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A Goalie Comparison Tool and What it Tells us about New Jersey Devils

ByTyler Kelley|
RALEIGH, NC - FEBRUARY 18: Eddie Lack
RALEIGH, NC - FEBRUARY 18: Eddie Lack

Over the past week with a lot of help from some great people on Twitter, I’ve put stats from Corsica.Hockey into a tableau that can be used for side-by-side comparisons of NHL goalies.

The days of evaluating goalies based off Wins, SV%, and GAA are long gone.  Or at least they should be.  There’s still a ton of data I want to add to this viz, specifically Cole Anderson’s data from CrowdScoutSports.com

Here’s a link for the Comparison Tool.

Goalies have to have played at least 200 minutes and I recently decided to change from only 5v5 stats to all situations.

Corsica.Hockey has a glossary that goes over each stat briefly and ingoalmag.com also put out a great article breaking down the different SV%’s.

With the help of CJ Turtoro, who writes for AATJ and actually recently wrote about the Devils goalie situation, all of these stats were converted to percentiles.  Hovering over the graph allows you to view the actual statistics that the goalie has posted.

Before I get into the Viz i’d like to thank CJ and Matt Barlowe.  Both were really helpful in me getting this viz together and it pretty much wouldn’t exist without the assistance and guidance they provided me.  Matt has some really good tutorials available, I specifically used his tableau tutorial to get started, and he does some awesome analytics work.

The numbers are simpler than they may seem and I’ll go over it really quickly in case you chose not to check out the Corsica glossary or the ingoalmag article, both of which I strongly suggest.

The stats listed in the viz are:
SV%, xSV%, dSV%, GSAA, HDSV%, MDSV%, and LDSV%.

SV% is simple enough.  It’s been the most common tool to evaluate goalies as long as I can remember.

xSV%: There’s a very in-depth explanation on Hockey Graphs of xSV% that I’d again strongly suggest reading.

GSAA: Goals Saved Above Average is almost as simple as it sounds.  A negative number basically means a goalie lets in more goals than they should and anything positive can be viewed as good.

And finally, HD, MD, and LDSV’s are saves broken into different zones.  The InGoalMag article I linked earlier has a great explanation of that.

Since this is a New Jersey Devils site, let’s talk about using this tool to evaluate the Devils goalies this year and last year.

Cory Schneider

First, we’ll address Cory Schneider.  As we all know, Schneider had a down year last year and it’s clear he’s bounced back.  However, I still see a decent amount of people claiming Schneider isn’t very good.  Feel free to use this tool to compare him to any elite goalie.  He’s certainly not a Vezina Trophy candidate, but he’s easily a top 12 starting goalie meaning he’s well above average.

I actually did a completely scientific twitter poll asking for people’s opinions of who the top 10 goalies in the NHL were.  Holtby was included in almost every single one and is a solid comparable to Schneider.

The only category that Schneider is below average is LDSV%.  Putting it simply, Cory Schneider is still a great goalie.  But at this point we should all know that and we can now move on.

The Curious Case of Keith Kinkaid

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One thing I’ve noticed in comparing back up goalies numbers season to season is that there is truly a ton of volatility.  Still, explaining Kinkaid’s drop off from a top end backup to this year isn’t necessarily easy.  Earlier this year when Cory Schneider had a minor injury, I even wrote that I didn’t think losing Schneider for a short period would hurt too much.  Kinkaid had a great year last year, and there was no reason to believe that would change this year.  I’ll key on a few things.

First, both his LDSV% and MDSV%’s have plummeted.  These are the areas where he’ll see a majority of his shots from. Since they have the biggest drops, they have the biggest hit on his overall numbers.  His HDSV% is still in the same ball park so the question is then why have those numbers dropped?

The answer could simply be a confidence issue or maybe the goaltending coach change impacted Kinkaid.  Either way, there was a significant drop in play, however, his recent performance against Carolina was a great sign.

Eddie Lack

Lack’s overall numbers this year leave a lot to be desired, but his overall performance in New Jersey has been good.  He was great this weekend against Tampa, and I’d expect he’ll get at least a game this week unless Schneider comes back.

Lack was slightly below average in Carolina last year and had a bad start in Calgary this year, but has looked rejuvenated since he joined the Devils.  That’s on and off the ice.

Here are some looks to my favorite Vizzes available:

CJ has a zone entry viz here.

Andi Duroux has a player comparison tool here.

And Bill Comeau has his SKATR comparison tool here.

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