Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time - Round 2, Vote 6

[Dennis Bonvie]

The offensive players are usually better players than the checkers, so Forsberg having the better numbers just means he was usually playing against worse players.

Or, Forsberg was just the better player.

 

[MXD]

I understand that idea but he doesn't have any filler GP, he hit the ground running and was relevant over a lo g period of time.

Just because some guys have less than average GP advantage over Forsberg it shouldn't hold him back.

Indeed he would look very good this round.

You can still edit this post.

 

[wetcoast]

"If Sakic is a 100 in his playoff resume is Esposito even a 60?"

In the playoffs Sakic averaged 1.09 points per game. Espo 1.05.

Each won 2 Cups.

Espo was +25. Sakic -2.

Each were a minus player in 7 playoff seasons.

How exactly does that translate into 100 to 60 on any scale?

This is the problem comparing raw numbers in different era with different scoring rates and opponents.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

This is the problem comparing raw numbers in different era with different scoring rates and opponents.

You mean its a problem for your scenario?

 

[Sentinel]

What did San Jose win that was noteworthy?

Beat Detroit. And then Detroit won in 02 without Fetisov.

 

[wetcoast]

You mean its a problem for your scenario?

No it's a general problem overall or else we would see a lot more players from the 80s right?

 

[Sentinel]

Clarke's defensive advantage over Yzerman is smaller than Yzerman's offensive advantage over Clarke. Their leadership is about even (Yzeman slightly ahead), and their classiness is incomparable.

 

[wetcoast]

Clarke's defensive advantage over Yzerman is smaller than Yzerman's offensive advantage over Clarke. Their leadership is about even (Yzeman slightly ahead), and their classiness is incomparable.

I tend to agree with the first sentence.

The second sentence has little to no bearing on my opinion of the 2 layers in this project.

 

[MXD]

Clarke's defensive advantage over Yzerman is smaller than Yzerman's offensive advantage over Clarke. Their leadership is about even (Yzeman slightly ahead), and their classiness is incomparable.

Evidence needed...

 

[wetcoast]

Evidence needed...

Well it wasn't my statement but the easiest one to prove if offense and the difference is measurable.

Measuring defensive play for forwards isn't as reliable and leadership and class (okay maybe not class) even less so.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Clarke also was the best player on his team during his entire career.

Yzerman was not. Hell when Fedorov was around and actually gave a shit Y wasn't even the best defensive forward on Detroit, circa early through mid 90's. I think Yzerman was a fine defensive player but it took many, many years for him to gain a strong reputation (Bowman years) for his defensive work.

Clarke's adjusted +/- dwarfs Yzerman and you can see the returns on and off the ice that strongly favor Clarke here:

Glossary of Terms:

SFrac: Season Fraction. 1.00 is a full season. I prefer it to games played because it gives a 48 game season, a 74 game season, an 80 game season or an 82 game season the same weight.
$ESGF: Even-strength goals for, normalized to a 200 ESG scoring environment and with estimated SH goals removed.
$ESGA: Even-strength goals against, normalized to a 200 ESG scoring environment and with estimated SH goals removed.
R-ON: Even strength GF/GA ratio when the player is on the ice.
R-OFF: Even-strength GF/GA ratio when the player is off the ice.
XEV+/-: Expected even-strength plus-minus, which is an estimate of the plus-minus that an average player would post with the same teammates. The calculation is described above.
EV+/-: Even –strength plus-minus, which is simply plus-minus with estimated shorthanded goals removed and normalized to a 200 ESG environment.
AdjEV+/-: Adjusted even-strength plus-minus, which is even-strength plus-minus minus expected even-strength plus-minus. This is the final number.
The following three stats evaluate special teams play and are not related to adjusted plus-minus. I’m including them in the table for a quick reference to the player’s contributions outside of even-strength play.
PP% : The % of the team’s power play goals for that the player was on the ice for.
SH%: The % of the team’s power play goals against that the player was on the ice for.
$PPP/G: Power play points per game, normalized to a 70 PPG environment and with pre-1988 PP assists estimated.

Results
Here are the top 100 in career adjusted even-strength plus-minus, as well as the players in the HOH Top 100 and several others who were strongly considered for voting.

Rank	Player	GP	$ESGF	$ESGA	R-ON	R-OFF	EV%	EV+/-	XEV+/-	AEV+/-	AEV+/-/82
1	Jaromir Jagr	1711	1794	1332	1.35	0.93	40%	461	-69	530	25
2	Ray Bourque	1612	1691	1231	1.37	0.95	42%	460	-48	508	26
3	Bobby Orr	657	1044	526	1.99	1.03	49%	518	13	505	63
4	Wayne Gretzky	1487	1893	1492	1.27	1.04	47%	401	39	362	20
5	Larry Robinson	1384	1632	1022	1.60	1.34	43%	611	250	360	21
6	Nicklas Lidstrom	1564	1682	1189	1.41	1.17	41%	493	149	344	18
7	Joe Thornton	1446	1269	955	1.33	0.96	35%	314	-28	342	19
8	Teemu Selanne	1451	1232	1002	1.23	0.87	35%	230	-101	332	19
9	Mark Howe	929	939	628	1.50	0.96	39%	311	-20	330	29
10	Al MacInnis	1416	1397	992	1.41	1.11	38%	404	81	323	19
11	Stan Mikita	1393	1220	825	1.48	1.12	33%	395	73	323	19
12	Mario Lemieux	915	1092	883	1.24	0.84	46%	209	-110	319	29
13	Bobby Clarke	1147	894	498	1.80	1.20	30%	397	82	314	22
14	Eric Lindros	760	842	565	1.49	0.95	42%	276	-22	298	32
15	Borje Salming	1148	1206	1056	1.14	0.82	43%	150	-148	298	21
16	Dave Taylor	1111	876	671	1.30	0.84	30%	205	-86	291	21
17	Peter Forsberg	708	741	432	1.71	1.07	38%	309	24	285	33
18	Gordie Howe	921	919	724	1.27	0.85	36%	195	-89	284	25
19	Pavel Datsyuk	953	858	553	1.55	1.07	34%	305	30	275	24
20	Bryan Trottier	1279	1081	724	1.49	1.17	33%	357	90	267	17
21	Mike Bossy	752	732	408	1.80	1.17	36%	325	59	266	29
22	Sidney Crosby	782	848	602	1.41	0.96	41%	246	-18	264	28
23	Guy Lafleur	1126	1079	646	1.67	1.35	34%	432	168	264	19
24	Marcel Dionne	1348	1126	1019	1.10	0.80	35%	107	-156	263	16
25	Henrik Sedin	1248	951	707	1.35	0.98	31%	244	-12	255	17
26	John Leclair	967	868	586	1.48	1.08	35%	282	36	246	21
27	Daniel Sedin	1225	891	660	1.35	0.97	29%	231	-14	245	16
28	Larry Murphy	1615	1534	1275	1.20	1.02	39%	258	14	244	12
29	Denis Potvin	1060	1122	753	1.49	1.23	43%	369	127	242	19
30	Alex Tanguay	1088	945	713	1.33	1.00	35%	232	2	230	17
31	Scott Stevens	1635	1658	1265	1.31	1.19	42%	393	162	230	12
32	Brad Park	1115	1212	866	1.40	1.20	42%	345	125	221	16
33	Ron Francis	1731	1374	1249	1.10	0.89	34%	125	-95	220	10
34	Brad McCrimmon	1222	1041	726	1.43	1.18	34%	314	94	220	15
35	Chris Kunitz	884	705	471	1.50	1.05	31%	233	17	217	20
36	Brian Rafalski	833	823	583	1.41	1.05	38%	240	24	215	21
37	Chris Pronger	1167	1060	858	1.23	0.99	39%	201	-7	208	15
38	Frank Mahovlich	1048	1022	722	1.42	1.18	35%	300	94	206	16
39	Steve Shutt	930	790	436	1.81	1.45	29%	354	148	206	18
40	Sergei Fedorov	1249	1018	766	1.33	1.08	32%	252	47	206	14
41	Marian Hossa	1309	1026	758	1.35	1.12	30%	268	64	205	13
42	Ryan Getzlaf	861	740	546	1.35	0.98	36%	194	-7	199	19
43	Patrik Elias	1240	912	691	1.32	1.04	31%	220	23	198	13
44	Steve Larmer	1006	750	577	1.30	0.95	32%	173	-24	197	16
45	Brian Propp	1016	767	524	1.46	1.12	31%	243	49	195	16
46	Zigmund Palffy	684	615	502	1.23	0.80	37%	114	-80	194	23
47	Terry Harper	1066	1108	890	1.24	1.04	43%	218	25	193	15
48	Craig Ramsay	1070	694	462	1.50	1.12	25%	231	42	189	15
49	Keith Tkachuk	1201	992	895	1.11	0.87	36%	98	-88	186	13
50	Charlie Simmer	712	524	395	1.33	0.83	29%	130	-56	186	21
51	Gary Roberts	1224	960	723	1.33	1.10	31%	237	53	184	12
52	Chris Chelios	1651	1476	1152	1.28	1.18	39%	324	143	181	9
53	Bobby Hull	923	1004	729	1.38	1.18	40%	275	94	181	16
54	Lubomir Visnovsky	883	791	702	1.13	0.83	38%	88	-92	180	17
55	Jonathan Toews	717	666	456	1.46	1.09	34%	210	31	180	21
56	Jere Lehtinen	875	616	413	1.49	1.07	28%	203	23	180	17
57	Pierre Turgeon	1294	1042	839	1.24	1.04	33%	203	24	178	11
58	Luc Robitaille	1431	1204	1028	1.17	1.00	33%	175	-2	177	10
59	Kenny Wharram	667	611	405	1.51	1.10	31%	206	32	173	21
60	Brendan Shanahan	1524	1181	960	1.23	1.07	32%	221	49	172	9
61	Dmitri Khristich	811	608	472	1.29	0.90	30%	136	-35	171	17
62	Alex Ovechkin	921	890	702	1.27	1.03	39%	187	16	171	15
63	Carl Brewer	533	648	456	1.42	1.07	44%	193	23	170	26
64	Joe Sakic	1378	1272	1105	1.15	1.00	38%	167	-2	169	10
65	Daniel Alfredsson	1246	1010	818	1.23	1.04	33%	192	23	169	11
66	Milan Hejduk	1020	840	662	1.27	1.02	33%	178	9	169	14
67	Pierre Pilote	660	873	652	1.34	1.11	49%	221	52	169	21
68	Jarome Iginla	1554	1238	1143	1.08	0.91	36%	95	-73	169	9
69	Petr Svoboda	1047	812	622	1.31	1.05	32%	190	22	168	13
70	Michael Nylander	920	718	585	1.23	0.93	32%	133	-30	163	15
71	Jason Arnott	1244	963	792	1.22	1.01	32%	171	8	163	11
72	Michel Goulet	1089	812	688	1.18	0.92	32%	123	-39	163	12
73	Simon Gagne	822	600	446	1.34	0.98	29%	153	-7	161	16
74	Henrik Zetterberg	1000	872	672	1.30	1.08	35%	200	40	160	13
75	Marek Malik	691	582	441	1.32	0.95	34%	141	-18	159	19
76	Jean Ratelle	1280	1073	834	1.29	1.14	32%	239	81	158	10
77	Zdeno Chara	1350	1271	1062	1.20	1.07	39%	208	50	157	10
78	Marian Gaborik	989	756	624	1.21	0.95	34%	132	-25	157	13
79	Joe Reekie	902	716	604	1.19	0.91	35%	112	-40	153	14
80	Jacques Lemaire	852	811	484	1.68	1.52	33%	327	175	152	15
81	Theoren Fleury	1084	942	795	1.19	1.00	36%	147	-3	150	11
82	Joe Pavelski	806	592	445	1.33	1.00	31%	147	-1	149	15
83	Ron Stackhouse	889	893	853	1.05	0.82	42%	40	-110	149	14
84	Alexander Semin	650	521	402	1.30	0.91	31%	119	-30	149	19
85	Bill Hajt	854	813	584	1.39	1.19	37%	228	81	148	14
86	Patrice Bergeron	899	684	516	1.32	1.05	30%	168	20	148	13
87	Mike Foligno	1018	665	557	1.19	0.90	28%	107	-40	147	12
88	Ulf Samuelsson	1080	911	775	1.17	0.98	36%	135	-11	147	11
89	Cliff Ronning	1137	709	592	1.20	0.93	26%	117	-29	146	11
90	Steve Sullivan	1011	745	621	1.20	0.95	30%	124	-21	145	12
91	Mats Sundin	1346	1139	1024	1.11	0.96	35%	115	-28	143	9
92	Doug Gilmour	1474	1141	997	1.14	1.00	34%	144	1	143	8
93	Henri Richard	998	933	663	1.41	1.28	33%	270	129	141	12
94	Paul Kariya	989	834	743	1.12	0.91	38%	91	-51	141	12
95	Pavol Demitra	847	716	554	1.29	1.05	35%	162	22	140	14
96	Sergei Gonchar	1301	1113	1010	1.10	0.95	37%	104	-36	140	9
97	Keith Carney	1018	818	688	1.19	0.98	35%	131	-8	139	11
98	Martin St. Louis	1134	985	939	1.05	0.86	36%	46	-92	138	10
99	Jeremy Roenick	1363	989	822	1.20	1.05	32%	167	30	138	8
100	Sergei Zubov	1068	1042	827	1.26	1.14	42%	215	78	137	11

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Player	GP	$ESGF	$ESGA	R-ON	R-OFF	EV%	EV+/-	XEV+/-	AEV+/-	AEV+/-/82
Steve Yzerman	1514	1352	1148	1.18	1.09	36%	205	73	131	7
Paul Coffey	1409	1625	1325	1.23	1.20	43%	301	175	126	7
Phil Esposito	1282	1302	1015	1.28	1.25	37%	287	166	121	8
Duncan Keith	913	978	816	1.20	1.08	43%	162	45	118	11
Evgeni Malkin	706	677	532	1.27	1.08	38%	145	29	116	14
Alex Delvecchio	1017	932	865	1.08	0.92	36%	67	-49	116	9
Scott Niedermayer	1263	1169	944	1.24	1.23	39%	225	139	86	6
Jean Beliveau	748	653	490	1.33	1.30	31%	163	97	66	7
Patrick Kane	740	697	576	1.21	1.16	38%	121	61	60	7
Tim Horton	1010	1196	1027	1.16	1.17	48%	169	114	56	5
Johnny Bucyk	1299	1096	1065	1.03	0.98	32%	30	-15	45	3
Brett Hull	1269	1093	995	1.10	1.12	38%	99	75	23	2
Dave Keon	1296	918	848	1.08	1.10	29%	70	54	16	1
Mark Messier	1756	1418	1302	1.09	1.13	33%	116	109	7	0
Gilbert Perreault	1191	980	904	1.08	1.13	36%	76	73	3	0
Bob Gainey	1160	645	525	1.23	1.51	23%	120	155	-35	-2

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Note: These numbers have been updated and expanded to go back to 1960 and through 2017.

I would just add that the 1960-1967 numbers are not directly comparable to the postexpansion numbers, as the average team and average player was stronger in the six team NHL than after expansion.

Also, a couple of methodological notes. I have changed the weighting so it weights based on games played and no longer adjusts for season length. I didn't like the increased weight on games in the lockout shortened seasons of 1995 and 2013. Also, the numbers are adjusted to a scoring level of 2.2 ESG/G per team.

Clarke never enjoyed playing for a dynasty either. Won 3 Harts in the same time frame as Orr, Lafleur and Espo. Yzerman was a Hart finalist, once. Clarke took his team to 3 consecutive finals (winning 2 in 74-75) with the insanely strong Habs dynasty putting an end to the broad street bullies in 76. No lost points for finally being crushed by one of the greatest hockey dynasties ever. I mean Ken Dryden vs Wayne Stephenson. The ridiculous disparity of the defensive corps?

I respected and loved Yzerman as a young man. One of my favorites, but Clarke was simply better. Yzerman had the class, no doubt about it but when it came to complete and total package, Clarke was a superior player. And I loathe Philly haha.

 

[MXD]

I was about to write a long post when I realize that Yzerman isn't eligible, so I won't bother.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I was about to write a long post when I realize that Yzerman isn't eligible, so I won't bother.

Saved you the trouble I see.

 

[DitchMarner]

Clarke also was the best player on his team during his entire career.

Yzerman was not. Hell when Fedorov was around and actually gave a **** Y wasn't even the best defensive forward on Detroit, circa early through mid 90's. I think Yzerman was a fine defensive player but it took many, many years for him to gain a strong reputation (Bowman years) for his defensive work.

Clarke's adjusted +/- dwarfs Yzerman and you can see the returns on and off the ice that strongly favor Clarke here:




Clarke never enjoyed playing for a dynasty either. Won 3 Harts in the same time frame as Orr, Lafleur and Espo. Yzerman was a Hart finalist, once. Clarke took his team to 3 consecutive finals (winning 2 in 74-75) with the insanely strong Habs dynasty putting an end to the broad street bullies in 76. No lost points for finally being crushed by one of the greatest hockey dynasties ever. I mean Ken Dryden vs Wayne Stephenson. The ridiculous disparity of the defensive corps?

I respected and loved Yzerman as a young man. One of my favorites, but Clarke was simply better. Yzerman had the class, no doubt about it but when it came to complete and total package, Clarke was a superior player. And I loathe Philly haha.

Interestingly, Jagr leads that entire table and you don't seem to think too highly of him as an overall player...not an insult or anything; merely an observation.

 

[seventieslord]

Manipulated Save Percentage - and how it applies to Sawchuk, Hall and especially Brodeur - Part I

Hockey Outsider's Adjusted Save Percentage is currently the best simple era-adjusted save percentage that anyone has done. You can find it here. Adjusted save percentage (regular season, 1956-2018)

I used it as a springboard for the following post. Particularly, post #5, which is a table of the leaders for "peak adjusted save percentage" - based on their best 7 non-consecutive seasons. This is as close to a "7-year VsX" as we have for goalies, disregarding for a moment that save percentage is a rate stat and points are a counting stat (though HO mitigates that by requiring 2400 adjusted minutes for a season to count as a season).

First thing I had to do, was add one more decimal place to these numbers. We are talking about massive sample sizes, so these are significant figures here. Plus, I'm talking about using other factors to manipulate save percentage, so it would be statistically irresponsible to be subtracting .002 from someone's numbers when that really means "anywhere from .0015 to .0024". Here are the top-22 all-time, plus one other relevant goalie:

Ken Dryden	0.9338
Dominik Hasek	0.9319
Tony Esposito	0.9292
Patrick Roy	0.9291
Bernie Parent	0.9264
Glenn Resch	0.9229
John Vanbiesbrouck	0.9220
Jacques Plante	0.9209
Johnny Bower	0.9200
Ed Belfour	0.9199
Roberto Luongo	0.9196
Dan Bouchard	0.9194
Martin Brodeur	0.9191
Glenn Hall	0.9188
Tom Barrasso	0.9186
Curtis Joseph	0.9184
Tomas Vokoun	0.9178
Henrik Lundqvist	0.9175
Rogie Vachon	0.9168
Sean Burke	0.9167
Kelly Hrudey	0.9167
Andy Moog	0.9166
Terry Sawchuk	0.9033

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Sawchuk lags way, way, way behind the rest. But there are reasons for that, which I will get to.

Right off the bat, let's agree that these are really excellent goalies. In the long run, the best goalies of a generation will post the best save percentage numbers - clearly.

But Martin Brodeur, the not-quite-consensus third best goalie of the last 30 years, is barely ahead of Barrasso and Joseph.... and behind Luongo and Belfour! What gives?

Save percentage is a good starting point stat to discuss a goalie's value, but if we have more information we should use it. There are three factors that need to be looked at:

1. Brodeur faced far fewer powerplays, on a per-game basis, than any other goalie in the eras his career spanned. (adjusting for this will hurt his save percentage).
2. Brodeur has had a noticeable effect on the number of shots the Devils surrender, and a less-noticeable but measurable effect on the number of shots that the Devils take (adjusting for this will help his save percentage).
3. Brodeur has had his shots against count supressed by stingy shot counters in New Jersey, at least since 1998-99. (adjusting for this will help his save percentage).

Let's start with the powerplays. I checked every season between 1993-94 and 2009-10 (except the incomplete 2008-09) and compared Brodeur's percentage of shots that were PP shots, to the average of the other top-40 goalies (I'd have checked all goalies, but it was manual data entry and too time-consuming, so I took the 40 that accounted for most of the shots taken in each season). I took note of what Brodeur's rate of PP shots were compared to the average (for example, in 1993-94, his rate was .924, meaning his ratio of PP shots was 92.4% as high as the average). I then calculated how many more PP shots Brodeur would had to have faced in order for his ratio to match the average. Using his PP save percentage I then calculated how many goals he'd have surrendered on those shots.

But, the NHL only had situational play tracked from 1997-98 onwards, so some projections had to be done for the 93-94 to 96-97 seasons. It turned out to be pretty straight forward. I noticed, unsurprisingly, that Brodeur's PP shot rate compared to the average of other goalies, almost perfectly tracked the Devils' PPOA rate compared to the average of the league. So using that number, and the actual calculated results from 97-98 to 09-10 on a data plot with a trendline, I was able to estimate the save percentage drop he should have, and build the "missing" shots and saves from there.

Here's what happened to his numbers:

Year	PPOA%	PPSA%	Extra SOG	Extra G	Sv%	PPAdj	Diff	AdjSv%	AdjSv%2	Diff
1993-94	0.924	0.924	96	10	0.9152	0.9138	0.0014	0.9253	0.9239	0.0014
1994-95	0.713	0.713	128	16	0.9020	0.8986	0.0033	0.9064	0.9031	0.0034
1995-96	0.772	0.772	119	16	0.9115	0.9088	0.0026	0.9181	0.9155	0.0027
1996-97	0.699	0.699	162	18	0.9265	0.9231	0.0034	0.9268	0.9234	0.0034
1997-98	0.813	0.737	110	15	0.9171	0.9136	0.0035	0.9159	0.9124	0.0035
1998-99	0.905	0.872	55	8	0.9063	0.9047	0.0016	0.9035	0.9019	0.0016
1999-00	0.946	0.936	25	2	0.9104	0.9105	-0.0001	0.9110	0.9112	-0.0001
2000-01	0.851	0.688	167	27	0.9058	0.8999	0.0058	0.9075	0.9017	0.0059
2001-02	0.784	0.821	68	10	0.9057	0.9037	0.0021	0.9030	0.9009	0.0021
2002-03	0.727	0.687	133	18	0.9138	0.9103	0.0036	0.9100	0.9064	0.0035
2003-04	0.764	0.861	95	12	0.9165	0.9144	0.0021	0.9106	0.9085	0.0021
2005-06	0.727	0.798	143	19	0.9112	0.9084	0.0028	0.9149	0.9121	0.0028
2006-07	0.681	0.736	159	15	0.9216	0.9205	0.0011	0.9214	0.9203	0.0011
2007-08	0.895	1.057	30	-3	0.9196	0.9199	-0.0003	0.9154	0.9157	-0.0003
2009-10	0.789	0.638	115	16	0.9162	0.9132	0.0030	0.9099	0.9069	0.0030

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

As you can see, lack of powerplays against have really helped Brodeur. If you normalize this to a league average, he has seasons where he loses as much as 0.0059 from his save percentage. But on average it's a loss of .0024. His best seven seasons are still the same as they were before: 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2006, 2007, 2008. His 7-year adjusted SP becomes .9172. Refer back to the list up above, and he actually drops five spots on the list, below Hall, Barrasso, Joseph, Vokoun and Lundqvist.

Wait, wait, put the pitchforks away! This was just the start. We have to get to the good stuff. It's important to note, however, that even if we stopped right here, Brodeur would have the peak numbers of a top-20 goalie of the save percentage era, which now goes back 65 years.

The next thing to do is use his PP-adjusted numbers as a the starting point for a shot under-counting adjustment. As BM67 has shown us:

The shots, goals, and shooting% for both teams in Devils home and road games over 20 seasons. More shots in Devils road games in 17 of 20. Higher S% in Devils home games in 17 of 20 seasons. The only one of the 3 seasons after 1996-97 with higher S% in road games was 2000-01 where the Devils shot an incredible 11.52% on the road. Over the 20 seasons, the average shots are +2.85 shots in Devils road games, and +3.42 shots from 1997-98 on.

Year	GP	HSOG	HSOG/GP	HG	HS%	RSOG	RSOG/GP	RG	RS%	Diff
1993-94	42	2497	59.45	259	10.37	2596	61.81	267	10.29	2.36
1994-95	24	1367	56.96	128	9.36	1295	53.96	129	9.96	-3
1995-96	41	2351	57.34	214	9.1	2459	59.98	203	8.26	2.64
1996-97	41	2416	58.93	204	8.44	2337	57	212	9.07	-1.93
1997-98	41	2199	53.63	217	9.87	2145	52.32	174	8.11	-1.31
1998-99	41	2256	55.02	225	9.97	2335	56.95	219	9.38	1.93
1999-00	41	2368	57.76	225	9.5	2450	59.76	229	9.35	2
2000-01	41	2244	54.73	237	10.56	2370	57.8	253	10.68	3.07
2001-02	41	2023	49.34	200	9.89	2322	56.63	192	8.27	7.29
2002-03	41	2205	53.78	206	9.34	2329	56.8	176	7.56	3.02
2003-04	41	2101	51.24	194	9.23	2333	56.9	183	7.84	5.66
2005-06	41	2278	55.56	225	9.88	2520	61.46	233	9.25	5.9
2006-07	41	2196	53.56	194	8.83	2490	60.73	205	8.23	7.17
2007-08	41	2268	55.32	197	8.69	2351	57.34	194	8.25	2.02
2008-09	41	2476	60.39	231	9.33	2637	64.32	214	8.12	3.93
2009-10	41	2205	53.78	210	9.52	2467	60.17	192	7.78	6.39
2010-11	41	2215	54.02	192	8.67	2281	55.63	186	8.15	1.61
2011-12	41	2208	53.85	213	9.65	2244	54.73	208	9.27	0.88
2012-13	24	1233	51.38	122	9.89	1239	51.62	110	8.88	0.24
2013-14	41	2070	50.49	191	9.23	2218	54.1	201	9.06	3.61
Total	787	43176	54.86	4084	9.46	45418	57.71	3980	8.76	2.85

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

(I added one more table into the quote to demonstrate the difference more easily)

I don't see any other way to interpret this as, it was harder to get credited with a shot in New Jersey. This applied to both teams equally. Some scorekeepers have different standards for what constitutes a shot. In the long run this should wash out for most players, but for Brodeur, it happened for almost his whole career and to be fair, we must account for it.

There does not appear to be an issue with shot counting until 1998-99, at which points the scorers seemed to count an average of 3.75 fewer shots per game in New Jersey, than the Devils and their opponents were credited with in other buildings. Divide this number by two (because Brodeur and the opposing goalie were equally affected) and then by two again (because this only happened in home games, 50% of Brodeur's games played) and you get 0.94. This is the number of shots against per game (and saves per game) that must be added to Brodeur's totals to fairly account for this - in 1998-99 and beyond. If we do that, we get:

Year	GA	Shots	Saves	Sv%	AdjSv%3
1993-94	115	1334	1219	0.9138	0.9239
1994-95	105	1070	965	0.9019	0.9063
1995-96	189	2073	1884	0.9088	0.9155
1996-97	138	1795	1657	0.9231	0.9234
1997-98	142	1679	1534	0.9136	0.9124
1998-99	170	1849	1679	0.9081	0.9053
1999-00	163	1890	1727	0.9138	0.9144
2000-01	193	1996	1803	0.9033	0.9050
2001-02	166	1791	1625	0.9073	0.9046
2002-03	165	1908	1743	0.9135	0.9097
2003-04	166	2011	1845	0.9175	0.9115
2005-06	206	2316	2110	0.9111	0.9148
2006-07	186	2405	2229	0.9268	0.9266
2007-08	165	2132	1967	0.9226	0.9184
2009-10	184	2189	2005	0.9159	0.9096

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

1999-00 actually replaces 1997-98 as one of his seven best seasons, and Brodeur ends up with a peak adjusted sv% of .9194. Refer back up to the table at the top, and you can see he's actually right back where he started, and 3 points higher now, in a tie with Dan Bouchard.

Lastly, we need to account for Brodeur's puckhandling which affected shots for and against for the Devils. Again, BM67's data:

Brodeur for whole game vs doesn't play or only plays part of game 1997-98 to 2013-14
Marty 30.00 SF/GP 25.67 SA/GP 57.89 Faceoffs/GP
Other 29.42 SF/GP 26.71 SA/GP 58.05 Faceoffs/GP

This is a very large data sample - it may feel right to say that Devils' backups played about 40 games from 1997 to 2014, but they actually logged 311 in that time - more than enough to confidently say that, compared to a field of middling puckhandlers, Brodeur's impact was felt in the form of 0.58 shots per game, and 1.04 shots against per game. This is a net of 1.62 shots (and saves) per game that Brodeur deserves to be credited with.

Doing so, we get this:

Year	GA	Shots	Saves	Sv%	AdjSv%4	OrigSv%	Diff
1993-94	115	1405	1290	0.9181	0.9283	0.9152	0.0030
1994-95	105	1129	1024	0.9070	0.9114	0.9020	0.0050
1995-96	189	2193	2004	0.9138	0.9205	0.9115	0.0023
1996-97	138	1899	1761	0.9273	0.9276	0.9265	0.0008
1997-98	142	1790	1648	0.9207	0.9194	0.9171	0.0035
1998-99	170	1963	1793	0.9134	0.9106	0.9063	0.0072
1999-00	163	2006	1843	0.9188	0.9194	0.9104	0.0084
2000-01	193	2112	1919	0.9086	0.9104	0.9058	0.0028
2001-02	166	1908	1742	0.9130	0.9102	0.9057	0.0073
2002-03	165	2026	1861	0.9186	0.9147	0.9138	0.0047
2003-04	166	2134	1968	0.9222	0.9162	0.9165	0.0057
2005-06	206	2434	2228	0.9154	0.9192	0.9112	0.0042
2006-07	186	2532	2346	0.9265	0.9263	0.9216	0.0049
2007-08	165	2257	2092	0.9269	0.9227	0.9196	0.0073
2009-10	184	2310	2126	0.9204	0.9140	0.9162	0.0042

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The "AdjSv%4" column reflects Brodeur's adjusted save percentage after all manipulations are made. The "diff" column shows how many points his save percentage changes by, positively, following these adjustments. A few seasons are affected by 7 or 8 sv% points!

Brodeur's 7-year peak adjusted save percentage now becomes .9231. Refer back to the top list, and he goes all the way up to 6th, right between Bernie Parent and Jacques Plante!

Now, don't get too used to the orders of the other goalies on this list. That requires more manipulation, which I'll do in part 2.

Also note that Brodeur's string of save percentage top-10 finishes would look like this now: 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 9. Compare to Patrick Roy (adjusted to account for Brodeur's adjusted placements): 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10. Roy still has a much better peak of delivering high-end puck stopping, and great longevity doing so, where Brodeur, even after adjustments, fails to make the top-10 in save percentage for half his career. Still, he acquits himself much better after adjustments, and his non-top-10 years (through 2010) are not bad, or even below average.

I did my best to account for all factors affecting Martin Brodeur, but I did not change anything for any other goalie. A true statistical analysis of all goalies of the save percentage era would need to include factors like this to be as accurate as possible, but I wonder whether it's necessary. If you could identify a goalie who always faced way more or less than his share of powerplays, played in an arena that overcounted or undercounted shots for a long period of time, or was exceptionally good or bad atpuckhandling, then I suppose they could be handled as a one-off, but for the most part, most long-career goalies played in a number of different situations. Not Brodeur. His statistical impediments and advantages were true for nearly his entire career and simply had to be accounted for.

Voila:

Partially manipulated all-time peak adjusted save percentage leaders:

Ken Dryden	0.9338
Dominik Hasek	0.9319
Tony Esposito	0.9292
Patrick Roy	0.9291
Bernie Parent	0.9264
Martin Brodeur after adjustments	0.9231
Glenn Resch	0.9229
John Vanbiesbrouck	0.922
Jacques Plante	0.9209
Johnny Bower	0.92
Ed Belfour	0.9199
Roberto Luongo	0.9196
Dan Bouchard	0.9194
Real life Martin Brodeur	0.9191
Glenn Hall	0.9188
Tom Barrasso	0.9186
Curtis Joseph	0.9184
Tomas Vokoun	0.9178
Henrik Lundqvist	0.9175
Rogie Vachon	0.9168
Sean Burke	0.9167
Kelly Hrudey	0.9167
Andy Moog	0.9166
Terry Sawchuk	0.9033

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[ImporterExporter]

Interestingly, Jagr leads that entire table and you don't seem to think too highly of him as an overall player...not an insult or anything; merely an observation.

Since you quoted me and mentioned double J....

I always gave respect to Jagr for his even strength scoring. It's elite. One of the selling points for him.

My biggest problem again, was his scoring dipped, often in the postseason, sometimes by a good deal and the Pens never played D, so they chased empty points often in the regular season.

Some people have him over Lidstrom and I'll never understand why. Watched both hundreds of times. One guy was an artist. The other was Rembrandt.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Manipulated Save Percentage - and how it applies to Sawchuk, Hall and especially Brodeur - Part I

Hockey Outsider's Adjusted Save Percentage is currently the best simple era-adjusted save percentage that anyone has done. You can find it here. Adjusted save percentage (regular season, 1956-2018)

I used it as a springboard for the following post. Particularly, post #5, which is a table of the leaders for "peak adjusted save percentage" - based on their best 7 non-consecutive seasons. This is as close to a "7-year VsX" as we have for goalies, disregarding for a moment that save percentage is a rate stat and points are a counting stat (though HO mitigates that by requiring 2400 adjusted minutes for a season to count as a season).

First thing I had to do, was add one more decimal place to these numbers. We are talking about massive sample sizes, so these are significant figures here. Plus, I'm talking about using other factors to manipulate save percentage, so it would be statistically irresponsible to be subtracting .002 from someone's numbers when that really means "anywhere from .0015 to .0024". Here are the top-22 all-time, plus one other relevant goalie:

Ken Dryden	0.9338
Dominik Hasek	0.9319
Tony Esposito	0.9292
Patrick Roy	0.9291
Bernie Parent	0.9264
Glenn Resch	0.9229
John Vanbiesbrouck	0.9220
Jacques Plante	0.9209
Johnny Bower	0.9200
Ed Belfour	0.9199
Roberto Luongo	0.9196
Dan Bouchard	0.9194
Martin Brodeur	0.9191
Glenn Hall	0.9188
Tom Barrasso	0.9186
Curtis Joseph	0.9184
Tomas Vokoun	0.9178
Henrik Lundqvist	0.9175
Rogie Vachon	0.9168
Sean Burke	0.9167
Kelly Hrudey	0.9167
Andy Moog	0.9166
Terry Sawchuk	0.9033

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Sawchuk lags way, way, way behind the rest. But there are reasons for that, which I will get to.

Right off the bat, let's agree that these are really excellent goalies. In the long run, the best goalies of a generation will post the best save percentage numbers - clearly.

But Martin Brodeur, the not-quite-consensus third best goalie of the last 30 years, is barely ahead of Barrasso and Joseph.... and behind Luongo and Belfour! What gives?

Save percentage is a good starting point stat to discuss a goalie's value, but if we have more information we should use it. There are three factors that need to be looked at:

1. Brodeur faced far fewer powerplays, on a per-game basis, than any other goalie in the eras his career spanned. (adjusting for this will hurt his save percentage).
2. Brodeur has had a noticeable effect on the number of shots the Devils surrender, and a less-noticeable but measurable effect on the number of shots that the Devils take (adjusting for this will help his save percentage).
3. Brodeur has had his shots against count supressed by stingy shot counters in New Jersey, at least since 1998-99. (adjusting for this will help his save percentage).

Let's start with the powerplays. I checked every season between 1993-94 and 2009-10 (except the incomplete 2008-09) and compared Brodeur's percentage of shots that were PP shots, to the average of the other top-40 goalies (I'd have checked all goalies, but it was manual data entry and too time-consuming, so I took the 40 that accounted for most of the shots taken in each season). I took note of what Brodeur's rate of PP shots were compared to the average (for example, in 1993-94, his rate was .924, meaning his ratio of PP shots was 92.4% as high as the average). I then calculated how many more PP shots Brodeur would had to have faced in order for his ratio to match the average. Using his PP save percentage I then calculated how many goals he'd have surrendered on those shots.

But, the NHL only had situational play tracked from 1997-98 onwards, so some projections had to be done for the 93-94 to 96-97 seasons. It turned out to be pretty straight forward. I noticed, unsurprisingly, that Brodeur's PP shot rate compared to the average of other goalies, almost perfectly tracked the Devils' PPOA rate compared to the average of the league. So using that number, and the actual calculated results from 97-98 to 09-10 on a data plot with a trendline, I was able to estimate the save percentage drop he should have, and build the "missing" shots and saves from there.

Here's what happened to his numbers:

Year	PPOA%	PPSA%	Extra SOG	Extra G	Sv%	PPAdj	Diff	AdjSv%	AdjSv%2	Diff
1993-94	0.924	0.924	96	10	0.9152	0.9138	0.0014	0.9253	0.9239	0.0014
1994-95	0.713	0.713	128	16	0.9020	0.8986	0.0033	0.9064	0.9031	0.0034
1995-96	0.772	0.772	119	16	0.9115	0.9088	0.0026	0.9181	0.9155	0.0027
1996-97	0.699	0.699	162	18	0.9265	0.9231	0.0034	0.9268	0.9234	0.0034
1997-98	0.813	0.737	110	15	0.9171	0.9136	0.0035	0.9159	0.9124	0.0035
1998-99	0.905	0.872	55	8	0.9063	0.9047	0.0016	0.9035	0.9019	0.0016
1999-00	0.946	0.936	25	2	0.9104	0.9105	-0.0001	0.9110	0.9112	-0.0001
2000-01	0.851	0.688	167	27	0.9058	0.8999	0.0058	0.9075	0.9017	0.0059
2001-02	0.784	0.821	68	10	0.9057	0.9037	0.0021	0.9030	0.9009	0.0021
2002-03	0.727	0.687	133	18	0.9138	0.9103	0.0036	0.9100	0.9064	0.0035
2003-04	0.764	0.861	95	12	0.9165	0.9144	0.0021	0.9106	0.9085	0.0021
2005-06	0.727	0.798	143	19	0.9112	0.9084	0.0028	0.9149	0.9121	0.0028
2006-07	0.681	0.736	159	15	0.9216	0.9205	0.0011	0.9214	0.9203	0.0011
2007-08	0.895	1.057	30	-3	0.9196	0.9199	-0.0003	0.9154	0.9157	-0.0003
2009-10	0.789	0.638	115	16	0.9162	0.9132	0.0030	0.9099	0.9069	0.0030

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

As you can see, lack of powerplays against have really helped Brodeur. If you normalize this to a league average, he has seasons where he loses as much as 0.0059 from his save percentage. But on average it's a loss of .0024. His best seven seasons are still the same as they were before: 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2006, 2007, 2008. His 7-year adjusted SP becomes .9172. Refer back to the list up above, and he actually drops five spots on the list, below Hall, Barrasso, Joseph, Vokoun and Lundqvist.

Wait, wait, put the pitchforks away! This was just the start. We have to get to the good stuff. It's important to note, however, that even if we stopped right here, Brodeur would have the peak numbers of a top-20 goalie of the save percentage era, which now goes back 65 years.

The next thing to do is use his PP-adjusted numbers as a the starting point for a shot under-counting adjustment. As BM67 has shown us:



(I added one more table into the quote to demonstrate the difference more easily)

I don't see any other way to interpret this as, it was harder to get credited with a shot in New Jersey. This applied to both teams equally. Some scorekeepers have different standards for what constitutes a shot. In the long run this should wash out for most players, but for Brodeur, it happened for almost his whole career and to be fair, we must account for it.

There does not appear to be an issue with shot counting until 1998-99, at which points the scorers seemed to count an average of 3.75 fewer shots per game in New Jersey, than the Devils and their opponents were credited with in other buildings. Divide this number by two (because Brodeur and the opposing goalie were equally affected) and then by two again (because this only happened in home games, 50% of Brodeur's games played) and you get 0.94. This is the number of shots against per game (and saves per game) that must be added to Brodeur's totals to fairly account for this - in 1998-99 and beyond. If we do that, we get:

Year	GA	Shots	Saves	Sv%	AdjSv%3
1993-94	115	1334	1219	0.9138	0.9239
1994-95	105	1070	965	0.9019	0.9063
1995-96	189	2073	1884	0.9088	0.9155
1996-97	138	1795	1657	0.9231	0.9234
1997-98	142	1679	1534	0.9136	0.9124
1998-99	170	1849	1679	0.9081	0.9053
1999-00	163	1890	1727	0.9138	0.9144
2000-01	193	1996	1803	0.9033	0.9050
2001-02	166	1791	1625	0.9073	0.9046
2002-03	165	1908	1743	0.9135	0.9097
2003-04	166	2011	1845	0.9175	0.9115
2005-06	206	2316	2110	0.9111	0.9148
2006-07	186	2405	2229	0.9268	0.9266
2007-08	165	2132	1967	0.9226	0.9184
2009-10	184	2189	2005	0.9159	0.9096

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

1999-00 actually replaces 1997-98 as one of his seven best seasons, and Brodeur ends up with a peak adjusted sv% of .9194. Refer back up to the table at the top, and you can see he's actually right back where he started, and 3 points higher now, in a tie with Dan Bouchard.

Lastly, we need to account for Brodeur's puckhandling which affected shots for and against for the Devils. Again, BM67's data:



This is a very large data sample - it may feel right to say that Devils' backups played about 40 games from 1997 to 2014, but they actually logged 311 in that time - more than enough to confidently say that, compared to a field of middling puckhandlers, Brodeur's impact was felt in the form of 0.58 shots per game, and 1.04 shots against per game. This is a net of 1.62 shots (and saves) per game that Brodeur deserves to be credited with.

Doing so, we get this:

Year	GA	Shots	Saves	Sv%	AdjSv%4	OrigSv%	Diff
1993-94	115	1405	1290	0.9181	0.9283	0.9152	0.0030
1994-95	105	1129	1024	0.9070	0.9114	0.9020	0.0050
1995-96	189	2193	2004	0.9138	0.9205	0.9115	0.0023
1996-97	138	1899	1761	0.9273	0.9276	0.9265	0.0008
1997-98	142	1790	1648	0.9207	0.9194	0.9171	0.0035
1998-99	170	1963	1793	0.9134	0.9106	0.9063	0.0072
1999-00	163	2006	1843	0.9188	0.9194	0.9104	0.0084
2000-01	193	2112	1919	0.9086	0.9104	0.9058	0.0028
2001-02	166	1908	1742	0.9130	0.9102	0.9057	0.0073
2002-03	165	2026	1861	0.9186	0.9147	0.9138	0.0047
2003-04	166	2134	1968	0.9222	0.9162	0.9165	0.0057
2005-06	206	2434	2228	0.9154	0.9192	0.9112	0.0042
2006-07	186	2532	2346	0.9265	0.9263	0.9216	0.0049
2007-08	165	2257	2092	0.9269	0.9227	0.9196	0.0073
2009-10	184	2310	2126	0.9204	0.9140	0.9162	0.0042

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

The "AdjSv%4" column reflects Brodeur's adjusted save percentage after all manipulations are made. The "diff" column shows how many points his save percentage changes by, positively, following these adjustments. A few seasons are affected by 7 or 8 sv% points!

Brodeur's 7-year peak adjusted save percentage now becomes .9231. Refer back to the top list, and he goes all the way up to 6th, right between Bernie Parent and Jacques Plante!

Now, don't get too used to the orders of the other goalies on this list. That requires more manipulation, which I'll do in part 2.

Also note that Brodeur's string of save percentage top-10 finishes would look like this now: 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 9. Compare to Patrick Roy (adjusted to account for Brodeur's adjusted placements): 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10. Roy still has a much better peak of delivering high-end puck stopping, and great longevity doing so, where Brodeur, even after adjustments, fails to make the top-10 in save percentage for half his career. Still, he acquits himself much better after adjustments, and his non-top-10 years (through 2010) are not bad, or even below average.

I did my best to account for all factors affecting Martin Brodeur, but I did not change anything for any other goalie. A true statistical analysis of all goalies of the save percentage era would need to include factors like this to be as accurate as possible, but I wonder whether it's necessary. If you could identify a goalie who always faced way more or less than his share of powerplays, played in an arena that overcounted or undercounted shots for a long period of time, or was exceptionally good or bad atpuckhandling, then I suppose they could be handled as a one-off, but for the most part, most long-career goalies played in a number of different situations. Not Brodeur. His statistical impediments and advantages were true for nearly his entire career and simply had to be accounted for.

Voila:

Partially manipulated all-time peak adjusted save percentage leaders:

Ken Dryden	0.9338
Dominik Hasek	0.9319
Tony Esposito	0.9292
Patrick Roy	0.9291
Bernie Parent	0.9264
Martin Brodeur after adjustments	0.9231
Glenn Resch	0.9229
John Vanbiesbrouck	0.922
Jacques Plante	0.9209
Johnny Bower	0.92
Ed Belfour	0.9199
Roberto Luongo	0.9196
Dan Bouchard	0.9194
Real life Martin Brodeur	0.9191
Glenn Hall	0.9188
Tom Barrasso	0.9186
Curtis Joseph	0.9184
Tomas Vokoun	0.9178
Henrik Lundqvist	0.9175
Rogie Vachon	0.9168
Sean Burke	0.9167
Kelly Hrudey	0.9167
Andy Moog	0.9166
Terry Sawchuk	0.9033

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[DitchMarner]

Since you quoted me and mentioned double J....

I always gave respect to Jagr for his even strength scoring. It's elite. One of the selling points for him.

My biggest problem again, was his scoring dipped, often in the postseason, sometimes by a good deal and the Pens never played D, so they chased empty points often in the regular season.

Some people have him over Lidstrom and I'll never understand why. Watched both hundreds of times. One guy was an artist. The other was Rembrandt.

It's really a question of how much adjusted plus/minus matters and how much stock should be put in it. I think it has relevance, but I personally can't say how much. Some of the scores on that table support the obvious (Orr was a beast, Lindros titled the ice heavily etc), but then you have guys like Kunitz and Khristich in that table.

In any event, I don't know if anyone would argue against the notion that Clarke was better defensively than Yzerman. Clarke may be the best defensive forward ever.

 

[blogofmike]

Right off the bat, let's agree that these are really excellent goalies.

I agree to no such thing about Kelly Hrudey.

And I imagine I'm jumping the gun, because there is a part 2 (I presume), but I'm guessing Sawchuk is probably playing with his 6th best to 12th best seasons here.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Manipulated Save Percentage - and how it applies to Sawchuk, Hall and especially Brodeur - Part I

This is a great post - the kind of post that we should be referring to years from now as a starting point for any serious discussion about Brodeur. (You did pretty much what I was hoping you'd do when examining the numbers).

It's late and I'll dig through the numbers in more detail tomorrow, but at a high level everything seems to make sense.

Obviously since you're only looking at save percentage (a rate statistic), Brodeur is still being underrated because his ability to play a huge number of games, year after year, is being ignored. In my original thread, I also looked at a couple of stats - goals versus average and goals versus threshold - which, in different ways, give him credit for his durability.

Even before these adjustments, he ranked 14th in career GVA 4th in career GVT - I could easily see him climbing to 10th and 3rd based on his adjusted numbers. He was also just outside the top ten for peak in both metrics, but since there's not a lot of separation, he could climb 3-5 spots pretty quickly.

I had Hall ahead of Brodeur last round, but I'm going to seriously reconsider if that's the right order.

 

[blogofmike]

Phil Esposito

An offensive superstar. Big for Boston during their mini-dynasty. Perhaps my math is off but my ES totals for the Bruins 1970-72 mini-dynasty has Esposito’s playoff R-on at 2.12 (53/25) and Orr’s at 2.09 (67/32). Espo had 37 ES points which seems a tad low compared to other superstar centres who are usually closer to 80% on the eyeball test, so perhaps there were a few free pluses, but I don’t know if it’s red flag low.

Also big for Team Canada where he was without Bobby Hull or Bobby Orr, the two guys who seem to be the source of the big knock against Phil (in that he got to play with them.)

Orr was surprisingly healthy during his prime when it came to not missing games. Still, even in the small sample sizes here: Phil Esposito Without the Orr Factor Phil Esposito is scoring at an Art Ross pace without Bobby Orr in 1968 (which he didn’t actually win), and 1969 and 1973 (which he did actually win). Even in 1974 the non-Orr pace is enough to win a Ross against non-Bruins.

Year	Non-Orr GP	Points	W/ Orr GP	Pts	Non Orr Pace	Actual
1968	27	32	47	52	87	84
1969	9	14	65	112	115	126
1972	2	0	74	133	0	133
1973	15	24	63	106	125	130
1974	4	5	74	140	98	145
Total	57	75	323	542	100	128
1960s	36	46	112	164	94	X
1970s	21	29	211	379	108	X

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

It is also possible that Orr carrying the puck had a push/pull effect on Esposito's scoring. The obvious interpretation has been that Orr scoring is a chance to collect points, but Orr outshooting Esposito (Shot share is just shots between the two of them) doesn't really seem to benefit Phil. In 1970 at least, it's possible that Phil's scoring chances were gobbled up in the opportunity cost of Orr having the puck all the time. Kind of like Lebron James on last year's Cavs.

Espo Pts	Orr Pts	Espo Shots	Orr Shots	Shot Share
84	31	284	173	62.1%
126	64	351	285	55.2%
99	120	405	413	49.5%
152	139	550	392	58.4%
133	117	426	353	54.7%
130	101	411	282	59.3%
145	122	393	384	50.6%
127	135	346	384	47.4%

[TBODY]
[/TBODY]

 

[blogofmike]

Sergei Makarov

One caveat off the bat, is that I don’t see the Soviet League stats translating very well to the NHL context. The Red Army was usually stacked.

1988-89 with Green Unit: 30-8-6, 224 GF / 118 GA
1989-90 with 0.5 of a Kasatonov: 33-9-6, 200 GF / 106 GA

That being said, in the 1981 and 1984 Canada Cups, Makarov and Bossy seemed to be of comparable quality. Of course Makarov outlasted Bossy, had a strong 1987 Canada Cup and when the chance to play in the NHL arrived he added a few solid seasons of being Hakan Loob.

I think Bossy did things that impress me a little more often than Makarov. (See: the playoffs 1980-83). But Makarov is in an odd place where you could liken him to Mike Tyson. Tyson had fewer good opponents in his heyday, but he dominated them with early knockouts. You can only punch the guys they put in front of you right? While I’m currently leaning towards this logic that puts Makarov high, that logic also works for Frank McGee. And in this case he was outscored by Fetisov at the Olympics 33-28 over 22 games, and wasn’t perennially the team’s top scorer at the IIHF World Championships. That’s not too dissimilar from Bossy in the playoffs though, and her certainly passed the eye/stats tests in best-on-best settings.

 

[seventieslord]

Manipulated Save Percentage - and how it applies to Sawchuk, Hall and especially Brodeur - Part II

Let me start by posting the table from the end of part 1:

Ken Dryden	0.9338
Dominik Hasek	0.9319
Tony Esposito	0.9292
Patrick Roy	0.9291
Bernie Parent	0.9264
Martin Brodeur after adjustments	0.9231
Glenn Resch	0.9229
John Vanbiesbrouck	0.922
Jacques Plante	0.9209
Johnny Bower	0.92
Ed Belfour	0.9199
Roberto Luongo	0.9196
Dan Bouchard	0.9194
Real life Martin Brodeur	0.9191
Glenn Hall	0.9188
Tom Barrasso	0.9186
Curtis Joseph	0.9184
Tomas Vokoun	0.9178
Henrik Lundqvist	0.9175
Rogie Vachon	0.9168
Sean Burke	0.9167
Kelly Hrudey	0.9167
Andy Moog	0.9166
Terry Sawchuk	0.9033

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

This table contains the top-23 all-time in peak adjusted save percentage, plus Terry Sawchuk, and a fairly adjusted Martin Brodeur. But I'm just getting started!

Take a look at numbers 1, 3, 5, and 7 on this list - all 1970s goalies. Watered down talent pool thanks to the WHA and fast expansion. Sure, they were great goalies, but comparing them to the league average save percentage really overstates their greatness.

Then, take a look at 9, 10, 15, and... I don't know, 155? Plante, Bower, Hall and Sawchuk were the best statistical goalies of their time but none of them can top the adjusted results of the 1970s goalies. They had to compete against a league average that was usually a HHOF goalie like Worsley, Sawchuk, or Lumley - that's not fair or right. Now I know HO had a system and it's completely sound mathematically and I respect things like that, but anyone who has known me long enough knows I am a fan of fudging and manipulating numbers subjectively to help them "look" right, and this is a case where that is necessary.

First of all, poor Terry Sawchuk. He's taking a kicking in this discussion, and maybe rightfully so, but his peak was hella dominant, and the save percentage era doesn't cover any of that. His first five seasons are probably his best five, and none of them are counted here because they predate regular season save percentage - also, one Jacques Plante season is missing. If I could just find a way to simulate save percentage for five seasons, then the entire careers of two top-6 goalies of all-time would be covered....

...so I did that. This is by no means an exact science, but there is enough information to use to make educated guesses. The NHL of 1950-55 was very similar to the NHL of 1956-60. We had a situation where one team was the best, and they also had the consensus best goalie. We can be certain that he had a very dominant save percentage, but also certain that his dominant team was surrendering fewer shots than the league average. And the total number of league goals was quite consistent from 1950 right through 1957, so you can expect that the total shots taken would have been as well. As it turned out, while I was manipulating the figures, I had to walk a fine line between making the league's SOG/60 averages abnormally low, and pumping up the league's average sv% to abnormally high figures. I ended up with league average save percentages of 91.01, 91.38, 91.84, 91.76, and 91.44.

I then assigned Sawchuk a workload in each season similar to what Jacques Plante, starter on the most dominant team from 1956-1960 had, and from there gave him save percentages of .9266, .9293, .9300, .9295, and .9298. I believe this is consistent with a goalie who would win the 1st or 2nd all-star team spot in each of these seasons. This was also quite conservative, because out of all pre-expansion 50-game seasons, these were just the 11th, 14th, 17th, 25th and 26th best seasons posted by any goalie. Then again, Plante had 5 in that range, Hall had 7, Bower had 4 and Worsley had 3 (and Giacomin and Hodge one apiece), so that seems fair. Still, I'm revisiting this, because intuitively, Sawchuk was thought to have the best peak of the era... doesn't mean he needs to put up all of the best five seasons ever, but his best placing higher than 11th would be a start.

(ten minutes later)... took a look at those seasons and noticed that scoring was 10% higher in 56-60 than it was in 51-55, so since I have no idea if it was because goalies were stopping more shots, or there were fewer shots, I manipulated shot totals to the point where they were 50% responsible, and save percentages accounted for the rest.

As you can imagine, this did wonders for Sawchuk's adjusted save percentage. I'd show you, but that was an intermediate step and I didn't save that step like I did for Brodeur.

The next major manipulation I did, was to subjectively change the "league average" save percentages every season to better reflect the competition level among goalies. I didn't go by any special formula, I simply went case-by-case.

In 1951-1955, I bumped the average down similar to how I did in 1956-1967 (see below)
In 1956-1967, I bumped the league average down to be approximately in-between the lowest starting goalie and the 2nd-lowest. This is done so that adjusted SP now shows how a goalie compared to the 5th-6th best goalie, instead of the 3rd-4th (which makes a world of difference)
In 1968-1972, I did nothing. There were 12 teams and a platoon system, so plenty of decent goalies with only one major league to play in. The league was not watered down. (Competition level by division is an issue, but adjusting for that would likely be a nightmare)
In 1973-1979, I bumped the league average up to be approximately 1/3 of the way up the list instead of right in the middle. The league expanded too quickly, and the best WHA goalies could have played in the NHL, keeping the really bad ones (who hurt the league average) out of games. Goalies compared to this horrible league average look too good.
In 1980-2018, I did nothing. There have been 21-31 teams, the NHL was again the only top pro league, and if you want to say it was watered down in the first half of the 80's, I wouldn't disagree, but it was nothing compared to the mid-late 70s. In 1985, in theory the worst goalie in the league was the 42nd best in north america. In 1977, the 60th best north american goalie could get playing time in the NHL.

This had the effect of making Plante, Hall, Sawchuk and Bower look better - and it should. They were not that dominant compared to the league average, only because the league average was an impossibly high standard. It also had the effect of making Dryden, Espo, Resch, Parent and Vachon look worse - and again, it should. They tore apart a severely weakened NHL with a league average baseline influenced by some truly terrible goalies.

(in the meantime I managed to make it so that Sawchuk had the 5th, 9th, 20th, and 25th best seasons posted by any goalie before the lockout, better appreciating his early peak while still being conservative).

After all that, here is what I got:

Dominik Hasek	0.9319
Jacques Plante	0.9303
Johnny Bower	0.9294
Patrick Roy	0.9291
Ken Dryden	0.9284
Glenn Hall	0.9283
Tony Esposito	0.9262
Terry Sawchuk after Adjustments	0.9257
Bernie Parent	0.9234
Martin Brodeur after adjustments	0.9231
John Vanbiesbrouck	0.922
Glenn Resch	0.9203
Ed Belfour	0.9199
Roberto Luongo	0.9196
Dan Bouchard	0.9194
Real life Martin Brodeur	0.9191
Tom Barrasso	0.9186
Curtis Joseph	0.9184
Tomas Vokoun	0.9178
Henrik Lundqvist	0.9175
Sean Burke	0.9167
Kelly Hrudey	0.9167
Andy Moog	0.9166
Rogie Vachon	0.9128
Real life Terry Sawchuk	0.9033

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Note that the modern goalies show up at 1, 4, 10, 11. The pre-expansion guys are at 2, 3, 6, and 8. The 70s guys are 5, 7, 9, 12. I think that after these adustments that reflect how difficult their benchmarks were to hit, the fact that they are sprinked among the top-12 with a fairly even distribution tells us that this manipulated adjusted save percentage does treat all goalies equally, by not treating their eras as equal.

This is completely subjective. But you must agree that when Gump Worsley and Terry Sawchuk are league average goalies, that's not the same as when Wayne Stephenson and Doug Favell are league average.

Except in the case of Johnny Bower (for whom something funny might have been going on), I think the above list does a fair job of ranking these goalies by their peaks. Considering longevity and consistency, I have no problem with putting Brodeur ahead of Parent, Sawchuk and Dryden (and of course, Bower), but for where they all look as peak performers, I like it.

 

[seventieslord]

I agree to no such thing about Kelly Hrudey.

And I imagine I'm jumping the gun, because there is a part 2 (I presume), but I'm guessing Sawchuk is probably playing with his 6th best to 12th best seasons here.

well you're wrong about Kelly hrudey.

But yes that's obviously correct about Sawchuk.

 

[seventieslord]

This is a great post - the kind of post that we should be referring to years from now as a starting point for any serious discussion about Brodeur. (You did pretty much what I was hoping you'd do when examining the numbers).

It's late and I'll dig through the numbers in more detail tomorrow, but at a high level everything seems to make sense.

Obviously since you're only looking at save percentage (a rate statistic), Brodeur is still being underrated because his ability to play a huge number of games, year after year, is being ignored. In my original thread, I also looked at a couple of stats - goals versus average and goals versus threshold - which, in different ways, give him credit for his durability.

Even before these adjustments, he ranked 14th in career GVA 4th in career GVT - I could easily see him climbing to 10th and 3rd based on his adjusted numbers. He was also just outside the top ten for peak in both metrics, but since there's not a lot of separation, he could climb 3-5 spots pretty quickly.

I had Hall ahead of Brodeur last round, but I'm going to seriously reconsider if that's the right order.

I'm not sure if the durability thing is a big deal. Other goalies getting injured is a factor, I agree, but for the most part, the elite goalies all stayed healthy, and who's to say they couldn't have played 70-75 games if their teams just figured out, like New Jersey figured out early on, that if you have a wagon you ride it because they can handle it?