John Gibson is a bad goalie, and I'm tired of people suggesting otherwise

[Empoleon8771]

This is going to be an absurdly long post and unnecessary post, but I just happen to have the right kind of autism to go through with it. The TL;DR is this:

"No matter what kind of statistical analysis you show, it shows that Gibson is a bad goalie that has been riding the reputation of pre-2019 performances for the last 5 years. Whether you look at base stats, advanced stats, team performances, performances relative to his backup and performances relative to opponent, the results consistently show he's a bad goalie. Anaheim's backup goalies do greatly benefit from playing bad teams, but Gibson's performance against good teams is only marginally better than his backups."

For a bit of background, I figure most people here know that John Gibson was once upon a time one of the best young goalies in hockey. Up through 2018-2019, Gibson had a career .921 save, received Vezina votes in multiple years and was about to start an 8 year, $52 million deal as a 26 year old. He was basically everything you wanted in a franchise goalie, he was a workhorse with great fundamentals that was signed to what seemed like a great deal going forward (6th highest paid goalie at the time that made $600k less a year than Fleury for comparison). However, once his contract kicked in, his numbers absolutely collapsed. He dropped from a .917 save% in 2018-2019 to a .904 save% in 2019-2020, which was a swing of -21.4 GSAA (goals saved above average). It was a massive drop-off out of nowhere, and in the years that have followed, he hasn't gotten back to his pre-2019 form. His best performance relative to league average was a .903 save% in 2020-2021, with his worst being an .888 save% in 2023-2024 this year. In every year over that window, he has put up a below league average save%.

Why do I feel the need to make a thread saying a goalie who has been below average for 5 years to say he's terrible? Because there is a notable portion of Gibson fans that just insist that he's not terrible, and I'm dumb/stubborn enough to address this argument. The points I'm going to address are:

1. How Gibson's basic stats (things like save% and GSAA) compare to other goalies and to his backups
2. How Gibson's advanced stats (things like high danger save% and GSAx) compare to other goalies and to his backups
3. Gibson's basic and advanced stats based on opponents (separating between good, mid and bad) compared to his backups

Basic Stats

The easiest stat to look at when it comes to goalies is save%. Over the last 5 years, here is where Gibson ranks among goalies who played in 25 or more games in each of the past 5 years:

• 2019-2020: .904 save% in 51 games (41st of 52 goalies)
• 2020-2021: .903 save% in 35 games (24th of 32 goalies)
• 2021-2022: .904 save% in 56 games (36th of 53 goalies)
• 2022-2023: .899 save% in 53 games (36th of 52 goalies)
• 2023-2024: .888 save% in 46 games (53rd of 54 goalies)

Gibson consistently ranked roughly in the bottom-third up until this year, until he absolutely collapsed and had the 2nd lowest save% of all goalies in the NHL. But with that being said, Anaheim hasn't been an exactly good team defensively over that window, so it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison for him versus other goalies. To remedy this, here is how Gibson's stats compare to his backups stats in each of those years:

• 2019-2020: .908 save% in 24 games between Miller (23 games) and Stolarz (1 game)
• 2020-2021: .897 save% in 24 games between Miller (16 games) and Stolarz (8 games)
• 2021-2022: .916 save% in 32 games between Stolarz (28 games) and Dostal (4 games)
• 2022-2023: .899 save% in 38 games between Dostal (19 games) and Stolarz (19 games)
• 2023-2024: .902 save% in 44 games by Dostal (44 games)

In those 5 years, you had 1 year where Gibson was better (2020-2021), one year where they were the same (2022-2023), one year where the backup was somewhat better than Gibson (2019-2020) and two years where the backup was significantly better than Gibson (2021-2022 and 2023-2024)

Advanced Stats

To address the differences that team defenses has, MoneyPuck provides a GSAx stat on their website that I'll also compare Gibson to the rest of the NHL with the same 25 game criteria:

• 2019-2020: -18.0 GSAx in 52 games (49th of 52 goalies)
• 2020-2021: -7.4 GSAx in 35 games (20th of 32 goalies)
• 2021-2022: -14.3 GSAx in 56 games (48th of 53 goalies)
• 2022-2023: -11.5 GSAx in 53 games (46th of 52 goalies)
• 2023-2024: -9.6 GSAx in 46 games (50th of 54 goalies)

Here is how Gibson compared to his backups in those years:

• 2019-2020: -5.2 GSAx in 24 games between Miller (23 games) and Stolarz (1 game)
• 2020-2021: -12.6 GSAx in 24 games between Miller (16 games) and Stolarz (8 games)
• 2021-2022: -2.4 GSAx in 32 games between Stolarz (28 games) and Dostal (4 games)
• 2022-2023: +0.1 GSAx in 38 games between Dostal (19 games) and Stolarz (19 games)
• 2023-2024: -5.3 GSAx in 44 games by Dostal (44 games)

I know GSAx is supposed to be neutral for teams, but what these stats tell me is that GSAx is not completely picking up how bad Anaheim has been defensively over these years. With that being said, it doesn't account for the fact that Gibson is once again being outperformed by his backups. Based on GSAx, Gibson was again better in one year (2021-2022) but his backups were better in every other year, to a substantial level in 3 of the 4 years (2019-2020, 2021-2022 and 2022-2023).

Stats Compared to Backup Based on Opponent

This one is going to be a lot harder to gauge, but I still think it can be done. I was initially planning on doing this for the last 5 years, but this takes annoyingly long enough that I'm going to only do it for 3 years instead. What I'm going to do is split up teams into 3 levels:

1. Good teams (top 10)
2. Mid teams (11-21)
3. Bad teams (22 through 32)

And compare how Gibson does versus his backup. We'll start with 2023-2024 with Gibson compared to Dostal. For Gibson:

-Good teams (NYR, Dallas, Carolina, Winnipeg, Florida, Vancouver, Boston, Colorado, Edmonton and Toronto): .868 save% (429 saves on 494 shots)
-Mid teams (Nashville, LA, Tampa, Vegas, NYI, St. Louis, Washington, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Minnesota and Philly): .914 save% (371 saves on 406 shots)
-Bad teams (Buffalo, New Jersey, Calgary, Seattle, Ottawa, Arizona, Montreal, Columbus, Chicago and San Jose): .880 save% (331 saves on 376 shots)

For Dostal last year:

-Good teams: .873 save% (275 saves on 315 shots)
-Mid teams: .898 save% (486 saves on 541 shots)
-Bad teams: .925 save% (420 saves on 454 shots)

In 2022-2023, you had a roughly even split between Dostal and Stolarz as the backup. But for Gibson, here is how stats looked:

-Good teams (Boston, Carolina, New Jersey, Toronto, Vegas, Edmonton, Colorado, Dallas, NYR, and LA): .904 save% (693 saves on 767 shots)
-Mid teams (Minnesota, Seattle, Tampa, Winnipeg, NYI, Calgary, Florida, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Ottawa): .892 save% (670 saves on 751 shots)
-Bad teams (Vancouver, St. Louis, Detroit, Washington, Philly, Arizona, Montreal, San Jose, Chicago and Columbus): .903 save% (420 saves on 465 shots)

Here is how Stolarz plus Dostal compares:

-Good teams: .903 save% (232 saves on 257 shots)
-Mid teams: .891 save% (369 saves on 414 shots)
-Bad teams: .906 save% (413 saves on 456 shots)

In 2021-2022, you just have to compare Gibson and Stolarz. For Gibson:

-Top teams (Florida, Colorado, Carolina, Toronto, Minnesota, Calgary, NYR, Tampa, St. Louis and Boston): .913 save% (621 saves on 680 shots)
-Mid teams (Edmonton, Pittsburgh, Washington, LA, Dallas, Nashville, Vegas, Vancouver, Winnipeg, NYI and Columbus): .899 save% (757 saves on 842 shots)
-Bad teams (San Jose, Buffalo, Detroit, Ottawa, Chicago, New Jersey, Philly, Seattle, Arizona and Montreal): .895 save% (239 saves on 267 shots)

For Stolarz:

-Top teams: .903 save% (195 saves on 216 shots)
-Mid teams: .892 save% (182 saves on 204 shots)
-Bad teams:.938 save% (365 saves on 389 shots)

Now for the final comparison, here is how Gibson compares to his backups over that sample size:

-Top teams: .898 save% (1743 saves on 1941 shots)
-Mid teams: .899 save% (1798 saves on 1999 shots)
-Bad teams: .894 save% (990 saves on 1108 shots)

For his backups:

-Top teams: .891 save% (702 saves on 788 shots)
-Mid teams: .895 save% (1037 saves on 1159 shots)
-Bad teams: .922 save% (1198 saves on 1299 shots)

The conclusion from this data comparison for opponents is this:

1. Anaheim's backup goalie performances are grossly overrated due to dominating bad teams, especially Stolarz's 2021-2022 season
2. With that being said, Gibson only performs marginally better against top teams and mid teams compared to his backups
3. Anaheim absolutely runs Gibson into the ground against good teams, although his performance tends to be independent of the opponents he's playing.

So what's the conclusion here? Personally, I think it just shows Gibson is a workhorse that consistently gives bad results no matter who he plays against. It's downright inarguable that Anaheim has thrown Gibson to the wolves and puts him against insanely tough competition, but he hasn't done well against pretty much any opposing teams. His backups do greatly benefit from him eating those tougher matchups, which I personally think has value, but Gibson's general results against all teams is pretty poor overall. Is he the worst starter in hockey? Probably not, but from all of the numbers here, I'm pretty certain he's a bad starter.

Click to read more...

 

[Barry Amsterdam]

can you tldr the tldr for me

 

[Our Lady Peace]

Before I read this in full, you should know that is an all time opening sentence. Grab autism by the HORNS baby let the world know who can rock the 'tism

 

[Empoleon8771]

This is a super long post, but one conclusion I had from this that I thought was worth sharing: Anaheim's backup goalies insanely benefitted from playing against bad competition. Both Stolarz in 2021-2022 (.938 save%) and Dostal in 2023-2024 (.925 save%) had dramatically better numbers against bad teams than they did against good to mid teams. I think that needs to be taken into account when people look at GSAx stats, especially if they're comparing a starter to a backup. At least with Anaheim, the backups did objectively face substantially easier competition and fared substantially better against those bad teams.

However, the thing that makes Gibson bad is that he only marginally outperformed the good and mid teams compared to his backup. Which a starter should obviously be doing way better than.

can you tldr the tldr for me

"Gibson is bad overall and barely outperforms his backup goalies"

 

[Turin]

IMO John Gibson is an unmotivated goalie, and just like Drew Doughty didn’t just stop being a good defenseman in his physical prime as soon as LA sucked, Gibson didn’t stop being a talented goalie as soon as Anaheim started tanking. These guys are human and putting your heart into 82 games you know don’t mean much since you’ve already got your contract and your team sucks just isn’t gonna happen.

 

[tomd]

Seems like your agenda is to discredit Gibson so that Detroit will want Jarry instead. It’s almost like you believe Yzerman reads these boards and will be magically convinced that you are right...

 

[Empoleon8771]

Seems like your agenda is to discredit Gibson so that Detroit will want Jarry instead. It’s almost like you believe Yzerman reads these boards and will be magically convinced that you are right...

No I just think John Gibson is a bad goalie.

There is definitely a bias factor here, since every Pittsburgh fan fetishizes players from Pittsburgh and Gibson is from Pittsburgh. Having to hear every yinzer scream out "wouldn't it be great to trade for Gibson, sign Trocheck and bring Ryan Malone out of retirement" does give me migraines. But the numbers posted in the OP are just to show that Gibson isn't good, not as some way to convince Detroit to trade for a mediocre goalie over trading for a bad goalie.

 

[Boo Boo]

lil bros special interest is not watching the ducks

 

[Empoleon8771]

lil bros special interest is not watching the ducks

And that is basically the only argument the pro-Gibson crowd makes. It's literally just "he's good because I say he's good".

Literally everything from basic stats, advanced stats, Ducks record with or without Gibson and performance relative to backups say that Gibson has been bad for a long time. But the pro-Gibson crowd just comes in and says "you don't watch the Ducks" as if that's a rebuttal to the overwhelming stats that show how not good Gibson has been for years.

 

[tomd]

No I just think John Gibson is a bad goalie.

There is definitely a bias factor here, since every Pittsburgh fan fetishizes players from Pittsburgh and Gibson is from Pittsburgh. Having to hear every yinzer scream out "wouldn't it be great to trade for Gibson, sign Trocheck and bring Ryan Malone out of retirement" does give me migraines. But the numbers posted in the OP are just to show that Gibson isn't good, not as some way to convince Detroit to trade for a mediocre goalie over trading for a bad goalie.

It’s just a bit much even for HF...let it go.

 

[yukoner88]

Before I read this in full, you should know that is an all time opening sentence. Grab autism by the HORNS baby let the world know who can rock the 'tism

I love rocking tisms!!! They go bounce bounce bounce bounce!

 

[Mr Kot]

OP is literally becoming the Joker

 

[Stephen]

Gibson isn't so much a terrible or mediocre goalie but an elite athlete who has been in a demotivating rebuild situation. Saw plenty of games where he was often a one man show early in a game and then the flood gates open up in front of him and he just starts packing it in, bad body language, eyes to the sky, complete frustration and disengagement. How he would respond in a new environment after all this time is unknown. But I think your deep dive misses the point.

 

[The Gr8 Dane]

Cool data , what are your thoughts on the eye test on him ? I feel like you're not a big eye test guy tho

lil bros special interest is not watching the ducks

thats what it comes off as honestly

 

[SoundAndFury]

Gibson isn't so much a terrible or mediocre goalie but an elite athlete who has been in a demotivating rebuild situation. Saw plenty of games where he was often a one man show early in a game and then the flood gates open up in front of him and he just starts packing it in, bad body language, eyes to the sky, complete frustration and disengagement. How he would respond in a new environment after all this time is unknown. But I think your deep dive misses the point.

I would get it in the first years of rebuild but by now he should have gotten used to it and found a way to motivate himself or force himself out. With performance that bad for so long there is really no hard evidence he's any good in year 2024.

He could have played for the US in the WC if he is that frustrated (for years) and wants to play behind a winning team. But all signs point he's actually completely fine with mailing it in.

 

[Our Lady Peace]

[takes breath] Alright tldr done - OP you really tired of John Gibson's sheit huh. I don't blame ya

You can see he's one of the most talented goalies in the NHL when he's on. On the other hand, I see that it seems like he's rather mentally not there in Anaheim watching his body language. His performance as has been so sustainably poor during a lengthy period of time in the NHL now it's plagued his personal results

Mind you, Anaheim has also been toiling at the bottom of the league and Gibson spent his prime NHL years there

To me I also see that this and last season Dostal, part of the Ducks new wave of talent, has greatly improved his relative GSAx to Gibson as he's stepped into the NHL. That's kinda impressive for a young goaltender to be doing, but Gibson also hasn't been doing himself any favours either

Sus if traded for a big package. Returns could be good but he's really gotta start proving himself despite the team he's on. Anaheim is getting better quick with all of that talent. They just need a minute longer unfortunately

Will a change of scenery kick him into gear or is he doomed by injury and inconsistency

 

[5Hollywood5]

wow this is long as f***

 

[Gurglesons]

John Gibson is one of the best goalie prospects of all time and he rightfully earned his contract.

He's been put into a terrible situation for literally 5+ years.

Judging him off of goal saved above expected numbers is just a bad analysis.

The amount of time he's been on a bad time will potentially effect him in a trade.

 

[SomeDude]

Now do Jarry.

 

[PAZ]

Some team is going to take a chance on him hoping he comes back to form. He still shows glimpses of his talent, but whether it's due to being unmotivated or if he's simply inconsistent is the risk the new team will need to find out.

However, years of bad habit and giving up is hard to break, I don't expect him to have a smooth transition unless he goes to a contender like Carolina that has a solid system.

 

[GirardSpinorama]

I would argue the ducks backups arent bad goalies. Their team makes all of their goalies look bad. Just look at stolarz's numbers this year.

 

[Empoleon8771]

I would argue the ducks backups arent bad goalies. Their team makes all of their goalies look bad. Just look at stolarz's numbers this year.

I think this is a very valid argument to make as well. It’s still “Gibson isn’t better than his backups” but it’s more “Gibson and his backup are good platoon goalies stuck on an awful defensive team” than “Gibson and his backups suck”.

GSAx hates all of the Ducks goalies, so that thought that GSAx is underrating the goalies seems like a completely valid thought to me.

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

Jarry's worse.

 

[HabsWhiteKnightLOL]

who let him cook that long

oh my god

 

[Panda Bear]

You're missing something crucial about John Gibson: he is significantly better before the Ducks fall out of the playoff race.

I'd say run the splits as pre- and post-All Star, but the Ducks are so terrible you might have to do it for January 1.

I've looked into it. You should too.