Thanks to a Jlikens post on the mind-bogglingly good fortune of the Boston Bruins so far, I've been working my way through Hockey Numbers recently (with a more Calgary-centric focus).
Some pretty interesting stuff. Most notably, the shot quality and expected goal differential work, which gives us an idea of how well a team is doing at generating and denying scoring chances.
The charts are big and scary, but terms are defined at the bottom. Basically what you're looking at here is a measure of the quality of shots for and against (shots from 12' go in far more often than shots from 30' for example) multiplied by gross shots for and against to yield an expected GD number.
The ES results for Calgary by this method are good. Very good. The Flames share the second best SQF (shot quality for) score in the league. Their SQA is just average, but they also tend to out shoot the bad guys, resulting in the second best EGD in the league (+14) behind the mighty San Jose Sharks. Keep in mind, this isn't actual ES GD (sometimes good quality shots don't go it and sometimes your goalie lets in a floater), but what this indicates is that only the Sharks significantly outchance the opposition more than the Flames so far*.
*(for interest sake, check out Detroit's numbers. They are third behind the Flames in terms of EGD, but they do it with pure out-shooting: they tend to give up high quality chances and generate low ones, but end up in the black because the shot differentials are so high).
Other items of interest:
- Calgary's ES SV% is a 25th ranked 88% - ahead of only Toronto, NYI, St.Louis, Dallas and Buffalo. How does Kipper have a SV% above .900 you ask then? Look no further than the 91.9% save rate on the PK. How ridiculous is that? Also, according to Java Geeks SV% numbers for shot quality, Kipper has struggled to stop average (89%) shots so far. MceLhinney's figure in this regard, for a point of reference, is 94%.
- Sticking with goaltending because it's a contentious point in Calgary these days, Kipper's contribution to GD this year has apparently been a negative one.
According to the linked graph, the Flames haven't exactly gotten the bounces either. The spike in expected GD seems to coincide with the Flames "turn around" after the Sharks debacle. That passes the sniff test, although I would like to see how the values for this output are generated.
- As I've wrestled with this Kipper @ 5.83M/year thing, I've started to get closer and closer to the conclusion that the Detroit model of spending money on skaters rather than goaltending makes the most sense. Low and behold, Java has a discussion on the very topic and he basically comes to the same conclusion:
It would appear good strategy would be to build a good team and then you can throw any goaltender in front without too much worry so long as the goaltender is at least average...
It would appear that Detroit is playing smart by spending very little on goaltending and spending on defense, Boston and Thomas are following similar logic. Of course this is all in the perspective on wins. What this says about the value of a goaltender is hard to say, due to the fact that a goaltender is worth more on a bad team and less on a good team. The best way to find out how good a goaltender appears to be: throw him on a bad team. Take Lalime, hugely successful in Ottawa (a team that doesn’t need a stellar goaltender), but failed miserably in St. Louis.
The study on which he based his discussion is a couple of years old now, but it looks more and more to me like the conclusions are sound. I've come around quite a bit on this topic since Kipper carried the team to almost-glory back in 03-04. I was a convert for a short time after that - a stone-cold "build the team from the net out" zealot I think. Time, experience and a growing body of data suggests otherwise to me now, however.
The re-structuring of my "goaltending effects" schema really began this summer when I looked at the value of drafting goaltenders and came to the conclusion that it was basically nil. I think the conclusion that "good skaters mostly the drive results" further enhances my thoughts on the issue and reveals why it's so damn hard to reliably find a great tender in the draft - the quality of your goalie is greatly determined by the quality of the surrounding team. Therefore, Gm's should concentrate on drafting and signing the best skaters they can find - then even an average tender can pile up the all-important wins (as we saw with Nabby last year and - yes - Kipper this year) and it won't cost an arm and a leg. Just make sure the guy can make it on time for practices and doesn't fight team mates while he's there...
PS - Im not trying to poke anyone in the eye with this post, as I know it will probably be unpopular to conclude that goaltending isn't all that important to success in general and that Kipper isn't all that good anymore in particular. I welcome discussion on the matter though since my own thoughts are still formative.
