First there was shock when the Red Wings didn’t protect Petr Mrazek. Shock shifted to suspicion in the days following GM Ken Holland’s decision to expose the supposed “goalie of the future” Petr Mrazek in the Vegas expansion draft. If his youth and unquestioned athletic ability couldn’t save him, surely there were deeper issues at play than mere performance and potential. The Athletic’s Craig Custance outlined those possible problems on Tuesday; management’s perception of a player, whether completely justified or entirely unfair, is colored deeply by their assessment of his character.

Far more interesting, however, is the on-ice evidence of divergence between Detroit’s netminders this season. I argue it was this, more than any problems with personality, that eventually led the team to protect Howard over Mrazek.

Previously, as is often the case with goaltenders developing in the same system, the two had highly comparable games. Both were very aggressive, challenging shooters far outside the blue paint. Both had a tendency (often related to depth) to over-pursue shooters on lateral passes and drives down the wings.

This aggression was welcomed in the Mike Babcock era, when the team was defensively strong enough to shut down backdoor plays that expose goalies who take aggressive depth. Last year’s Red Wings were not that squad. Howard was prepared for what he was facing. Mrazek was not.

As reported by NHL.com, newly-promoted goalie coach Jeff Salajko worked on reigning in Howard’s depth last summer. Instead of setting up in the white paint and striving to remain aggressively close to the puck, Howard learned to keep his blades in the blue in most situations. By sitting further back, a goaltender doesn’t have as far to move to follow the puck, gives himself more time to react to shots, and is generally in better position to stop second and third chances.

The difference between the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons is pronounced:

In this clip from the 2015-16 season, Howard swoops well out of his crease to face a shooter approaching from a poor angle. Even more tellingly, he works to maintain his advanced position as long as possible, only retreating once a lateral pass forces him to get back and across quickly.

In this clip from last season, Howard sets up far deeper despite facing a similar threat. He hardly breaks contact with the crease at all, marking a significant departure from his previous approach.

The result? Howard had the best save-percentage season of his career (albeit having played only 26 games because of injury), a tremendous turnaround from his career-worst 2015-16 season. Keeping closer to the goal line enabled him to makes saves like these:

Howard makes the first stop with the boot of his pad, creating a bad rebound that he loses sight of immediately. This is bad. However, because he is in the crease, rather than well outside it as he would have been previously, he doesn’t have far to go to get himself between the puck and the net when he finds it again. Instead of having to sprawl, he simply seals the bottom, then keeps a pad in front of the puck.

Since Howard was working with Salajko to manage his depth more effectively, one might assume that Mrazek, the team’s presumptive starter heading into last season, would be making similar adjustments. The visual evidence, however, doesn’t bear this out:

With the shooter on the boards and a defender interposing, Mrazek sets up almost at the bottom of the circles. This is comparable to Howard’s approach from 2015-16, but doesn’t resemble an attempt to keep closer to the goal line.

Facing an odd-man rush this season, Mrazek’s aggressive depth was once again on display:

As both he and Howard had done in previous seasons, Mrazek starts off far from his net, and flows back as the play approaches. There’s no indication that Mrazek was making any attempt to follow Howard’s more conservative new approach.

There is nothing inherently wrong with playing further out and working to maintain that depth: as with all aspects of goaltending, there is a tradeoff: the closer to the puck you stand, the less room the shooter has to score, but the farther you have to move to stay on your angle. The closer to the net you stand, the more room the shooter has to score, but the less you have to move to stay centered on the puck.

This Mrazek play illustrates nicely the main disadvantage of coming farther out:

(I bet you were expecting me to show you a goal here. Sorry. You’ll have to go elsewhere to get your goalie gore, you monster.) Though the shooter stops showing shot altogether and moves to his backhand for a pass on this two-on-one, Mrazek remains well out of his crease. When the pass is made, he has a great deal of distance to cover to get his body back in front of the puck. He never really manages, but stretches out his paddle to make an unlikely save. It’s beautiful, but it’s one of those highlight-reel showstoppers that a goalie playing further back would have made look far easier.

The results of Mrazek’s and Howard’s divergent depths were stark: behind the same defense, Howard had a career year, while Mrazek turned in his worst ever NHL season.

It’s certainly no easy task to rework a goaltender’s depth: Toronto’s Frederik Andersen depth experiment failed miserably, remember. Was Mrazek unwilling, or unable, to make the adjustments that served Howard so well? Making such a fundamental change mid-season is nearly unheard of – did Mrazek simply realize too late that his style wasn’t going to work behind this version of the Wings? We can only speculate.

What is clear, however, is that whether Mrazek ends up back in Detroit, or behind the expansion-quality defense of Vegas or elsewhere in a trade, he’ll need to embrace a more conservative style to recapture his previous success.