Toronto Maple Leafs Really Don’t Need to Trade for a Goalie

Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock sparked some rumours the other day when he made some post game comments about getting another goalie.

The thinking is that with Andersen on IR with a groin injury, Sparks going through concussion protocol (notoriously mysterious as to how long it takes) the Toronto Maple Leafs may not be satisfied with their goalies.

They recently acquired Mike Hutchinson, and while he was solid against Minnesota, he’s definitely not the kind of goalie you want to hang your season on.

So if you take the information from the above paragraphs, the obvious conclusion is that the Leafs will need to get another goalie.

One More Goalie

The ideas range from the novel (re-acquiring Curtis MacElhinney or Calvin Pickard) to the ridiculous (Taking on the 34 year old with a $5 million dollar cap hit Jimmy Howard).

But no one is saying the most obvious thing: it doesn’t matter.

The Leafs, with a healthy Andersen, are, at worst, the #2 team in the NHL as far as cup contenders go.  If Andersen goes down, so does their ranking.

But this is true for every single team in the NHL.

If you have an elite goalie, he is irreplaceable.

I’ve seen so many people talking like goaltending is the Leafs “Achilles’ Heel” but that’s like saying that you’re allergic to bullets.  Everyone is.  Just like every single hockey good hockey team is overly reliant on their starting goalie.

Now, flukey things happen.  Any goalie capable of making the NHL in any capacity is capable of going on a run.  Just check out Louis Domingue.  Remember Jim Carey? The Hamburglar?  No position in the entirety of sports produces more one-hit wonders.

Unpredictability

But you can’t predict when or if they will happen.  Louis Domingue was  nothing more than a warm body who could easily have been without a contract this year.   Then Vasilevskiy went down and he performed as his equal.  Awesome, but completely unpredictable or repeatable.

Vasilevskiy may be the NHL’s best goalie, and if you asked me who the worst back-up in the NHL was before the start of the season, I’d have probably said Louis Domingue, whose current record is 15-4. 

It’s entirely possible that if Andersen went down long-term, that Hutchinson or Sparks could equal his play.  Unlikely.  But it could happen.  Probably more likely that it was that Domingue would equal Vasilevskiy’s play, but still unlikely.

But here is the thing: unless you spend the top prospects and first round picks necessary to trade for a legitimate #1 goalie, anyone you aquire is a total crap shoot.

Anyone who thinks there is an appreciable difference between Michael Hutchinson and Curtis MacElhinney is kidding themselves.  MacElhinney is likely slightly better.  But given the volatility of goalies, the fact that the differences between pro athletes who aren’t superstars are marginal, the weight team defense has on a goalie’s play, and the general level of luck involved, there is basically no difference.

If you lose your Frederik Andersen, unless you trade for a Bobrovsky, what you get out of your backup is a total fluke.

There are 68 goalies who have played in 1000 minutes or more in the NHL over the last three seasons (including the current one).  If we look at high-danger save percentage (thought to be the least affected by luck) of all these goalies, the range is 74% to 87%. (Corsica.hockey)

Over a 100 high danger shots, the best goalie will allow 13 goals, while the worst goalie will allow 26.  That might sound like a lot, but do you have any idea of how long it takes a goalie to see 100 high danger shots?  (

Roughly 1500 minutes, or around 25 games.

A difference of a half goal per game, if you have the best goalie vs the worst goalie, and if those numbers are predictable and they perform exactly as advertised.  Which they aren’t and they won’t.

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(And it should be mentioned that in order to keep backup goalies on that list, I could only do 1000 mins minimum, and that many of the back-ups where at the top of the list. However, if I move it to 2500 minutes, the range shrinks by 20%, showing that the numbers at a 1000 minutes (i.e back up goalie range) are much more volatile and that percentages drop the more you play,  which I think shows even more so how little difference there is between non-star goalies.)

But let’s assume you’re not going to go out and get the best goalie in the league, so let’s throw out the top ten and the bottom ten, and you have a range of 77 to 81 high danger saves per 100 shots with the middle 40 or so goalies.  So four goals, give or take, every 30 games.

Conclusion

This is isn’t meant to be an exact science.  But given the relative unpredictability of a goalie, and given the small range of skill based results you can hope to get from one, it just doesn’t seem like something to worry about.

If you’re the Toronto Maple Leafs, and you lose Freddie Andersen for the season, unless you want to spend the capital to trade for another #1 goalie, you might as well just stick a warm body in net and see what happens.

If that happens, and it’s before the trade deadline, it would make sense, given the Leafs high contender rating, to make a trade for a #1 goalie.  But because of the salary cap, trading for a high quality back-up just in case is highly unlikely.

So the only question is: Should the Toronto Maple Leafs try to get a better backup goalie than Garrett Sparks or Michael Hutchinson?

The answer is no.

stats from corsica.hockey