The Toronto Maple Leafs are not having the best luck in net recently.
No position in all of sports is as unpredictable as goaltending.
A wise man did once say “Goalie are Voodoo” for a reason, after all. The sheer randomness confined between the pipes of a hockey game is all too unique to the sport itself and bears influence from a number of factors, often varying by the second.
Can you explain how Devyn Dubnyk went from waiver fodder in Edmonton to a perennial Vezina contender in Minnesota? Can you decipher how Andrew Hammond single-handedly dragged the Ottawa Senators into the playoffs one year before drifting off into hockey’s abyss the next?
No, you can’t. No one can. But The Athletic’s resident goaltending expert, Catherine Silverman, comes as close as you can get.
And with Michael Hutchinson now joining Toronto’s ever-spinning goalie carousel, I sat down with Silverman (or whatever the online version of sitting down is) to analyze the Leafs’ newest last line of defence.
Analyzing Michael Hutchinson
One glance at Michael Hutchinson‘s numbers from the season thus far does very little to inspire confidence in the 28-year-old, particularly now that he’s the newly-crowned starter for the Leafs.
Prior to changing area codes in Saturday’s trade, Hutchinson was nothing short of abysmal throughout his 4-game stint with the Panthers. A 1-1-2 record certainly didn’t do him any favours, but it was Hutchinson’s .839 save percentage – easily the worst among Florida’s trio of sub-.900 goaltenders – that shuttled the Newmarket-native back to the AHL and, ultimately, sent him packing before the countdown to New Year’s could even begin.
The thing about numbers, particularly those in respect to the goalie position, is they often lack the important caveat of context. The kind which, in this case, Silverman sees as vital to understanding Hutchinson today.
But before focus can be spent on the present, we must first venture to the past
Silverman posits that a lack of team-wide goaltending stunted Hutchinson’s development from the onset, referring to the 6 prior seasons he spent in the Winnipeg Jets organization.
“I think he had a severely missed opportunity with the Winnipeg Jets,” she explains.
“His numbers weren’t nearly as bad as fan perception made him out to be, and he was a competent backup on a team that, by and large, struggled with goaltending across the board.”
And struggle they did.
Given Connor Hellebuyck‘s ascent to the level of perennial Vezina candidate in recent years, it’s hard to picture goaltending ever being an Achilles heel for the Jets. But it sure was. For nearly their entire resurgence in Winnipeg, in fact.
Harkening back to the 2016-17 season – Hutchinson’s final full season with the Jets at the NHL level – not only did the trio of Hellebuyck, Hutchinson and Ondrej Pavelec fail to compliment an otherwise potent Jets roster, their cumulative .901 save percentage finished 27th in the NHL. The year before, a .903 landed them 26th.
They say misery often breeds company. Goaltending is no different.
“Think of the performances by the Flyers goaltenders;” Silverman argues.
“When no one is getting it, there’s always a chance that it’s not the goalies alone,”
Hutchinson certainly ended his tenure as a Jet with little in the realm of accolades, but it’s not as if he was given the requisite playing time to earn any, either. The 38 games he spent in the starter’s crease during the 2014-15 season stands today as a career-high and also came amidst the same season in which Hutchinson earned a career-best .914 save percentage as well.
Goaltending is a predominantly momentum-driven position, perhaps more so than any other in hockey; an argument that just so happens to be the go-to for any Leafs’ team personnel or media when justifying Frederik Andersen‘s herculean workload. And when it comes to workload, Hutchinson’s has been anything but herculean as of late.
As Silverman argues, that matters.
“This year his numbers have been mediocre, but he hasn’t gotten a lot of playing time anywhere,”
“And after a lot of lack of use with the Jets in those final years too, getting trapped in the system with the need for Hellebuyck and (Eric) Comrie to get the lion’s share of the starts across the board, it’s tough to tell whether there’s been any major setback in his style or if he’s just looking rusty from inactivity”
To better illustrate exactly how Hutchinson’s style may have atrophied in recent years, Silverman centres on an oddly specific clip culled from the Panthers’ bout with the Detroit Red Wings on October 20th.
It’s a seemingly insignificant sequence; a routine shot from the top of the circle which Hutchinson turns away with the pad. But Silverman tends to see what many, myself included, don’t.
“In theory he makes the save but look at how poor that post recovery is,” explains Silverman.
“That’s sloppy goaltending, even though statistically he made the stop. But the promising sign is that he tracked the puck into the corner well”
“But, he can’t do that in Toronto. He’ll get smoked”
While he didn’t necessarily “get smoked” as Silverman warned, Hutchinson’s struggles with post recovery indeed reared its ugly head at times during his first start as a Leaf.
On Minnesota’s first goal, Hutchinson failed to recover to the left post while turning aside a similarly routine top-of-the-circle shot. As a result, this then forced him into over-committing himself to the left as Luke Kunin crashed the net and, in the process, left him out of position for when Charlie Coyle scooped the loose puck up and beat him to the right seconds later.
Thursday served as Hutchinson’s first NHL start since October 23rd. After being sent to the Panthers’ AHL affiliate in Springfield on November 5th, he proceeded to suit up for a grand total of just 9 games prior to being traded on December 29th; or a span of 54 days.
If momentum is really as important to the goaltender position as most perceive it to be, playing once every 6 days doesn’t seem to offer much help.
“Take a look back last year, though, when he managed to get strings of starts for the Manitoba Moose,” Silverman posits.
“He had some of the best numbers in the AHL, and the system in front of him in the Jets organization wasn’t starkly superior to what he’ll be behind here in Toronto.”
Silverman may even be understating how dominant Hutchinson became at the AHL level last season when given consistent usage. In 26 games with the Moose, his sterling .935 save percentage fell just one point shy of Garret Sparks‘ for the AHL lead and earned Hutchinson Second Team AHL All-Star honours in the process.
Case in point; the last time Hutchinson handled a stable workload, he quickly emerged as one of the top two goaltenders in his respective league.
Which now brings us to the present day. With Hutchinson seemingly entrenched in the starter’s role until one of either Andersen or Sparks returns from injury, it’s important to gauge exactly what the Leafs gave up a 2020 5th-round pick for, not to mention who they’ll be handing the immediate future of their season over to as well.
Hutchinson’s ceiling, according to Silverman, relies on a few factors.
“(It) depends on how long Sparks is out,” she explains, referencing the concussion which Sparks suffered as a result of taking a puck off the mask in practice on Wednesday.
“I think if we have a long concussion recovery, we’ve got a potentially very reliable backup at the NHL level, but all of that depends on how much he can improve. If he can get back to where he was in the past”
Frankly, that may not be so unreasonable of an ask. With the Leafs, Hutchinson now has the structure and workload to mimic his time with the Jets. Whether or not he can find a way to reach that former level, or even surpass it, will remain to be seen.
Hutchinson is expected to start his second consecutive game on Saturday as the Leafs take on the Vancouver Canucks.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to check out Cat’s incredible work over at The Athletic Arizona.
All stats courtesy of hockeyreference.com
All gifs and footage courtesy of NHL.com