I’ll confess a certain level of amusement over the handwringing going on in the comments here, when it’s blatantly obvious that the biggest impediment to the Flames reaching the playoffs last season was a player that has received no mention at all. It’s a bit odd, really, that people are willing to agonize over the mediocre play of middling types like Stajan while never, ever discussing the elephant in the room.
The primary reason the Calgary Flames watched the playoffs from the comfort of their homes was the substandard play of their number one goaltender, full stop. Miikka Kiprusoff seems to get an astonishing amount of slack from the local media and fans, but even a cursory examination of his 5v5 work last year should have given people the hint. The Flames were one of the stingiest teams in the league 5v5, allowing shots at a rate of 27.5 per 60, 4th best overall, and yet somehow finished 16th in 5v5 goals against.
I’ve collected a wide range of data from Hockey Analysis to show just how badly served the skaters on the Flames were by their alleged elite goalie last year. First, here are the 5v5 shots for/against percentages for the regular goalies in the league when they were in net. I’ve included everyone that played at least 1500 minutes at 5v5 in 2011/12, covering 32 goalies, with the major starters and 1A types captured.
| Shots % | Shots % | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ELLIS, DAN | 0.539 | 17 | BRYZGALOV, ILYA | 0.497 |
| 2 | CRAWFORD, COREY | 0.533 | 18 | LUNDQVIST, HENRIK | 0.493 |
| 3 | BRODEUR, MARTIN | 0.532 | 19 | ELLIOTT, BRIAN | 0.492 |
| 4 | NIEMI, ANTTI | 0.529 | 20 | RINNE, PEKKA | 0.490 |
| 5 | FLEURY, MARC-ANDRE | 0.528 | 21 | ROLOSON, DWAYNE | 0.488 |
| 6 | KIPRUSOFF, MIIKKA | 0.524 | 22 | BUDAJ, PETER | 0.485 |
| 7 | HOWARD, JIMMY | 0.519 | 23 | PAVELEC, ONDREJ | 0.484 |
| 8 | LUONGO, ROBERTO | 0.514 | 24 | VOKOUN, TOMAS | 0.484 |
| 9 | PRICE, CAREY | 0.514 | 25 | ANDERSON, CRAIG | 0.480 |
| 10 | MILLER, RYAN | 0.513 | 26 | WARD, CAM | 0.472 |
| 11 | HALAK, JAROSLAV | 0.512 | 27 | LEHTONEN, KARI | 0.466 |
| 12 | NEUVIRTH, MICHAL | 0.507 | 28 | DUBNYK, DEVAN | 0.462 |
| 13 | QUICK, JONATHAN | 0.506 | 29 | REIMER, JAMES | 0.460 |
| 14 | BOBROVSKY, SERGEI | 0.504 | 30 | KHABIBULIN, NIKOLAI | 0.459 |
| 15 | THOMAS, TIM | 0.500 | 31 | HILLER, JONAS | 0.452 |
| 16 | MASON, STEVE | 0.498 | 32 | BACKSTROM, NIKLAS | 0.433 |
| 5v5 SV% | 5v5 SV% | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | THOMAS, TIM | .949 | 17 | MILLER, RYAN | .926 |
| 2 | RINNE, PEKKA | .935 | 18 | QUICK, JONATHAN | .925 |
| 3 | LUONGO, ROBERTO | .934 | 19 | ROLOSON, DWAYNE | .924 |
| 4 | REIMER, JAMES | .933 | 20 | ANDERSON, CRAIG | .921 |
| 5 | BRYZGALOV, ILYA | .933 | 21 | DUBNYK, DEVAN | .921 |
| 6 | NIEMI, ANTTI | .931 | 22 | VOKOUN, TOMAS | .920 |
| 7 | BACKSTROM, NIKLAS | .931 | 23 | NEUVIRTH, MICHAL | .919 |
| 8 | PRICE, CAREY | .930 | 24 | HALAK, JAROSLAV | .918 |
| 9 | HILLER, JONAS | .930 | 25 | KIPRUSOFF, MIIKKA | .917 |
| 10 | WARD, CAM | .929 | 26 | HOWARD, JIMMY | .915 |
| 11 | LUNDQVIST, HENRIK | .929 | 27 | BUDAJ, PETER | .914 |
| 12 | LEHTONEN, KARI | .929 | 28 | MASON, STEVE | .912 |
| 13 | PAVELEC, ONDREJ | .928 | 29 | BRODEUR, MARTIN | .911 |
| 14 | CRAWFORD, COREY | .928 | 30 | ELLIS, DAN | .907 |
| 15 | BOBROVSKY, SERGEI | .927 | 31 | KHABIBULIN, NIKOLAI | .901 |
| 16 | FLEURY, MARC-ANDRE | .927 | 32 | ELLIOTT, BRIAN | .900 |
That really isn’t up to snuff for a goalie that’s carrying the 5th highest cap hit amongst goalies, at least in my view. As an aside, a drop of one percent is likely worth about 12-15 goals against 5v5 for a regular goalie, since most of the main guys face between 1200-1500 5v5 shots.
Now, one of the common refrains is that the Flames ran up shot totals when they were chasing the game. With that noted, here are the shots for/against % when the game was tied for the same approximate cohort of goalies. For these next two tables, I’m using the filter of 750 5v5 tied minutes played during 2011/12 on Hockey Analysis, which gives me 27 goalies in total:
| Shots % | Shots % | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | HOWARD, JIMMY | 0.547 | 15 | ELLIOTT, BRIAN | 0.503 |
| 2 | BRODEUR, MARTIN | 0.544 | 16 | QUICK, JONATHAN | 0.501 |
| 3 | CRAWFORD, COREY | 0.544 | 17 | BRYZGALOV, ILYA | 0.499 |
| 4 | BOBROVSKY, SERGEI | 0.537 | 18 | PAVELEC, ONDREJ | 0.492 |
| 5 | FLEURY, MARC-ANDRE | 0.532 | 19 | VOKOUN, TOMAS | 0.491 |
| 6 | KIPRUSOFF, MIIKKA | 0.530 | 20 | LUNDQVIST, HENRIK | 0.490 |
| 7 | NIEMI, ANTTI | 0.529 | 21 | ROLOSON, DWAYNE | 0.489 |
| 8 | THOMAS, TIM | 0.526 | 22 | NEUVIRTH, MICHAL | 0.478 |
| 9 | RINNE, PEKKA | 0.525 | 23 | ANDERSON, CRAIG | 0.465 |
| 10 | LUONGO, ROBERTO | 0.518 | 24 | HILLER, JONAS | 0.462 |
| 11 | MILLER, RYAN | 0.513 | 25 | WARD, CAM | 0.460 |
| 12 | MASON, STEVE | 0.506 | 26 | LEHTONEN, KARI | 0.454 |
| 13 | PRICE, CAREY | 0.506 | 27 | BACKSTROM, NIKLAS | 0.424 |
| 14 | HALAK, JAROSLAV | 0.505 |
Again, Miikka wasn’t all that hard done by. The Flames actually controlled more of the shots when the game was tied than overall, and Kipper had the 6th best support of his peer group. Honestly, if your team is sporting a 53% shots for/against ratio when the game is tied, average goaltending should do the trick unless you have a season like New Jersey where nothing was going in the other team’s net for the first two months. At any rate, here are the SV% numbers in that game state for the same crew of goalies:
| 5v5 tiedSV % | 5v5 tied SV % | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NIEMI, ANTTI | .944 | 15 | QUICK, JONATHAN | .930 |
| 2 | RINNE, PEKKA | .944 | 16 | BACKSTROM, NIKLAS | .927 |
| 3 | WARD, CAM | .940 | 17 | MILLER, RYAN | .926 |
| 4 | HILLER, JONAS | .940 | 18 | FLEURY, MARC-ANDRE | .924 |
| 5 | THOMAS, TIM | .939 | 19 | BRODEUR, MARTIN | .923 |
| 6 | ROLOSON, DWAYNE | .938 | 20 | HOWARD, JIMMY | .923 |
| 7 | ANDERSON, CRAIG | .936 | 21 | LEHTONEN, KARI | .923 |
| 8 | PAVELEC, ONDREJ | .936 | 22 | PRICE, CAREY | .921 |
| 9 | HALAK, JAROSLAV | .935 | 23 | VOKOUN, TOMAS | .921 |
| 10 | BRYZGALOV, ILYA | .935 | 24 | MASON, STEVE | .917 |
| 11 | CRAWFORD, COREY | .935 | 25 | NEUVIRTH, MICHAL | .911 |
| 12 | BOBROVSKY, SERGEI | .934 | 26 | KIPRUSOFF, MIIKKA | .910 |
| 13 | LUONGO, ROBERTO | .933 | 27 | ELLIOTT, BRIAN | .906 |
| 14 | LUNDQVIST, HENRIK | .930 |
Oy. When the game was tied, as his team helped him more, he gave them less. The Flames were a middle of the pack SH% team at 5v5 overall and tied, by the way. Kipper had the 14th best SH% support overall and 13th best when the game was tied, so I have a hard time accepting any sort of argument that his team shot nothing but muffins while he faced unstoppable bullets.
What should worry people the most is that Miikka Kiprusoff has been underwhelming for several years running by that last metric. I ran a four year composite of SV% for goalies that had played at least 3000 EV tied minutes since 2007/08. There are 19 goalies that met that threshold:
| 07/08 to 10/11 5v5 tied SV% | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RINNE, PEKKA | .941 | |
| 2 | THOMAS, TIM | .937 | |
| 3 | BRODEUR, MARTIN | .935 | |
| 4 | WARD, CAM | .934 | |
| 5 | LUONGO, ROBERTO | .933 | |
| 6 | QUICK, JONATHAN | .931 | |
| 7 | VOKOUN, TOMAS | .930 | |
| 8 | ROLOSON, DWAYNE | .929 | |
| 9 | BACKSTROM, NIKLAS | .929 | |
| 10 | MASON, CHRIS | .928 | |
| 11 | NABOKOV, EVGENI | .928 | |
| 12 | BRYZGALOV, ILYA | .928 | |
| 13 | MILLER, RYAN | .926 | |
| 14 | FLEURY, MARC-ANDRE | .925 | |
| 15 | LUNDQVIST, HENRIK | .925 | |
| 16 | MASON, STEVE | .924 | |
| 17 | KIPRUSOFF, MIIKKA | .919 | |
| 18 | PRICE, CAREY | .919 | |
| 19 | TURCO, MARTY | .913 |
Interesting post, but I have some questions. Specifically about sample size vs skill, shot quality, luck, team.
Before that, I will say that to my eye Kipper didn’t have a great year last year, but neither did the team.
1. Sample size: We’ve got Kipper at .917 for this past season and .925 (6th) for his time in Calgary. I’m not sure why we’re panicking about a .008 difference comparing a small sample to a large one?
2. Shot Quality: According to this article:
http://www.puckprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=540
There is a correlation between the teams doing more outshooting and the higher quality of shots against. Surely, we’ll see outliers, but your list of Howard, Ellis, Kipper, Brodeur, Niemi, Fleury and Crawford and compare them. Niemi appears an outlier and then consider those other goalie’s teams/standings.
Is it a more open game and goalies getting “hung out to dry?”
3. Next, Luck.
according to this article:http://www.puckprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=558
No skill in goaltending, it’s all luck. Perhaps better said there isn’t much disparity in goaltending currently and skill gets you to .900 and the distinction between .900 and .940 is more luck and team together than skill? Or why we need large sample sizes to reduce the noise.
4. Team. Calgary is a middling team with ever decreasing skill on defense and increasing age up front. Now that Regehr is gone to we expect Kipper to be better or worse? As the team gets worse and older, do we really expect Kipper to get younger and better?
If worse, than what does it say about quality of team? Quick back-checking teams seem to eliminate those second and third chances… that doesn’t sound like Calgary.
As well, if we’ve had so many backups over the years and not one has been within reaching distance of Kipper. WHY?
That is the closest control we’ve got the back-up. If Kipper were on Boston (with two goalies with excellent sv%) do we assume his sv% to be the same as on Calgary? On Edmonton? I don’t. Luongo and Schneider same ev sv%
So Karlsson. He sported a .905evsv%. That’s what ~1million dollar goaltending gets us. Why did we re-sign him?
If Kipper is the weakest link, then is Karlsson the weakest, weakest link? But two more years? Surely Irving could do better? Or McL. Or …
Maybe there is more to it than only sv% (the one-stat-small-sample-size-argument). Maybe it has a lot to do with the whole team, shot quality, back pressure and bad luck.
The back-up comment is an interesting one and worth investigation.
That said, what the rest of your questions suggest to me is it doesn’t make any sense to spend 5.83M on goalie.
I think in regards to this team and where it’s headed, that it does not make any sense to spend that kind of money on a goalie.
Yes and No.
I think what we both agree is it makes no sense to pay 5.83M on today’s Miikka Kiprusoff
But when he lead the league three consecutive years in evsv% it sure did, right? Maybe even more money!
It also doesn’t make sense to pay 7 million on today’s Jarome Iginla and 6.5 on today’s Jay Bouwmeester.
As well, we know what 900k goaltending gets us – Karlsson, McL, McClennan
We know what 3 million got us – Toskala.
I’d LOVE it if we could take 2.83 million out of Kipper’s contract and spend it and more on a third defender since we don’t have one, but that’s not reality. Probably Kipper looks at his results and feels like he’s not earn(ING) his money, but certainly feels like he earn(ED) it.
Here’s a question: Who can come in for half the price of Kipper and guarantee a playoff spot on THIS TEAM.
I’d love to have that goalie, but I’m not convinced that goalie exists when he’s placed in Kiprusoff’s skates especially when we just look at a chart of numbers from completely different teams.
I’ll be watching Vokoun and Bryzgalov with a LOT of interest this year.
Shots on goal don’t tell the whole story.In a game against Van last year(Jan 5)we lost 3-1 but out shot them 44-21 and Kent had the scoring chances at 13-10.Luongo padded his stats with 31 easy saves while 1/2 the shots Kipper faced were quality chances.
+1….The problem with looking at sv% and comparing evenly across teams is assuming that all teams are equal environments – an unsafe assumption.
Boston. They allowed 32.7SA/game last year 29th in the league! Are they the 29st best defensive team? They’re worse then the Islanders? No way. I’d assert that not all teams are equal, but how much difference exists: I don’t know!
Comparing sv% across teams should be secondary information to comparing within the team. In fact, against career should preface against other teams.
BOS evsv% – Thomas .947, Rask .925,
VAN evsv% – Luongo .934, Schneider .933
Why are they so high? Cause they’re good teams! Team sv% vs goalie have any value?
Logically, this makes sense. Kipper always plays 10-15 more games than is the goal at the beginning of the season. If he was the weakest link…. then are the coaches insane?
This isn’t Turco getting usurped by Crawford,
This isn’t Huet getting usurped by Niemi, This isn’t Goalie B out playing Kipper. Instead of Kipper preventing us from being in the playoffs, what if Kipper is preventing us from being worse?
Comparing Miikka to any goalie on Boston (or other quality teams) doesn’t really tell us anything except Boston is waaaay better than Calgary even without Thomas in net.
Ok, I already know that.
Robert,
I’ve been reading your articles and what you have to say about the Redhead. I admit I’m a big fan of Kipper, but numbers don’t lie and he’s getting worse.
My question to you is: do you see a big turnaround in his game IF he plays less than 60 games next season, or do you think he’s the next Marty Turco?
That’s the 5.833 million dollar question, I suppose. I don’t think that overwork is really the core issue, but at this point, I’m not sure that playing him 75 games is going to help the Flames all that much from a practical POV, either, so maybe it’s time to see what Kipper would do with a significantly reduced workload. I’d still temper my expectations irrespective of the number of games he plays, though.
I’ll have my thesis on the subject up tomorrow at Matchsticks, but basically I completely agree with you: http://hockeyandbooze.tumblr.com/post/7934611662
Considering these stats, and acknowledging the small small sample size of Henrik Karlosson, is there any way to see if the Calgary Tower would be doing a bettr job? If he can play even 10 more games and have a decent even strength save % that could help significantly.
Great post Robert. Couldn’t agree more. We all loved Kipper for the cup run in ’04 and a run of stellar seasons, but we’ve been in denial for a while.
I was encouraged by the fact Feaster and Sutter said they felt Karlsson could be a starter in the league. Hopefully they give him some extra minutes this season to find out.
I don’t fully disagree with you, but no matter how great the Flames outshoot the opposition, when you end up having the likes of Getzlaf and Perry bearing down on Staios and Mikkelson, Kipper is hard pressed to get defensive support. Outside of Gio and Reggie, our defensemen were pretty laughable last year. I won’t use the lack of back checking forwards either, because it’s hard to compare that against other teams to determine who did and who didn’t have that support. But overall team defense let this team down last year, even with all the bright offensive work this team did.
I think that he was suggesting based on the shootin numbers of the team, that it wasn’t in fact completely inferior defending that was leading to his lackluster numbers. Kipper has been a decreasing asset for a number of years now and people ( read GM ) need to realize it.
Woulda looked good in a Philly uniform……
While much of the discussion with many of the regulars is most often focused on the perceived lack of scoring,the facts don’t support what many seem to feel is the issue with the team.
On the other hand there has been a feeling that without Kipper we would have fared much worse. During the 2010/11 season it became increasingly apparent that contrary to the general fans feeling that the Flames were a team that lacked scoring and was “old and slow” I always contended that the problems resided primarily (but certainly not only)with the quality of goaltending.
Your analysis would appear to bear this out.
I understand why down the stretch this past spring why Brent would rely exclusively on Kipper but I believe that and some key injuries cost the team a more legitimate shot at the post season.
The past 2 years the team missed the playoffs by only a few points and better goaltending would have made the difference.
Kipper is a bit of a “sacred cow” in this city but I think your analysis clearly shows there is a need to begin to move into the post Kipper era, with at least moving to a 1A/1B system barring a major turnaround in his performance.
Ouch Bobby. Very Ouch. Thanks for the persecptive, but why do you think people (Flames fans) think he is so good, if he is so bad?
Oh yeah and this
“Miikka Kiprusoff hasn’t been within hailing distance of elite during the last several seasons.”
isn’t correct. He had elite numbers in 09/10 finishing with a raw .920sv% and a .928evsv%
remember… Toskala (3.5mil) was .880 raw and .902evsv% the same year?
Sure, last year wasn’t elite, but his largest sample (7 years) is .925 and the last two years is .923.
Maybe he is a .923 goalie on Calgary trending down with a team going the same direction. Or maybe he’s slightly worse.
There will be a time when we move beyond Kiprusoff. He’s still given us the Best to 6th best goaltending in the league from 03/04 to today by career numbers.
Last season wasn’t good and hopefully he can bounce back…. but look at the Flames, seriously, I doubt it.
I’ll answer your first two posts in one here. First, given the volume of shots, a 1.0 or .7% difference is considerable. As I said, a regular goalie faces about 1200-1500 5v5 shots in a year, so even at .7%, we’re talking 10 goals against to the bad. That’s worth about 3 points in the standings. How many points did the Flames miss the playoffs by? Oh, right. 3.
Even strictly in the EV-tied state, Kipper faced about 700 shots, so .7% would be an extra 5 goals against just in that phase of the game. And the Flames weren’t worse in 10/11 at EV than 09/10. They were better by a differential of about 1.7 shots/60.
Next, Tom Awad makes a lot of claims re: shot quality that he’s never really been able make good on. Gabe Desjardins openly challenged anyone with a case to take 150 dollars off of him this spring. He still has his dough.
Still, on the off-chance that there is anything to the notion of general shot quality, Chris Boersma is the one person regularly tracking it, and the Flames were 3rd best in the league at EV by that measure , so that’s not really suggesting Kipper was hung out to dry.
I’ll also note that a few folks tried that argument out on Tampa earlier in the year. Amazingly, when they got a decent goalie (Roloson) all that BS about how their system was exposing their goalies dried up, because they now someone that stopped the puck in a competent manner.
In 09/10, Toskala’s Calgary numbers were right in line with Kipper’s, IIRC, but I wouldn’t have bet on that continuing, and no other GM did either. The string of crappy backups might simply suggest that the Flames’ org. might be really terrible at goalie talent assessment. We’ll see about Karlsson. His sample size was pretty small, and he had a poor game very early on against the Avs that smoked his EVSV% for the whole season.
I’m a huge Kipper fan, end of story, and I do agree to some extent with Rain Dogs but I think reality is somewhere in the middle.
Anyone remember that 1st round playoff against Detroit when Playfair was coach and Kipper was absolutely un freaking believable even though we got absolutely pounded in Detroit. He also individually won the 2 games in Calgary to tie the series 2-2 leading to that debacle in game 5 in Detroit.
What does Daryl due that summer, brings in Mike friggin Keenan, one of the worst coaches on the planet from a goalie standpoint. Since then, this analysis totally sums up Kipper.
I believe Kipper can be a money playoff goalie yet, but unfortunately it breaks my heart to say not with the Flames. This guy needs a change and a significant reduction in work load to Karlson is the prelude to a trade next summer (short of any miraculous Flames run in 2011-12).