Doctor No
Registered User
This is strange. Going by the differentials in the weekly summaries before and after that week, Micalef played 20 minutes, faced 12 shots and gave up no goals. Yet the summaries for all the games that week only list Greg Stefan, plus there's no periods where the Wings gave up 12 shots and zero goals.
One thing to watch out for if you're comparing the weekly summaries: I've tried tallying save percentages for a couple of seasons when the stat wasn't kept and there would be the odd time when a game's minutes and goals would be charged against the wrong goalie in that weeks summaries, then it would be corrected the following week. I know its not much help, but it may be something to look for. Perhaps Micalef's 20 min. came from the week before, or maybe the Bouchard/Gosselin mix-up occurred in the final week.
Then again, it's entirely possible that an error was made by the NHL's statistics department and nobody noticed it.
Several good points brought up here - well-said!
On the issue of official errors made by the NHL's statistics departments, there are definitely some in 1984-85. Most notably, Pelle Lindbergh officially had seventeen losses in this campaign (his Vezina year). As it turns out, however, one of Bob Froese's losses actually belonged to Pelle (was not too hard to track down because Froese only had two "official" losses all year). The November 1, 1984 loss to Winnipeg was incorrectly given to Bob Froese as the fifth goal was allowed by Lindbergh. From the Gettsyburg Times: "The Jets opened up a three-goal lead at 23 seconds of the third period when Robert Picard took a pass from (Dale) Hawerchuk in front of the goal and went over substitute goalie Pelle Lindbergh."
Additionally, Rick St. Croix was missing a two-save non-decision on January 9, 1985 against the Boston Bruins which is not in the official NHL statistics. I'm so confident on both of these that I've changed the numbers on my goaltender page for each of them.
My guess is that this is the worst period for reconciling numbers for goaltenders - for the longest time, there was just one goaltender on a roster at a time, and for long period after that, very few times did more than one goaltender play in the same game. And of course, more recently, there are so many eyes on the game that it's easier to get the details right. But the early-to-mid 1980s appears to be the "sweet spot" for statistical errors.