Yesterday, guest columnist Frjohnk dug into war-on-ice’s high/medium/low danger assessment of shots to try to get a bead on the true state of the Oiler defense and Oiler goaltending.

The Oiler D as you’d expect did not look so good, giving up a higher than average amount of dangerous shots. But NOT the worst in the league as many assume when they look at the Oiler goaltending.

Speaking of Oiler goaltending, Frjohnk’s analysis suggested that if the Oiler defense was a tire fire, then the Oiler goaltending was a tire fire in a dumpster. Rolling around on the deck of the Titanic. In a hurricane.

Dead last in sv% for easy shots.

Dead last in sv% for medium shots.

Talk about soul crushing.

And the kicker – not quite dead last in difficult shots. That’s right – the Oiler goalies were actually better relative to the league at stopping dangerous shots then they were stopping the easy ones. Must be all the practice.

Anyway, I figured I would try and do a slightly different take on breaking down goalies using the shot categories. Assess each one based on their performance in each category against the other goalies quantitatively. But rather than give numbers (which quickly become meaningless) or rankings (which put too fine a grain on it, as if there is really any difference between the 1 and 2 or the 28 and 29th ranked in any category!) … I figure I’ll try and express it qualitatively. (I tried visually but it was too damn much work to make it look good).

Not only would this put the Oiler goalie performance in perspective, but perhaps help isolate which goalies we think might be good candidates for MacT to dither on, er, I mean go after this summer.

*** Warning: take absolutely everything I post below with a grain of salt. These are goalies, for Gord’s sake. They’re voodoo. ***

I’ll throw charts at you first, and then, for those interested, a short discussion on how the ratings were devised. First, for an overview, how all goalies did at EV this year:

Goaltender EV Sv% (games > 9)

See that little bar captioned 89.4 over on the left? There’s two goalies stuck in that bar. Their names are Fasth and Scrivens.

Using the war-on-ice data, I pulled the H/L/M difficulty sv% for each goalie, then applied an assessment based on where it fit on the distribution of how all goalies did in their category.

Here’s the list, along with a categorical description.

Name Sv% SvLSD Rating SvMSD Rating SvHSD Rating Calvin.Pickard 95 Elite Elite Elite Scott.Darling 94.8 Slightly above to above average Vezina Vezina Steve.Mason 94.37 Elite Vezina Slightly above to above average Carey.Price 94.27 Way above average Elite Way above average Antti.Raanta 94.21 Way above average Average to slightly above Vezina Andrew.Hammond 94.06 Slightly above to above average Slightly above to above average Vezina Keith.Kinkaid 93.7 Slightly below to below average Slightly above to above average Vezina Craig.Anderson 93.69 Average to slightly above Elite Slightly above to above average Pekka.Rinne 93.62 Slightly above to above average Slightly above to above average Way above average Devan.Dubnyk 93.62 Slightly above to above average Slightly above to above average Way above average Cory.Schneider 93.44 Slightly above to above average Way above average Way above average Roberto.Luongo 93.14 Average to slightly below Average to slightly above Way above average Reto.Berra 93.12 Slightly above to above average Slightly above to above average Way above average Tuukka.Rask 93.09 Slightly above to above average Elite Average to slightly below Petr.Mrazek 93.07 Average to slightly above Way above average Slightly above to above average Cam.Talbot 93.04 Average to slightly below Way above average Way above average Corey.Crawford 93.04 Elite Slightly above to above average Slightly above to above average Ondrej.Pavelec 93 Way above average Slightly above to above average Slightly above to above average Henrik.Lundqvist 92.99 Average to slightly above Way above average Average to slightly above Braden.Holtby 92.94 Average to slightly below Average to slightly above Way above average Jonathan.Quick 92.78 Way above average Average to slightly above Slightly above to above average Andrei.Vasilevskiy 92.75 Way below average Average to slightly above Vezina Jonas.Hiller 92.71 Average to slightly below Way above average Way above average Marc-Andre.Fleury 92.64 Elite Slightly above to above average Slightly above to above average Brian.Elliott 92.58 Average to slightly above Elite Average to slightly below Michael.Hutchinson 92.56 Way above average Slightly above to above average Average to slightly above Niklas.Svedberg 92.49 Slightly above to above average Elite Average to slightly above Sergei.Bobrovsky 92.47 Average to slightly below Way above average Average to slightly above Michal.Neuvirth 92.45 Way above average Average to slightly below Slightly above to above average John.Gibson 92.42 Vezina Slightly below to below average Slightly below to below average Jaroslav.Halak 92.26 Average to slightly below Average to slightly above Way above average Thomas.Greiss 92.21 Average to slightly below Average to slightly above Way above average Antti.Niemi 92.19 Slightly above to above average Way above average Average to slightly below Jonathan.Bernier 92.18 Average to slightly below Slightly above to above average Slightly above to above average Jimmy.Howard 92.15 Average to slightly above Slightly above to above average Average to slightly above Frederik.Andersen 92.09 Average to slightly below Slightly above to above average Average to slightly above Eddie.Lack 92.08 Elite Elite Average to slightly below Jake.Allen 92.01 Way below average Average to slightly below Elite Ben.Bishop 91.99 Slightly above to above average Slightly above to above average Average to slightly above Semyon.Varlamov 91.85 Average to slightly below Slightly above to above average Average to slightly above Karri.Ramo 91.85 Average to slightly below Slightly above to above average Slightly above to above average Martin.Jones 91.57 Average to slightly below Average to slightly above Average to slightly above Jhonas.Enroth 91.51 Average to slightly below Way above average Average to slightly below Kari.Lehtonen 91.42 Average to slightly above Average to slightly above Average to slightly above Ryan.Miller 91.41 Slightly below to below average Way below average Way above average Anders.Lindback 91.37 Slightly below to below average Way above average Slightly below to below average Curtis.McElhinney 91.29 Way above average Average to slightly above Slightly below to below average Cam.Ward 91.28 Average to slightly below Average to slightly above Average to slightly below James.Reimer 91.27 Average to slightly below Average to slightly above Slightly above to above average Ray.Emery 91.27 Vezina Slightly below to below average Average to slightly below Mike.Smith 91.21 Average to slightly above Average to slightly above Average to slightly below Dustin.Tokarski 91.05 Slightly above to above average Average to slightly below Slightly below to below average Alex.Stalock 91.03 Vezina Slightly above to above average Slightly below to below average Robin.Lehner 90.89 Terrible Average to slightly below Average to slightly above Darcy.Kuemper 90.72 Average to slightly below Terrible Average to slightly below Carter.Hutton 90.56 Terrible Terrible Slightly above to above average Anton.Khudobin 90.3 Slightly above to above average Way above average Way below average Chad.Johnson 90.07 Slightly above to above average Average to slightly below Slightly below to below average Ben.Scrivens 89.98 Terrible Average to slightly below Average to slightly below Al.Montoya 89.59 Way below average Terrible Average to slightly below Viktor.Fasth 89.58 Terrible Horrawful Slightly above to above average Evgeni.Nabokov 89.56 Horrawful Average to slightly below Average to slightly below Rob.Zepp 88.89 Terrible Horrawful Slightly below to below average Justin.Peters 88.7 Way above average Terrible Terrible Niklas.Backstrom 88.6 Average to slightly above Slightly below to below average Horrawful

Oiler goalies: not good. Especially at the easy shots, as Frjohnk showed.

Arguments that its because they were overwhelmed by the defensive tire fire are a bit challenged by the fact that both goalies, especially Fasth, were not that bad in stopping the ‘really dangerous’ shots. It looks to me that its mostly the goalies.

It might be the team e.g. a poisoned atmosphere, bad goalie coaching, etc. But it’s still the goalies, not the defense.

As for the future …

Cam Talbot may indeed be the right guy to backstop a tire fire … but small samples.

Martin Jones? No thanks.

Cory Schneider really is good. Another reason to say: F*** YOU CANUCKS.

Other surprises I thought: Marc-Andre Fleury has had a decent year. Eddie Lack is like the anti-Fasth. Ryan Miller is like the anti-Lack. Antti Niemi might not be that bad. Neuvirth might be good – but not great. Between Berra and Ramo, the Flames might have kept the wrong one. Pavelec really has had a good year – at 27, he may be hitting his stride, that’s the same age that Kipper became a good ‘un.

*** Warning: take absolutely everything I posted above with a grain of salt. These are goalies, for Gord’s sake. They’re voodoo. ***

How I did what I did:

Pulled H/M/L EV save %

normalize relative to mean and standard deviation

cut the resulting distribution into ten categories, in order of worst to best: ‘Horrawful’, ‘Terrible’, ‘Way below average’, ‘Slightly below to below average’, ‘Average to slightly below’, ‘Average to slightly above’, ‘Slightly above to above average’, ‘Way above average’, ‘Elite’, ‘Vezina’

Paste as a table above