Still, Brodeur posted the second highest save pct. of his storied career that year
Thkis was a pattern with Julien. Can you post some stuff from your MLD bio?
As for Alex Auld, he was sitting below a .900 all season long until March (at the time, Thomas had a .925), so Julien wasn't really working any miracles with him until a late-season hot streak against middling teams like Toronto, Buffalo, Washington, Ottawa, and Florida skewed his statistics into something more resembling a quality goaltender.
that is cherrypicking. You're saying that smaller sample sizes are more important than larger ones now.
And where was the Julien effect on Manny Fernandez? Fernandez put up excellent statistics in Dallas and Minnesota (once placing higher through 24 games than official league leader Ed Belfour on the same team) but couldn't get closer than .023 from Tim Thomas in 2009. Rask, himself, was .020 away in 2011, and he's one hell of a goaltender.
Hey, I never said Thomas was a bad goalie. Or that Fernandez at age 34 was a good one, either. I'm not trying to argue that any schmuck would have posetd the same numbers, only that Julien played a significant part.
Naming Khudobin is weak. First of all, stop the presses because he was a .955 goaltender before Julien ever got his hands on him, and the sample size hasn't gotten much bigger (6 games to 15).
Let's try to stick to serious arguments, ok?
A .920 backup in a league average .912 is supposed to invalidate two Vezinas and a Conn Smythe because of coaching? Biron and Bernier have done the same thing in New York and Los Angeles, so take Lundqvist's and Quick's trophies too.
First, no one's trying to "invalidate" anything, just put it in proper context. Second, the fact that even a mediocre backup was .920 in Boston this season helps my case... not yours. (it would be nice if we had a better sample for him, but we don't) Third, we do have better sample sizes for New York and Los Angeles (not cherrypicked single seasons that apparently allow us to claim they're "doing the same thing"), and the long term results show the starters are clearly outperforming the backups. Significantly, in Lundqvist's case.
I mean, Tim Thomas' peak wasn't that long ago, so I'm not going to be sold on this being all about Claude Julien. I didn't buy it in 2010, and I'm not buying it now; Tim Thomas was an excellent goaltender. I've seen the quality and quantity of shots he faced with my own eyes - particularly ones in pressure situations. If someone wants to argue it was mostly coaching (just because Tuukka Rask is also a very good goaltender), it's an argument best saved for twenty years later with someone who didn't see him.
It is not "all" coaching, and it doesn't even have to be "mostly" coaching. But coaching has something to do with this. This phenomenon has followed Julien around for a while now.
And again I'd like to point out the inconsistency of using backup numbers for Thomas under Julien while not considering backup numbers for Thomas pre-Julien.**In '05-06 and '06-07 Thomas at .909 while his Boston teammates combined for .891.**.909 vs .891 is almost exactly the same thing as .926 vs .909, which is Thomas vs. non-Rask teammates under Julien.**Do backup numbers and shot quality matter, or do they not?
Where did you get the idea that I was not including 2006 and 2007? In the other thread where I posted the cumulative numbers, those were complete post-lockout totals. Thomas' overall outperforming of the other backups has been consistent and fairly significant, but it has not been otherworldly. Other goalies have managed to do the same or better. Of course, the caveat to that is that maybe Rask and Thomas are both truly elite, devaluing the :"vs. backups" stat for them, but that's only a maybe. If that's true, then your stat that indicates both are*11 sv% points ahead of run-of-the-mill backups. I wouldn't dispute that. But remember, 11 points isn't
that special either.
If it is entirely a case of Julien making his goalies look good, then he's the most valuable individual in all of hockey.**Boston's save percentage under Julien is .924 compared to .911 league average, making them 180 goals better than average over 458 GP.**That means that Boston outperforms expected save percentage by 32.2 goals per 82 games, and going by the quick rule of thumb that 3 GD costs about $1 million means that Julien is worth $10.7 million more per year than an average coach.**That's well above the highest cap hit of any player in the league, and that's compared to average, not replacement, which means he would actually be even more valuable than that.
Even assume Julien's impact is only responsible for half of the team's outperformance, and he's still being underpaid by a factor of at least 4 or 5, which still makes him one of the most valuable hockey people in the world.**And if we go further to suggest that it's only one-third or one-quarter from coaching effects, to make his salary vs. performance seem much more reasonable, then we're in essence agreeing that Thomas and Rask are both excellent goalies with true talent levels of .010+ above league average, which means they're good enough to be talked about in a top 40 context anyway.
There's one thing you're missing, and that is that Julien's style tends to create or allow more shots against. So the number you're quoting, 180 goals better than average, is based on the assumption that they'd "normally" allow that many more shots. I don't think it would be in that ballpark. they've averaged 19th best in shots allowed during his time in Boston, which is conunterintuitive to take at face value considering the personnel and Julien's reputation. His actual value can be represented in the fewer number of
goals the team allows, independent of shot totals. And could he be worth roughly half of that? Considering his history, yeah, I think that's definitely in the realm of possibility.
I can get behind some Boston shot quality effect, but not enough to say that Rask and Thomas aren't very good goalies.**Seems to me there's either a huge market failure here involving probably the greatest coach ever, or else just maybe Boston managed to get their hands on two top goaltenders at the same time and boosted their stats slightly with strong defensive play.
No, they're both very good. But let's be careful not to throw hyperbole around as well. This isn't unprecedented. The same thing has been happening in Phoenix. They picked Bryzgalov off the scrap heap, he suddenly placed top-5 in Hart voting, earned a massive contract, Smith comes in off the same scrap heap and leads the league in GVT; meanwhile, Bryzgalov is earning the reputation as perhaps the worst starting goalie in the NHL. Hitchcock has been having a demonstrable effect on his goalies' numbers as well.
