The Puck Stops Here

In my look at sabermetrics and hockey, so far I have presented a hall of fame monitor for forwards and defenders. These formulas were first presented by pnep on hfboards.com.

Goaltenders are the hardest of the three positions to evaluate statistically. Most goalie stats are strongly biased by the team the goalie plays on. Good teams win lots of games, yet wins are considered a key goalie stats. Teams that allow few shots and few good scoring chances tend to have goalies with lots of shutouts and low goals against averages. These stats which are highly team dependant are used to evaluate goalies. Even saves percentage is biased by the team the goalie plays on. If a team allows lots of low quality shots, their goalie will tend to have a high saves percentage. Further, GAA's and saves percentages of goalies have changed dramatically in different eras of the NHL. Its not easy to analyze goalie stats in any meaningful way, but nevertheless here is pnep's attempt.

His hall of fame monitor formula for goalies is:

"HHOF Monitor" formula for Goalies =
Adjusted Wins/5 +
Adjusted (W-L)/2 +
2* Adjusted PO Wins +
Cup - 50 pts +
Final - 25 pts +
All Star Games - 20 pts +
Calder - 150 pts +
Calder Runner Up - 70 pts +
1 ALL STAR TEAM - 125 pts +
2 ALL STAR TEAM - 100 pts +
Vezina - 100 pts +
Vezina Runner Up - 75 pts +
Jennings - 50 pts +
Jennings Runner Up - 30 pts +
Conn Smythe - 200 pts +
LESTER PEARSON - 300 pts +
Hart - 250 pts +
Hart Runner Up - 200 pts

Shutouts, GAA and saves percentage are for the most part ignored in this formulation. The highly team dependant stats of wins and losses are used. This will lead to selection of goalies who played on good teams. Wins and losses are adjusted for length of season. The first two lines of this formula effectively give us adjusted wins * 0.7 - adjusted losses * 0.5. Good goalies who played on great teams for long periods of tgime will benefit the most. Goalies on weaker teams will be underrepresented. Again, there is strong weight given to award winners and all star appearances. This is including other people's opinions, when sometimes those opinions are incorrect. Trophies are worth more for goalies then they are for position players. All star game appearances are included for goalies when they are not for position players. Also, it is interesting how the Jennings and Vezina trophies are treated. Until 1981, the Vezina trophy was given to the goalie(s) on the team with the berst goals against average. In 1982, they started up the Jennings trophy for this and began voting for the Vezina winners. Winning a Jennings trophy in 1982 is worth half of a Vezina trophy in 1981 (despite the fact they were effectively the same thing). This is probably done to give points to earlier era goalies, but it is a clear discrepancy. This kind of problem comes from assigning points to trophy winners instead of assigning points for play on the ice only (sometimes the points on the ice should show that the person who won the award was not the most deserving candidate). Again, these formulations are going to benefit goalies who held on after their primes were over and played long careers. Retired players get no points, but equivalent players who did not retire and are hanging on beyond their useful years still will accumulate points.

Here are the top 10 goalies of all time by this formulation:

1. Patrick Roy 3235.65
2. Dominik Hasek 3221.51
3. Glenn Hall 3155.64
4. Jacques Plante 3036.20
5. Terry Sawchuk 2756.29
6. Ken Dryden 2564.97
7. Frank Brimsek 2083.45
8. Bill Durnan 2049.78
9. Martin Brodeur 1966.82
10. Tony Esposito 1802.66

In order to get on this list, it is OK to be a goalie who played a short career, as long as you played on an elite team. There are two biases on tghis list. Long careers and great teams. A better sabermetric analysis would do a better job of remove these two biases. Nevertheless, this is a list of ten very good goalies.