The value of good goaltending is widely and sometimes
heavily discussed. The mainstream opinion is that good goaltending is
essential, a good goaltender is 50% of the team-success. My personal opinion is
a bit more reserved to this. I think if you want to be a contender you need to
have at least average goaltending but not necessarily top-goaltending (there
are historically and in the present a lot of world-wide examples of
championship-teams with average goaltending). And what about the myth of the
Mr.50%? I just don’t “eat” this, this is exaggerated. However: In any case as a
team-responsible manager you always have to try to find the best goalie
possible... the big question is: For what price?
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Goalie is the most improved position in hockey in the
last 10 years. In the last NHL-season the average save-percentage was as high
as 91.4%! The best number ever! I guess - however, I didn’t check it to be
honest - we have very similar results in minor- and European pro-leagues. Thank’s
to a lot of very good goalie-coaches and analysts all over the hockey-planet we
never had such a big amount of good goalies and more is to come! If you dig
deeper in the NHL-goalie-stats you’ll find out very soon that the difference
between the best goalies and the approx. No.100 ranked goalies is smaller than
ever. This is the sweet truth for hockey-goalies: You are playing the game on a
very high level, easily the highest level ever. The depth of good goalies is
also better than ever! Dropping some examples and names: Calvin Pickard, COL, started as the No.3 goalie in the Avs
depth-chart and put on the best numbers so far. CHI goalie Corey Crawford got injured and the No. 2 Antti Raanta needs a rest? Depth-chart No.4 goalie Scott Darling takes over and puts on a show, save-percentage-numbers
around 93% and this in the handful NHL-games as well as in close to a dozen
AHL-games.
ever heard of Scott Darling before the start of this season?
The Winnipeg Jets have a goalie-problem with their supposed to be No.1
Ondrej Pavelec? Their No.2-4-goalies
Michael Hutchinson, Connor Hellebuyck and very young Eric Comrie are just brilliant in
whatever league they are playing. They have three very good goalies awaiting to
take over... There are more expamples like that in the NHL but here comes some from
Europe, from Switzerland: The ZSC Lions did lose in the last couple of years Tim Wolf, Melvin Nyffeler and Lukas
Meili to other teams because the No.1-goalie position seemed to be fixed in
stone for years to come in Zurich. So one could guess that their goalie-pipeline is
more or less dry after three losses within the last couple of years. Not so
fast: Their No.1-goalie Lukas Flüeler
had some small injuries here and there and couldn’t play for a couple of weeks
alltogether. Veteran Urban Leimbacher,
a B-leauge-goalie did take over for a couple of games, youngster Niklas Schlegel (picture)
and Luca Boltshauser for another handful of games... and the result?
Not really a big difference for the ZSC-Lions. All these replacement-goalies
did do an average to good or even in some cases a very good job. Similar things
happened in Geneva. Their 1st and 2nd goalie were out because of injuries and a
no-name-goalie did arrive for temporarily relief, performed very solid and
Geneva had the same or maybe even better results than with their
regular-goalies.
So what does this mean? And now we come closer to the
bitter truth for hockey-goalies: The competition for the goalie-position was
never as tough as nowadays and there is no reason why this will change soon in
the future (again thank’s to excellent goalie-coaches worldwide). As a
team-responsible you will start to think twice to pay high-end money to a
goalie because if you can’t sign him you just take the next best and you know
the next best is just slightly worse – if any – than the prime-target... but
the prime-target, respectively their agents, need to start to become careful in
terms of looking for 7 or 8 Mio deals per year for their goalie-clients,
talking in NHL-numbers. The GM might refuse it, even if the goalie is really
high-end. Personally I strongly believe that in future we will see less goalies
with 7 or 8 Mio-contracts in the NHL and possibly the same goes for high-end
goalies in the European leagues, of course with converting these numbers to
local standards.
So, the bitter-sweet outlook for goalies is: You never
did play the game better than now, you goalies did improve your plays really a
lot... and all this will lead into a little bit smaller salaries. Strange logic
for the ones who just think with their technical hockey brain. Clear logic if
you follow your economical brain. The market is talking, also in hockey!
Thomas Roost Horgen,
7th December 2014
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