NHL Goaltending Market over-corrects Itself
by Hawerchuk on Jul 2, 2010 11:00 AM EDT
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PrintIt's amazing how quickly conventional wisdom can change. Not much more than one year ago, it was basically an article of faith that a playoff team needed a top goaltender (probably even a clutch one). And such goaltenders came with high price tags.
Then the Colorado Avalanche found Craig Anderson hiding in plain sight. Chicago won the Stanley Cup with a question mark in goal. Philadelphia went all the way to the finals with two goaltenders who've established their mediocrity over rather lengthy careers. And on July 1, eight free agent goaltenders signed for what strike me as tiny contracts - here are their new salaries and three year average even-strength save percentages:
| Salary | Saves | Shots | Save% | |
| Niittymaki | $2.000 | 695 | 755 | 921.0 |
| Biron | $0.875 | 1065 | 1157 | 920.5 |
| Ellis | $1.500 | 695 | 755 | 919.7 |
| Auld | $1.000 | 606 | 660 | 918.1 |
| Mason | $1.850 | 1069 | 1165 | 917.6 |
| Hedberg | $1.500 | 788 | 860 | 916.3 |
| Budaj | $1.250 | 670 | 732 | 915.3 |
| Leighton | $1.550 | 353 | 389 | 908.3 |
| Average | $1.441 | 743 | 809 | 917.8 |
It is safe to assume that these goaltenders will face approximately the same number of shots in the aggregate in 2010-11, so the goaltending market on the first day of free agency established itself at 1 win = $782k. (This assumes a replacement level save percentage of 908.9.) Needless to say, this is substantially less than the typical price for goaltender wins on the UFA market over the last few years, and it makes Michael Leighton's contract look pretty silly.
So what does this tell us about the two remaining veteran goaltenders on the market? Assuming they face as many shots as they did on average over the last three years:
| Salary | Saves | Shots | Save% | |
| Turco | $1.85 | 1217 | 1328 | 916.7 |
| Nabokov | $3.09 | 1345 | 1458 | 922.5 |
While that's still a big drop in compensation for both of those guys, it seems like they'll each be hard-pressed to get that kind of cash. Nabokov is barely better than league-average - is anyone looking to spend $3M, likely over multiple years, for that? And now that Turco has the same established talent as Johan Hedberg, will anyone want him as their starter? All signs point to no.
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When you say that Nabokov is barely above average, I recognize that that’s true, but it also seems to me that there won’t be many goalies in the league with a better three-year aggregate than .922. He’s a pretty good goalie. Wouldn’t it be funny to see him sign for something similar to Niittymaki to play in Chicago?
More generally, I don’t think the market is over-correcting because of events this year, although the successes you mention may have helped. In fact, this is a continuation of what we saw last summer, the Khabibulin signing excepted: no big contracts and nothing long term because the market is flooded with too many goalies who get to market that can play. The odd part to me is that the kind of thinking that’s lead to these deals isn’t the same when it comes to signing incumbents.
I don’t have a great memory for these things, but how goalies have re-upped with bad long-term contracts recently? The big ugly contracts are all from more than a year ago, right?
Thomas was last summer – not sure if you’re counting that as a year ago or not.
With his past performance, it may not have been the worst contract, but with Rask coming up and considered a top prospect for years, the no-trade and long-term nature of the deal were at best misguided.
Not sure about what other goalies have re-signed.
Cam Ward signed his (ludicrous) $6.3M extension last September. Pekka Rinne’s $3.4M extension seems expensive relative to the market and was signed during the season. Kari Lehtonen’s $3.55M extension with Dallas is similar, though calling him an incumbent might be a stretch. Jonas Hiller might be different since he has very, very good results, but he also signed a long-term deal during the season at $4.5M. I doubt any of the UFA goalies approach these numbers, but I could be wrong.
by Scott Reynolds on Jul 2, 2010 2:41 PM EDT up reply actions
Yeah, so the volume of truly bad contracts is dropping, with only Ward happening after the point where teams began to act more rationally. It’s funny – Luongo’s contract looked like it would pay for itself given how many bad contracts there were, but now probably not…At $782k/win, nobody can be worth $6.7M.
yeah, i’m suddenly dece worried about Bob’s deal. worth noting that his cap hit is 5.3 per though.
by Passive Voice on Jul 2, 2010 9:49 PM EDT up reply actions
Just doing the quick math – Luongo paid 4.8M above replacement (in cap dollars) and so using 782K per win as the price, he’d have to provide 6 wins. That’s 36 goals or about 17 total save percentage points above replacement (assuming 30 shots a game over 70 starts).
Does that seem unreasonable? I know a lot of context is lost there by looking at total save percentage instead of a breakdown of EV/PK but even on the surface of it, Luongo seems like he could do that (given we’re talking above replacement and not above league average)
He actually doesn’t need to provide quite that much. Goaltender wins were more expensive when he signed his contract, so his past performance was worth more.
But there are only seven teams with goalies signed long-term as UFAs (Luongo, Lundqvist, Kiprusoff, Miller, Fleury, Ward, Backstrom) that they’re committed to playing. The other 23 teams seem very unlikely to lock anyone up to a 6-year, $36M deal (or more) given the depressed goaltender market. Isn’t this roughly what happened with defensive forwards?
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