Halak v Price - What Should the Habs Do?
by Hawerchuk on Apr 27, 2010 9:00 AM EDT
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PrintOh, to have two talented, young goalies. Well, at least it's obvious which of Montreal's goaltenders is better, right?
| Shots | Saves | SV% | |
| Halak | 3250 | 2984 | 918.2 |
| Price | 4525 | 4119 | 910.3 |
We've got 100+ NHL games for each of these guys, and their performance should be converging toward their true talent level. The odds are pretty high that Halak is a better goalie than Price, right?
Not so fast. Price has seen proportionally fewer shots at even-strength than Halak has, so we'd expect his save percentage to be lower. And his PP save percentage is also considerably lower than Halak, which is generally not a persistent phenomenon. Let's look at their even-strength save percentage:
| SV% | Halak | Price |
| EVEN | 924.6 | 921.2 |
| OTHER | 893.2 | 871.4 |
The difference between Halak and Price's performance has been tiny so far. But, given how inefficient the NHL market for goaltenders is, that's probably not how people will see things:
1. They'll look at overall save percentage
2. They'll weight recent performance disproportionately (Halak's .924 SV% in 2009-10 vs Price's .912 SV%)
3. They'll weight playoff performance disproportionately (Halak's .910 vs Price's .895)
In other words, Halak is much more likely to be overvalued by someone than Price is. Even though Halak is probably a slightly better goaltender than Price, the Canadiens should deal Halak in the off-season. Price's value is reduced by poor recent performance, which should (hopefully) allow the Canadiens to sign him to a cheaper contract, and Halak's trade value is higher relative to his abilities.
I suppose this is a situation that paralyzes general managers with fear. They know that they have two good, young goalies, and they can't justify paying both of them to split time in goal. No matter who they deal, it could come back to haunt them if that player hits performance highs for another team. So the key is to get as much as possible in return for the player you deal - and the key to that is dealing the player who is most overvalued.
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I’m not sure if Price’s age, draft pedigree, and WJC performance won’t make up for the difference in performance when tallying up his trade value.
I’m not sure the Habs can go wrong with either guy, but I think they should hang on to both as long as feasible — and, I agree, the key is getting as much as you possibly can out of a trade.
Maybe Gauthier should just wait and see which goalie he gets the best offers for. In the end, the difference may not be all that great.
Of course, then there’s the Montreal situation to consider. The media have already written the Price/Halak story and they don’t like Price very much… and many fans have followed. Whether that should weigh into the decision is another matter, but if they end up trading Halak there might be a bit of a backlash there.
It’s not unheard of for a guy drafted high in the first round and played for Canada in the WJC to get traded for less than his perceived value.
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Can you do something that shows ES SV% by goalie age league wide? It’d be interesting to see.
Price’s career accomplishments by age 22 are very impressive, even if it appears he’s losing ground to the soon to be 25 year old Halak.
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I agree that age is a really important factor. The Contrarian Goaltender looked at goaltender performance by age since the lockout and found that (1) most goalies aren’t in the NHL at that age and (2) those that are generally aren’t very good. I understand that the sample size is pretty small, but those same goalies do improve as they get closer to their prime. Halak is probably a lot closer to his peak value now than Price which makes Price’s case over the long term a little bit stronger. But they are both really good goalies. If I were the Canadiens I would worry less about which guy to trade and more about which guy is willing to sign with my team at a good price. After the playoffs are over I’d be putting together a long term contract for slightly less than what I think each guy is worth to see if one of them is willing to sign and become my number one goalie.
by Scott Reynolds on Apr 27, 2010 12:00 PM EDT up reply actions
Yeah, Habs fans panicking over this should remember that the team is going to come out of this exercise with at least one good goalie on the roster.
I put up my data as a Fanpost.
http://www.behindthenethockey.com/2010/4/27/1448204/beating-save-percentage-to-death
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by DoctorMyBrainHurts on Apr 27, 2010 11:17 PM EDT up reply actions
To some degree, wouldn’t it be expected that there would be a slope of 0 if we were using all goalies that played in the NHL as singular datapoints? I think it would largely be a result of a selection bias in the sample group as GMs favor goalies good enough to play in the NHL.
Here is my thinking … there is a realistic upper bound as to how high a goalie’s save percentage can be – i.e. going beyond .930 is extremely difficult. Additionally, we can assume that GMs have some minimum standard of how good a goalie must be before they’ll actually dress them for a game – it seems that it’s hard for a goalie to stay in the NHL with a save percentage below .890. Thus, we are already working with a very tight range of save percentages for goalies in the NHL – in what I described, we’re talking a range of performance of about 4%. Imagine all players scored between 47 and 50 goals each year – in one sense, that’s a wider distribution in performance than what we see in goalie save percentages.
Additionally, with this tight range, any goalie that may show a drop off is likely to be removed from the dataset even if he is willing to play. A retiree like Kolzig springs to mind as far as being forced to retire. On the other hand, he’s someone who could be evidence that there is a minimal decrease with age as well.
Brainstorming out loud (ok, brainstorming by typing) here, but I think to test whether or not age impacts save percentage, you would have to do a comparison of a keeper’s save percentage in any year to his peak season, let’s call it “Percent of peak performance.” If you plotted Percent of peak performance versus age, that might be lead to some further insight.
However, save percentages league-wide have been rising over the last 30 years, at least some of which is due to a change in equipment and the style of game. To account for this, maybe you also have to compare their save percentage in a year to the league average as well. That may be over-complicating the analysis though.
4% performance range? The best goalies allow goals on just 7% of the shots they face. You gotta hit 11% to stay in the league. That’s 30% performance range!
I think you are still describing a 4% range – 4 goals out of 100 shots (i.e. 4%).
Save percentage is already a percentage, so over the course of 100 shots, there is a range of 4% in the performance of top goalies to bottom goalies (89% of saves vs 93%). Even looking at goals, there is still a 4% range in the performance of goalies (7% of goals versus 11%).
At the same time, even a 30% range is not that big compared to the range of performances we see elsewhere in the league. Crosby and Ovechkin led the NHL with 51 goals. Fewer than 10 players were within 15% of that total.
There’s no precise definition of the performance range, but in any meaningful sense of the term Hawerchuk is correct and it’s a 30% performance range, and possibly more. Say there was 1 goaltender who is a god, his save percentage is always 1.000. Could you say with a straight face that there was only an 11% difference between him and the 0.890 guy?
I don’t want to get into a semantic argument and I even stated that if you work off of a 30% performance range, that still is not much compared to other positions in hockey. However, when you make statements that imply insults (i.e. I don’t know the meaningful definition of percent) than I feel the need to go down that path.
While there may not be a precise definition of performance range, there clearly is a precise definition of save percentage. Save percentage refers to the number of saves per 100 shots.
If you agree that there is a precise definition for save percentage, then the difference between a goalie with a 1.000 save percentage and a goalie with a .890 save percentage is 11%. One goalie will allow 11 goals per 100 shots. The other goalie will allow 0 goals per 100 shots. Per 100 shots, the difference is 11. Thus, goalie 1 is 11% better than goalie 2.
If you disagree that there is a precise definition for save percentage, then I can see your point that there is a wider range of performance than 11%.
Again, this is completely beside the point – even if you consider a 30% performance range, that is still incredibly tight.
In other words, Halak is much more likely to be overvalued by someone than Price is.
It would be interesting to see if goaltenders with similar experience levels tend to have Halak-like stats, or Price-like stats.
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I think young goalies who split time early in their careers. Probably not a ton of choices there though.
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by red army line on Apr 27, 2010 11:05 AM EDT up reply actions
Im saying – would other goalies’ stats at 100+ games be closer to Halak’s stats (ie .918 total, .924 at ES), or Price (.921 total, .910 ES). I guess my question is – do we know which one is closer to the expected norm? Maybe Halak isnt overvvalued, compared to the expected norm. Maybe he’s were he should be, and maybe Price isn’t undervalued – he’s actually below where he should be.
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do we really know that there is much less repeatability of pp sv% than ev sv ? id guess that pp sv is more dependent on team performance than ev sv% and that could be causing year-to-year variational problems that you dont see at evens, but i think we have to assume that 1) some goalies are better than others than stopping the puck on the kill, 2) ev goaltending ability is probably the a good indicator of pk goaltending ability, and 3) pk goaltending ability is enormously important.
right, but how much of that is because teams’ pk units vary from year to year (or other team dependent issue) and how much of it is just that there’s more randomness and smaller sample size on the pk? if, on the same team, one goalie has a higher ev sv% than the other, and also has a disproportionately better pk sv % as well, should we just throw out the latter when evaluating the two goalies?
the above comment wasnt entirely clear, but the whole thing w pp sv% repeatability seems to me to be making the statement that there’s going to be a more intense regression to the mean with a smaller sample size (which is fairly obvious). is there anything else going on with pp sv % repeatability and the decision to ignore it that i am missing?
i think that’s fair, but i dont think it leaves us in a great position of evaluating goaltending if we assume that some goaltenders are better (if only very very slightly) at stopping the puck on the pk than others, and that it’s important to be able to identify that.
Yes, PPSV% isn’t broken into 5v4, 5v3 and 4v3. These situations are not equally dangerous. Getting a bit more 5v3 is a huge issue. Also, the amount of time spent in each of these situations is unrelated to a goaltender’s true talent.
Let’s say that we think Price is a 921 goalie and Halak a 924 at even-strength, and that they have the same relative difference at SH (say 893 vs 888). Let’s then assume that they each get the same amount of time at SH (unlike the last few years, where Price has had way more.) If this seems like a reasonable scenario, then we have lost zero precision in our analysis by considering only ES SV%.
agreed with all that. my only further thought would be that a goalie’s ability qua goaltending should be magnified while penalty killing relative to evens because more of the play is around them and dependent on what they do. i could be wrong on that, but that makes intuitive sense to me. so whatever it is that makes halak .924/.921 better at evens than price should make him more than .924/921 better than price on the kill. if that’s the case, you do lose a little by only considering es sv%. i imagine it would be hard to do bc of sample sizes and controlling for 5v4, 5v3 and 4v3, but my guess would be that es sv% would be more concentrated the mean for nhl goalies, and pp sv% would show more distribution, which, i think, would support my theory.
I don’t think anyone has found utility or predictive value in SHSV% so far, but I am all ears when someone does.
It seems to repeat as well as EV SV% when sample size (i.e. number of shots faced) is controlled for.
I remember fiddling around with the numbers about a year ago, and that was my finding, although I never posted anything to that effect. If I recall correctly, I looked at the EV SV% and PK SV% of individual goaltenders over a two or three year sample, and then correlated those figures with EV SV% and PK SV% over the following two or three years.
The strength of the correlation was about the same, although that may have been an artifact of the specific sample of goaltenders that I looked at.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that team PK SV% appears to be at least as sustainable as team EV SV%.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that team PK SV% appears to be at least as sustainable as team EV SV%.
Sustainable over the same number of shots, you mean? We don’t want to give people the impression that the PKSV% over the first 40 games is as sustainable as the EVSV%.
In fact, the strength of the correlation is about the same, even before sample size effects are accounted for.
I looked at team PK SV% and EV SV% in a randomly selected group of 40 games, and then looked at the correlation between those values and team PK SV% and EV SV% over another randomly selected group of 40 games (as selected from the 42 remaining games).
I did this for every season between 2003-04 and 2009-10. For each season, I averaged the correlation over 1000 simulations.
For PK SV%, the average correlation was 0.21. For EV SV%, the average correlation was 0.27. However, for EV SV% with the score tied, the average correlation was only 0.11 (partly due to the reduced sample size, I assume).
I plan to throw up a post on this shortly.
Price’s value is reduced by poor recent performance
That was the scuttlebutt after each of Price’s first two seasons, when he melted down in the playoffs both times. Halak’s postseason performance is far superior to date (Halak now .928 to Price’s .895), and while sample sizes are small, that’s all you get in the playoffs and so far Price hasn’t measured up.
Moreover, in 2009-10 the Habs wouldn’t even be in the playoffs were it not for Halak’s superior regular season. His W-L-O record of 26-13-5 was FAR superior to Price’s 13-20-5. I know that’s not a fashionable stat, but the fact is the Habs were far more likely to win games with Halak in the crease this season.
In the two full seasons since Huet was traded, Halak had a significantly superior Sv% both years: .915 to .905, and .924 to .912. To my eye he’s the better, and certainly more reliable, of the two right now. Price’s age is the big wild card in his favour. Both would fetch a pretty good return, but Montreal could do worse than to hang onto both. As RFAs their salaries should be middling, and their combined cap hit not out of line with other teams that sport a single star goalie.
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“Moreover, in 2009-10 the Habs wouldn’t even be in the playoffs were it not for Halak’s superior regular season. His W-L-O record of 26-13-5 was FAR superior to Price’s 13-20-5. I know that’s not a fashionable stat, but the fact is the Habs were far more likely to win games with Halak in the crease this season.”
It’s not just unfashionable. It’s also grossly unfair to the goalies, as the Habs scored at Pittsburgh levels for Halak and below Carolina levels for Price… which much of the difference coming on the power play.
The difference in their team’s records is simply not commensurate with their difference in goaltending performance.
I agree that Halak is better now, but Price certainly isn’t worse than Halak was at his age. I concur with you that Montreal would be well-advised to hang on to both goaltenders and hold out for the proverbial offer they can’t refuse.
Montreal seems to have built their cap strategy on getting high-quality goaltending for a low cap hit. That part of the plan seems to have worked nicely.
Given that Price and Halak will never be the same age at the same time, is there any scenario where keeping the guy who is establishing himself already is a better 5-10 year plan than keeping the guy 2 years behind?
Yes: if you believe that Price has a higher peak than Halak and good odds of reaching it. And that’s where it gets tricky. As Gabe points out, the real difference in performance NOW between the goalies is not all that great — certainly not nearly as great as the hype makes it out to be. And Price has the consensus bigger upside — he may yet be better overall over that 5-10 year span than Halak.
Two other questions that may affect the question is when you expect your team to peak (if you expect to peak later, it’s an argument in favor of the younger guy, and vice-versa) and whether the expected difference in performance is significant in regard to the expected difference in trade value. If Halak gets you a 25% bigger return and you expect Price to be 99%, or even 90% as good, is it worth to keep the “better” goalie?
It’s a very tricky question actually, and picking Halak certainly is no slam-dunk. The difference between the goalies has been exacerbated by hype and personal preferences, so much so that if you don’t look at it too closely, “keep Halak” may seem to be a no-brainer, but it’s really not.
That’s a good insight into where this argument really goes. It comes down, at the end of the day to some peoples’ beliefs. If they believe tall is 2% better, then Price is 2% better.
Anyway, you also raise a good point about when the peak will be. This is another leap of faith, and no stats can protect against the John Leclair trade (so to speak).
I still think that there is no need to look at this as a 15-year commitment or even more than a one-contract comiitment. The decision should be made on who the team thinks may be better over the contract term. The amount teams change from year to year nowadays, 5 years down the line either guy is defending behind a completely new set of players anyway.
If it’s 5 years, then working in another year or two of growing pains becomes a more significant investment, probably necessitating the hire of a more experienced and expensive back up. Just another consideration, in my eyes.
“Good experienced backups” are pretty cheap really. Regardless of whichever goalie the Habs end up keeping, they will probably want to get a solid backup like Martin Biron and they can do so for 1.5 million a year or so. I don’t think the backup budget will get much higher or lower depending on who ends up being the starter.
“Moreover, in 2009-10 the Habs wouldn’t even be in the playoffs were it not for Halak’s superior regular season. His W-L-O record of 26-13-5 was FAR superior to Price’s 13-20-5. I know that’s not a fashionable stat, but the fact is the Habs were far more likely to win games with Halak in the crease this season.”
I may be overly pedantic, but the stat you list indicates that the Habs won far more games with Halak in net than Price, it doesn’t indicate they were more likely to win games in net with Halak than Price.
A parallel situation is the following – imagine you and I both buy lottery tickets. You win, but I lose. Were you more likely to win than I was? No. The numbers simply came up in your favor that one time. Similarly, the Habs were not far more likely to win games with Halak in the crease – the numbers just played out that way.
It would be like buying a lottery if the two were equally good. The stats suggest Halak was substantially better.
He did have more scoring support which accounts for some of the difference. According to Behind the Net, these were their results at evens:
Halak +2.30 / -2.03
Price +1.87 / -2.46
With Halak the team was +0.43 GF/60 and -0.43 GA/60, suggesting that it was a 50/50 split between better offence and better defence, although obviously the netminder himself contributes primarily only to the latter. Jaro also had much better numbers on the PK to the tune of about -1.5 GA/60. So I’ll stand by my original statement that the Habs were more likely to win this year with Halak than Price, although maybe not as much more likely as the raw W-L-O stats might indicate.
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by Bruce McCurdy on Apr 30, 2010 11:57 PM EDT up reply actions
Judging by this small sample, Price is at least as likely to be overvalued as Halak.
In any case, neither one has a contract, so dealing them before that happens is probably foolhardy. Rather than trade, the likely scenario is that one will be exposed to RFA offers while the other won’t be.
Do you think they should sign both assuming they’ll be able to get value, even when they know the value wasn’t what they’d hoped for in the season?
Do you think they should sign their least favourite first to throw off the bidders?
How exactly do you see this happening logistically?
Great stuff
I think the Habs could really help themselves up front (and then subsequently Price) by dealing Halak while he’s hot. If you go take a look at Halak’s year by year stats this one just pops out and screams OUTLIER.
Granted, Halak is still young and is heading into the prime of his career, so he could keep this type of play up and it wouldn’t surprise anyone. The Habs can use this as another point though in trade talks, and hope that Price is just experiencing young goal-tending troubles.
I’m holding onto Price in my keeper league, let’s just say that.
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While Halak’s .924 season is certainly an outlier, he’s a .919 career goalie, even though it’s a short career. And if you look at EV save%, well…
2009-2010: .933
2008-2009: .922
2007-2008: .933 (6 games)
2006-2007: .906 (16 games)
That last one looks more like the outlier — odds are, Halak is at least a pretty good goalie. But the problem is, over a third of the shots he faced have been this year. And herein lies the problem.
I’m not sure I’d rush to trade either right away.
If somehow Gauthier can get them both signed, I’d almost see how both perform to start next season. And hopefully raise both their values.
In my eyes, both Price and Halak have tremendous potential.
Price is very gifted but still has a bit of time to put in experience wise…. this might be the first time he’s really faced some kind of adversity in his career being in the background to Halak.
Halak on the other hand has faced adversity several times. He’s quietly played his role… the minors.. as backup…. always believing in himself and proving himself one step at a time.
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I think Price is a sitting duck target for either of the offer sheet variations described in the above. Whether it be the two-year front-loaded deal or the one-year signing-bonus-laden deal. Although I don’t know Price’s circumstances vis-a-vis GP requirements, I doubt he is subject to that.
I don’t think a contract in the $1.5-$2.0M will be enough for Price. A team with no goaltending (DET? WSH?) could tender a short-term $3M offer sheet and force MTL into a very difficult decision.
Offer sheets are the exception rather than the rule. Generally speaking, only players coming off strong years are targeted as well (Vanek, Penner, Backes, Mezaros and Kessel, with Vancouver players like Kesler and Bernier being targeted out of spite).
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I think it was only Bernier that was targeted out of spite but your overall point stands. For some reason, teams are very reluctant to use the offer sheet to their advantage. But, if a GM does, I think RO is correct in saying that Montreal’s goaltending situation is a wonderful target, especially for a team in the division like the Senators.
by Scott Reynolds on Apr 28, 2010 4:29 PM EDT up reply actions
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