In a 2018-19 season where there was little to celebrate, Jacob Markstrom’s emergence as a bonafide starting goaltender stood out as one of the beaming positives.



The shift in perception became abundantly clear at the end of the campaign when the fans voted Markstrom as the Vancouver Canucks’ MVP over super rookie Elias Pettersson, who lit up the league with 66 points in 71 games. It takes something special to trump the franchise’s budding superstar and Markstrom delivered exactly that for the majority of the year — posting a remarkable .921 save percentage from December on in front of a defence that was undeniably one of the worst in the NHL.



Such words can reek of hyperbole and recency bias when one considers that his 2018-19 .912 save percentage is the exact same as last year’s mark, but that says more about the shortcomings of save percentage as a statistic than it does Markstrom’s play. Despite being a reasonable starting point,...