Nashville Predators fans were disappointed by the omission of the Preds’ fantastic goaltender, Juuse Saros, from the list of nominees for the Vezina Trophy. When the vote data was released last night, Saros was in 4th place, just missing out on a finalist slot with 24 points (2-2-8).
Saros’s perfomance dragged a struggling Preds team within sight of the playoffs. But ultimately they came up short, missing the postseason by just four points. Saros’s traditional stats were solid, but not the stuff of legends. Among goalies who played at least 25 games, he was 7th in wins (33), 17th in GAA (2.69), and 8th in Sv% (0.919).
But these statistics need to be viewed in the context of the Preds’ defensive struggles. According to Natural Stat Trick, Saros faced 2099 shots on the season, the most of any NHL goaltender and 116 more than the next closest contender–John Gibson, whose Ducks finished as the last-place team in the West. Part of this difference is workload–Saros played 11 more games than Gibson–but the Predators also allowed the sixth-most shots against per game in the league.
Shot quality was also an issue for the Preds. Saros faced the second-most high danger shots and allowed far fewer goals than would have been expected given shot quality. By Money Puck’s calculation, Saros allowed 46.7 fewer goals against than expected–placing him first in the league. And a number of other “advanced stats” guys advocated for him being the best goalie in the league.
Let’s look at some history
It has been suggested by some that the Preds missing the playoffs doomed Saros. Maybe Saros was the best goalie in the league, but if his team missed the playoffs, would anyone recognize that?
That started me thinking about how much making the playoffs might matter for a regular-season individual award like the Vezina. To look at that a bit more, I collected the data from the past 11 years (2012 – 2022) of Vezina voting from hockey-reference.com. This data included data on all goalies to recieve votes in any year, including how the general managers (who vote for the Vezina) voted, the team’s record with the goalie in net, and basic statistics of Sv% and GAA. To this I added data collected from the NHL’s website on whether the team the goalie ended the season with made the playoffs.
The number of goalies who recieved votes varies by year with an average of 9.8. But it’s common for goalies to be included in the voting in multiple years. The winner of the Vezina on average gets 71.5% of all possible first-place votes and only once since 2012 have fewer than 50% of GMs chosen the winner as their first choice (Marc-Andre Fleury in 2021 recieved only 14 of 31 possible first-place votes).
In looking at this data, it’s clear that making the playoffs is important for recieving votes at all. Of 98 goalies nominated, only 11 had failed to make the playoffs in the year of their nomination. Further, most of these netminders recieved few voting points. Six of the 11 playoff missers garnered only a single third-place nomination (one point), while four others recieved a smattering of points.
The only goalie who missed the playoffs who was a real contender for the Vezina is an outlier in many ways: Sergei Bobrovsky in 2013. Bobrovsky not only contended for the Vezina that year–he won. Bobrovsky’s Blue Jackets missed the playoffs that year in a tie breaker, despite their netminder’s .932 Sv%. Bobrovsky was a bit of a controversial winner, by recent Vezina standards, garnering only 56.7% of possible first-place votes.
The statistics
Goalie performance is an important component of team performance. So separating the goalie’s own performance from the team’s performance, and the benchmark of “making the playoffs,” is difficult to do anecdotally. Thus, I ran some basic regressions to try to determine if the “playoff” benchmark was a statistically significant factor in the number of points a goalie received in Vezina voting and whether or not they were among the top three candidates (the finalists).
What I found is both expected and a bit surprising. The explanatory variables I included in my analysis were: the number of games played by the goalie, the standing points per game for the team while the goalie was in net, the goalie’s aggregate statistics (Sv% and GAA), and whether the team made the playoffs.
Amongst the group of elite goalies who received votes for the Vezina, the most important factors in determining the number of points recieved in Vezina voting or whether they were a Vezina finalist are the number of games played, standings points per game and Sv%. GAA is not statistically significant, perhaps suggesting that GMs realize that it is not an important measure of goalie performance. But making the playoffs also did not matter.
What does it all mean?
So if making the playoffs wouldn’t have made a difference, how could his teammates have helped Saros out? Given the historic regular season for Linus Ullmark and the Boston Bruins, it’s unlikely that any advanced stats would be sufficient for Saros to have won this season. But his team might have been able to help him make the list of finalists.
The average third-place Vezina vote-getter has 31 points (this year Connor Hellebuyck had 32). So Saros’s 24 points put him approximately 7 points out of a finalist slot. This could have been overcome, according to the historic data, by improving his Sv%. Saros’s Sv% for the season was .919 and the regression results suggest that a 0.001 increase in Sv% translates into 3 additional points in Vezina voting. So, raising that Sv% to .921 (.001 higher than third-place Hellebuyck), might have made a difference in theory.
Given Saros’s Sv% on “High Danger” shots (.843, according to Natural Stat Trick) and his Sv% on other types of shots (.949), Saros could have made the finalist list if the team had managed to keep High Danger shots to 26.5% of Saros’s workload. To do this, the team in front of him, would have needed move 44 of the High Danger shots Saros faced to a non-high danger category. This represents a change in only 2% of the shots he faced this season.
The Predators are changing rapidly. A new GM, a new coach, and certainly at least one change at center. We’re all anticipating new young players, but only time will tell what this team will look like on opening night. Perhaps, with Barry Trotz at the helm, we’ll see a new defensive structure that will reduce the difficulty of Saros’s workload. I know I’ll be watching to see if the team can give Saros the boost he needs to get the recognition that many Predators fans feel he has already earned.