GDT: Game 56/82 Blues vs Chicago 6PM CST FDSNMW

[Reality Czech]

By this logic, let's just remove all of the bad games from every goalie on the list.

Better yet, why keep statistics at all?

I'm not so sure why you're resistant to consider advanced metrics, especially when they tell the same tale as the eye test. Our goalies have been bad this season, worse than our defense.

Nevertheless, less chalk this up to small sample size and kick it back to the last 25 games:

Okay, let's play the small sample size game and take it back 25 games.

GSAx/GP: 2.55 (1st)
HDCA: 226 (1st)
Goals Against: 75 (18th)

Our goalies have been underperforming all season long and they are a very large reason why this team isn't closer to a wild card spot right now.

Keeping statistics is fine, but everyone knows they can be misleading. I've heard Gretzky and others mention in interviews that judging goalies solely by their numbers is misguided. Does it really matter if a goalie lets in a bad goal to make it 5-0 instead of 4-0? It's possible a goalie can have an .800 sv% and still play a decent game depending on the quality of shots against him. If he makes key saves late in the game and the team wins, who really cares how many goals he let in? Let's say a goalie plays 5 games and lets in 2 goals in 4 of them and 7 goals in the 5th game. Is he a good goalie because he played well in 4 out of 5 games, or a below average goalie because his GAA is 3.00? I could go on and on. I'm more interested in how a goalie plays in close games and important situations and whether he lets in 5 or 6 goals in a blowout loss doesn't really matter that much.

The goaltending could have been better this year sure, but it's not near the top of my list of biggest concerns with the team. If we were playing close games and goalies were letting in soft goals which actually cost us games on a regular basis, then it's a problem. But we are being outplayed too often, not getting enough from our best players, and we have the 3rd worst PK in the league. Letting in that many PP goals will definitely not help a goalies statistics as goalies often get hung out to dry when it's 4-on-5.

Since you love stats, I crunched a few numbers of my own. Binner's save% is .896, which doesn't look great. However, all goalie stats are down and the league average this year is .902 according to hockey reference. He's allowed 108 goals. If he had let in just 5 goals fewer, he's nearly up to league average sv% (.901), 10 goals fewer (.906) which puts him tied with Shesterkin and others at 19th best league wide. Sure, many of those goals against are the goalie's "fault" but I bet if the Blues had played better defense and PK all season long he would have 10 fewer goals against if not a lot more. I'm only pointing this out to show there's a pretty slim margin between having what is seen as a "bad season" and an average or even above average season.

Hofer has had a few rough games that really tanked his numbers as well, including the 8-1 loss against Ottawa where the whole team sucked and the 5-0 drubbing against Colorado. But he's also got a save % above 90% in 5 of his last 7 losses and the only one I can really be angry about is the 6-4 loss in Columbus awhile back. His other losses were either close games against quality opponents or games in which the team got totally outplayed.

So judging from your statistics the Blues are one of the best defensive teams in the NHL. Do you really believe that? If your numbers are showing that then I question how accurately those numbers reflect reality. I believe that if the team had played up to its potential all season long that the goaltending would be good enough, but unfortunately I don't have any fancy numbers to prove that.

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

Keeping statistics is fine, but everyone knows they can be misleading. I've heard Gretzky and others mention in interviews that judging goalies solely by their numbers is misguided. Does it really matter if a goalie lets in a bad goal to make it 5-0 instead of 4-0? It's possible a goalie can have an .800 sv% and still play a decent game depending on the quality of shots against him. If he makes key saves late in the game and the team wins, who really cares how many goals he let in? Let's say a goalie plays 5 games and lets in 2 goals in 4 of them and 7 goals in the 5th game. Is he a good goalie because he played well in 4 out of 5 games, or a below average goalie because his GAA is 3.00? I could go on and on. I'm more interested in how a goalie plays in close games and important situations and whether he lets in 5 or 6 goals in a blowout loss doesn't really matter that much.

The goaltending could have been better this year sure, but it's not near the top of my list of biggest concerns with the team. If we were playing close games and goalies were letting in soft goals which actually cost us games on a regular basis, then it's a problem. But we are being outplayed too often, not getting enough from our best players, and we have the 3rd worst PK in the league. Letting in that many PP goals will definitely not help a goalies statistics as goalies often get hung out to dry when it's 4-on-5.

Since you love stats, I crunched a few numbers of my own. Binner's save% is .896, which doesn't look great. However, all goalie stats are down and the league average this year is .902 according to hockey reference. He's allowed 108 goals. If he had let in just 5 goals fewer, he's nearly up to league average sv% (.901), 10 goals fewer (.906) which puts him tied with Shesterkin and others at 19th best league wide. Sure, many of those goals against are the goalie's "fault" but I bet if the Blues had played better defense and PK all season long he would have 10 fewer goals against if not a lot more. I'm only pointing this out to show there's a pretty slim margin between having what is seen as a "bad season" and an average or even above average season.

Hofer has had a few rough games that really tanked his numbers as well, including the 8-1 loss against Ottawa where the whole team sucked and the 5-0 drubbing against Colorado. But he's also got a save % above 90% in 5 of his last 7 losses and the only one I can really be angry about is the 6-4 loss in Columbus awhile back. His other losses were either close games against quality opponents or games in which the team got totally outplayed.

So judging from your statistics the Blues are one of the best defensive teams in the NHL. Do you really believe that? If your numbers are showing that then I question how accurately those numbers reflect reality. I believe that if the team had played up to its potential all season long that the goaltending would be good enough, but unfortunately I don't have any fancy numbers to prove that.

You are the one who brought up high danger scoring opportunities saying it's hard to blame the goalies when it's happening so frequently, but when I bring up an actual statistic, a literal count of the number of high danger chances, all of the sudden it's irrelevant and one of those confounded new advanced metrics.

The Blues are unequivocally the best team in the NHL at limiting high danger chances in the last 25 games and, yes, I believe that since it's a literal count of scoring chances within a specific box on the ice.

Instead you bring up a highly flawed save percentage statistic. So you're good with stats, just as long as you can contort them to support what you're trying to say. The problem is, save percentage is highly flawed because it does a poor job providing context for the shots. Not only that but you'd like to introduce 'what-if' scenarios instead of giving any value to a statistic that clearly outlines what actually happened. Here's another counting stat, we're the 12th best team in the NHL at limiting shots, yet 18th in the last 25 in goals against. If your goalies are performing as they should, you would hope those rankings would be closer together.

You're right about one thing though, our goalies look better if we ignore the games where they played very poorly as would any other goalie in the league. If every other goalie made 5 to 10 more saves they'd be better, but they didn't. Our goalies would, indeed, look better if they made more saves than they actually did. That's pretty much the point.

I would hope that if we need to play 'what if' and invent a scenario that would make Binnington appear average that we could take off the fan goggles and admit that he's not having a very good season.

I don't deal in IFs. I look at what has actually happened. And what has happened is they've let their team down a lot this season. If I completely ignore the stats (which I had no idea how badly they made our goalies look until I looked up these numbers today), I've thought many a night that our goalies have sucked this season. This isn't how I felt two seasons ago when the defense actually was garbage. Now it's no longer an excuse because our defense has actually been solid. Our offense on the other handm that's a different story.

Our goalies aren't the only problem on this team. I believe fixing our offense should be our number one concern, but if Binnington and Hofer continue this play next season and the following, this team is going to have a difficult time trying to contend better than they are this season. They need to be better.

 

[Xerloris]

You are the one who brought up high danger scoring opportunities saying it's hard to blame the goalies when it's happening so frequently, but when I bring up an actual statistic, a literal count of the number of high danger chances, all of the sudden it's irrelevant and one of those confounded new advanced metrics.

The Blues are unequivocally the best team in the NHL at limiting high danger chances in the last 25 games and, yes, I believe that since it's a literal count of scoring chances within a specific box on the ice.

Instead you bring up a highly flawed save percentage statistic. So you're good with stats, just as long as you can contort them to support what you're trying to say. The problem is, save percentage is highly flawed because it does a poor job providing context for the shots. Not only that but you'd like to introduce 'what-if' scenarios instead of giving any value to a statistic that clearly outlines what actually happened. Here's another counting stat, we're the 12th best team in the NHL at limiting shots, yet 18th in the last 25 in goals against. If your goalies are performing as they should, you would hope those rankings would be closer together.

You're right about one thing though, our goalies look better if we ignore the games where they played very poorly as would any other goalie in the league. If every other goalie made 5 to 10 more saves they'd be better, but they didn't. Our goalies would, indeed, look better if they made more saves than they actually did. That's pretty much the point.

I would hope that if we need to play 'what if' and invent a scenario that would make Binnington appear average that we could take off the fan goggles and admit that he's not having a very good season.

I don't deal in IFs. I look at what has actually happened. And what has happened is they've let their team down a lot this season. If I completely ignore the stats (which I had no idea how badly they made our goalies look until I looked up these numbers today), I've thought many a night that our goalies have sucked this season. This isn't how I felt two seasons ago when the defense actually was garbage. Now it's no longer an excuse because our defense has actually been solid. Our offense on the other handm that's a different story.

Our goalies aren't the only problem on this team. I believe fixing our offense should be our number one concern, but if Binnington and Hofer continue this play next season and the following, this team is going to have a difficult time trying to contend better than they are this season. They need to be better.

Do you also consider how often the team has let our goalies down? It's way more than our goalies letting the team down.

 

[Snubbed4Vezina]

Do you also consider how often the team has let our goalies down? It's way more than our goalies letting the team down.

Yes, and I said as much in the post you quoted.