Toronto Maple Leafs: Good-Bye Jack and the Goalie of Our Dreams

While Goalies Are Nearly Random

In the NHL, team defense doesn’t  correlate to goaltending as much as you would think. Defense obviously does make some difference, but it is my experience that most people are surprised or skeptical about the idea of defense and goalies not matching up exactly.

For whatever reason, the teams with the best defense are not automatically the teams with the best goaltending.

Here is a quick example of what I mean:

For the last 3 seasons (209  games) the team’s with the lowest Expected Goals Against per game are Boston, Minnesota, Colorado, Dallas and Tampa.

Here is how those teams rank by save percentage over the same period: 5, 14, 2 , 3 ,7.

One reason why defense may not be the difference maker we would suspect is that pretty much anyone capable of being an NHL goalie is going to be amazing at stopping low danger shots.  There isn’t going to be any difference between Michael Hutchinson and Andre Vasilevskiy at stopping easy shots because there is a limit to how good you can be at the skill where you will stop 100% of the shots you don’t make a mistake on.   (All stats naturalstattrick.com).

Therefore, any goalie with a low save percentage against easy shots is just in a luck based slump.  Team defense isn’t going to help any goalie having an off year on shots that are labeled “easy” by the official scorer. (For an example of what I mean, the “worst” goalie in the NHL to play minimum 20 games this year at saving Low Danger shots had a .969 save percentage, while the best who played at least 20 games had a .979%). (These stats specifically from moneypuck.com).

Where team defense does matter, is in limiting high-danger shots.  If your team’s goalie isn’t ice-cold, he should save nearly all the easy shots, and if your team limits the dangerous ones, he will do better.

Except that the range of how many dangerous shots teams allow per game is tiny.  The best defensive team in the NHL only allows four less dangerous shots against per  minutes of 5v5 ice time (which is actually more than one game) than the worst defensive team.

That doesn’t sound like a lot, but at the pro level tiny margins can matter (especially in a cap league).

So if a team wanted the best goalie possible, they should look at high-danger save percentage, and try to acquire the goalies who are best at saving those shots.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Dream Goalie

A 209 game sample of NHL goalies who have played at least 1500 minutes over the last three NHL seasons gives us  75 goalies.

Jack Campbell ranks 69th of 75 in high-Danger Save Percentage.  That’s enough right there not to sign him.

For three years, Campbell is among the worst goalies in the NHL at saving difficult shots.  That makes it extremely easy to let him walk.

Here are the Top 11 Goalies ranked by High Danger Save Percentage over the last Three Years:

1. igor Shesterkin
2. Ilya Sorokin
3. Corey Crawford
4. Spencer Knight
5. Ville Husso
6. Ben Bishop
7. Anton Forsberg
8. Darcy Kuemper
9. Jordan Binnington
10. Tuukka Rask
11. Andrei Vasilevskiy

Crawford, Knight and Bishop only barely qualify, but Binnington has played 6000 minutes and Vasilevskiy has played 8000.  Those guys are awesome and have earned their reputations.

But for me, the goalie who really stands out, is Ilya Sorokin.  The Islanders have been great defensively so he hasn’t gotten the credit he deserves, but he ranks second over the last three years at making saves when his team’s defense lets him down (i.e dangerous chances).

The Islanders clearly need to rebuild, and Sorokin’s signed for $4 million for next year and the year after.  He is only 26, and while I normally wouldn’t recommend spending a ton of assets on a goalie, I can’t imagine there is someone (outside of Shesterkin, Vasilevskiy or Binnington) to do it on.

Conversely, a rebuilding team who has an elite goalie signed dirt-cheap for two seasons is basically holding a lottery ticket.

The kind of confidence you get from having a no-doubt ELITE goalie would do wonders for this team.  The Toronto Maple Leafs are clearly a good team that is having trouble getting over the hump. The psychological factor of having an ace-in-the-hole as their goalie might go a long way.

Therefore, if I was the Toronto Maple Leafs, I would seriously consider making a massive offer for Sorokin.  He’s young, he has a history of being among the best in the world, he’s the king of the high-danger chances, and his cap-hit is ridiculously low.

The cost to acquire him would be astronomical, but for the Leafs management, it’s hard to see how they could bet their entire careers and reputations on a goalie who carries any kind of risk.  Sorokin checks every single box you would want – he should be available, he has a very cheap contract, and he is elite at saving high-danger shots.