Goaltending
As humans, all of us are guilty of recency bias. This means we value the present moment and things that are happening in it more than we do the past or future.
It means that we put too much weight on current events instead of looking at the big picture. This is especially true in sports where everyone has an opinion, but few people have the time to spend making sure that opinion is well informed.
Hockey is a somewhat poorly designed game, in that one player – the goalie – has an outsized affect on the outcome.
The worst team in the league can put up a great record if they get great goaltending. Our recency bias makes us big believers in teams getting great goaltending, but the inverse of this is that we often don’t believe in teams getting bad goaltending.
For instance, Dallas, Colorado and Boston are all getting over 93% goaltending on the season. This is impossible to maintain, and when those teams inevitably face regression, they won’t seem as good as they are today.
This doesn’t mean they aren’t good teams, just that they’re not as good as they seem. Same goes with teams that aren’t getting good goaltending.
Despite stats that indicate they should have better records, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Vegas Golden Knights are sitting 28th and 26th in overall team save percentage.
The Leafs are 14th overall and the Knights are 9th overall. The fact that they are doing so well despite their low goaltending ranking suggest very good things for the future.
Under Keefe, the Leafs are 9th and have the 27th best goaltending.
If you believe that Freddie Andersen can be at least a league average goalie (and he’s been Vezina Quality in front of brutal defensive teams for three or four years in a row) then you should believe the Leafs will get better in the future.