Antti Niemi's performance has followed an odd pattern - huge successes followed huge collapses. Here, we can see his road 5v5 save percentage after winning the Stanley Cup and signing his four-year contract with the San Jose Sharks, just in time for the playoffs:
Those numbers are still pretty good - Niemi has been one of the best goaltenders on the road over the last four seasons:
| Goaltender | Goals | Shots | SV% |
| Tim Thomas | 183 | 2719 | 933 |
| Tuukka Rask | 72 | 1069 | 933 |
| Craig Anderson | 163 | 2350 | 931 |
| Henrik Lundqvist | 225 | 3144 | 928 |
| Ilya Bryzgalov | 216 | 3006 | 928 |
| Pekka Rinne | 125 | 1717 | 927 |
| Antti Niemi | 102 | 1388 | 927 |
| Kari Lehtonen | 145 | 1956 | 926 |
| James Howard | 123 | 1655 | 926 |
| Antero Niittymaki | 103 | 1385 | 926 |
| Tomas Vokoun | 209 | 2799 | 925 |
| Cam Ward | 228 | 3047 | 925 |
| Martin Brodeur | 202 | 2659 | 924 |
| Niklas Backstrom | 183 | 2406 | 924 |
| Joey MacDonald | 78 | 1018 | 923 |
| Jonathan Quick | 161 | 2093 | 923 |
| Brian Boucher | 103 | 1338 | 923 |
| Chris Osgood | 122 | 1578 | 923 |
| J-S Giguere | 134 | 1729 | 922 |
We're ignoring half of his record in an attempt to remove home-ice scorer bias from our analysis, but the long-term view suggests Niemi is probably a pretty good goaltender. Interestingly, Chicago has almost exactly replaced Niemi's performance with Corey Crawford, and San Jose got a cheap goaltending tandem to replace Evgeni Nabokov. The only question mark is why the Sharks lacked confidence in their ability to find a cheap goaltender yet again next season.