The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 82: Hanks For Nothing

Episode Date: April 25, 2016

Nick Mercadante joins the show to react to the New York Rangers meekly bowing out of the opening round of the playoffs with the visuals of the Penguins skating laps around them fresh on the mind. We discuss where they go from here, whether Alain Vigneault is still the man for the job, and how blaming Henrik Lundqvist for the loss is missing the forest for the trees. Here’s a quick rundown of the topics covered: 0:40 The fresh wounds of the Rangers playoff exit 4:30 The overrealiance on Henrik Lundqvist 7:32 The pros and cons of Alain Vigneault 11:05 The untapped potential of Kevin Hayes 16:31 Fixing the Rangers this summer 19:40 The curious case of Jonathan Quick 26:45 The flawed idea behind "timely saves" 32:50 Introducing Win Threshold % 38:30 Boom or bust vs. Consistency Every episode of this podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher and can also be streamed from our website. Make sure to not only subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new shows as they’re released, but also take a minute to leave a glowing review. 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 today is someone who I've honestly wanted to have on for a while now because he's doing work that I think is pretty interesting and thought-provoking and it's about, it's on a topic that I personally don't know very much, which is a goalie performance. But for our purposes here, he's most importantly a very disgruntled Rangers fan, and that's Nick Mercodonte. Nick, what's going on, man?

Not much, thanks for that heartfelt intro there. Yeah. So we're recording this. just for a sake of transparency, minutes after the Rangers just bowed out of the playoffs in a... I wouldn't call it a very ceremonious way. How are you feeling right now?

I know the wounds are still pretty fresh, so let's just get right into it. You know what? I kind of came to grips with it after game... Really, honestly, I came to grips with it before game one. That's the true. But, you know, after last game, I, this was kind of just the, the funeral recession.

I knew this was coming. It's so, it was so apparent before the postseason that all the problems of the Rangers, you know, in front of Hank were coming to head right as the playoff was starting. So it was one of those things where I'm going in going, okay, this isn't going to go well. Yeah. Well, okay, let's try and sort through the rubble here and pick up some of these pieces of the, oh, this mess. they left behind because I think it's it's tough right because it's easy to look back and be like okay they haven't picked in the first round in three years they don't have a first or second round pick this summer and they've got I think the oldest group of players in the league based on their on their

main roster and the thing is is that's sort of the price of doing business right like no one was really complaining and they were more willing to sweep it under the rug when they made the conference finals in three or the past four years and they made the finals in one of those years and you have Henrik Lunkwist at your peak, but now that it kind of hasn't worked out and they're looking very, very poorly equipped to deal with a team like the Penguins, all of a sudden you start raising those questions of whether this was kind of something. The writing was on the wall here. Yeah, honestly, I think that the cup finals run a couple years back kind of doom their future in the short term. They got high off it, really. They did. I thought that that team

you know, a lot of components of that team came together at the right time. I think St. Louis, you know, say what you want about him towards the end of his career, but he injected something into that roster, you know, chemistry-wise or whatever you want to call it. And they did play well at times in front of Hank that season. But really, you know, they rode Hank all the way to the finals and it was hard-fought. And then they said, okay, we're that close. All we have to do is maybe make another, you know, free agent acquisition here and, you know, mortgage our future a little bit there. And we should be able to get over the hump.

Obviously, they weren't looking at everything underlying, which shows pretty clearly how much they relied on Hank. So, you know, last year, I thought it was smoking mirrors. they were running on the high PDO. And then this year, you know, things started to fall back down to earth, especially offensively. They couldn't get out of their own zone. And then meanwhile, you're looking at a team that's the oldest team, like you said, and, you know, they have no farm system to speak of because they've traded most of it away to stock up for this window that they had.

It's just, you know, and now it's starting to look bleak. it really is. And it's tough too because you look at them every season. You say, well, with Lungquist every year, they have a chance. They could be a playoff team. And that's a blessing and a curse. You know, it's great as a fan to root for a team that's going to go into the playoffs. But it's also tough to look at it and go, they don't really have, they're not really

that type of team. You know, so. Well, I'm looking at it right now. And definitely the year they made the cup finals with 2013, 20, 2014. They were like a 52% possession team for the year, but they were all the way up near 55 in the final 25 games of the year. And it makes sense that they kind of peaked at the right time, as you said. And then last year, slowly started declining, but, you know, Lundquist was still so good that he could cover everything up. And then this year, I think anyone that was really paying attention noticed that this was a shell of the team they've been in years past. And there was a lot of flaws there that were being masked by a really good shooting percentage, which was a bit lucky, but also probably speaks to the sort of counterattack style. They play off the rush and certain players they have, but also just Lunkwist being the best goalie in the league.

Now the carry price was out pretty much the entirety of the year. And their 5-15 save percentage was through the roof, and it was masking a lot of those problems. And I think that's where people can kind of miss the forest for the trees here, right? Where it's like Lunkwist didn't play well in this series, but pretty much the only reason they were in the position they were in to begin with was because he was just dragging everyone along with him for the ride. Yeah, yeah, totally.

And, you know, it's crazy, too, that I think over the past three seasons, we've kind of seen that Elaine Vigno has trouble adapting to the roster that's put in front of him, or maybe he's just having issues with who he chooses to deploy, whatever it may be. But he's wanted to play that kind of running gun style where you're making a lot of long, hundred foot passes from the D to streaking wingers that are high for those quick two-on-one strikes, that's, you know, I think that their high save percentage in the past is a reflection of that. The problem is that the Rangers haven't had that personnel on the back end for at least two seasons

now, maybe longer. Since Strawalman left, really. Really, yeah, really. And, you know, and then they buried Yandel this year for most of the year. when I think he was probably the guy best equipped to do it. You know, McDonough is a good defenseman, but he's not that type of defenseman. He's a guy who likes to carry the puck up. He doesn't want to make that long home run pass.

And then forget it. With Stall and Gerardi, they're just ringing around the board. So you started to see teams adapting to what they were doing and cutting it off. I especially noticed that last year when they played Tampa, Tampa just bottled up the neutral zone and said, okay, if you're going to throw it around, we're going to just keep pushing you back in and hemming you into your zone. And you saw that again in this series with the penguins.

There was all these turnovers right on the Rangers blue line. And, you know, I just, A.V. just hasn't adapted to it for whatever reason. Yeah, you really did see it in this series, especially even if they could get out of their own zone. The penguins were super content to kind of just messy, play a messy game in the neutral zone where they would just recover every single loose puck it seemed like and just bring it right back the other way. And they had no answer for that. And I guess that's a good pivot point because I'm a bit. torn on Elaine Vino, right?

Like, I think that he is still one of the better coaches in the league, just because you look around at the other 29 coaches and, like, you'd be hard-pressed to find 15 guys that are better than him, right? Like, he's still above average. I think he's generally willing to listen and think critically and progressively, and there's something to be said for that. But I don't know. It's like when people were so down on him by the time he left here in Vancouver, and then

as soon as he leaves, all of a sudden, everything falls apart. and you realize that the grass isn't greener and always, and that if you don't have a good contingency plan that's actually better than Ellen Vinyo, maybe you shouldn't be making a move to get rid of them just for the sake of kind of making fresh change. Yeah, yeah, it's tough. You know, I've spent so much time watching the Rangers

over the past few years, so it's easy to kind of get tunnel vision on all the mistakes that Vigno or all the flaws in his coaching style. But the reality is, and, you know, I'm just, from my own personal experience as a hockey coach. I think every coach has flaws, and it's how well you manage those flaws

if you recognize them yourself and you surround yourself with people that can help check and balance you. And I think maybe that that's a little bit what's going on with the Rangers. I also do think it goes back to the adaptability thing. I think that when he was in Vancouver, he had the roster he wanted,

and he had a novel approach to offense, especially quick strike offense on quick breakouts, where the D is moving it up to streaking forwards that are moving out of the zone quickly. I thought that stretched the ice style fit perfectly for Vancouver. Maybe not as much so for the Rangers, but they were doing it at first. They had the forwards to do it,

and they had some of the D with Strawman and, you know, a younger McDonough. But I just, I think that he fell to adapt. So I think that that was one thing. And, you know, maybe he needed to either look at what he was doing and augmented a little bit or whatever it is. And then I think the other thing is every coach I know has biases towards certain players. AVs is Tanner Glass. And it's, and it's apparently Dan Girardi. And it's apparently Mark Stahl.

you know and he likes his guys and I think his guys play for him and that's a you know an admirable trait for a coach to have that he sticks with his guys and he and he is you know he gets everybody to stick with the process and believe in that and you can see it with the way they play they do play his style but I think that those biases towards certain players have gotten in the way of maybe putting your best team on the ice and you saw it with you know scratching Kevin Hayes down the stretch. It's just absolutely bonkers to me. It's just... Yeah. No, and he was doing it a lot with J.T. Miller earlier in the year, even though there were long stretches where he was arguably their best forward. And yeah, you're right. He definitely

has his guys he loves. And there is, as you mentioned, an admirable quality to that just because there is a human relations part to it where you need to maneuver around that carefully and not ruffle too many feathers and upset the wrong guys. But when it comes to the expense of some of your younger, better players who could really provide the speed and the energy that this team was sorely lacking this season, it's a problem. And you're right about Hayes. I think you and I are probably the two biggest fans of his that exist right now other than maybe his parents, I guess, and his brother. But it's so curious to me, right? And I see it a lot with even certain segments of Rangers fans online. I know there's others that are very much big Kevin Hayes fans,

but then there's people that just can't seem to get over these ideas that he has shortcomings in his game that are fatal flaws. Yeah, that he doesn't work hard, all these things. I don't, you know, I watch him every game and I see the same player every game. I don't see huge, you know, blips of games where he's just like out to lunch. To me, it seems like almost an energy guy at times. I think it's just the perception thing where a taller, more lanky guy just probably looks like he isn't trying. as hard as a guy that's 5 foot 8 and is just like, you know, getting into all these positions where he's leveraging defenders just because he has to because he's so much

shorter than that, right? It looks like Hayes isn't necessarily giving it 110% every time, but that's just because of his physique more so than anything else, I think. Do you remember the website fired Joe Morgan as a baseball website? All right, so they always were on with David Eckstein, right? So the same principle goes for hockey, I think. So David Eckstein's like the plucky shortstop, you know. He's short and he's small and he's got no skill when he goes out there and he, you know, it's all about like effort and hustle and all the stuff, but really he kind of stunk. Right.

He wasn't that good. Well, so that same premise goes to hockey. I think it's even more magnified because, you know, hockey has board battles and things like that. You're right. You know, Hayes is graceful at times. and then other times he's powerful. But all the time he's kind of got this like lanky stride. The way he moves is different than some other players that might be smaller and scrappier.

But he's down in the corners. He's doing those board battles. So that's why I always think it's hilarious when people say, well, he's out to lunch. He doesn't try and he's in the doghouse of A.V because of that. I don't know what's going on in the locker room. Maybe there's something there. But when I watch him play, I'm like, he's the guy I want out there for, if you're looking for an injection of some kind of, you know, hustle element or whatever you want to call it.

But, you know, it is what it is. I think the circumstances here might save the Rangers this summer because you look at him and he's an RFA, so he needs a new contract. And he's probably going to be fairly cheap, whether they give him a bridge contract or whatnot, just because his box car stats were kept down based on the way he was deployed. But I think a smart team here, if there is even a single non-zero chance that, you could get him for anything. I would be calling the Rangers every single day this summer because

you look at all of his underlying numbers and it just makes so much sense that putting this guy in the right situation to succeed is going to pay dividends for you, right? Like he's through the roof in terms of primary points. He doesn't get any power play time. He plays with guys that are nowhere near his skill level and it just seems like if you give him the minutes

and the opportunities and actually give him wingers that have enough skill to convert some of the chances he makes because I'm the belief that he thinks the game so much faster than some of these other guys that he plays with that he gives them these passes that they can't even, they don't even know what to do with them or even when they get them, they just can't do anything

with it because he's just like thinking one step ahead and doing stuff that is just way above their pay grade. He's, I'm telling you, that's, baby Joe Thornt. That's what he is. He's, and he does. He catches a lot of his linemates by surprise. That's why I was so amazed in his rookie season

because he had a rotating cast of line mates. And it wasn't always guys, it wasn't top six guys. It was usually, you know, bottom six guys. And he made them look, sometimes he made them look great. Sometimes he made them look foolish because they've missed his passes. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, look, somebody sent out on Twitter, they put out, I figure it was it. It's like if you go to the Rangers General Fanager page, it's just a YouTube video.

of albatrosses. Right. I don't know if Elbatrosses, Albatry. Albatry, yeah, that's good. But I thought that was hilarious because the Rangers are up against it and then they've got these RFAs.

You know, after 20 plus goal season for J.T. Miller, you know, he's going to stay and he's going to get a pay raise. Criter, A.V. loves Criter. So he's going to stay. He's going to get a pay raise. He definitely had his best season.

and then you've got Hayes who was kept down a little bit. The box cars aren't there for them, but the potential is enormous. So you're right. A smart team is going to try to leverage that. And, you know, maybe I don't know. I don't know how the Rangers view them internally. I don't know how Gordon views it.

But, you know, a smart team is going to maybe give an offer of, like, you know, a decent draft pick or something like that to try to snake him away as an RFA just based on the fact that they can't pay him a lot. And he's probably third of the three in the pecking order of those RFAs. Yeah. Well, the problem with the Rangers, you mentioned the general fan of your page. And it's they just, they have a lot of holes, but they don't have a lot of assets to plug those holes. And the one saving grace, I'd say, is that we see every summer.

I mean, the devils were a great example this past summer where they get guys like jog. Ron Moore and David Schlemko for super cheap, I'm just in the bargain bin. And guys like that are around every summer where you really can find like a third pairing defenseman that can help move the puck. And that would be something the Rangers need so desperately. So it's not the end of the world. But the problem is that Yandel's probably out the door and he was by far their best defenseman in moving the puck.

And this team's going to be so devoid of guys that can get Chris Cryder and Rick Nash, the puck with speed and the neutral zone, and I think that's going to be a massive problem for the next year. Yeah, it is. At some point, they've got to look at rebuilding the farm a little bit. I mean, they can't, I don't know how much further they can leverage this. You know, Hank's what? He's 34 going 35, right?

So, you know, we're hitting that point now where, I don't know, I mean, he had an amazing year this year. Again, every year you think he's going to decline. he doesn't so but at some point father time undefeated world champ um it's it's got to end so i i they're going to have a tough time just trying to even restock anything i think that they have to to start leveraging what they have and and looking ahead and saying okay we got to bite the bullet here and get a draft pick for you know for a guy who's in the nchl now yeah to try to plan ahead because they have no maneuvering room with the contracts they have.

Yeah. But it's so tough because it's really hard to reconcile not trying your best to win while Henrik Lucas is still at his peak, right? Like you can't, he's only going to be like this for a select number of years and it'd be such a shame and to just see them kind of be middling and losing in the first round while he's still this good. Yeah, I know. In New York as well. I've been floating out they should trade them to Dallas Dallas needs a goalie Yeah

That's gotten positive feedback Well I think yeah Anyone in the league That doesn't really have a stake in it I guess if you're a fan of another team Especially on Western Conference team You're probably Not liking the idea of that

But that'd be a pretty amazing partnership Yeah Yeah no I think you're absolutely right though It's really hard to justify not going for it It's just what else can you do how much, you know, there's nothing left to mortgage. So, you know,

if they want to retain assets and try to get somebody on the cheap, they're really going to have to dig deep and find it or find a partner who maybe overvalues somebody that they undervalue or whatever it is. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know. That's good, yeah. The 2016, 2017 New York Rangers. I don't know. All right, let's move. move around the league a little bit and and I wanted to talk to you about Jonathan quick because so much time and energy is spent discussing a guy that's ultimately the definition of average just in every sense of the word both the regular season and the playoffs and you just look at all

his numbers and I guess he has these high peaks and then really low basements where you you can easily kind of get swayed in either direction but when you put it all together as one cumulative package he really is just the league average He is. That's what he is. I've never quite understood. So I got to preface it with this. So John Quick grew up in Connecticut. I crossed paths with him when I was coaching and doing the coaching camps and stuff like that. He's always, you know, he's always been an extraordinary athlete. When he was a young kid, everybody, you know, raved about him because of his athleticism and things that he could do that other kids couldn't do. And then he went to prep school. Same thing. He went to college, same thing. He went to college, same. thing. He's always also had fundamental flaws in his game that hold him back from greatness. And a lot of it is kind of predicated on that athleticism. He gets away with maybe being overaggressive, overshooting his marks, not hitting his angle lines, and doing things that more fundamentally sound goalies are trained to do because they have to do. He's gotten by all this time basically

not having to do it because of that athleticism. But I think what's happened at the NHL level is the same thing that's happened at every other level. When people watch him, they see a goalie who is astounding astoundingly athletic and can do

things that other goalies can't do physically. So they lose sight of the fact that his underlying numbers are pretty much astoundingly average year after year after year after year. So while he looks like he's doing things that are extraordinary that other goalies can't do,

maybe he's just covering up for other deficiencies he has, and people just don't seem to notice. Well, I think it's just, I definitely see it's kind of tough to acknowledge the fact that you watch him, and there's certain times where you're like, holy shit, this guy's amazing. He can do things that no one else can do, and then just be like, oh, but actually, he also does all these other things poorly that wind up kind of evening. out. Yeah, yeah. It's, um, you know, it's, it's, it's obviously the, the, the big thing is that the, the, the winner tag, right? He, he won the cup, so, um, that goes with him. And, and he has, he has that

ability to have these incredible performances. Right. Um, but I think that, you know, again, I think people just lose sight of the fact that in between those incredible performances, he also has some really, really bad blow-up games, and he's not incredibly consistent with his play. And that, he either goes really high or he goes really low, and then his career averages and his in-season averages end up right in the middle of the league. So, you know, I wish that, you know, I don't know. I can't say anything bad about his goal-tending coaching or anything like that. maybe it's

maybe it's you know he doesn't want to change certain things that he does but I wish that he would do some things to to rein in his aggressiveness because that's what's caused a lot of his problems and I've always looked at him and said boy if he could rein in certain things he really would be that elite goalie

almost unbeatable goalie because of his athleticism but he's just never done it right and I think we should be fair like the first cup run they had he was amazing like he he warranted all the high praise of God. I think he started nearly 90 games combined that year between the regular season and the playoffs and stopped like 93 and a half or 94% of the shots he faced.

It was absurd. It was one of the greatest seasons we've seen. And the problem is that maybe it's just unfair to him because after that, people started lionizing him and what he's capable of. And it just wasn't realistic to expect anyone really to be able to maintain that level moving forward. and as a result, no one's really been able to have a rational reason discussion about him,

especially on television, just because it seems like you have to go either super aggressively being like, this guy's one of the best goalies in the league, and then people on the internet go, oh, no, Jonathan Quick actually sucks to try and kind of overcompensate for that. And then once again, of course, we wind up coming back to that average middle ground where we really should be. Yeah, yeah, and he hits all the top 10 highlights with certain saves he makes. And a lot of those saves, the reason they look extraordinary is because he was first out of position. So he had to stretch to make that save. But, you know, you don't see that side of it.

The analysts on TV don't seem to see that side of it. And so that's not how they explain quick. They explain him as an extraordinary goalie. You're right. I mean, what was that first cup season? 2011, 2012. 2011, yeah. All right.

So just looking at his numbers. So that was by far and away his best season in his career as far as regular season numbers. Right. But if you actually look at, so if you look at my stat, so five versus five adjusted goal saved above average per 60 that season. Right. He was at plus point one, six, seven. which was good for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8th

amongst goalies facing more than 600, 5-on-5 shots. So he wasn't at the top. Actually, he was right around where Hank was that season. Right. Which isn't bad. Yeah, I think being in the same sentence

as Henry Glanquist is good, regardless of what the conversation. It's not a bad season. But I think that, you know, if that was his high watermark, we're not talking about an elite goalie. We're talking about a goalie who blew it out of the water for him in one season and got noticed, kind of like Devin Dubnick last year, blew it out of the water for him last season, but he wasn't the best goalie in the league.

I think just people noticed that he was on a hot stretch for him. Whereas, you know, a guy like Hank does it year in and year out. A guy like Kerry Price makes it look routine. So I think perception got off that season. And then he had an amazing cup run. But, you know, then by the same token, in the other cup they won, he actually was pretty bad. Yeah. So, and people just didn't seem to notice.

I don't know. So much ink has been spilled with quick. Yeah. Well, I think the most annoying aspect to it, and it's not just with him, it's with many other goalies around this time of the year. It's this idea. And you and I were discussing it when we have. had some adult beverages here in Vancouver after the analytics conference, this idea that there's certain goalies who have this innate ability to make quote unquote timely saves.

And it's just so frustrating. And you saw it the other night where, on Saturday night, where the Kings are down three nothing and Patrick Marlow has a penalty shot and Quick saves it. And all of a sudden, all these people are going like, oh, remember this moment if the Kings wind up coming back. That's right. Quick made the timely saved. keep his team still in it and it's like okay that's fine but i don't understand you're making it

sound like he has this superhuman ability to be like okay i have to make a save here so i'm going to make it which inherently applies that implies sorry that in past shots he was facing he was going out of his way not to save them because they weren't as important which just if you put it that way it just seems like a ridiculous thing to say but that's really what we're talking about here right where it's like you're basically saying that he went out of his way to give up goals so that he'd be able to create higher leverage situations later down the road and be more dramatic. And that seems like an incredibly weird thing that no professional athlete would ever do. That's right. I heard a great quote. It was either today, I forget which day it was

the playoffs, but somebody on television said something like, you know, don't count Philly out because they're a team that has something to play for, inferring that because they're, because they they actually lost games to put themselves in a situation where they would have to fight and claw to stay alive. They're in somehow a better position to win a game than the better team who had been winning games previously, which of course is a ridiculous statement. That makes no sense whatsoever. The same goes for goaltending. You know, every save is timely.

Every save is important. There's never a time where it's good to let a goal in or even okay really to let a goal in, And unless we're talking about, you know, it's, I don't know, it's 6-1 and, you know, plays driving at the net and you're just diving out of the way to not get injured. That's a ridiculous scenario. No games end that way. So, well, aside from today when the Rangers, you know, got blown. But, yeah, I mean, the point is with a guy like Quick, he has that, quote-unquote, wow factor where he does things that stand out. and people seem to miss all the other stuff that he does where he struggles.

In this postseason, he's been quite bad. He's been one of the worst goalies so far in the playoffs. You know, very small sample size, but let's not discount the fact that everybody going into the playoffs says, well, this is Quicks time. He's got ice water in his veins. This is when he turns it on. And all those sorts of things, you know, the sharks were a quality of, opponent, but where was that? That it didn't happen.

So, you know, I would like to see the, the, the reality start meeting the, uh, uh, where people actually think he is. And I think the, like the thing we should point out here is that I do think there is something to be said for just the human scale of try, of like being able to keep it together and, you know, stay composed and, and not completely get flustered and fall apart. and the problem is that there's no real evidence to show that a guy who's otherwise not good all of a sudden becomes great in these high leverage situations, right? Usually the guys that are really good in those important spots are also the guys that are really good in every other spot.

It's just they're good at stopping pucks, so they're going to stay good at stopping pucks regardless of the situation. So I think as long as you think about it that way, it all of a sudden makes a little bit more sense, I think. Yeah, and playoffs are a different animal because you're playing the same team, multiple times in a row. So teams are going to game plan. They're going to watch video and say, okay, this is what we need to do against this offense, against this defense, against this goalie. This is how we can expose each thing. And they really do plan for a particular goalie.

You know, for instance, when you play against Chicago, you might be planning for Crawford's to expose Crawford's glove hand because he's been known to have a weak glove, especially like a foot or a foot and a half off the ice that you could beat him there. So you have an opportunity to, you know, really hone in on that as an opponent and pick a part of goalie that way. So there is something, you know, there is something to be said for that. But at the same time, you know, I just today, I ran the numbers from 2008 until now for the same stat, the Mercad stat. And Henrik Lundquist is at 0.277. and his career mark over that same span of time is 0.270.

He is literally exactly the same in the playoffs over that time as he is in the regular season. Right. Which I think that, you know, that's exactly what you want. You want a goalie who is consistently good all the time no matter what. He doesn't elevate his game in the playoffs. He's just doing what he always does, which is being a great goal. I think that, you know, some of the goleys that develop this aura of elevating themselves or that, you know, have this reputation of falling apart in the playoffs, really it's just

small sample size craziness, you know, it's a bad series. It's Flurry getting shelled in the first round. Or, you know, Holbe having, you know, one really, really out of his mind series against the Rangers, that type of thing. Well, and think about how small, like, in a four to seven game sample, like, one or two goals can completely shift both the perception and the actual save percentage itself, right? Like, it's such a small fine line for looking really good and being considered the hero or just being the goat. So I think a good transition point for this topic of consistency in goal-tending performance is to the presentation you recently gave at the Analytics Conference in Vancouver, and where you introduced concepts like win threshold percentage and above average appearance percentage and how they work in concert.

And let's discuss Dallas a little bit because I think everyone just views their goaltending as being the eventual downfall of that team as a fatal flaw. And I found it very fascinating that Ante Niemie was, I think, the best on your list in win threshold percentage this year, but also one of the worst in terms of above average percentage. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so I guess a little bit of an explanation without getting too into it. So win threshold, basically the premise of the stat is this.

I looked at what it takes to win an average NHL game. So if an average NHL game, at 5 on 5, I should say. So if an average NHL game, a team gives up about 1.78 goals against at 5 on 5. So in an average goalie plays about 48 minutes of time five on five in that game. So what I did was I looked at the performances of goalies who gave up less than 1.78 goals, so one goal or less at 5 on 5 while playing within a standard deviation of 48, 5 on 5 minutes. So 35 and up, basically. and then I determined their Mercad for that.

And then I compared that to all appearances. And I said, how many appearances or what percentage of appearances is a goalie meeting that threshold? And it's on a seasonal basis. It just adjusts with the seasonal averages so you can compare across seasons, right? And so, yeah, this isn't a kind of an amazing thing. So in this season, Antiniemi, who does have a, a little bit of a boom or bust reputation is he is a boomer bust coley that's exactly what he is so he uh he hit win threshold 45% of the time so in nearly half of his appearances he was

basically blowing it out of the water he was doing enough to win an average game you know irrelevant of if they want or not uh you know because he obviously can't score the goals right um so 45% of the time he's performing great great right but only only 53% of the time over all those appearances is he an above average goalie. So that means that 53% of the time he's above average. 45, so nearly, what is that, 92, whatever it is, 92% of those above average starts are blowing it out of the water. And the rest of the time, he stinks.

I think maybe we saw that a little bit in practice here recently, where in game four he was really good. I think he stopped like 28 of 30 shots in face. And then game five, he makes 19 saves on 24 shots and they lose an overtime and he looks terrible. The puck's just going through him. And yeah, that's exactly it. So I don't, I guess it's just one of those things where you take the good with the bad, I guess. But it's funny how ultimately, like maybe not as much in the past few years as he's declined, but for a while there in San Jose, he was just like that as well. but he always wound up being sort of a league average guy. And I think everyone really just thought of him as that.

So it's interesting that people just acknowledge that he's just an average goalie who has ups and downs, whereas some other guys you might be prone to think about them in extreme directions. Yeah, I think that, you know, the interesting thing is so, you know, there's this ongoing debate, especially with people that look at goalies of, what do you really want a goalie? Do you want somebody who can win you a game that can blow it out of the world? water like a Niemi or like a quick sometimes or but then they can also lose you a game just as easily or do you want a guy who's just you know kind of consistent and maybe they're consistent at an average

level and you know what you're going to get you're going to get an NHL average goalie game in or game game in game out or you know obviously you want really ultimately what you want is a you know a lunguist a guy like that where he's above average all the time consistently um and it's it's interesting to look at it because what I've been finding is that more often than not, the guys who are consistently, they're consistent in their performance above average, are also winning more games. Right. For whatever reason. And they're also, generally speaking, higher in this win threshold percentage.

So you really don't want the boom or bust goalie because while Niemie led the league in win threshold this season, he also lost a lot of games probably. I mean, aside from the fact that Dallas can score at will, you know, he probably lost games for him as well. And on a seasonal basis, you just don't know what you're going to get yourself into with him. And while it comes back to league average for his overall stats, he's getting there a different way than, say, a Frederick Anderson, who is about a league average goalie, and he's

relatively consistent. He's kind of steady. I prefer that steady guy. I think that also makes sense, especially the better your team is, it seems like intuitively you'd want a guy that's not really going to cost you that many games just because you're probably going to be controlling play

more often than not, and you're going to rely on him less. You won't really need him to steal many games for you, whereas I feel like if you're a bad team, you're going to need him to win you some games, so maybe the boomer bust potential guy might be more intriguing in that regard. Yeah, I had a conversation a while back with Matt Kane,

he's great at just like presenting thought-provoking things. And he said, well, what about in a playoff series? You know, maybe you do want the boom or bust guy, because if he gives you, you know, three amazing starts, you're pretty much on your way to winning the series. Right. Whereas maybe the steady average guy, when there's less goals to go around in the playoffs,

he doesn't have that capability of going boom, right? So he's not going to win you those games when you actually really need that guy to win you those games. So it's, I don't know, it's one of those things that, you know, I presented the stat in Vancouver, the wind threshold stat and the above average appearance stat. Now I just want to start digging into it and seeing if there's anything to that.

Yeah. Oh, that'd be interesting to follow. Where can people find your work? Because I know that you usually tweet out all these charts and your must follow for that regard, if not just for the Dave Babbage photo. So the folks at hockey graphs are going to yell at me. So I'm a hockey grass writer, but I actually don't have any articles on hockey grass right now. I have been working quote unquote, behind the scenes with the other writers.

But the plant, so you can find me at. at M-M-R-C-A-D, if you want to get, you know, I'll tweet out charts and thoughts about goalies and different little snippets. But the plan is to, during the postseason in the summer, I'm going to post-season in the summer, I'm going to post a few articles with more information about this, digging into what we're really trying to do here with goalies, which is become more predictive of performance. and become more predictive of what type of goalie truly will help a team reach, you know, become successful. Because I think that the big question mark going forward is, well, how do we compensate goalies and what are we actually looking to compensate? And that's some of what we also presented with Carolyn Wilkie.

And we also presented on that aspect of it is, well, what are we paying for here? Are we paying for a guy like a NEMI or a quick? Should we be paying a premium for them? Or should we be paying a premium for somebody who's more steady, like a Steve Mason or somebody like that? I know I can't say that after this postseason. Well, maybe a Freddie Anderson who will need a new contract this summer. So that'll be interesting. There you go.

It will be interesting to see. what happens with Freddie because the ducks have made no bones about the fact that they're going forward with Gibson. And boy, some team's going to get lucky with Freddie. Yeah. Well, we'll see. I mean, he's been playing well for them recently

here against the Predators. Maybe they're going a long run with him and net and they changed their mind. But you're right, it does seem like they've picked Gibson of the two. Nick, man, thanks for taking the time. That was a lot of fun. I think that you're doing a lot of cool work and I'm not just brown-nosing because you came on the podcast.

I think it's very easy to just throw out the whole goalies are voodoo thing and just, you know, lazily just attribute it to that. But I think there is some stuff to really mind here and you're doing a good job progressing that conversation. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. I love doing this stuff. I'd be happy to come on again sometime. Excellent, man. We'll have you on and we'll talk soon. Okay. All right. Great. Thanks. The Hockey P.D.O.cast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud. at soundcloud.com slash hockey pdocast.