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“There’s nothing wrong with him playing basketball. He was supposed be doing some exercise. Should we tell the players not to drive to the rink? Do they need chauffeurs?”
-Kevin Lowe, commenting on Ethan Moreau’s injury

As I guessed below, it sounds like the Oilers aren’t going to make an attempt to find out if they have the right not to pay Ethan Moreau while he recuperates from his basketball injury. In fairness to the Oilers, the facts are a little murkier than it seemed intially-for some reason, the Oilers were still in Phoenix on Monday morning and the injury occurred in a fitness club where the team was training. Both of these facts open up potential defences for Moreau to an Oiler attempt to recoup the money spent on his salary while injured-the provision of the SPC that I thought provided the Oilers with their strongest argument excludes time missed as “…the direct result of any injury
sustained during the course of his employment as a hockey player with the Club, including travel with his team or on business requested by the Club.” Had this case proceeded to the stage of a grievance, Moreau’s agent would doubtless have argued that a) the injury occurred while Moreau was travelling with the team and that b) it occurred while he was at a team approved training facility which included a basketball court. This would have made it a much more contentious battle and given the deleterious effects of such a route, it’s not surprising that he’s elected not to proceed.

What is surprising to me though, is that he’s elected to make a public statement to the effect that the team is fine with people playing basketball as a form of exercise. While the Oilers might be happy to pay Ethan Moreau while he’s out, given the (presumed) contentiousness of the case and his position with the team, I don’t see the point of publicly condoning the activity. If anything, I would have thought that this would be an excellent opportunity for the Oilers to review what players are doing as exercise and assert their right to govern what a player does to train. What if Ty Conklin had suffered an injury while playing basketball tomorrow and was out for the rest of the year? As it stands, he’d likely point to Lowe’s statement and say that the team was fine with it, leaving the Oilers on the hook for his salary. What is the point of foreclosing your options in future cases that may arise with players of whom management takes a less charitable view by making this statement? I can’t see any.

It’s possible that this statement is meaningless and that the Oilers are making a very different policy clear in house. I hope that this is the case, but I’m not optimistic.

Image courtesy (in the sense that he added the word bubbles) of futurecorerock over at HF, who takes issue with the idea that the Oilers goaltending is their only real problem. The difference between the Oilers save percentage and an average save percentage this year works out to a 20 goal difference. Add that to the Oilers +9 and you’ve got…the second best goal differential in the Western Conference and fourth best in the NHL.

(I really think that this picture is awesome-I love the way he’s made it look as if the Oilers logos really are on the flags, as opposed to just slamming them down; it shows a sense of pride and ownership.)

The recent return of Rick Nash has coincided with a nice run for the Columbus Blue Jackets. Nash returned on Dec. 17-the Jackets are 11-8-2 since that point, leading Jackets fans to start semi-seriously tracking the distance that the team sits from a playoff berth in an HF thread that’s rather hilariously titled Target: Edmonton.

The problem is this-the Jackets are still bad. Their goal differential over that time span is -7. This team, which is playing it’s best hockey of the season, is still a good 30 goal differential from the level required of a playoff contender. While maintaining this level for the rest of the season would represent a quantum leap forward for a team that has yet to best the -43 goal differential that they achieved in their inaugural season, it’s still nowhere near the level they should be at if they want to be a serious playoff contender.

The poisson standings suggest that the Jackets current position in the standings-tied for second last in the West-is due to some good bounces as well-they’re 4 or 5 points better than where they should be, according to this metric. I can’t help but note their phenomenal record in one goal games this season either-they’re 16-5-2 in contests decided by one goal (9-2-1 in one goal games since the return of Nash). In games that aren’t decided by one goal, they’re an ever so slightly less impressive 4-25. This team is still a mess.

While the Jackets are currently terrible, there is hope for the future. They’ve got a lot of young, talented players who should continue to improve. St. Louis looks to be bad for a while to come, Chicago has some problems, Detroit is old and Nashville is not nearly as strong as they appear (The Predators have a goal differential of -16 in games not involving Chicago, Columbus and St. Louis). The division is ripe for some team to take a huge step forward in a very short period of time. If I was a Jackets fan, I’d be praying that the team does not continue to win these tight games all year long, lengthening the odds of a good draft pick in what is believed to be a shallow draft year and worse, shortening the odds that Doug MacLean returns for another season of tying the hands of the Blue Jackets with asinine moves as they try to develop the core of cheap young talent that every team needs to move forward.

Sportsnet’s story on the Ethan Moreau leg injury suffered while playing basketball today opens with “Ethan Moreau’s next contract may force him to stick to just playing hockey.” Unless Moreau negotiated special permission to play basketball, it’s likely that his current contract also forced him to stick to just playing hockey.

The old CBA, which was in force at the time Moreau negotiated his contract, has a Standard Player’s Contract attached as an exhibit. Two clauses in this contract address the issue of players taking part in other sports. First, a look at the clause addressing player participation in other sports:

7. The Player and the Club recognize and agree that the
Player’s participation in other sports may impair or destroy his
ability and skill as a hockey player. Accordingly the Player
agrees that he will not during the period of this Contract or
during any period when he is obligated under this Contract to
enter into a further contract with the Club engage or participate
in football, baseball, softball, hockey, lacrosse, boxing,
wrestling or other athletic sport without the written consent of
the Club, which consent will not be unreasonably withheld.

Without knowing how the history of this provision or how it’s been interpreted in the past by an arbitrator, it’s hard to say whether or not Moreau violated it by taking part in a game of pickup basketball. The term “athletic sport” is ambiguous-one could argue that it basically prohibits the player from doing anything athletic that is not specifically approved of by the hockey club but the SPC also requires a player to report to training camp in good physical condition and to keep himself in good physical condition. Should the Oilers want to take action against Moreau (see below), the NHLPA may well want to argue at a grievance hearing that the term “athletic sport” needs to be interpreted narrowly so as to allow the player to fulfill his obligation to maintain good physical condition and that the clause does not cover situations where the player takes part in a pickup basketball game but is limited to more formal situations.

The other clause in the SPC that’s of note in a situation such as this is 5(b). It states as follows:

5 (b) If the Player, in the judgment of the Club’s physician,
is disabled or is not in good physical condition at the
commencement of the season or at any subsequent time during the
season (unless such condition is the direct result of any injury
sustained during the course of his employment as a hockey player
with the Club, including travel with his team or on business
requested by the Club) so as to render him unfit to play skilled
hockey, then it is mutually agreed that the Club shall have the
right to suspend the Player for such period of disability or
unfitness, and no compensation shall be payable for that period
under this contract. If upon joint consultation between the
Player, the Club’s physician and the Club General Manager, they
are unable to agree upon the Player’s disability or physical
condition, the Player agrees to submit himself for examination by
an independent medical specialist and the Parties hereto agree to
be bound by his decision.

I think that this clause puts the Oilers in a much stronger position if they want to take a run at Moreau. For what it’s worth, there’s a reasonably significant amount of money involved here-assuming that Moreau is out for 6 weeks (although the Oilers usually like to rush people back from injury to ensure that they get some ineffective play out of the guy) there is about $275,000 in play. Even if one accepts that the clause relating to taking part in other athletic sports is not breached by engaging in a game of pickup basketball, it’s hard to argue that Moreau’s failure to be in good physical condition is due to the direct result of an injury sustained in the course of his employment as a hockey palyer with the Club. I think it’s probably safe to assume that the Oilers are in position to deny Moreau his salary from now until he regains his health.

So what does Lowe do now? $275K is a lot of money to a team like the Oilers but at the same time Moreau seems to be a guy who is pretty well liked by management and the coaching staff. My bet is that they’ll do nothing other than maybe call him in and scream at him for a little while. I’m about to break my rule and speculate on the CBA again but my recollection is that extensions cannot be signed until after January 1 in the last year of a player’s contract. If this provision didn’t exist, the Oilers could call in Moreau’s agent and try and tag another year onto his contract at a reasonable price in exchange for not enforcing their right not to pay him but instead they’re stuck. It’s a choice between not paying him, at a cost of possibly angering him, alienating the dressing room and looking bad to potential future Oilers or swallowing a $275,000 hit.

Of course, at least this gives the papers something to write about other than how bad the goaltending is, so at least some good will come of it from the perspective of Lowe and MacTavish.

Stats are updated as of games through Jan. 27, 2006. Comments follow:

Poisson Standings: Ottawa continues to be the runaway leader in the East but other than that, things are relatively tightly bunched. In the West, I wouldn’t give too much weight to Detroit’s position-the Central is terrible. If anything, the West is even tighter than the East. Only 6.2 points separate the second place Avalanche from the eighth place Oilers.

Team Save Percentage By Situation: The Oilers now have the second worst save percentage in the NHL. Fix it Kevin.

Team Ice Time By Situation: I’ve mentioned it before, but Carolina is going to be an interesting team to follow in the playoffs. If they run into a team that doesn’t given them an extra power play every game, I’d imagine that they’ll experience difficulties.

Strength of Schedule: The NW division is hard. I’m surprised to see that the Islanders have had as difficult a schedule as they’ve had so far. I know that some people have written them off, but they sit just five points out of a playoff spot at the moment and presumably have a softer schedule from here on out. I wouldn’t write them off yet, although I admit that I’m excited to see what Mike Milbury might do at the deadline if they’re out of it.

Even Strength Rebounds Faced By Goalie: The objective sounding “Lou is God” posted in an HF thread that
“…very few goalies know how to redirect rebounds to his defensemen and away from the other team the way Marty does.” Is this true? Well, according to the rebound report, Marty does not face very many rebounds-he sees .038 rebounds per shot compared to the .1 rebounds per shot faced by Roberto Luongo at ES. Lou is God has a point.

Unfortunately for him (and more importantly for Team Canada fans), this doesn’t address the real problem. If the objective of the game was to prevent rebounds, I’d concede that Brodeur looks like an elite goalie. It’s not though…

ES Expected Goals Against by Goalie: The objective of the goalie is to prevent goals. Luongo sits at +15 by this measure to Brodeur’s -1. Even if you attribute some of the blame for the rebounds to Luongo, it’s not going to be enough to come anywhere near closing this gap. I figure that the difference between Luongo and Brodeur is an extra 2-3 wins so far this season-that’s a significant difference and one that someone will pay a lot of money for.

ES Expected Goals Against by Team: Seriously Kevin, fix the goaltending. The Oilers are 16 goals below average at ES right now. Given their horrific save percentage on the PK at the moment (.834 in an .860 league), they could well be talking about the failure to have average goaltending costing them 8 or 9 points so far this season. They’re three points out of the division lead.

Playoff odds, penalty info and scoring info still to come; it’s in separate spreadsheets.

Update: Playoff odds are done and updated. It appears that I was a little hard on James Mirtle-the Islanders come in as a 7.1% shot at making the postseason. The Oilers on the other hand are at 80%; as much as I want Lowe to get a goalie, the pressure to do so still probably isn’t there.

Martin Brodeur has signed a $31.2MM contract with the Devils for an average salary of $5.2MM for the seasons 2006-07 to 2011-12. Unfortunately for any Devils fans who were still holding out hope, I’d say that this provides concrete evidence of what was only suggested by early indicators such as the Mogilny and Malakhov signings: Lou Lamariello has entered the 1990’s Glen Sather phase of his career. Enjoy the ride-it will bottom out with Lou on the phone to some nobody, telling him “Look Gord, things are grim and I need your help. I…I don’t know what I’m doing. W-we just got lucky.”

Many people reading this will be aware of my thoughts on Brodeur-I think he’s quite possibly the most overrated goalie in my team following the NHL, with the possible exception of Oiler stalwarts Bill Ranford and Grant Fuhr. None of this is to say that Brodeur is a bad goaltender, only that I think he’s been phenomenally overrated by fans, the media and those within the game (although not by the goalies, as I noted a few days ago). I’m not going to repeat the argument here that I’ve made against Brodeur all over the Internet the past few years but suffice it to say that his save percentages have not been overly impressive since 1997-98, particularly when you consider that he played on a very strong defensive team and a team that didn’t take a lot of penalties-facing a lot of power play shots can be death to a goalie’s save percentage and Brodeur simply does not see a lot of them-the Devils have not taken a lot of penalties historically.

Brodeur actually looks to be having an excellent season by his standards, but it has all the hallmarks of the traditional edges he’s enjoyed (other than the Devils being less defensively strong than in previous seasons). He’s putting up a 1013 relative save percentage, which is better than anything he’s done since 1996-97. Two red lights though: his save percentage when the Devils are on the PK is an excellent .874 while his save percentage at ES is a middling .917. As a rule of thumb, I generally expect a goalies save percentage on the PK to be about .055 less than his save percentage at ES-most guys can’t sustain big differences. Brodeur has had differences of as much as .080 per season. The other point of note is that, as always, Brodeur has seen a lower percentage of his shots while on the PK-21.6% compared to a league average of 25.6%.

	Pre 35				Post 35
NAME	SHOTS	SAVES	SV%	RELSV%	SHOTS	SAVES	SV%	RELSV%
PATRICK ROY	21087	19211	0.911	1019	4865	4474	0.920	1014
CURTIS JOSEPH	22316	20260	0.908	1010	744	676	0.909	997
SEAN BURKE	19908	17929	0.901	1004	1934	1771	0.916	1006
ED BELFOUR	15459	14013	0.906	1012	6265	5705	0.911	1003
JOHN VANBIESBROUCK	16335	14733	0.902	1012	3910	3531	0.903	998
MIKE RICHTER	17215	15566	0.904	1006	2004	1813	0.905	996
MIKE VERNON	13978	12398	0.887	997	3989	3608	0.904	999
DOMINIK HASEK	13150	12173	0.926	1027	3704	3397	0.917	1012
TOM BARRASSO	15602	13953	0.894	1004	1128	1019	0.903	995
GRANT FUHR	13813	12263	0.888	998	2717	2413	0.888	980
KELLY HRUDEY	14254	12733	0.893	1006	1863	1661	0.892	985
ARTURS IRBE	13989	12599	0.901	1000	1044	921	0.882	970
RON TUGNUTT	13308	11903	0.894	998	892	800	0.897	986
JEFF HACKETT	13189	11893	0.902	1002	684	619	0.905	993
KEN WREGGET	12589	11172	0.887	996	700	630	0.900	995
ANDY MOOG	9245	8231	0.890	1003	3251	2945	0.906	1003
BOB ESSENSA	11131	9970	0.896	1005	967	858	0.887	982
GLENN HEALY	10438	9251	0.886	999	1568	1391	0.887	980
CHRIS TERRERI	9775	8729	0.893	1001	671	595	0.887	981
DON BEAUPRE	10319	9125	0.884	995	60	50	0.833	921

Anyway, you’re still left with the question of whether or not it makes sense to commit $5.2MM annually for six years to a guy who will be 35 at the start of the 2006-07 season. I don’t think that it does, myself. My goalie database contains the stats for all goalies from 1987-88 through the end of the 2003-04 season. I’ll choose the somewhat arbitrary cutoff point of having seen 10,000 shots in that period and examine the performance of those goalies before and after turning 35, both in terms of save percentage and in terms of relative save percentage.

20 guys managed to meet the criteria of facing 10,000 shots in total and seeing shots at the age of 35 and later. I’ve provided both raw save percentage and save percentage relative to the league. The average NHL save percentage drifted up by about .030 over the time period between 1987-88 and 2003-04 so the raw save percentage numbers are a bit misleading. The relative save percentage though is still a useful measure. It suggests that for a lot of these players, the seasons after the age of 35 were not their best. Only two of the twenty managed to face more than 4000 shots after the age of 35-if, as Tom Benjamin has suggested, years after the age of 35 count against the cap for veterans on multi-year deals even if they retire, Lou has exposed the Devils to significant risk of a cap hit if Brodeur loses what game he has, even if he goes the Roy route and decides to retire. Brodeur has been an exceptionally durable player to this point-by the end of the 2006-07 season, he should be fifth on the list of shots faced since 1987-88 despite playing for a team that does not allow many shots for much of that period.

Looking at this chart in particular, two key trends are clear. First, players almost always put up a worse save percentage relative to the league after age 35 than they do before-only two of the twenty on this list managed to put up a better relative save percentage after the age of 35 than they did before. Second, the aforementioned fact that many of these guys didn’t face a lot of shots after hitting age 35.

Brodeur’s save percentage relative to the league stood at 1008 for his career at the start of this season, although it has to be kept in mind that his truly exceptional seasons in terms of save percentage were put up prior to the 1998-99 season. If he falls at somewhere around 1000 for the sum of this contract, which doesn’t seem unreasonable given the past history of guys after turning 35, I don’t see how he can be a good use of $31.2MM. Even if he’s worth the money for the early part of his contract, I can’t see any reasonable way to suggest he’ll be worth it later (he’s not Dominik Hasek) which will make the entire thing a net negative. The risk here is huge and I don’t see the upside.

There’s a concept that’s quite popular in sabermetric circles known as the success cycle. BPro author Jonah Keri writes “To measure a team’s place in the cycle, assess its talent in the majors and minors. Can the players in the organization, mixed with a few trade acquisitions and free agents the team could reasonably sign, yield a competitive team? More precisely, can the team expect to compete while its current core of major-league players remain productive and under contract?”

I don’t think that the Devils can reasonably answer this question positively at this point in time. The salary cap almost enforces the success cycle by preventing teams that do not produce cheap young players from being able to purchase enough veteran talent to win. The Devils are old and expensive at the moment (one of the little mentioned benefits of this deal is that the Devils were apparently able to tear up an option for $6.08MM next season, saving a million bucks now) and, according to HF (who systematically overrate every young player) sit 18th in terms of talent in the minors with only one player on the top 50 NHL prospect list-Zach Parise, who has already made the team. Given that the Devils are apparently not in a position to use the system to underpay a bunch of players, they’re going to be stuck paying market or near to it for talent. I can’t see how they can expect to win games when they need to pay market value for stars while teams like Ottawa, Atlanta, Tampa and Carolina are enjoying paying star players less than their value on the open market.

All that this contract has done for the Devils is delayed the inevitable departure of Martin Brodeur for a few seasons. An asset like Brodeur could have enabled the Devils to take a quantum leap forward and maybe avoid the real bottom end of the success cycle if he’d been swapped to some foolish team desperate for a goalie. Instead, Devils fans will get to watch his decline at a time when the team cannot contend. It won’t be pretty.

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I speculated in one of my first posts on this site that, in light of the fact that the Kings have led the league in time played without a goalie the past few years, it was possible that Andy Murray was really aggressive when it came to pulling his goalie. In light of his removal of Garon with more than three minutes remaining against Edmonton the other night, I suspect that’s true. I’ve idly wondered in the past if pulling the goalie is a strategy that makes sense-the fact that Murray is apparently such a believer in it leads me to believe that it may well be a useful strategy.

Update: According to Tom Benjamin, the rule that I thought would apply to ensure that Brodeur was unable to retire without dealing the Devils a crippling cap hit applies only if a player signs his contract after the age of 35, not if he retires after the age of 35 as I was speculating. While this might explain why the Devils and Brodeur chose to do this now as opposed to waiting until he became a free agent (they get cap relief for the option next season and they get Brodeur signed long term before he turns 35), it doesn’t seem like an effective rule. In any event, I’m done speculating on the CBA effects of things until after a copy of it is made public.

Interesting game tonight between the Oilers and the Ducks, even before Ryan Smyth coaxed JS Giguere into doing his best Hanrahan impression. Giguere went fucking bananas (he was so angry at Smyth that he took 16 PIM) and the Oilers ended up winning a pretty important game 6-3.

Bob McKenzie had some interesting comments during the second intermission, telling us that the Oilers are in the hunt for another defenceman and mentioning Jaroslav Spacek, Dick Tarnstrom and Ric Jackman as possible acquisitions. While I’d welcome Lowe improving the team, I don’t think that defence is a problem that he needs to address at the moment.

Team	xGA/60	ESS/60	xGA Rank	ESS Rank
DAL	2.10	25.25	1	1
CGY	2.13	26.50	2	2
S.J	2.14	26.89	3	4
PHI	2.23	27.94	4	8
EDM	2.25	27.09	5	6
DET	2.28	26.87	6	3
N.J	2.45	28.98	7	10
BUF	2.46	31.13	8	22
PHX	2.48	28.32	9	9
MTL	2.50	30.88	10	20
T.B	2.50	27.72	11	7
ANA	2.52	29.78	12	13
NYR	2.55	27.01	13	5
VAN	2.58	31.58	14	23
TOR	2.60	30.29	15	16
CHI	2.61	29.78	16	13
OTT	2.61	29.71	17	12
BOS	2.62	30.99	18	21
CAR	2.65	29.78	19	13
L.A	2.70	30.49	20	18
MIN	2.73	33.09	21	25
STL	2.76	29.70	22	11
COL	2.85	30.52	23	19
WSH	2.87	33.31	24	26
NSH	2.92	34.33	25	28
CBJ	2.93	32.89	26	24
FLA	2.97	35.08	27	30
NYI	3.02	33.66	28	27
ATL	3.05	30.37	29	17
PIT	3.25	34.68	30	29

This chart shows the rank of expected GA/60 and ESS/60 for each team in the NHL at ES. For a team like the Oilers, who rank 5th in the xGA/60 category and 6th in the ESSA/60, I don’t really see the need for a defenceman-the prevention of scoring chances against doesn’t appear to be the problem at the moment. Teams like St. Louis and Atlanta, both of whom seem to give up an inordinate amount of high quality chances relative to the amount of shots that they give up might benefit from improving their defensive corps-it’s tough to see how much better the Oilers could reasonably expect to be. Is it worth (presumably) taking on salary and giving up assets for a very minimal improvement in expected goals against? I can’t see it.

There is one possible advantage though that I haven’t mentioned, which is reducing the load borne by Pronger. Pronger sits second in the NHL to Nicklas Lidstrom in terms of ice time played. If the Oilers were to acquire someone who could eat some of the hard minutes that Pronger plays at ES and on the PK (PP ice time would seem to the easiest minutes available), this would seem to have the potential to benefit the team by easing up on the load Pronger has to carry. This description does not seem to fit Dick Tarnstrom. Tarnstrom is essentially the sixth defenceman on the Penguins at ES-they play Gonchar, Whitney, Jackman, Melichar and Orpik more at ES than they do Tarnstrom. Same thing when it comes to the PK. Now, I’m no rocket scientist but if you’re such a liability that the PENGUINS have five other guys that they’d prefer to use over you at even strength or on the penalty kill, I’d suggest that you’re not particularly useful in those instances. Particularly not when you come at the cost of $1.6MM annually. Additionally, there’s the question of how much of an improvement he’d actually be to the PP-the first unit is doing pretty well right now and I don’t see how swapping out Bergeron or Pronger for Tarnstrom will result in a significant improvement. Jackman looks to essentially be the fifth man in those situations-same red flag, as far as I’m concerned. I have a hard time seeing how those guys would make the Oilers much better.

That leaves Spacek. While he looks a lot more legitimate-he plays a ton of minutes, in all situtions, he’s the Hawks’ de facto #1. I’d be interested in him, depending on the price that they want to extract. He earns $2.25MM annually though, which is pretty steep. I can’t imagine that the Hawks would be willing to just give him away either-what’s the point? They can probably get something tangible (ie. not Jani Rita) for him if they sit on him until closer to the playoffs.

Bob McKenzie was pretty sure that the Oilers are about to make a move. While the benefit of cutting the minutes that Pronger plays at ES or on the PK could probably be had without sinking the team if the team acquired Spacek, I’d prefer to keep the cash and assets to address the real problem here. I doubt that Jackman or Tarnstrom bring significant improvement. Lowe should really be pushing the goalie angle right now-everything else is just window dressing.

Update: According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Oilers scouts were at yesterday’s Caps-Pens game. To bring this post full circle, “Scouts?” (but in a horrified tone as opposed to an interested one).

Courtesy of Jes Golbez, a pretty cool little THN article where they surveyed NHL goalies on who were the best goalies in the game this season. The results are surprising in at least one sense-no Martin Brodeur. The voting went Hasek (17), Kipusoff (16), Turco (6), Vokoun (5), Luongo (4), Lundqvist (4), Fernandez (2), Gerber (2) and Belfour (1).

All in all, I’m surprisingly amenable to the selections made by the goalies. I frequently wonder at the decisions of people in the game but the Hasek/Kiprusoff pick is obvious, in my opinion. I would have tossed my vote for one of those two guys, probably Hasek. The Turco pick is nuts-his save percentage is worse than league average despite playing for a stellar defensive team. Giguere, Sauve, Ward, DiPietro, Sanford and Osgood dropped the ball on that. I can’t argue with the Vokoun selection. As Golbez notes, Luongo has had an off year-he’s probably still a little low in the rankings. My favourite vote is the one cast for Belfour, who is struggling this season with a save percentage well below the league average. Who cast the vote? None other than Martin Brodeur who states that “I like the experience factor.” It’s like he’s an Ontario voter casting a ballot for Paul Martin-sucking be damned, he’s better than the unknown. Say whatever you like about Martin Brodeur but it appears that he knows why he’s where he is.

Leaving aside the two bad picks (Turco and Brodeur) the others selected make up 7 of the top 13 at goals saved above expected goals at even strength. I guess I should probably reconsider my negative stereotype of how well goalies know the game, but I blame the CBC for that. I’ll change when they do. (Hopefully, their change follows swiftly on the heels of a Conservative majority government.)

MacT is sick of talking about the goalies. The Gump style quote is his comment on the goaltending fiasco from today’s Sun, which is also dangerously close to Mark McGwire “I’m not here to talk about the past” territory; I had a tough time choosing between the Forrest Gump pic and one of McGwire testifying in front of Congress. Everyone in the blogosphere loves talking about the goalies. Personally, I’m with MacT. I’m sick of it (although I’m putting together a post defending Lowe’s strategy with the goalies last summer, which I still believe to be appropriate).

I wondered out loud down below if a team has ever had a save percentage as poor relative to the league as the Oilers do and gone on to make the playoffs. Just as a bit of background, while I believe that save percentage is largely goalie related, there is doubtless a team component as well (however small I may think it is).

I’ve avoided blaming “goaltending” below and have confined myself to talking about save percentage. Draw your own conclusions about whether goaltending or team defence is to blame. When looking at save percentage over large amounts of time, save percentage relative to the league is preferable because a different save percentage has a different value depending on the league environment. In 1987-88, when the league save percentage was .878, a .900 save percentage was phenomenal. In 2003-04 when the league average was .908 it was lousy.

When looking at save percentage relative to league, I use something I call relative save percentage. It’s simple, just SV%/LG AVERAGE SV%*1000. The multiplication at the end is just for the ease of looking at it. The Oilers this year are .881/.897*1000=982. I’ve got the numbers for every team since 1987-88; that’s 435 teams in all. Guess how many of those teams have put up a relative save percentage worse than the Oilers 982.

17.

17!!

Season	Name	RELSV%
19931994	OTT	960
19921993	OTT	966
19951996	SAN	970
19891990	QUE	971
19992000	TAM	971
19961997	BOS	972
19992000	ATL	972
19941995	EDM	975
20032004	PIT	979
19951996	BOS	980
19871988	LOS	981
19921993	SAN	981
19951996	EDM	981
19961997	SAN	981
19971998	TAM	982
19981999	STL	982

So the Oilers save percentage has been worse relative to the league than that of all but 3.9% of teams in the past 17 years or so. It’s phenomenal. I can certainly understand why MacT doesn’t want to talk about it. This team seems to be cursed to be two parts good, one part abominable.

How did these teams do? 5 of them made the playoffs, although two of those appearances came in the old Smythe division in the late 80’s and early 90’s when there was Edmonton, Calgary and three shitty teams of whom two had to make the playoffs. Other than that, we’re talking about the Blues in 1998-99, the Sharks in 1996-97 and Boston in 1995-96. San Jose is pretty clearly a poor comparison-the year that they made the playoffs with terrible save percentage, they had a -32 goal differential and it was the first lockout season which means it was a short season where goal differentials and team quality could be less connected. Not all that comparable to the Oilers. Boston is a little spooky at first glance but it appears that they were an old team in decline-Ranford, Bourque, Oates and Stevens were all key players on that squad. One year, they were making the playoffs with bad goaltending and the next they were drafting Joe Thornton.

Of these three teams, I think that the Oilers are most like the 98-99 Blues. The Blues managed to put up a solid goal differential of +28 despite trotting out Brent Johnson, Jamie McLennan, Grant Fuhr, Rich Parent and Jim Carey. The next year they got the solid if unspectacular goaltending of Roman Turek and were a dominant +83. I really like the comparison with the 1998-99 Blues, right down to the presence of Chris Pronger. It’s even got that “I’ve got a job here because I won Cups with the Oilers in the ’80’s” presence that is essential to any solid Oilers analogy in the person of Grant Fuhr.

Having looked at this, I’m even more convinced that this team is fairly unique within the past 17 seasons. While I’m sure that the marketing department is busy altering the logo on the third jersey as we speak to celebrate the fact, that the Oilers look to be playoff bound despite having near historically bad goaltending, (maybe even a banner raising is in order?) it really is depressing to consider how good this team could be with half decent goaltending.

The stats update is done-next update of stats is early February, although I might add some stuff between now and then. Jussi is just a goal away from surpassing Patrick Lalime as the goalie who’s allowed the most goals compared to his expected ES goals against this year. Conklin’s even worse than that if you look at it as a rate. The discerning fan should note Kolzig’s steady fall-he’s now barely above league average. While Lowe obviously needs to make a move, I can understand why he’s a bit hesitant to do something like that-it’s gotta be tough to consider paying a guy $2.5MM for average play for the rest of the season. I was correct on the Oilers playoff odds, by the way-73.5% entering last night. Assuming that the Oilres consider something like this, I’d expect Lowe to continue sitting on his hands. Edmonton fans excused bad hockey for 10 years due to the whole CBA thing; surely they’ll accept another 20 games of lousy goaltending. If anyone gets uppity, the EIG can just threaten to leave town.

Quote of the year so far in relation to Oiler goaltending belongs to MacT on his decision to start Jussi last night “I just feel more comfortable with him in this situation. Jussi hasn’t started a lot of home games in the last number of games. I fully expect him to play well.” To paraphrase Lisa Simpson, I know those words but that quote makes no sense. Jussi hasn’t started a lot at home so we’ll start him here? That’s what drives the goalie decisions at this point? “He hasn’t sucked in this location recently.”

All this and the team is 4 points out of the division lead.