More great stuff going on around the 'sphere these days. And by great, I mean: stupid, boring mathy stuff that some people disregard as either nerdy or irrevelent and others don't really understand. If you fall into either of these categories (particularly the former), don't read through only to make some snide comment at the bottom. Do us both a favor and stop here.
For the small remaining number of you who DO find this interesting, check out Mirtle and Tylers posts on individual player contributions to SV%.
Depending on how much stock you put in save percentage in general, you can see a lot of these guys haven't had much luck in terms of their goaltenders making a lot of saves. Only Gervais has had even close to average goaltending behind him, with Brind'Amour, Boyes, Mayers, etc., seeing an awful lot of pucks per shot beat their netminder.
Do you chalk this up to the fact better scoring chances are being given up or is it really just the luck of the draw?
That from James.
It’s sort of a dispute betwen randomness (also referred to as “luck” amongst the staterati) and a hot streak or a guy playing really well. Personally, I’m on the side of the randomness fence - no matter what those guys do, they aren’t going to be .980 ES save percentage goalies in the long haul. Maybe some pucks hit the post, maybe some guys on the other team flubbed their chances; who knows.
...
I’ve made my views clear that I think that the save percentage stuff is largely randomness at the NHL level. Time will tell but if there’s some sort of a market in which you can make bets based on the percentages behind guys through the first half of the year, I think that we’re starting to pile up the evidence that the smart is against betting on players continuing to post big save percentages over time.
Tyler's conclusion, based on a split-half test from last year.
It's somewhat counter-intuitive to think that individual players have a trivial effect on a goalies save percentage: surely Robyn Regehr deters more quality chances against than, say, Adam Pardy? Keep in mind, however, that only the shots that get through reflect SV%: if Reggie stick checks guys in the slot or limits chances by rubbing out guys on the wing, the puck doesn't make it to the net and doesn't register positively (a save) or negatively (a goal) either way.
As such players probably have more control over shot variance (shots for/ shots against) than the SV% behind them. So Regehr's positive contributions are limiting shots and therefore driving the shots against part of the SF/SA ratio - whereas a guy like Iginla drives the other part (SF).
What this means for poolies and the interested observer is that it's easier to identify the lucky/unlucky guys in the short term. In terms of the Calgary Flames, this means that Todd Bertuzzi isn't as bad as he seems, given the frightful SV% behind him (.888). I mean, he's bad - he makes questionable decisions with the puck, flubs good scoring chances too often and his positive corsi rate probably has a lot to do with who he plays with (Iginla and/or Langkow) - but there's a good chance that the SV% behind him will improve and he won't be -35 by the end of year.
Conversely, players probably don't drive big differences in team-wide on-ice SH% over the long term either. Ovechkin, Iginla etc. are effective offensive players more because they drive possession and shots on net rather than SH%. This was partially covered in the PDO post below, but guys like Langkow (5.2%), Bertuzzi (5.5%) and even Cammalleri (6.8%) are in line for a turn around in terms of ES SH% and therefore plus/minus. Especially Langkow, whose +112 corsi figure is the best of any forward on the team. The puck's going in the right direction when Langs is on the ice, it's just not going in right now for whatever reason (although his gain in SH% may be cancelled out by an inevitable drop in the .930 SV% behind him).
Potentially useful stuff if you're a fantasy player or gambling man. It'll be interesting to keep an eye on these numbers going forward, just to see what kind of predictive validity this theory has.
