Toronto Maple Leafs: Give Ilya Samsonov the Vezina for This Save Alone

The Toronto Maple Leafs new starting goalie Ilya Samsonov isn’t going to win the Vezina Trophy this year as the league’s best goalie.

The Toronto Maple Leafs goalie can stand on his head for the rest of the season, but Linus Ullmark is 26-4-1 / .937  / 1.90 and is currently adding an addition to his house for his new trophy room.

That said, Ilya deserves the trophy just for this save alone:

Now, Morgan Rielly might want to re-asses his life after that play, but damn what a save!

Toronto Maple Leafs New Starter Having a Great Season

Last night, after the first period, I really was ready to anoint Samsonov as the best goalie in the world, but it was a humbling lesson about short sample sizes, because he was awful in the second and third and actually cost the Leafs a game they should have won.

Still, who cares?

He’s allowed a bad game here and there, as maybe he hasn’t been “Linus Ullmark” good, but he’s been fantastic.

Samsonov has a .927 5v5 save percentage. That’s really good.  His .913 overall is decent too.  Both numbers put him just outside the top 10, but that’s really nothing to be concerned about because like shooting percentage, a goalie’s save percentage is largely due to circumstances outside of his control.

NHL goalies will save 100% of all easy shots they face, and almost all medium shots they face.  At the professional level, the only times those shots go in are due to luck (deflections, screens, unforced errors they won’t usually make).

The best way to judge a goalie’s long-term potential, and the best way to test his talent, is to check out his high-danger save percentage?

Sure, luck is still involved, but the bigger the sample size, the better the goalie.

We can’t draw any long-term conclusions about Samsonov’s current 25 game sample size, but we can say that the fact he currently leads all NHL goalies in the Cadillac of goalie stats means he’s at least been among the best goalies this season. (naturalstattrick.com).

Samsonov’s .894 high-danger save percentage is just slightly higher than Vezina favorite Linus Ullmark’s, not to mention the next two guys on the list – Vasilevskiy and Shesterkin.

If your closest company in the most important stat are the reining and (probable) current Vezina Trophy winners, as well as the guy in the conversation for best goalie of all-time, I think you’re doing OK.

But again, I think he should get the Vezina just for that one save, as it was incredible.