Sports

With the Sharks announcing that they will not be resigning Evgeni Nabokov, the big question is who will they sign?

Usually, when we talk about goalie performance we talk about overall season GAA and SV%. But I don’t like these aggregate numbers. Common wisdom is you want a goalie who can give you a chance to win every game. To me, that means a goalie who is good enough and is consistent. So how do we measure “good enough” and more importantly how do we measure consistency.

From a statistical point of view, looking at the distribution of a goalie’s save percentage over the course of a season is far more interesting than looking at an aggregate save percentage. A distribution shows me how many good games a goalie had and how many bad games a goalie had. By looking at the mean, median and standard deviation, I can get an idea of what I can expect from a goalie night after night.

For example, compare Nabby’s distribution to Marty Brodeur’s distribution:

The charts represent games played during the regular season. The x-axis shows save percentage and the y axis is number of games.

You can see that Nabby was far more consistent (and better) than Brodeur, despite Brodeur’s 9 shutouts. Now compare Nabby’s stats to Brodeur’s in the table above. The standard deviation is a measure of how spread out the chart is. A smaller standard deviation means a more condensed graph and thus a more consistent goalie. Nabby’s standard deviation is much better than Brodeur’s and around a higher average, meaning he had a higher save percentage in more games.

Now, let’s look at the full table above. Given that we now know that Nabby isn’t coming back. Who should the Sharks pick up based on these stats? The table includes the Sharks 2009-2010 goalies and the Vezina nominees for reference. The bottom section includes the top free-agents available.

Here’s my breakdown:

The numbers (along with common wisdom) show that Turco is the best free-agent goalie – and I think he would be the best fit for the Sharks. However, he’ll come at the highest price. If DW can convince him that a chance at a championship is more valuable than money at this point in his career, then he’s the best option for the Sharks. But if Turco goes for the money, well the Sharks have lots of other options.

Emery is the most consistent (after Turco) and is also young so has more upside potential compared to most of the goalies on the list. As far as investing in the goalie position, I think he is the best option on the open market. But again, he might cost too much. Theodore has the next best stats and also could be a good fit.

Toskala just doesn’t have the numbers. I’d argue Mason, Ellis and Biron are too inconsistent. But that’s based on this table alone – one season does not make a goalie.

My preference would be to spend no more than $3.5 million in cap space on a goalie and go after Turco, Emery and Theodore in that order.

If we can’t land any of those three at that price, I’d prefer we go after a trade or let the kids share the games and pick up a better goalie later after the season starts.

The last thing we should do is throw big money at an inconsistent goalie.

Tags: #nabokov, biron, brodeur, bryzgalov, cmason, ellis, emery, greiss, iller, sharks, theodore, toskala, turco

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Armchair GM, Patterns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.