me as our resident goalie expert Nick Mercodonte. Nick, what's going on, man? What's up, Dimitri? How are you? I'm good. I'm good. We're recording this on a Sunday afternoon, working hard before the Super Bowl. We were just discussing how Vancouver got hit by a massive snowstorm by its low standards.

So hopefully this is... I guess Vancouver doesn't get that much snow, huh? No, we don't. We didn't for like a decade. And then I feel like the past year or two, we've started getting like colder winters and more snow. And I think that, uh, yeah, yeah, the world's coming to an end slowly, man. Hey, hey, hey, it's not necessarily, it could just be, you know, the natural, no, no, the world's going to end. Yeah, I'm sure it's completely coincidental that there's all these signs that, uh, the climate

is changing before our very eyes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The other day, uh, we've, we've been having like pretty steady, cold weather here in, in, in the beautiful state of Connecticut. And then, you know, just randomly, it's like 55 degrees and sunny. And you're like, well, this isn't normal for, you know, the depth of January and February. But, yeah. Well, there's a great segue.

Speaking of abnormal stuff, we're going to start to show off by talking about some bizarre goalie performances this year. Yeah, it's been a weird year, man. I think that, you know, there's all those jokes about goaltending being voodoo and all that. and being very unpredictable and there is something to that but you know there's been a handful of guys over the past let's say three to five years that we've just come to expect a high standard from something between that like 920 to 925 range in terms of a percentage and this year for whatever reason a lot of those guys other than basically like brayton holtby have just completely fallen apart and and played way below what we come to expect from them so i don't know there's some

interesting theories circulating around that but do you think it's just just one of those things where it's just a coincidence or just, you know, goals scores up across the league and goalie performance is down? Or is it, is there something to it? You know, you have me on as an expert and it's seasons like this where then I'm just like, you know, I don't know. It's crazy because, yeah, this season down is up, up is down. We've got, you know, Kari Lettenen really having a pretty stellar season, especially considering the circumstances defensively in Dallas. And then you've got, you know, Jonathan Bernier has been like the perfect backup

goaltender. You've got, you know, these kind of other bizarre, you know, guys that have risen to the top. But more, I think what's more spectacular is some of the guys down, that have been down near the bottom all season, like Henrik Lundquist, those are names that you. you never associate with anything below league average, anything even close to below league average. So it's strange, and I think you really do with goaltenders, you do have to go case by case and look at the circumstances because we just haven't done a good enough of a job of separating out confounding variables and team effects and all those things that impact how a goalie performs.

And because there are so many, you know, kind of circumstantial types of empirical data that you, I think you still really do have to consider when analyzing a goalie. It is hard to just go by the numbers when you're looking at goalies because, quite frankly, the numbers have proven not to be good enough at predicting performance. Right. Well, at the same time, though, like if we've come, you know, if there's like, let's say like a guy like Henrik Lunkwist and a guy like Corey Schneider, for example.

I mean, we've come to sort of expect this like level of greatness from them. And then when they don't perform that way, like, yeah, I understand what you're saying, especially in terms of a guy like Lundquist, for example, like when you watch the Rangers play, it's pretty clear that most of the time the team in front of them is just hanging him out to dry. And it's like, it's stuff where it's, you'd have to be honestly an idiot to think that it's his fault, like some of these goals that are happening. But then it's like, well, it's been that. way for years and you know it's quite possible that maybe he's just having an off year maybe

some age related signs of decline slowly and it's like one of those things where if you just lose like a fraction of your ability all of a sudden you just get exposed to that same stuff that you otherwise would have been able to cover before before yeah yeah i mean especially so just kind of staying on lunkwist especially given the circumstances so you know i've been going back to this average shot distance. It hasn't really proven to be predictive of performance, but again, I think that's because there are tons of confounding variables that get in between the scenes of just shot distance.

You know, shot distance is a simple statistic. It's just how far away from the net are the shots coming. But if you watch a Rangers game, you know that the shots are in tighter. They're often going through several layers of screens. It makes it difficult to track the puck. And as a result, there's lots of tips and deflections that happen right around the net. And lots of guys sitting wide open on the doorstep to tap pucks in.

So those are things that Lundquist can't really control. They've been there in the past, though. They've always kind of been there for him. If you look historically, the Rangers have had the lowest average shot distance for, meaning closest to the net, for several seasons now. So, you know, those things really haven't changed all too much. Maybe, you know, some of the defensemen like Dan Gerardy and those guys are even worse than they've been in the past.

But it hasn't gotten, you know, appreciably worse. The issue is what you were saying, which is, you know, he's 34 going on 35 and he's starting to slow down. I think he has blips. He has games where he just doesn't look on. He's having trouble tracking the puck. His reaction time isn't up to speed or up to the crazy speed that it used to be. And sometimes some of those miraculous saves he used to make are just turning into goals.

And you see his reaction too. He's much more demonstrative this year in terms of his disappointment in himself. Like you can see visibly like he'll hang his head like, oh. I'm Henrik Lungwist and I make those saves. You know, maybe other goalies don't, but I do. And he's not making them this year. And, you know, it's a sign of aging. Now, could he have a Renaissance season next season?

I think he's already on his way to having a better second half. And by the end of the year, I bet his stats are going to be, they're not going to be great, but they're going to be above league average. He's already kind of creeping up in my stats that I look at, like Mercad and those. he's just below the Mendoza line now. So, you know, I think he's having like a second half kick. Could next season be, you know, a vintage Lunkwist season? And this was just a blip?

Yeah, maybe. But, you know, history tells us that goalies are going to decline at some point because of age. And, you know, maybe just this is the time. Yeah. Well, I think, yeah, but at the same time, like, you're right in the sense that he's built up enough stock with us over the years that I'm not going to be the one to bet against him at this point. Right. I feel like with a guy like him, like I'm going to have to see like overwhelming evidence to suggest that he's, we need to recalibator expectations just because of like, I don't want to be there.

It's like, oh, yeah, no, Henry and Conquist's best days are behind him. And then all of a sudden he's back to being like a 925 goalie. And I'm just like, uh, I feel like a idiot now. Yeah, yeah, you can't. You can't. Because he is one of the very, very few goaltenders where you can set your watch to him. You know, you know what he's going to turn in, season in and season out. And he's been doing it for over a decade.

So I don't, I'm, I'm with you. I don't want to be the person who says, well, he's finished just because I'm looking at a sample of, you know, whatever, five playoff games last season. And, you know, a swath of games this season, whatever you want to call it, 25 bad ones this season. You know, that's not good enough for me to go, well, you know, I'm writing off Henrik Lundquist and we need to, you know, just think of him as a league average. or worst goalie at this point because there's just too long of a track record of him being well, well above average in terms of the distribution of his performance. I do think the average shot distance thing you brought up is interesting. I mean, this year in particular, I feel like we've been focusing on it a bit more just league-wide

in terms of mostly shooters just because of the great work. Someone like Michael McCurdy has been doing with the heat maps and stuff like that. But it is one of those things where, you know, if you try to find a relationship between shot distance and shooting efficiency or something like that, it's kind of all over the place. Like there's like a slight positive relationship, I feel like, but not nearly as much as you'd think intuitively. And I do think some of that just has to do with the fact that, you know, the guys with the higher true shooting ability, like a guy like Alex Ovechkin or early in his career, what we've seen from Patrick Lidney, like those guys typically will, because their shot is so much better,

they will kind of shoot from a further distance. And I feel like that'll throw things off. whereas, like, you see some of these, like, more, like, net front, gritty guys that don't necessarily have that much skill, but are just constantly around the net, jamming away the puck. Like, those guys, it's interesting how the shot profile and the type of shooter that's taken them, like, it all works together. But unfortunately, we sort of have to go on a case-by-case basis because it's kind of all over the place otherwise. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly.

I mean, look at Ovechkin, you know, most of Ovechkin's power play one timers, or a lot of them, I should say, not most. They're actually really coming from kind of a medium danger area. They're not quite in that high danger area that most guys, I think, really need to shoot from on a one-timer in order to be an NHL goalie consistently. They get, you know, a guy like Ovechkin or a line A, and there's a few others around the league, they get away with that because their shot is just that good, you know, in terms of release and speed and trajectory and where it hits in the net.

So that's where, you know, quite frankly, we've got these danger zones. We've got distance from the net. You know, we've got heat maps and where do shots usually come from. But, you know, the missing link, and this is what guys like Ryan Stimson are looking at with their tracking projects. The missing link is more information on what's happening before the shot that, you know, creates pre-shot movement. And then also what are the confounding variables in between the shooter and the net in terms of screens, in terms of things that are potentially creating havoc for a goaltender in just squaring up and facing a shooter and having it be the shot versus the goalie and which one is better.

So that's the type of information and data that we, you know, as a hockey analytics community, community or whatever you want to call it, I think we need to continue to drill down into. And until then, you just got, you really do, I mean, it's not a good, or a lot of people will say it's not good practice to go case by case and kind of cherry pick statistics to make your argument. But the reality is, with goalies, you really do kind of have to do that to a certain extent. You can't just look at it on a surface level and go, oh, well, that explains everything. you know, Lungwist, the shots are coming closer to the net. It doesn't explain everything.

It just doesn't. And the predictivity of the statistics bears that out. You know, the only thing that I've really found that's been predictive is distribution of performance. And that's, you know, a statistic I've messed with and mentioned on this show with win threshold and loss threshold. and that's really kind of it's grouping data together and binning data which is not again again not good practice but it you know it helps predict there's just nothing you can't take one stat and go well this stat works to explain everything it's just no we're not there yet right and i understand you know that's sort of a bit of a point of contention or frustration for for people especially like you know it's easy if your job is working in hockey and and analyzing this stuff and writing about or talking about or talking about on podcasts or radio or TV or what have you and where you can like spend all day crunching the numbers and looking into it

on a case by case basis and really doing deep dives but it's like for more casual fans or observers it'd be nice to have a more catch-all thing like you know like how baseball has like it's war statistic or something like that or various other ones and it's like where you could just point to one thing and it could just basically be like a ranking but unfortunately it's just not we're just not really at that point yet

I think we will I mean, we'll get there just based on. It's all about the underlying data and finding, you know, we've got to find the underlying data that actually, and then determine that it means something. There are a lot of companies and, you know, resources that are tracking data and doing this stuff called microsatts. We just have to figure out what's meaningful and then implement it into a formula that, you know, that will actually tell us something. So it's going to get better and better. I think it's going to happen rapidly.

I mean, I hope that a lot of this stuff that's out there, but maybe blackboxed, some of it will make it into the public domain so that smart people can mess around with it and turn it into, like you said, either a war stat or whatever it may be, that a casual fan can latch onto and go, okay, this I can trust is a, you know, somewhat of a catch-all that will tell me where my goalie ranks. Well, and, you know, looking at the other end of the sort of, in terms of shooters,

like, I constantly think that, you know, we've taken the next leap as a community in terms of realizing that, you know, shooting efficiency for most guys is very volatile and it's all over the place. And that's why we look at shot generation stats more so than the actual goals they score just because it tells us more about what's kind of what's going to come in the games and weeks and months to take place. But like then you see a guy like Jordan Eberley, for example, who's generally been a pretty above average league shooter, just shooting percentage just goes in a tank this year and then all of a sudden you start hearing all these rumblings about how, you know,

Edmonton should move him and how he's, you know, a horrible player all of a sudden. And it's like, we do this dance with various guys every year. And, and it, for whatever reason, it just keeps happening. I mean, I guess it helps, it helps us because it gives us something to talk about and sort of look right and look smart when it turns around and we've quote unquote predicted it but i mean like it's it just hilarious to me that we still keep doing the same dance yeah that the jordan everly thing is funny just an anecdote uh i don't know where it was i'm sure it was positive it was on twitter uh there was somebody wrote something about how everley can't play on good teams because and in that this season shows it and i and i said to myself but when has he ever

previously been on a good team where you can definitively say that he can't play on good teams. Maybe just his shooting percentage went in the tank, which happens to everybody. It happened to Crosby last year for a huge portion of the season. It just happens because hockey is hard and sometimes you just don't score for a while. So I thought that was hilarious. Well, yeah, the funny thing. I mean, it's like, I feel like the only good team Jordan I believe has ever played on that we've seen is like that

world junior Canada team and where he was like one of the best players and insanely clutch and score the big goals and it's like yeah but those are the little details details okay I mean that's just yeah that doesn't support our story yeah that doesn't support our story so we'll leave that out and we'll just you know continue barreling forward until Jordan we run him out of town and yeah and then his shooting percentage just you know

goes back to where we'd expect it to be and it's like well he must have changed something with his game it's like I doubt it yeah he was just jealous of on Rick David and, you know, he just couldn't perform next to a guy like that. So, you know, he couldn't handle all the success. Edmonton was enjoying this year. It's too much for a system. Let's, okay, so the thing about, back to the goalie discussion, you know, a friend

of the show, Craig Custin's had this theory where he talked to certain, I think, goalie coaches around the league, and basically they were positing that just the weird nature of this season with the wonky schedule and how it started off with, you know, an irregular training camp and preseason because the World Cup is sort of throwing them for a loop and throwing them out of rhythm and you know that would make sense if you just think about it like just sort of how goalies are like creatures of habit just like most pro athletes but it's i feel like goalies in particular like where you just sort of do the same thing over and over again and need to get into a nice rhythm and it makes sense that would throw off their performance but it always seems

like one of those things where like it's kind of hindsight 2020 where you're just trying to fit it fit it to what's actually happening i didn't see anyone like really throwing this theory out before the season like goalies will struggle this year because of this like no one was really saying that so that's why i kind of have my eyebrows raised when someone says something like that yeah i mean look starting goalies are there's absolutely first of all there's no doubt in my mind that goleys are creatures that have it it's just like a pitcher in baseball you i i i went haywire early in the season with a couple different goalie tannums where i said why are they jerking these guys around just let them through their problems these guys are professionals and they're comfortable

doing this. They might have a couple of bad games, but in the long run, you'll be better off just letting them work through it because they are creatures of habit. You can't yank a guy out after one bad goal and, you know, he's going to be better off for it. He's actually probably going to be worse off for it. And so I've been big on that. You've got to let professionals do what they do and work through things. You've got to let them know what their schedule is going to be, generally speaking, and you don't want to change it up too much. Like, I find, if a coach wants to ride a hot hand or something like that, that's okay, I guess. But I like to say, okay, I've got two goalies.

One is my starter. He's going to get these games. The backup's going to get these games, all things equal. And then if there's an injury or something that changes it up, we deal with that. I think a lot of goalie coaches will agree with that, with doing things that way. Because they work with these guys day in and day out. everything in practices is about repetition in terms of your movements and how you approach different types of shots and all of that gets thrown into upheaval when you suddenly change it.

Now the thing that to what Custin's did in pulling these various coaches, you know, there might be something to it. The NHL changed its schedule. suddenly we've, you know, congested certain areas of the season with a ton of games. And then there's these other areas of the season where you have no games, literally a one-week vacation. And it does change things up, especially for guys that have been pros for a long time. And they're used to at the NHL and the AHL level, a very similar type of schedule in terms of the spread of games and, you know, when they're going to hit back-to-backs and things like that.

So, yeah, I think there could be something to it. You know, is there a way to prove it? I don't know. Again, it's kind of a case-by-case thing. You know, a guy who's used to getting 60 games spread out over a typical NHL season. Yeah, it's a different schedule. And maybe it impacts them. But, you know, I don't know.

How do you prove that, you know? It seems way too convenient. Right. Life's never that easy, man. But so there's like the guys, like we mentioned, like Lung-Quish-Ny. I think you can carry price has performed better than those guys, but based on his lofty standards, he's also, his performance has dropped a little bit. Well, he hasn't been consistent, you know, he's, he usually is so steadily great.

He's been, he's had high highs and low lows, which is not carry price. Yeah. And then so, but like those guys, it's, it's alarming just because we're not used to seeing it from them. But then there's this other group of goalies where it's like the guys that people, you know, myself especially, were kind of slow. to come around on whether it's Ben Bishop, as we discussed in the preseason or, I don't know, even like a Steve Mason, I know you and I were probably on them a bit earlier than most people,

but it's like, even a Brian Elliott, it's like these guys that for years were sort of a punchline or people were very skeptical of their performance, and then they were so solid for a couple of years there where you had to just start buying in because you can just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. It seemed like it would never happen. And then all of a sudden this year, it's like the few people that were holding out hope that they were right in their analysis that these guys actually maybe aren't that good it's like they're all of a sudden getting very vocal again because the performance has dipped quite a bit and I don't know it's frustrating to me like finally you buy in on this and then it's just like you're not rewarded

for your faith at all yeah welcome to analyzing goalies yeah um yeah so so before the season so just taking those three guys so before the season I said Steve Mason is going to be great again like he's been for the past few seasons. He's in his prime in terms of his age prime. And his performance in Philadelphia has been pretty much nothing short of spectacular. So I don't see any reason why it wouldn't continue. So put that one aside. That was my preseason prediction of him.

Ben Bishop, I said he is due for a decline. I think we started to see it last season. and it will continue, and it's age-related and injury-related. A goalie that big with his injury history, it's only going to get worse. And, you know, let's face it, most goalies are not Hemrick Lungquist or Roberto Luongo, where they last into their 30s at all. And he's hitting that age where it's, you know, maybe it's just time for him to start declining. Goleys have a short shelf life, and I think he is one of them.

So that was my prediction on him, and I look kind of smart on that one, because I think that's pretty much what I think that's pretty much what we're seeing. And then, you know, in Elliott, I said, hey, that's a great pickup by Calgary. He's going to be awesome. He's been awesome. You know, I don't know how long that will last for,

but he's certainly at the top of his game right now. And, you know, I honestly don't think he got a fair shake, or hasn't gotten a fair shake. He hasn't been able to kind of work through. issues. He's been treated like a guy on a short leash who is a tandem type of goalie, which is what he was in St. Louis. And it's a little bit, I think it's a little bit frustrating that he's been treated that way in Calgary. But then again, Chad Johnson, for some weird reason, was exceptional for, you know, a huge portion of the season. So, yeah, so I've been eating

some crow on Twitter because of some of these guys. But, you know, I think that there is kind of circumstantial, empirical evidence to suggest either to explain their performance or to suggest it might get better. You know, Steve Mason was just jerked around for the first part of the season. Noyverth went down with injury and then suddenly hit a stride and he played really, really well. And then he hit hiccups, but every goal he hits hiccups. It's just how quickly they get out of it. His has just been more prolonged. Now he's kind of starting to play a little bit

better again. You got to just give the guy some leash for once, you know, let him play. Because his recent history suggests that he is good enough to get out of it and he's consistent enough to perform well for a long period of time. So let him work through it. Haxdall doesn't give him any leash at all. He freaks out at the first side of him playing poorly and yanks him, which I think for a goalie like Steve Mason, it really, you know, screws him up in terms of confidence and his readiness to perform. I think in terms of like value added though, I mean, if assuming it doesn't cost them a playoff spot and they miss out because of the goaltending, like if they make it and they're able to get Mason on a more team-friendly, cheaper deal because of this drop in the moment.

It's going to work out pretty nicely for them. Although, I guess you could also argue that, like, they might freak out and think this is the new Steve Mason and just, like, not give him a contract at all and just let him walk. And that would, that would be a bad decision, I think. Yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing. There are a lot of people out there that just don't believe in a guy like a Steve Mason because of his funny career trajectory, maybe, or, you know, I don't know. know why. Philadelphia fans are notoriously tough on their goalies. But yeah, the silver lining underneath all this is you basically knocked the guy's stature down to the point where you can get him for a really team-friendly deal and keep them around. I don't think Neuverth is a guy

that you really, if you can keep him for cheap, great. If he goes away, that's fine too. He's kind of a career backup type of goalie. So, you know, I've heard some stuff out there. well, should they keep Mason or Neuivert? I don't even think that's a question. I think it's, do you keep Mason if you can get him on a team-friendly contract? Or is he going to go into free agency and somebody's going to give him a bloated contract, which I highly doubt. So I think that's the only question. And Neuiverth is just, you know, if you want to keep him great, if not, you've got stolars that you can bring up and make the, you know, the caddy.

Yeah, well, the Elliott one is the fascinating case to me just because, I mean, I think that, you know, know if him and the blues could do it all over again, I'm sure they would just love to repeat what they had going last year. The magic they had there where they were first in the league and safe percentage. And, you know, his performance has declined. And as you mentioned, he hasn't really given him afforded a chance to work through it. But it's like, they basically just tried to replace him with Carter Hutton, who was like a suboptimal backup.

It was not an NHL goal. He never has been. I think if you asked Carter Hutton, he'd be like, I don't know how this happened, but here I am. Yeah, I mean, they should just let Carter Hutton be their color commentator on their home broadcast. He's fantastic. He provides way more insight than I've heard from any of these other guys.

Just let him do that. Put the man in a position to succeed is what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Carter Hutton's an interesting story because he really was not a guy who was ever expected to make it to this level at all. And he didn't really win his way to this level with his performance. it was just a bunch of injuries kind of led to like a circumstance where he kind of worked his way up. You know, ECHL, A HL, and suddenly he's in the NHL, which does happen from time to time.

And even then, he didn't really seize the opportunity. I think he just, maybe he's one of those guys that everybody likes him. And they said, well, he's, you know, is a backup, I guess maybe you could do worse. We'll just keep him around as a backup. So suddenly he was, you know, an NHL back. backup. And it's funny. I mentioned this on another podcast, but, you know, some of those types of backups, they get this, like, reputation of like, oh, he's just a, he's a steady backup. He's a good guy to have around. And then they make an NHL career out of it. But the underlying performance and

the statistics don't bear out that he's anything better than a below average goalie. You can get an average or above NHL average backup. And that's what you should be looking for. You shouldn't be looking for Carter Hutton. But, you know, that's, hey, I don't, I said last season and I said before this season, I said, I don't think Jake Allen is ever going to be a very great NHL starter. I think he's a serviceable guy who can perform at or just above league average, which is good. You know, this season, he's not. And I think that that's why that tandem maybe worked is you've got essentially Jake Allen, who's a really good backup.

And then Brian Elliott, who's on top of his game. And, you know, at any given time, you're getting pretty good goal-tending out of it. So I do think the Blues would take that one back if they could. Yeah, well, it's one of those things where, you know, Ken Hitchcock obviously paid for it because, he was already kind of in that weird middle ground where it was clear that he wasn't going to be back after this year so it made it easier to just cut the court now but it's like people are making all these excuses about you know how the system had deteriorated and how their defensive scheme was and what it used to be and it's like there's nothing in the numbers to suggest that like they give up the same number of chances the same number of shots like everything is the exact same and it's just one of those things where the goalies just stopped making the same number of saves that we're making last year and obviously when that happens you're going to lose all the same same lot more games and you're going to know your defensive system is just going to look a lot worse because you're just kind of micro-analizing and questioning everything after the puck's in your net so it's just like it's funny how that works but i the hudden discussion is a good one and i think that that's what

i want to spend a bunch of time here on i wrote about it this week on sportsnet dot ca and people can check that out um but it's i basically raised a question of you know the backup position was this one thing where it was often overlooked it was you just have these sort of career backups guys that had been around the league mostly because they were just pleasant to be around, I'm assuming, or the consum of professional or all this sort of intangible stuff. But it's like, it was one thing when, you know, when we knew less about goaltending and how usage affects performance and you had starters like Mika Kiprasov and Marty Bruder playing like 72 times a year. It's like, okay, well, I mean, if you're only going to be playing a guy 10 times a season, like there's only

so much damage you can do. But now, as we're learning that goalies really shouldn't be playing, more than some in like 60 games, 65 tops, and backups are playing more as a result. Like, it's very, all of those games means so much in today's NHL with all the three points, three point games that are handed out and how tight the standings are. And it just seems crazy to me that there's so many teams out there that are just very negligent in how they're filling that position considering how big of a difference it can make in the standings. It's like, if you're just like giving away points when you're playing a guy like Jonas Gustafson, rather than actually having a competent backup there,

that's such a major difference for you in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, yeah. It's really an interesting thing. I just wanted to look something up real quick because, so Curtis McLeany is a career backup, right? And he is, yeah, this is what I wanted to look up. So Curtis McElaney is 33 years old. And, you know, suddenly he's like the,

the sought-after backup because he had this little short spur of really good performance that just so happened to coincide with Columbus playing out of their mind in front of it, right? So suddenly he's this sought-after backup. He ends up in Toronto because they have a need for backups, for a backup goalie, a desperate need for backup goalie because they're basically burning Anderson out. And they need to give Anderson some breeding. room. So they go out and get McLeanie, and I don't know if it's a direct quote or not, but this is what I heard from somebody else, and I'm just going to say it anyways. Apparently Babcock, during an interview

about McElaney, they said, he said something like, well, he's six foot three, and you can't, he's six foot three, and he's always going to be six foot three, and you can't coach six foot three, or something like that. So apparently, you know, Babcock, which he's done before with other types of players, you know, he's basically what he's saying is, I want a backup who I can throw in the net and he's going to be six foot three tonight or any night I throw him in the net. And, you know, by proxy of his size, he will be able to make enough saves for us to, you know, get through a game with a backup in that, right? So, so that is a perfect kind of description of like this, you know, what might make a guy a career backup that has,

really nothing to do with his career performance, but it's almost akin to a relief pitcher in baseball where I think you've used this before, but like Fernando Rodney. It's like, why does a Fernando Rodney keep getting chances? Well, because he's demonstrative on the mound and he throws hard and sometimes he'll strike some people out. Yeah, but what in his overall performance makes him good enough to eat those innings up? We need those innings to be eaten up by somebody because we don't throw pitchers. for nine innings anymore.

So should we be giving them to a guy where they've proven statistically that they're good or we predict statistically that they're good? Or should we just give it to a guy who has this standout feature? And there are a lot of NHL teams that give a guy a backup role because of some standout feature. It's like you said, it's a consummate professional. He shows up to work every day. It's like, who does it? What are you talking about?

Right. Yeah, he comes in with. with a good attitude and he supports a starting goalie and and blah blah blah blah. Okay, yeah, great. That's good. That would be a great trait on a good goalie, right? A good goalie who actually performs well. Curtis McElheny, well, he's a guy.

He's bigger. He fills the net. And we can have faith that when we put him in there, he's going to just block some stuff just by virtue of his size. Okay, that's great if it were actually true. Curtis McElhaney for his career has been one of the worst. worst goalies in the NHL over the entire, over every single season that he's played. So it's just not true.

Yeah. And it's really, really interesting to me that there are backups, like you said, that it's like they make a whole career out of this thing that has nothing to do with really actually stopping the puck. Yeah, which is their job and what they're paid to do. And it's important now. It's vital that you have a backup goalie that can stop the puck. because they're going to play.

And with how tight the standings are, whether they're playing 10 games or 25 games, every single game is important because there is no wiggle room. You are going to have to put a backup in, and that game is going to be a quote unquote important game because every point matters at this with how the NHL is. The parody, you know, is razor thin. So, I mean, you look at the Bruins, like the best example. I mean, they've won something like three out of 26 possible points when Rask hasn't been a net. And it's like, even if they win like half of those, all of a sudden they're comfortably in a playoff spot. And this whole Claude Julian storyline, it just isn't a thing. And it's like, it's amazing how little difference or how just like them changing one little at fast end of their game,

they probably wouldn't be that expensive could make all the difference in the world. But I think like pro sports in general has this sort of problem with recycling talent where it's like once you get your foot in the door, you're pretty much a maid man from that point. And that's so true with, you know, you mentioned a guy for Randi, like pro quote unquote, proven closers in baseball where it's like if you've saved games at any point in your career, you're probably going to have first dibs on being a closer for some other team because you've done it before where it's like, it seems kind of like a weird catchment. Well, yeah.

To be a proven closer, you need to be given a chance in the first place. So it's like everyone could see what they have this setup role now. You know, the setup role now is getting, you know, treated kind of with the same how they treat the closer role. So now what ends up happening is you have a closer who couldn't cut it as a closer. They just go, oh, well, then he's a setup man. He just must be a set up man. And what really, I mean, there's a. not really a ton that's different between the eighth and the ninth inning. And that's been proven

statistically in terms of how they perform or, you know, the leverage of the situation. Games are usually around the same score in the eighth and ninth inning. So, you know, all that they're basically doing is exactly what you said. It's like, well, this guy got a chance to be a closer. Regardless of how he did in that chance, it just means that he's a closer now. But maybe he's not a tier one closer, so we'll just turn him into a setup man. It's like, no, maybe he's not. Maybe he's not even an ML, I almost said, NHL, MLB pitcher. Maybe he's just not one. And maybe we need to go into our minor league system

and find another guy who could competently fill that role. And, you know, the analogy works for backup goalies. With limited data on most backups in terms of, you know, just the size of the sample of NHL shots, why not just pull the trigger and go try to, find somebody who, you know, maybe they're performing well on the farm and you just give him a shot and see if you catch lightning in the bottle. Why is that any worse than just taking a guy who's proven to be bad in putting him in there, you know?

Well, I mean, you look at, like, the sharks are a great example of this where, like, Aaron Dell all of a sudden this year comes out of nowhere and is having a fantastic backup season for them. And it's like, you know, he had good numbers in the H.L and they just finally gave him a chance. And he's doing perfectly fine. And I'm not saying that they should, you know, sign him up to a massive long-term deal to be their backup for the rest of time. But it's like it's... But you go season to season and you say, okay, Aaron Dell, he kicked ass. So let's see if he can keep kicking ass.

And, you know, if he doesn't kick ass next season, we're no worse for it because he's on a small, you know, a short-term contract and we're probably not paying him much. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's just like with like, you know, fourth-liners or third-liners in hockey where it's like when teams sign these guys like Luke Lynn and. or whatever or Trevor Lewis with the Kings. It's like when you give them like a four-year deal, it's not that they're not useful players, but committing yourself to that much time for those types of players when they're just readily available at the HL level.

Like if they have an injury or if their performance declines for whatever reason, you should be able to just make the change on the fly and just go with someone else rather than being pod committed to that player. It's like it just seems like a logical way to approach roster construction. Yeah, there's a, Well, we're going to have an interesting time here with the expansion because, you know, you're going to see there's going to be more room for, you know, some of these guys who are quote unquote tweeners to actually make an impact on an NHL roster because there's another team in the league. So there's just more available spots. And, you know, there's this kind of predominant across, I think across NHL.

front offices, which is that there's a clear dividing line between what's an NHL player and what's an HL player. I don't think that's true at the bottom of your roster. I just don't. I think on a third line, a fourth line, your third pairing defenseman, your backup goalie,

I think that it's a lot closer than they're willing to admit. Now, obviously, system to system, it might be different. You know, the Bruins really just don't have a lot going on in terms of goalie talent at the lower levels. But with that being said, the difference between a Zane McIntyre and, you know, Suban or whoever,

eh, you know, but if McIntyre doesn't perform, you bounce him and try the other guy, you know, I mean, who cares at that point? So, you know, I think that's something that front offices kind of have to overcome is that you do have a pool of talent that you can reach into if you don't see the guy performing. You don't have to go out and sign a Curtis McElaney in order to fill that role necessarily because he's not going to give you necessarily anything better than what your pool of talent below the NHL level could give you. And I mean, you know, listen, you know, historically there have been challenges

with a backup position if you're playing once every handful of weeks. Like, it's tough to work on your job and work to kicks out. And I understand it might probably would be pretty mentally draining, like having to constantly be prepared but knowing that you're probably not going to be playing unless things go horribly wrong for your team like it's it's a tough position to fill but i think that you know that might have been the case more so when it was that sort of 70 70 to 10 split now that we're transitioning closer to you know the smart teams going to even more of like a 50 30 almost like i think that you're incentivized to give that young prospect that you think highly of that you drafted or

signed or whatever that's dominated at lower levels, give him a chance to play because he's probably a better option than a Curtis McLean or a Carter Hutton or a Jeff Zatkoff. And you know, you get him in there, you play him a bit more frequently. And like we're seeing, we're seeing a team like the Predators, for example, this year. I mean, they're a perfect example of that. They let Carter Hutton walk. They promoted UC Soros and he's performing remarkably well. And I don't want to get too carried away after just 10 games. Like I'm not, I'm not necessarily in the camp yet that he should be playing over Becker-Rennie. I think, you know, it should be more of a split for sure, but I want to see...

I mean, listen, it's quite... You know you got sent down, right? Yeah, I think they just get a bit more games or something like that. Yeah, they want to get them. I think they want to get them reps, but... Yeah, I think that, you know, I think it's very realistically possible that he's already a better goalie than Pecorane, but at the same time, like, we're seeing with guys like Vasilevsky and Mrazik this year who we're both very high on, like, it's not always this sort of upward

ascension. Like, there's peaks and valleys when it comes to development. sometimes you hit these rough patches. So I don't want to, after just 10 games, annoying him as one of the best five goalies in the league based on how he's performed in short doses this year. But it is just a great example of how they, instead of signing Carter Hutton to this two or three year deal this summer

just because they were comfortable with him, they'd let him walk, they brought in this guy they were very high on that maybe in the past wouldn't have gotten this opportunity because he was too young or too unproven. And he's rewarded them for it. And I think that more teams should look at that. and act accordingly because it's a great way to squeeze out, even if it's like five points or something over a full season.

Like, that's enormous. Like, if that was like a skater, we'd be writing so many blog posts raving about how useful this guy is. So it's like, I just think that we don't spend nearly enough time talking about that as a kind of a sneaky little advantage for teams to exploit. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think, you know, what you said was about the split of goal. I just don't think there's many NHL goalies that should be getting 70 games.

On merit, or because it's a good idea, you know. I mean, on merit, if you want to ride a hot hand like a Devon Dubnick or, you know, whoever it may be, and then they end up getting more starts than maybe they should have gotten because you're riding him, fine, so be it. I don't think a guy like a Freddie Anderson should play that many games. You know, Tuka Rask is too late in his career to play 72 games or whatever the hell he's on pace for. I mean, Cam Talbot's on pace to play like 73 games or something this year,

and it's because they thought that Jonas Gustafson would be able to spell him occasionally, and he proved that just as been the case for the past five years or pretty much since he came to the NHL, he wasn't up to the task. And I think that, you know, they do have playoff aspirations. They look like a pretty good team out West. they'd be smart to slow down a little bit with that because I think that at this rate, come to playoffs, Camtow, it will probably be a shell of himself. Yeah, that's exactly it. And that's what I'd be fearful of.

You know, just I don't think there's a lot of goalies that should be playing that much. And so if you slow it down and you give your backup time, obviously you want to have faith in your backup that they can actually do the job. And, you know, in Edmonton, they don't have it. But let's say you have a, you know, a backup who's proof. proven competent, or maybe they're a young prospect or whatever it may be. I think you've got to just give them that time at the NHL level and let the chips fall where they may. Nashville is a good example.

They should just give Soros more time. Just give them more. You don't have to give them starters time. Give him a healthy dose in the backup role. He's going to be better off for it because he's going to get his reps. And he's going to get to be at the NHL level and grow his confidence and all. all those other good things that go into, you know, turning him into starting goalie. And you're not going to, you're not going to affect Renee.

He's a professional. He knows probably where he's at, generally speaking, in his career. You know, he's 34 years old himself. So, you know, it's probably about time for him to start giving up that role a little bit. I think the entire team is better off for it when you do stuff like that. But you have to do it with consistency. You got to dole it out in a fair way. And it can't just be, well, we're going to yank René whenever he struggles and put in Saros.

And then we're going to yank Saros if he struggles and put in Renee and do all this stuff like they do in Philadelphia. Just give those guys the time and dole it out in, you know, 60% to 40% or whatever you want to call it. So that both guys are fresh, but they've also gotten their reps in. And you don't have, the only, you know, guys where you need to just give him the net and let them, let them dictate it are absolute superstars, like a Kerry Price or Henrik Lundquist or a guy like that where that's a guy that he should be able to dictate when he can play and when he can't play. And those are rare. You know, there's a handful of those in the league. Look at, um, in, um, in Washington, okay. So I know Hope he won the Vesanel last year,

but everybody should know at this point that he didn't deserve to win the Vesan last year. This year, he actually is a legit Vesina candidate. Yeah, he's what people thought he was last year. Exactly. And he was always on that trajectory to become a top five NHL goalie, and I think he's now he's there. If you remember when we did our goalie rankings way back, I said he's on his way to being there,

and it's just a matter of when he makes that next step. And I think he's made that next step. But I think a big thing that's helped him that's been underrated is they've given Grubauer a ton of time. Grubauer has played like, I don't know off the top of my head, but I think he's played, you know, well over, he's over 500 minutes. I think he's like almost 600 minutes of time, which is quite a bit considering Holpe's stature is the, you know, the most recent Vezina winner. That's to me, that's great coaching. That's just saying, okay, let's make sure Hope he's healthy. Let's, you know, back him off a little bit.

If he's feeling something, we'll sit him for a while. And also we'll just give group our time because it's a good thing to do. Let's not exhaust our starting goalie. And I hope he, I think, is having his best season so far. So maybe there's a little bit of a connection there. Well, I think a lot of it also has to do with backwards thinking in terms of just like results-based analysis teams often do where it's like that whole thing where you know you can't you got to keep playing the team that just won the night before like you can't

make any lineup changes because we was like why would we we won last night we shouldn't change anything but it's like that's that's not how you should approach this stuff particularly with goaltending where it's like you should just have that plan as you said like this guy's going to be playing on this night and you just do it no matter what and let the chips may where they fall where they made because like with with with with with goalies it's it's it's I don't know it just results based analysis when it comes to that just throws me for such a loop where it's like the whole timely save thing or or or you know a guy's riding hot it's where we have all this evidence that shows that just like with most other positions like there's no there there's ups and downs but it's not

necessarily a hot streak it just a variance in their performance and like I think that playing a guy repeatedly just because he keeps winning like is not the way you should approach it doesn't seem like a sustainable thought process moving forward. You should have a plan and just execute it regardless of what happens pretty much. Yeah, yeah. And if you do that, if you do that, most goals are going to respond to it positively because of, you know, what we want back to, which is that they're creatures of habit. They like to know what they're getting themselves into.

It doesn't affect, it doesn't shake their confidence or anything like that. These guys are professionals. I do hear, I get a lot of backlash when I talk about like the comments. of a goalie and in the mental aspect of the game, but I've coached goalies. I know that a ton of it is happening between their ears and not, you know, physically. And, you know, when you do, when you, when you, when you dole out the assignment, you know, and you kind of keep things status quo throughout the season, the goalies just say, okay, this is my job and I'm going to prepare for this job.

and there's no other kind of, you know, confounding type of variable that comes in of, oh, my God, I'm going to get yank the next time I give up a bad goal. I just know that that's coming around the corner because that's how this coach is, which, you know, sure, it's hard to prove it, but it does, I think, overall, it impacts performance potentially negatively for a lot of goalies where, you know, there's a frailty in their confidence and their kind of their mental makeup. to deal with it even as a professional. So, you know, but I don't know.

You know, it's hard to know case by case. I think, like, for instance, in Florida, they knew before the season started that they were going to give Rimer a healthy dose of starts. You know, that's why they got him. I'm sure that Luongo knew that going in. Hey, you're not going to start 65 games. You're going to start, you know, maybe 50 games or whatever it is. And they're on pace for that.

I think Rimer started like 20 or 22 games or whatever it is. And Luongo's performance has dipped. And, you know, I don't know, you know, we could certainly say it's got to be age at this point with Luongo. But, you know, somebody could also say, well, maybe it's just because he knows he's not going to play as much. And, you know, he's not happy with that. And he doesn't do as well in a tandem. He could be right. There's no way to prove one way or the other.

but I still believe that you're doing what's best for the goalie when you just plan in advance and lay it out there and say, look, this has nothing to do with performance, this is how we're going to treat you guys as goalies based on what we know about you today. Yeah, no, I completely agree, man. We're in agreement here. All right, let's get out of here. We're getting close to the one hour mark. I feel like we've put in some work here today.

Yeah, wings and beer. Super Bowl. Yeah, where can people check you out online, man? You can check me out on Twitter, as always, N-M-R-C-A-D on Twitter. I am not a writer anymore. I'm just going to say that. I'm a media mogul. Were you ever a writer?

Just by title, right? Just by title. Yeah, I wrote for a while and then, you know, other things get in the way. No, you can find me on Twitter. That's where I've got my public stuff that I talk about with the goalies. Yeah. Yeah, and also I see you appearing on other podcasts and stuff. And listen, I'm not happy about it, but I understand it's a part of life.

I can't give you everything you need and deserve. Look, are we negotiating an exclusivity deal because I think I need fair compensation for that. We'll talk, man. We'll figure something out. All right. Thanks to meet. Let's enjoy the Super Bowl, man, and we'll chat soon, okay? All right, thanks.

Have a good one. The hockey... Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud. At soundcloud.com slash hockeypedocast.