Washington Capitals goalie Braden Holtby (70) adjusts his mask during a break in play against the New York Rangers during the second period of Game 5 in the second round of the NHL Stanley Cup hockey playoffs, Friday, May 8, 2015, in New York. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Later this week, Washington goaltender Braden Holtby is scheduled to have an arbitration hearing, and the two sides seem quite far apart from an arb asking price perspective.

The Capitals asked for a $5.1 million cap hit, because they have about $10.3 million worth of cap space remaining and still have to re-sign Marcus Johansson as well. Holtby asked for quite a lot of money — $8 million — because by a lot of standards he seems as though he's worth it.

Among active goaltenders, his save percentage across both the regular season and playoffs since 2010 ranks fourth, behind some guys you might have heard of like Tuukka Rask, Cory Schneider, and Henrik Lundqvist. He is ahead of guys like Carey Price and Pekka Rinne, among other really, really good goaltenders who make a lot of money. The average goaltender in the league's top-five in terms of cap hit carries an AAV of $7.285 million. That's dragged up pretty sharply by Lundqvist's $8.5 million cap hit, because that average would be the third-highest cap hit in the league among goalies (behind only Lundqvist and Sergei Bobrovsky). It would also be the 21st-largest overall AAV in the league.

So really, we're facing two questions here:

1) Is Braden Holtby really a top-five goaltender?

2) How much is he worth if so?

The good news about goalies is also, in some ways, bad news: It's relatively easy to compare and contrast them because we really only have one statistic through which we can evaluate them, but also, we only have one statistic through which we can evaluate them. That, of course, is save percentage, and there are very few goaltenders who do what Holtby does in terms of keeping those numbers high at his age.

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In short, apart from that age-23 season (when everyone started worrying, “Oh my god is this guy even a good NHL goalie?” season of 2013-14), during which he played for an Adam Oates-coached team at its absolute worst, he has been world-class. And even when he wasn't world-class, he was still above league average overall, and among the very best at 5-on-5 anyway. In short, this is a young and apparently very, very good goaltender.

And please note, too, that 5-on-5 play is usually a better indicator of goaltender quality than overall numbers, because when you start adding in penalty kill or 5-on-6 numbers, things become a lot more dependent on systems than individual goalie skill. That is to say: Goalies have more — but obviously not total — control over their save percentage. This makes sense. At 5-on-5, even the teams with the worst defensive coverage aren't usually going to give up appreciably more goals than those with the best defenses. This comes with the acknowledgement that margins in the NHL are slim so even an extra goal against every four games can add up to a deficit of something like seven or eight points in the standings at the end of the season.

Holtby appears to be a flat-out, unequivocally dominant goaltender at 5-on-5.

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