Mirtle alerted me to the fact that Desjardins has published his yearly look at actual performance versus expected for goalies (based on these criteria).
James has the league wide run down, but of course it's Miikka we're mostly concerned with around here.
And regular readers of the space can likely predict the outcome of Gabe's analysis. Keep in mind this is ES only (and Kipper actually excelled SH this year, relative to other game states):
Kipper:
Actual SV% - 89.9
Expected SV% - 90.8
Diff - (-0.9%)
Actual GAA - 2.68
Expected GAA - 2.44
Diff - (+0.24)
Of all the NHL goalies that played this season, only Raycroft, Budaj, Legace and Lalime under-performed their expected GAA to a greater degree than Kipper according to this process. Toskala and Ersberg tied with Kiprusoff at +.24. The delta between his expected SV% and actual also placed him at the bottom of the list - tied with Marty Turco and ahead of only the Colorado tenders, Ersberg, Toskala, Legace and Lalime.
In theory, this analysis factors out team effects. Kipper's "expected stats" are based on the quality of shots he faced behind the Flames defense. His expected SV% of 90.9 placed him in the middle of the pack (tied with the likes of Chris Mason, Dwayne Roloson and Craig Anderson), so it's certainly arguable that the Flames didn't get good bang for the buck out of their pricey blueline this season. Still, it's not like he managed to outperform the club's mediocrity. If anything, he sank them to lower depths.
I hypothesized last summer that we'd see something like this out of Kipper this season based on his steadily declining stats, although looking at stuff like this now I'm still slightly surprised at how far he's slipped. The Flames probably didn't even really get replacement level performance out of him this season - and he's signed for another five more years. The question now becomes: is this as low as he goes?
