The incorrect conclusion that some have drawn from these results is that a team does not need a top goalie to win the Stanley Cup, therefore it is not a big deal that their team does not have a top goalie.  The more accurate conclusion is that it is no longer possible to build an elite team in the current salary capped environment, therefore the Stanley Cup winner will not be an elite team.  That doesn’t mean a team should ignore an important position on their team.  In all likelihood, next year’s non-elite Stanley Cup winning team will be lacking in some other areas, but will have strong goaltending from a top goaltender. 

What’s your basis for calling this a likelihood?  When was the last Stanley-Cup winner to have a top goaltender in your estimation?  Which teams with top goaltenders do you think are the likeliest to win the cup?

You call the idea that a team doesn’t need a top goalie to win the cup after spending serious time bemoaning the fact that cup-winning squads since the lockout have lacked top goaltending.  I’m wondering what’s changed in the league this year that makes you believe the tide will turn.

Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 08/29/10 at 07:11 PM ET

If we take it as a given that the 2011 Stanley Cup winner will not be an elite team, then they will have at least one significant weakness somewhere.  The odds that it is the exact same weakness as in 2010 is low.  Even if they don’t have the greatest goaltender in the game on one of the two Stanley Cup teams, the odds that the Stanley Cup finals are played between the 26th best regular season goalie (Niemi) and the 46th best regular season goalie (Leighton) by goaltending goals versus threshold is highly unlikely.  More than likely they will come from at least the top half of the thirty starting goalies in the league - afterall their teams are suposed to be the best in the league.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 08/29/10 at 07:22 PM ET

Ok, that makes more sense.  I agree that it’s likely the team to win the cup in the upcoming season will likely be in the top half. The misunderstanding was caused by previous conversations making me think you were talking that the likelihood would be that a goalie considered near the top five of the top half would win.

Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 08/29/10 at 07:27 PM ET

A team does not need a top goaltender to succeed.

I will use my very Detroit Red Wings as an example, in the past few years Holland has had to make a choice. To have a goalie or not to have , that is the question. A expensive goalie that is.

It seems that Ken Holland thinks a another player or two is more of a necessity than one of the NHL most elite net minders. A top goalie in the new NHL can make around 5 or 6 million. So Wings fans, who do you to give up to have a “elite” goalie?

Cleary and Hudler’s contracts make up around the cost of a Drew Miller. Is that something that would help the Wings chances? I hope you see the point. This is the kind of sacrifice it takes in order to have an elite. Rather than Cleary or Hudler think of any other combintion of players that will equal Brodeur’s contract.

Giving up players like that is a tough pill to swallow. Obtaining a elite dictates what type of team you have. Why would you need to pay that much when you have been successful? The Wings have done just fine without. Chris Osgood makes about 1.5 million and the wings have done just fine.

For argumentative purposes I will use Ozzy but you can just mentally sub Howard for when I mention ozzy.

Finally I will argue that having a goalie like Ozzy is the best possible scenario. Think about it. When Ozzy stands between the pipes he occupies just as much space as Drew Miller would. . Ozzy is a good goalie, how many extra saves could he possibly make over Miller. Most shots from players are stopable, both MIller and Ozzy can stop them. Most goals are usually generally unstopable. Is Miller gonna save a shot that Ozzy could not? Maybe, but most goals are gonna be goals no matter whos in net. If a goalie is beat, hes beat. There is a huge difference between a bad goalie and a great one. Is there also a huge difference between good goalie and a great goalie? That is the question. Really how many extra saves does Miller make over Ozzy? If you had a way to test them on the exact same shots in the exact same scenarios, would there really be that much of a difference?  Most goals are going in and most saves are getting stopped. So does it really help to pay someone 6 million over someone who makes 2 million?

There is a small percentage of scoring chances in which an elite goalie could really make the stop over just a good goalie. Obviously Miller is a better goalie than Osgood. Miller is a tremendous goalie, perhaps the best in the NHL. Remember thats not what im arguing. Think about all those shots and scoring chances, does it really make a HUGE difference whos in net? Does it make any difference?

Posted by pjwalny from Not Detroit, evidently?? on 08/29/10 at 09:48 PM ET

And dont just say that Miller or whoever is better than Ozzy or Howard because that is not what im asking.

Posted by pjwalny from Not Detroit, evidently?? on 08/29/10 at 09:52 PM ET

The difference between Ryan Miller and Chris Osgood is huge and could very easily be the difference between having a Stanley Cup winning team and not having one.  Chris Osgood has not been an NHL calibre goalie for a while - the one hot streak that is an exception is the 2009 playoffs - however it is clear that the Wings failed to win the cup that year and a more elite goalie could easily have been the difference. 

The difference between Miller and Jimmy Howard is not nearly as big.  Howard is one of the better goalies in the NHL (or at least he was last year).  Goalie goals versus threshold calls Howard the fifth best goalie in the NHL.  A player who can do that as a rookie could well be a future elite goalie if he can repeat it- but the caveat is that he is not a young rookie and his AHL numbers did not suggest that he had that ability.  If your cheap goalie can be fifth best in the league then you are probably in good shape.  Not as good shape as if you had the number one guy, but in the salary cap world where you have to get rid of talent before your team could ever be elite, that is likely good enough.

Now you could just as easily have made the argument that you do not need defence to win a Stanley Cup or you do not need offence.  It just happens that in the short term when there have been no elite teams, the winning teams have been weakest in terms of goaltending, but that isn’t the only way it can be, you could have strong goaltending and other weaknesses and be as good a team as they are.  I think that is likely what we will see in the future if only because there are far more available weaknesses for non-elite teams than only goaltending. 

The sad part in all of this is our Stanley Cup champions are becoming weaker and weaker relative to the pack and we seem to be accepting this and thinking it is OK for a team to have the 26th best goalie in the league and win the Stanley Cup.  Yet at the same time, we understand this goalie is not very good and do not bat an eye at the fact he cannot get a job only months after that cup victory.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 08/29/10 at 10:08 PM ET

Drew Miller isn’t a goalie. Must have Red Wings on the brain.

Posted by pensfan29 on 08/30/10 at 06:46 AM ET

The sad part in all of this is our Stanley Cup champions are becoming weaker and weaker relative to the pack and we seem to be accepting this and thinking it is OK for a team to have the 26th best goalie in the league and win the Stanley Cup.  Yet at the same time, we understand this goalie is not very good and do not bat an eye at the fact he cannot get a job only months after that cup victory.

So you’re saying the Carolina Hurricanes in 2005-06 were better than last year’s Chicago Blackhawks?  I’m looking at the list of past Stanley Cup-winning teams and I’m seeing a good number of them that I believe the Hawks, Penguins, Red Wings, or Ducks from their championship years could have beaten in a 7-game series.

Would you bat an eye that Niemi can’t get a job only months after being the 26th-best goalie in the league (if going by that metric)? 

I accept that the team with the 26th-best goalie in the league won the cup because they were the best team in the league.  I accept that the way hockey is being played nowadays is different than hockey being played before the lockout and in a very good way.  I accept that it is harder to be a dominant goaltender because your defensemen are no longer allowed to blatantly hook, hold, and impede people who are going to get scoring chances.  I also believe your argument about the cup finals ignores the fact that Chicago’s goaltending had been good during the regular season and through the playoffs up until the Finals.  As much as you claim Chris Osgood’s playoff success as an aberration off the norm of a mediocre-to-bad goalie, I would say that the goaltending Chicago got in the Finals was an aberration from a year in which they got very capable goaltending from Niemi.  As a team, they were fifth in GAA with 2.48.  If Cristobal Huet hadn’t been dragging down the numbers with his 0.895 save percentage, they would have been tops in the league.  Chicago faced 2058 shots all season (best in the league).  If they had gotten Niemi-caliber goaltending throughout the entire regular season, his .912 save percentage would have given Chicago a total of 181 goals against, which would have put them in first place in the league, with five goals against fewer than New Jersey.

Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 08/30/10 at 07:58 AM ET

2004 Standford Physics Probability Study asked Collegiate, Semi professional and Professional goalies what are the most common ways they are scored upon. Almost 100% of Surveyed participants had the same answers. The scenarios which usually led to the most goals were, Breakaway (or one one between goalie and skater), Screened shots, Deflections and Transitions (transition would be when the players make a cross ice pass usually leading into a one timers, which causes the goalie to shift from one side of crease to other). 

The above scenarios were most difficult to stop. Participants mostly said that there is nothing more they could do to stop the goals. When asked if they thought another more skilled goalie could make the stop only about 25% believed some other goalie could make the stop.

I will sum this up now. Basically most of the goalies said that 85-95% of shots are stoppable. The goalies believed that they could do just as good at stopping those 85-95% as any other goalie on the planet. Now the other 10-15% are mostly made up of the above scoring scenarios. Out of that 15% only a handful of talented goalies on the planet have the ability to stop any number of shots out of that 15%.

How does this affect a goalie in a actual game? If a goalie faces 30 shots a game, around 5 of those shots are the fore mentioned scenarios. There are around 5 shots per game that could be saved or stopped pending on the goalies ability. There is a difference between Jimmy Howard and Ryan Miller. That number of variable shots could be even less per game. Basically there is a handful of shots that the goal is truly tested on.

Does that extra one or two shots constitute paying a goalie 6 million over 2 million? Maybe, If the goal only saves two of those five, that means he got scored on three times. Being a hockey fan, Im sure you know there is a huge difference between one or two goals. Having one of those elite goalies certainly makes a difference , it could be the difference between a one goal loss or a win.

The proposed errors in this idea is that one could argue there are less than five variables every game. IF there was only two, that would mean there is not a huge difference between Miller and Howard.

I hope you liked this. Because I got close to plagiarism. It’s an interesting way to look at the importance of goal tending.

Posted by pjwalny from Not Detroit, evidently?? on 08/30/10 at 04:20 PM ET

I think I can agree with the concept that goalies are slightly underpaid while defensemen are slightly overpaid.  I think a league correction of that concept (which isn’t likely in the short run, but may happen in the long run), would make it possible for one of TPSH’s “elite teams” to actually form.

Of course, a team that’s overpaying their defense and gets elite-level play from an underpaid goalie could do the same thing…

Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 08/30/10 at 05:13 PM ET

Yeah, Sometimes I feel that a team is more likely to pay for an elite goalie if they dont want to spend alot of money overall on the team salary.

I think of Phoenix this way. We can all agree that the Coyotes were Cinderellas last year, no one really anticipated a good year from them.

The Phoenix owner or whoever, did not want to spend anything close to the salary cap. I think the were about 22 million under the cap last year. They did pay Bryzgalov around five million. Thats alot of money. I think they got Bryzgalov because they didnt want to spend more money.

Rather than spending 20 million on a good defense, they just went out and got a top goalie for 5. The Coyotes front office probably thought they could shadow weaknesses and save money by getting a great goalie.

I dont even know what im trying to say here. hahah. That was a cool study on top though right?

Posted by pjwalny from Not Detroit, evidently?? on 08/30/10 at 08:18 PM ET

In a salary cap world what is the best way to use money?

Would a expensive defense and a average paid goalie make the best defense?

Maybe just get a top goalie and give up a few depth players?

Posted by pjwalny from Not Detroit, evidently?? on 08/30/10 at 08:21 PM ET

Yeah, Sometimes I feel that a team is more likely to pay for an elite goalie if they dont want to spend alot of money overall on the team salary.

Oh, fuch, I agree with you! Nooo…. Okay, seriously now, that’s a very good point.

Maybe, If the goalie only saves two of those five [shots], that means he got scored on three times

Yep, maybe ...

Posted by Guilherme from Brazsil on 08/30/10 at 08:39 PM ET

But PJ, there’s also another view on that. Sure, teams could be choosing between paying for good defense or paying for good goaltending.

But now, after some thought (that’s right, 15 seconds), I just think the team that pays for good goaltending doesn’t need great defense. The same thing the other way, a team that has great defense doesn’t need an elite goalie (i.e. Detroit).

Posted by Guilherme from Brazsil on 08/30/10 at 08:43 PM ET

Yeah, Sometimes I feel that a team is more likely to pay for an elite goalie if they dont want to spend alot of money overall on the team salary.

Posted by Guilherme from Brazsil on 08/30/10 at 09:39 PM ET

I dont understand what you are trying to tell me.

What I was talking about is whether or not its wise to obtain an elite goalie. Using the Phoenix Coyotes as an example is merely an example of a team who devoted a large sum to one player. I think the Phoenix front office did that primarily because overall they did not want to spend alot. Maybe they thought they could take the easy way out and save some money.

The same thing the other way, a team that has great defense doesn’t need an elite goalie (i.e. Detroit).

Posted by Guilherm

I agree with you Guilherm. I mean have we seen a Cup contending team in the past few years that had a Phoenix defensive attitude. Obviously Detroit has had success and they choose against getting an “elite”. Chicago, had Huet but they didnt use him. I guess you could also put Chicago into that category. Philadelphia might fall into that category as well.

Pittsburgh certainly pays Fleury alot, does their defense struggle from lack of depth? In fact if you look at the teams with the top goaltenders, they have had some troubles. New Jersey has not been to the finals or close to winning the cup with Brodeur. Ryan Miller has not taken Buffalo to the promise land. Boston has recently fallen into this category as well. As soon as they rewarded Thomas with a large contract he play slummed considerably.

I think it is safe to say that saving money on a goalie is the best option in the NHL. Acquiring a good goalie seems better than drafting a stud. Putting that 3 or 4 million into another a solid one or two more players is ideal. The teams that should get an elite goalies are teams who have a lower overall salary, or lack overall defensive talent. Ryan Miller is expensive but its alot cheaper than an top defense.

Posted by pjwalny from Not Detroit, evidently?? on 08/30/10 at 10:03 PM ET

Brodeur has not taken them to the Finals in the past couple years or post lockout. ( Right?)

Posted by pjwalny from Not Detroit, evidently?? on 08/30/10 at 10:06 PM ET