OTF Classic

Today's analysis was inspired by a comment left here by Magicpie over at Nucksblog , who wondered whether some NHL goaltenders perform better when they face more shots. That's certainly part of the Common Wisdom of hockey, and when asked, just about every goaltender admits that facing frequent pressure helps them stay focused. But in the final analysis, does this really hold true? I went back through the game-by-game details for #1 goaltenders over the last two full seasons, to find out which guys fare better facing a ton of shots, and which ones wilt under the pressure. The measurements presented in the graphs below represent Save Percentage for each game, measured against the average Time Between Shots that the goalie faced, with a trendline in bold summarizing that relationship across an entire season. A line that slopes downward to the right shows that as the Time Between Shots becomes shorter, the Save Percentage tends to increase. An upward sloping line indicates a Save ...

Last week I dug into the offensive end of NHL shootouts, so now we need to give the goaltenders their due. As we consider goaltender success during the shootout, a significant aspect to contend with is the quantity of Missed Shots (roughly one out of eight shootout attempts misses the net entirely). Within the table below, I'm including them in a "Stop Pct.", since by definition, Missed Shots aren't included in a goaltender's regular save percentage. When it comes to the shootout, however, I'm inclined to give the netminder some credit for forcing the shooter into an untenable option. So let's get to the results, including the 2005-06 season, and this year up through the games of February 4: Top 10 SO Goalies by Stop Pct. Goaltender SO Attempts SO Goals Saves Missed Stop Pct. Marc Denis, TBL 32 5 24 3 .844 Kari Lehtonen, ATL 39 7 28 4 .821 Henrik Lundqvist, NYR 63 12 40 11 .810 Rick DiPietro, NYI 67 16 48 3 .761 Tim Thomas, BOS 54 13 39 2 .759 Pascal LeCla...