Confirmed with Link: Eric Staal signs contract with Canes

[Joe McGrath]

Ward was a top-10 goalie for most of his career.

No he wasn’t. He was a top 10 goalie for 5 years.

 

[tarheelhockey]

No he wasn’t. He was a top 10 goalie for 5 years.

Half his career is 7 years.

We can quibble over what 2 years I think he was a top 10 goalie and you don’t, or we can move along.

 

[Joe McGrath]

On any given year, we had one or two defensemen that could maybe play in the 3/4 slot of a contending team, then a bunch of 6-7-8 defensemen to fill out the rest. Looking back at these rosters now, it’s unbelievable how bad some of them were.

Another fun fact: The 11-12 season was the same year that Eric Staal seemingly intentionally tried to get Maurice fired. The Canes started the year 8-13-4, which cost Maurice his job. In those 25 games, Eric had 11 points and was pointless in 18 of those games.

After Muller was hired, Staal put up 59 points in the remaining 57 games. He would be held pointless in only 22 of those 57 games.

The ‘11-12 season was also the Tomas Kaberle year. They stopped sucking in total without ggat absolute boat anchor of a human, playing with Staal on the powerplay and at even strength. After watching him in training camp JR should have fired Mo straight into the sun for saddling Faulk with him as a rookie. Right after firing himself into the sun for hiring him in the first place.

 

[NotOpie]

I was referring to Ward….

Where's that Homer Simpson "Doh" meme when you need it.

 

[Joe McGrath]

Half his career is 7 years.

We can quibble over what 2 years I think he was a top 10 goalie and you don’t, or we can move along.

I’d really like to quibble

 

[Nikishin Go Boom]

Ward was a top-10 goalie for most of his career.

No he wasn’t. He had 2 good seasons and a playoff run

Nothing supports him even being average. -51 GSAA.

Career GSAx is very negative too

Cam Ward is the John Gibson of the 2010s. Fans swear he is good because the team sucks but in reality they just good for real short amount of time and below average the rest.

 

[Blueline Bomber]

No he wasn’t. He had 2 good seasons and a playoff run

Nothing supports him even being average. -51 GSAA.

Career GSAx is very negative too

Which shows why advanced stats aren't the end all, be all. Put any goalie behind the joke of a team Carolina had for much of his career and you'll find similar or worse results.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

Cam Ward finishes among goalies who played at least 30 games in Goals Saved Above Expected per 60:

08-09: 5th
09-10: 1st
10-11: 3rd
11-12: 7th


And then the injuries kicked in.

I already thought Ward was underrated because he was on a declining, cash strapped team that had to overplay him, wasn't expexting 3 top 5 finishes.

 

[Joe McGrath]

No he wasn’t. He had 2 good seasons and a playoff run

Nothing supports him even being average. -51 GSAA.

Career GSAx is very negative too

Cam Ward is the John Gibson of the 2010s. Fans swear he is good because the team sucks but in reality they just good for real short amount of time and below average the rest.

Did you watch these teams at all? I think Tarheel and Blueline are overrating Ward slightly but you are underrating him based on made up bullshit stats. Much like Staal there were games Ward quit on and gave up a goal he shouldn't have with 30 seconds left. Just looking at numbers doesn’t tell the story of what went on in those years.

 

[Nikishin Go Boom]

Which shows why advanced stats aren't the end all, be all. Put any goalie behind the joke of a team Carolina had for much of his career and you'll find similar or worse results.

Thats the wonderful thing about GSAx, its defense agnostic. Did the goalie stop the ones they should? In ward’s case, no. Although he did with some bad defense in 10-11.

 

[Joe McGrath]

Cam Ward finishes among goalies who played at least 30 games in Goals Saved Above Expected per 60:

08-09: 5th
09-10: 1st
10-11: 3rd
11-12: 7th


And then the injuries kicked in.

I already thought Ward was underrated because he was on a declining, cash strapped team that had to overplay him, wasn't expexting 3 top 5 finishes.

Those were the only seasons in his career where he wasn’t a negative in that stat. Which is also a made up nonsense stat to be fair. If we were looking at that as his most impressive quality he was below average 11 out of 15 years of his career. Which in reality, he wasn’t.

 

[DaveG]

The ‘11-12 season was also the Tomas Kaberle year. They stopped sucking in total without ggat absolute boat anchor of a human, playing with Staal on the powerplay and at even strength. After watching him in training camp JR should have fired Mo straight into the sun for saddling Faulk with him as a rookie. Right after firing himself into the sun for hiring him in the first place.

I remember getting into it with a few people early that season with "WTF Faulk" takes, with me saying "Faulk's fine, it's Kabs that is trash right now"

 

[tarheelhockey]

No he wasn’t. He had 2 good seasons and a playoff run

Nothing supports him even being average. -51 GSAA.

Career GSAx is very negative too

Cam Ward is the John Gibson of the 2010s. Fans swear he is good because the team sucks but in reality they just good for real short amount of time and below average the rest.

If you don’t think Ward was even an average goalie outside of 2 seasons, you are flat-out wrong.

I’ll trust the experience of watching him outplay his counterpart night after night only to fold under intense pressure, over some alphabet soup statistic that has no reference point other than the scoreboard.

 

[Unsustainable]

I blame Frederick Andersen for the failures of Cameron Ward, he was the chosen back up to take half the work load off.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I remember getting into it with a few people early that season with "WTF Faulk" takes, with me saying "Faulk's fine, it's Kabs that is trash right now"

Young Faulk was just one of those guys who looks extra goofy when he fails, like a Skinner or Kochetkov.

All very good players, who are easy to roast when things go badly.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

Those were the only seasons in his career where he wasn’t a negative in that stat. Which is also a made up nonsense stat to be fair. If we were looking at that as his most impressive quality he was below average 11 out of 15 years of his career. Which in reality, he wasn’t.

I guess. Does anyone really disagree with describing Ward's career arc as

06 run: got hot at the right time
06-08: not ready for everyday starter role
08-12: enters prime, consistent top 10 goalie
12--- injuries derail his career

 

[To Be Determined]

Thats the wonderful thing about GSAx, its defense agnostic. Did the goalie stop the ones they should? In ward’s case, no. Although he did with some bad defense in 10-11.

what's the stat for stopping the ones he shouldn't have? I always felt like ward (at least pre-injuries) was genuinely amazing - he was good for multiple holy shit saves per game. i mean, outright robbery type saves over and over. of course, he'd always end up giving up a couple that, after seeing all the amazing saves, seemed pretty soft. but given the "defense" played in front of him i never faulted him much for those - he was basically the victim of hockey erosion where eventually the waterfall of shots was going to wear him down. but maybe i'm giving him more benefit of the doubt than i should.

to me he is one of, if not the biggest, what-if guys ever. get him a backup capable of competence in 25-30 games, or even an only slightly below average d instead of literally league-worst.

seriously, i'd take last year's 3rd pair over multiple "first" pairs he had in front of him.

 

[Joe McGrath]

I guess. Does anyone really disagree with describing Ward's career arc as

06 run: got hot at the right time
06-08: not ready for everyday starter role
08-12: enters prime, consistent top 10 goalie
12--- injuries derail his career

Well Tarheel just claimed he was a top 10 goalie for half of his 14 year career. This stat would argue that he was a below average goalie 10 of 14 years.

In reality, its somewhere in between.

 

[Ole Gil]

Maybe so, but he went from making over 8 million a year, when that was a metric f***ton of cap, to having to accept 3 years at 3.5 per. Even in his low thirties that was kind of insulting. He might not have said what he said to be "real" but that being the best he could get, combined with a clear uptick in on-ice effort, makes it look like some part of him believed it.

I remember at the time hearing he wanted to play for Bruce. After a shitty situation in Carolina with Peters tanking the franchise, then not getting used in NY, coming off a 70 million dollar contract,

Again, maybe just more bs talk. But I'm skeptical he couldn't do better than 3x3.5 if he went to arizona or something.

There was a period of two years (I wanna say the 10-11, 11-12 seasons?) where Ward was facing more shots against than any goalie in the league dating back to Luongo back in his days starting out in Florida.

We gave him zero defensive support and zero backups during his entire career here. Honestly, who was the best defensive pairing we put in front of Ward?

For the record, here’s the defense we had in 10-11 (in terms of ice time):

Corvo-Pitkanen
Gleason-McBain
Harrison-some combination of White/Babchuk/Joslin/Allen

Ward played 74 games. Justin Peters was our backup, started 8 games and won 3 of them.

And here it was in 11-12:

Faulk-Pitkanen
Gleason-Harrison
McBain-Allen

Ward played 68 games. Our backups were Justin Peters and Brian Boucher, who started a combined 14 games and won 3 total.

Yup. There were a few seasons, Ward was getting points at well above a playoff pace. He had a 4 year stretch where he was very very good.

 

[Blueline Bomber]

I don’t put a lot of stock into the years after his back injury. The fact that we were still playing him, despite such an injury, is just so f***ing stupid.

I mean, Rutherford was a goalie himself. We had Barasso as well. Hell, even Tripp Tracy was a goalie at one point. Why in the hell did this organization not put their collective knowledge together and realize what a terrible idea that was and the long-term ramifications of such?

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Ward was a top-10 goalie for most of his career.

No he wasn’t. He was a top 10 goalie for 5 years.

Half his career is 7 years.

We can quibble over what 2 years I think he was a top 10 goalie and you don’t, or we can move along.

Tarheel: 5 out of 14 is "most" but "we can quibble".

 

[DaveG]

I guess. Does anyone really disagree with describing Ward's career arc as

06 run: got hot at the right time
06-08: not ready for everyday starter role
08-12: enters prime, consistent top 10 goalie
12--- injuries derail his career

I'd put a caveat in that 12-retirement section that 14-16 he was back to very good for a while, but injuries. Those were also the absolute worst teams in franchise history since the move, yes worse than 02-03.

 

[hblueridgegal]

Nice graphic

 

[Navin R Slavin]

Why yes, it's the middle of summer. Why do you ask?

 

[Lempo]

I’d really like to quibble