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.


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.