I read your first paragraph and decided to save myself some time and eye rolling and not read the rest.

Posted by Sp4r7an on 06/12/09 at 12:18 AM ET

He wins.  He wins on a regular basis.  Sometimes he wins 5-4 games and sometimes he wins 2-1 games.

Bottom line, he wins.  That’s all that matters.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 06/12/09 at 12:38 AM ET

Dude, at least you are using numbers now, but you’re still a fu<king idiot.

This is an argument I can almost buy, but you have to look at the circumstances surrounding Ozzie’s numbers here.  The years where he falls well below the league average are years where he played for St. Louis and New York…not very good teams.

This last year is also an outlier in Ozzie’s career.  I would buy this argument in a couple of years after we have the benefit of hindsight…If Ozzie’s numbers continue to decline than I think you are right.  If this season is shown as an outlier, than you are an idiot.  Still.

You have to admit, it is something that even in what you call the twilight of his career, he is taking a team to game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.  Kind of says something about his skill level, eh?

Posted by John from Pittsburgh, PA (Wings fan for life!) on 06/12/09 at 12:54 AM ET

No offense, but I can’t even begin to point out the problems with what I just read.

The problem with most bloggers that attempt to analyze goaltenders from a purely statistical perspective is…well…that they are totally missing the purpose of what makes an elite goaltender different from all the other mediocre goaltenders.

It has NOTHING to do with any kind of possible statistic you could ever create in your mind or on a calculator. It has EVERYTHING to do with the mental and emotional aspects of the position.

Chris Osgood, like many goaltenders, is all about persistence, desire and extreme mental toughness. He has the heart of a lion and he understands the position.

I can totally crush your entire argument with one paragraph that has not one statistic in it. Ready?

Chris Osgood is an elite goaltender because of his extreme mastery of the mental aspects of the game. Whenever he allows a bad goal, he bounces back. He knows how to handle seeing very few shots in a game and he knows how to stay strong when Nothing surprises him. He’s seen it all. He’s durable. He’s acrobatic. He’s smart. He can move the puck. He has experience.

Oh, and one other thing. No matter where Osgood has played and no matter how good or how bad that team was, he put them in the playoffs. Go back and look what he did to a young and unenthusiastic Islanders team. Then go back and look at what he did on a struggling St. Louis Blues team. That’s right, playoffs.

In 1998 when he allowed a center-ice goal from Jamie Langenbrunner in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals in Dallas…what did he do in Game 6? Please, go look it up. And then try to chart it.

Posted by Justin from Colorado on 06/12/09 at 01:19 AM ET

TPSH,

You’ve made a good start, but you need to build on this. Save percentage by itself is not a particularly revealing statistic. It’s akin to trying to use plus/minus to determine the best defensive player. Save percentage alone doesn’t provide you with the quality of the opposition, or the difficulty of the shot. It doesn’t tell you if the save (or goal) was on a man advantage situation or at even strength. It doesn’t even tell you how many goals were due to goaltender error versus an error by a teammate.

You need to get beyond the realm of statistics and into the world of analytics, where we take a number of data points that can better help us understand and interpret what the statistics mean.

For example, Gabe Desjardins started a very interesting analysis on his BehindTheNetBlog that began to analyze 5-on-5 performance by goaltenders based on the scoring probabilities from various shooting zones. Notice in his initial data run snapshot from the 2007-08 season that Mr. Osgood finds himself in the top five (i.e. performing significantly better than a hypothetical average goalie).

It would be revealing to see this kind of study that Gabe started extended over the course of a couple of seasons so see how our “perceived” top goaltenders sort themselves out.

Posted by Matthew McCallum from Redding, California on 06/12/09 at 02:30 AM ET

I have talked about asng shot quality in the past.  It is not exactly Desjardins system, but it is a similar idea and it comes with several pitfalls in the data quality.

That said it is not necessary to the argument.  It is pretty clear from these numbers that Osgood is in the decline phase of his career.  That really shouldn’t surprise anyone given that he is 36 years old.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 06/12/09 at 02:39 AM ET

The link should read “assessing shot quality”  I don’t know what happened to half a word.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 06/12/09 at 02:40 AM ET

When you what is importnant is now Osgood’s “merntal make-up” you have finally hit the last bullshit dump.  There is no meaningful way to assess it.

Detroit has won in the playoffs and Osgood has been the goalie.  Therefore he has a good mental make-up.  That is your argument.

It is popular to define sports as some epic battle where the guy with the most character who digs the deepest wins.  It portrays the winner as having some intanglible that the loser doesn’t.  There is little that can be done to verify such a statement and it is something people have tried many times.

I think its pretty clear that Osgood’s place in history is far bigger because of being a Detroit Red Wing.  The Red Wings were a good team and he won, sometimes because he was a good goalie and often because the Red Wings were good enough to win with any goalie (this regular season is exhibit A - although a bit atypical as Osgood is not usually that bad).  If Chris Osgood played his career with a .500 team we wouldn’t even be having this discussion and further this discussion is not exactly relevant to what I wrote today.  Even if Osgood has some kind of superior “mental make-up”, he is still clearly in decline.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 06/12/09 at 02:51 AM ET

another game of select what facts are important… it’s exhausting really.

Posted by perfection from LaLaLand on 06/12/09 at 03:23 AM ET

He wins.  He wins on a regular basis.  Sometimes he wins 5-4 games and sometimes he wins 2-1 games.

Bottom line, he wins.  That’s all that matters.

Yes. This.

During the playoffs Osgood elevates his play.  He has always been a winning goaltender in the regular season, no matter what team he is on he has never been under .500 in win %; in the postseason Osgood shines.

How about you make a graph showing Osgood’s playoff save % and the league average save % year-by-year?

Posted by VooX from Behind the Bar in the Hasek Club Car on 06/12/09 at 03:54 AM ET

Matthew McCallum

Your suggestion to use Desjardins scoring probabilities fails for another more significant reason.  The NHL has not recorded sufficient data to attempt to calculate them in much of Osgood’s career.  The data does not exist in the 1990’s when Osgood was in his prime and games are missing each season until the middle of this decade.

Saves percentage is the most reliable statistic available for the time period in question and it clearly shows Osgood’s prime years were in the 90’s and possibly early 2000’s.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 06/12/09 at 04:12 AM ET

This post is ridiculous.  Doesn’t the fact that ozzie has led his injury riddled team to game 7 of the finals, and will likely win the conn smythe should the wings win tonight, prove that he is on the top of his game? 

I don’t think we need line graphs in this debate- it’s clear..

Posted by matt from vancouver on 06/12/09 at 05:33 AM ET

Hey, a circular and specious argument from TPSH that cherry-picks facts and uses the existence of his opinion as support for his opinion?  Really?  No way.

When did he start doing that? 

Seriously, if the Wings aren’t an elite team because they have Osgood, yet Osgood puts up outstanding numbers in consecutive playoff seasons, and TPSH thinks this is evidence that he is in ‘decline’...

...well, needless to say, that’s an incredibly stupid position to take.

The fact that he then goes on to try and minimize the importance of the mental aspects of the position is, perhaps, the single most definitive example of TPSH’s appaling lack of anything remotely approaching a grasp of the game of hockey he’s seen fit to expose.

In today’s day and age of maximum equipment and maximum Butterfly, the goaltending position is almost 80% mental anymore.  Any guy who manages to get to the NHL level obviously has all the physical tools to be a good netminder, but it’s the timely save and the consistency of performance which really pushes the cream to the top of that position.

Further, Osgood’s consistency is one of his most prized attributes.  To look at his career (on a freaking graph, no less) and not see more than a couple spikes in either direction is something which ought to be to his credit not seen as a negative.

I think a better description of Chris Osgood, and really any goalie who plays as long as he has and who has won as much as he has, would be to a Pitcher who loses a few MPH off his fastball, but who better understands the strike zone and batter psychology.  He may not be as physically gifted as he was earlier in his career, but his guile and experience more than make up for that lack of raw talent and result in him being a more effective pitcher, not less so.

Okay, there we go.  This thread can now resume it’s regularly scheduled broadcasting, mostly involving TPSH saying stupid things and 90% of the posters laughing at him, with the other 10% having already given up.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 06/12/09 at 06:48 AM ET

TPSH, wake the &$#@ up and just move on from this constant Osgood bashing. You are catching nothing but flack for it, so what’s the point? We get it, you don’t like Osgood and think he sucks. Is he the only thing you are capable of writing about?

QFT

Posted by detroitdan1982 from St. John's, NL on 06/12/09 at 07:42 AM ET

Not for nothing, but those charts were ELITE.

Signed,

Amused by the weird pile-on that’s happened on this blog for the last several weeks.

Posted by Greg Wyshynski from Washington, DC on 06/12/09 at 08:02 AM ET

You’re poking fans with a stick on the day of the most nervewracking game of the season.

You’re an insensitive ass, a poor writer, and I’ll never click on your blog again.

Cheers!

Posted by Jayo from Toronto on 06/12/09 at 08:21 AM ET

Go *#$%@& yourself.

Posted by moore00 from Columbus, OH/Grand Rapids, MI on 06/12/09 at 08:29 AM ET

A lot has been mentioned about Osgood’s “Mental Toughness”  many have blown this off, probably because you can’t make a chart of it from a spreadsheet. 

But so much of goaltending is a mental game.  You can have amazing reflex’s but if your head is not in the game it won’t do you any good. 

Look at Legace several years back, (and now for that matter)  He has a ton of talent, but he is lacking in the mental aspect of the position.  When he was with the Redwings during there playoff one, he once told a reporter he wasn’t sure if he should be starting…

This was already mentioned above, but Osgoods ability to play well when recieving very little shots is a tremendous asset. 

I also have to take issue with your graphs, as they dont tell the whole story.  Osgoods single worst year was 2003.  That was the year that he was injured.  He missed a bunch of games and play some games injured.  This year he obviously had a terrible regular season.  Thus skewing the numbers.

Furthermore why don’t you produce a graph of playoff save percentage…  I think it would tell a different story…  After all elite teams are not made in the regular season (see San Jose Sharks)

Posted by wingsnut25 from Cheboygan, MI on 06/12/09 at 08:33 AM ET

ENOUGH! Jesus,the guy wins!why this this guy so hell bent on beating Ozzie up,the guy is top 10 in many key categories career wise.This inane bashing of a guy who will be HOF is just ridiculous.He is 36-37 we GET he doesn’t have 10 yrs left,STFU already

Posted by Speedy Sammich from DTown on 06/12/09 at 08:35 AM ET

This would have been an elite article if it included Ozzie’s playoff stats as compared to the league average.

Because as everyone in San Joke knows, it doesn’t mean a thing what you do in the regular season if you don’t win in the playoffs.

Posted by johnny 2 in kalamazoo on 06/12/09 at 08:38 AM ET

TPSH - What an ass.

The stats have it.

Posted by Wings_Fan_In_KC from ...somewhere southwest of The Motor City... on 06/12/09 at 08:44 AM ET

I’m sorry, but when was his prime?

This is his prime.

Do you watch hockey?

Have you watched any this post season?

I’m sorry, but when you’re relying on the extended pre-season (ie the regular season), before the REAL season (ie playoffs) even begins, your argument has NO credibility.

Ask ANY goalie in the ENTIRE WORLD if they would rather win a Vezina or Jennings or if they would prefer to be the best goalie in the playoffs, backstopping their team to a Stanley Cup and getting serious consideration for the Conn Smythe.

Go ahead.  Ask ANYONE.

Last year Osgood got the Jennings AND the Cup.  This year he could be hoisting the cup with one arm and holding the Conn Smythe with the other.

How’s that for elite?

Your logic is SO flawed that it’s beyond ridiculous.  Please just give it up.

Posted by Garth on 06/12/09 at 09:33 AM ET

What. An. As$hole.

Of all the frigging days.  On a day you know Wing fans are more stressed than ever and you do this again?

Seriously.  You are an as$hole.

Posted by IwoCPO from Sunny San Diego, bitches on 06/12/09 at 09:34 AM ET

The argument is tiresome and ridiculous. To me, Chris Osgood is one of the most unique and remarkable stories in Detroit sports history. It can be argued that he’s never been better than he is right now, 15 years into his career. He was always above average and always a winner, but statistically, last regular season and the last two playoff runs have been his best. This past regular season doesn’t mean much and you can throw the numbers out.

Just in terms of the road he’s taken to where he is now and all of the circumstances which have brought him one win away from back to back Stanley Cups and probably a Conn Smythe trophy as well, makes him a lock for the Hall of Fame. Debate all you want. There is/ should be a lot more to a player’s career than numbers. He has numbers and a great story.

Posted by Jeff Nikosey from Windsor, Ontario on 06/12/09 at 09:39 AM ET

PSH,

Do you want to know when Osgood’s Prime was/is?

I have a very simple answer for you (and I don’t need any fancy charts or statsitics to do it).

Osgood’s primse is between mid April and June.  That’s his prime. 

Boom.  Roasted.

So long as the team makes the playoffs, I could give a rat’s ass about stastics, how well they played, etc.  Playoffs are where careers are defined.  Everyone always talks about how winning the Cup can make the difference between a good career and a great one.

Luongo, Kiprusoff, Nabakov, all of these guys are good goalies, but whatever have they really accomplished in the playoffs?  Kipper got to one finals.  The others?

As far as the Red Wings go, come playoff time, I’ll take Chris Osgood, you’re little line graphs aside.

Posted by Ajax19 on 06/12/09 at 09:40 AM ET

Shitty line graphs too ajax19…

Posted by moore00 from Columbus, OH/Grand Rapids, MI on 06/12/09 at 09:54 AM ET

As requested, Osgood’s playoff numbers versus league playoff numbers:

The drop off in the middle corresponds to his time with the Blues/Islanders.

Posted by Steve J from Columbia, MO on 06/12/09 at 09:59 AM ET

Blah blah blah blah…

All I hear is “Chris Osgood has been on 3 Stanley Cup championship teams and is one win away from a fourth.”

And those, TSPH, are the only numbers that matter.

Posted by Incognetis from Delaware... Hi... I'm in... Delaware on 06/12/09 at 10:38 AM ET

TSPH = TPSH.  I’m already jittery.

Posted by Incognetis from Delaware... Hi... I'm in... Delaware on 06/12/09 at 10:39 AM ET

TPSH,

Thanks for the direct reply.

Having worked extensively with the data over the years I’m well aware of the lack of good metrics particularly over the long term. Frankly, shooting percentage and save percentage are rather dodgy statistics, too, since there’s been great inconsistency over the years as to what was counted as a shot on net and what wasn’t in the various buildings around the league. Fortunately, we don’t need a full career span of data to test your theory.

Your hypothesis is that Osgood is past his peak and in decline. I think it would be meaningful to take the full array of data that we have in the current period (certainly a full data set is available for the post lockout period) and test Osgood under a more rigourous set of analytics. While it wouldn’t likely identify his career peak—which, logically, we should expect to occur when he was younger, but not necessarily—it would provide evidence (or not) of Osgood’s decline.

I also think for the purposes of a proper study that regular season and playoffs do need to be split apart, as we’re really dealing with two different animals. Yes, it’s all hockey, but Stanley Cup hockey is played at a much different intensity and for much higher stakes. That does mean something, and a game versus Pheonix in January isn’t quite the same as a game versus Pittsburgh in June.

I had a thought late last night that would be a useful comparison and relatively easy to run. You’ve made much of Osgood’s subpar 2008-09 regular season. Let’s take a look post lockout at the regular seasons of the Stanley Cup Finalists and their goaltenders in the year following their Finals appearance. Is there evidence of a dropoff in performance of these teams / players following the long march to the Final, and does Osgood’s 2008-09 regular season fits the pattern?

Posted by Matthew McCallum from Redding, California on 06/12/09 at 12:41 PM ET

I think that you really cannot prove anything from looking at the playoff numbers.  Osgood hd not been out of the first round since 2000, until last year and hadn’t even played a playoff game since 2004.  The only conclusion if I tried to find his prime years from playoff numbers alone is that I don’t have enough data to determine anything meaningful.  Too much was thrown out when the regular season was tossed.

Keeping both the playoffs and regular season as I did is the best method.  I am not sure what else you would learn with further study.  There already is pretty strong evidence of his decline when you look at the plotted data.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 06/12/09 at 01:06 PM ET

So, Matt… starting to see why TPSH is the subject of giggles?

He’s not interested in finding out the realities of an issue, he’s only interested in ‘proving’ himself right.

Your suggestions are all entirely apt ones, at least if one proceeds under the assumption that he’s out to prove whether or not a hypothesis is true or false rather than what TPSH actually does… simply looking for things that ‘prove’ it’s true.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 06/12/09 at 01:18 PM ET

Keeping both the playoffs and regular season as I did is the best method.

No, it isn’t.

What kind of moron is going to argue that a goalie is in his prime when he’s not playing in the playoffs?

For years people were saying that Roberto Luongo was the best goalie to never make the playoffs. 

Not the best goalie in the league, but the best to never make the playoffs.

Know why?  Because he hadn’t proved anything since he had NEVER MADE THE PLAYOFFS!

Unless you go 82-0 with a 1.00 save percentage and a 0.00 GAA, then the regular season doesn’t matter.

That’s why nobody in football cares if a team goes 16-0 in the regular season if they lose their first playoff game.

That’s why the President’s trophy is a consolation prize, and in recent years has been a curse.

Posted by Garth on 06/12/09 at 01:29 PM ET

...It makes sense because these were the years he was in his mid to upper 20’s which are common years for the prime of any hockey player.

Be careful of that assumption. Due to the nature of the position, a goalie and a defenseman usually have later prime years than a forward. In addition, I think its fair to say that there has been an extension of a sports figure’s prime years the past 10 years or so. Whether it be off season training, specialized coaching, supplements (legal and non-legal) or maybe just some natural evolution, players are playing at the top of their game in all sports into their mid to upper 30’s.

Posted by UMFan from Colorado on 06/12/09 at 02:47 PM ET

TPSH,

Perhaps I was not clear. I never suggested that you look at playoff numbers alone. Rather, I said that blended regular season and playoff data is not the most revealing, and that regular season and playoff performance do need to be isolated. And it’s perfectly acceptable to hold Osgood’s non-playoff years against him in such a study, since we’re looking at what the average goaltender performs over that period.

For example, in the 2008-09 playoffs through Game 6 of the Final, the AVERAGE goaltender has played 422 minutes (roughly 7 games), faced 213 shots (30.3 per game), allowed 18 goals (2.57 goals against average) and made 195 saves (earning a 0.915 save percentage).

Thus far, Osgood has faced 27.6 shots per game (a below average challenge), has a 2.00 goals against average (an above average performance) and a 0.927 save percentage (an above average performance).

For comparison, Fleury has faced 28.6 shots per game (also a below average challenge), has a 2.68 goals against average (a slightly below average performance) and a 0.906 save percentage (again, a below average performance).

Now, JUST AS AN ASSUMPTION to frame the methodology because we can run the detailed data later, let’s say that the AVERAGE playoff goaltender will always be in the ballpark of 420 minutes / 7 games per year as the total number of playoff games played has been generally consistent throughout Osgood’s career. So in the 15 years that Osgood has been in the NHL, the AVERAGE playoff goaltender should have played 6300 minutes 105 games (15 seasons times 420 minutes and 7 games per season). Using a similar method we can calculate what the expected goals against average and save percentage, but let’s just stick with games because it’s a fast comparable to give you an idea of how to work this.

So, since 1993-94 our AVERAGE goaltender should have played 6300 minutes / 105 playoff games based on the ballpark assumptions. Osgood has played 7491 minutes which works out to 124.85 games. He’s roughly three seasons above the average, with three (perhaps four) Stanley Cups in that span.

To illustrate what should likely be the top performance in the period, Martin Brodeur over the same timespan has played 10917 minutes which works out to 181.95 playoff games, or roughly 11 seasons above the average with three Stanley Cups in that span.

Let’s look at a couple of other top goaltenders.

Henrik Lundqvist has been in the league four seasons. Using our ballpark average, we expect our AVERAGE goaltender to have played 1680 minutes / 28 playoff games. Lundqvist has delivered 1802 minutes and 30.03 games, essentially the average result with no Stanley Cups and not even a trip to the Final.

Marc-Andre Fleury has been in the league five seasons. Using our ball-park average, we expect our AVERAGE goaltender to have played 2100 minutes / 35 games. Fleury has delivered 2925 minutes and 48.75 games, two playoff seasons ahead of pace with two trips to the Final and perhaps a Stanley Cup.

Roberto Luongo has been around nine seasons. Using our ballpark average, we expect our AVERAGE goaltender to have played 3780 minutes / 63 playoff games. Luongo has given us 1465 minutes and 24.42 games, well below the averages we should expect, with no Stanley Cup and no trips to the Final.

Curtis Joseph has played 15 seasons from 1993-94, so like Osgood he has to top the 6300 minutes / 105 playoff game mark set by our AVERAGE goaltender. CuJo has delivered 6685 minutes for 111 games, about a season above the average (good) but no Stanley Cups and no trips to the Final (bad).

To do this properly and refine the result, we should run the averages for every regular season and every playoff season since 1993-94 (i.e. Osgood’s career span) for the different metrics, than compare the goaltenders against the average. I anticipate the findings will confirm that there will be a top tier of great netminders (Roy, Brodeur, Hasek) that will score in the highest percentile, followed by cohorts of near-great, above average, average and below average. It will be interesting to see where Osgood places in such a standing.

Posted by Matthew McCallum from Redding, California on 06/12/09 at 02:59 PM ET

HockeyinHD,

I don’t think TPSH is a lost cause or the source of giggles. He’s trying, really trying, to apply a Bill James / Sabrmetrics kind of logic to hockey. I admire and support the effort, within reason and with a couple of caveats.

Hockey isn’t baseball. Any effort to utilize statistics alone in a hockey context gives us a somewhat limited picture, particularly because we don’t have a full array of statistical data that captures all elements of the game. Where baseball is orderly, structured and “fair” (i.e. each team gets 27 outs), hockey is much more fluid, chaotic and “unfair” in comparison. When doing hockey analysis we need to maintain a broader focus as there are more intangibles at play in our sport. That said, I do think there are some tools that James has developed studying baseball that if adapted to a hockey framework do have some value.

I find it very interesting that both TPSH and I independently saw value in adopting the Bill James Keltner List for assessing potential Hockey Hall of Famers, but where I see it as a subjective tool to help organize one’s thoughts counter-balanced by other objective measures, TPSH is tyring to use it as a proper test that if you don’t get a passing grade you’re not qualified for the HHOF. That type of restrictive interpretation was never James’ intention, a point he states in his book Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?.

TPSH does not consider Chris Osgood to be a HHOFer and a couple of weeks ago attempted to use the Keltner List to prove his point. Yet, at the same time, TPSH considers Dave Andreychuk and Mark Recchi to be certain HHOFers. Why doesn’t TPSH run those two fellows through the Keltner List and we’ll see if they score any better than Osgood. Assuming they don’t—which I think is a safe assumption—TPSH is left with a choice: reconsider Osgood’s qualifications, or reconsider those of Andreychuk and/or Recchi.

Forgive the shameless self-promotion, but for those interested, I’ve already got my own piece on Chris Osgood penned for my Hockey Hall of Fame Hot Stove blog that I’ve been waiting for the end of the Stanley Cup to post so it doesn’t immediately become staledated. It’ll be up tomorrow (Saturday), and I think it’s safe to say that I have a slightly different interpretation of Mr. Osgood based on the objective data I’ve developed and subjective analysis I’ve applied.

I would look forward to TPSH’s comments (among others) if anyone considers visiting.

Posted by Matthew McCallum from Redding, California on 06/12/09 at 04:40 PM ET