IS IT HARDER TO FACE FEWER SHOTS
There is very little correlation between shots faced and save percentage, and the evidence is that shots faced are overwhelmingly a function of the team, rather than the goaltender
Save percentage appears to be independent of the number of shots faced, and goalies can have outstanding save percentages both when facing many shots per game and when facing very few.
shot quality is a more significant variable than the number of shots against.
Facing a high or a low number of shots is therefore no excuse for a goaltender.
SV% AND SHOTS AGAINST
There is absolutely no evidence of a trade off between shots against and shot quality.
There isn’t much of a pattern between the two variables. In some years, the correlation is positive; in other years, negative. What’s important, I think, is that all the values are fairly close to zero.
The important point is that teams that give up more shots against do not tend to have higher save percentages
There is absolutely no evidence that high shot totals have an inflationary effect on goaltender save percentage.
GOALIE FATIGUE
(Aug 2008)
Even though these goalies played big minutes all throughout the season, they did not get worse as the season went on.
Not only that, but the goalies played the most games and minutes in March, late in the season, and their performance did not deteriorate.
Goalies apparently do not get worse as the season goes along
This suggests that goalie fatigue is not really a major issue.
It appears that fatigue may have an effect on goalies, but if so it appears to be a very small one.
I haven’t seen any proof that goalies get a lot worse by playing in more games.
If goalie fatigue doesn’t exist, and the evidence suggests that it is at the very least highly overrated, then every team in the league should play their best goalie in every single game. That’s what they did back in the day of Sawchuk/Plante/Hall and they handled it fine even without facial protection.
SHOTS AGAINST AND SV%
(Nov 2008)
playing for teams that outshoot their opposition on a regular basis is a drag on your save percentage.
A goalie’s save percentage is much better in games where he faces a lot of rubber, and much worse in games where he goes long stretches without seeing a shot.
SHOTS AND SV% REVISITED
There is not a clear relationship for either the shots while leading or the shots while trailing.
I think that special teams, playing to the score, and strength of opposition effects are mainly responsible for the stats that show a relationship between shots against and save percentage.
SHOTS AGAINST EFFECTS
over an 8 season sample it did not appear to make much difference at all whether goalies faced fewer shots than average or more shots than average.
DO GOALIE NEED TO FACE FREQUENT SHOTS
If a goalie hasn’t faced a shot for between five and 150 seconds, it has no impact on the percentage of shots he allows. I’ve included all shots at net
SHOTS AGAINST & GOALTENDING
(Jan 2010)
There doesn’t seem to be any significant effects from different levels of shots.
HIGH AND LOW SHOT GAMES
(Jan 2010)
A team’s shooting percentage (or, conversely, the opposing goalie’s save percentage) impacts the number of shots in the game. A high save percentage tends to cause higher shots against, while a lower save percentage tends to cause lower shots against.
the direction of causation runs from the percentages to the totals, rather than the other way around.
very high shots against numbers do tend to go hand in hand with a high save percentage
low shot games are usually a result of the scoreline and the percentages early in the game.
The low shot teams had a higher shooting percentage at all four game situations. In my view this supports the theory that shooting percentage has a strong impact on shots against.
It seems apparent that save percentage has an impact on shots against. Teams that posted high shot totals tended to have very low shooting percentages early in the game, while the opposite is true for teams with low shot totals.
All studies I’ve seen that look at seasonal averages for all teams show no relationship between save percentage and shots against,
CONSECUTIVE STARTS & GOALTENDER RYTHME
Do goaltenders really get in a rhythm?
What we really want to know is whether his fifth – or eighth, or tenth – straight appearance is better on average than his average first or second appearance.
Looking at the rest of the league’s goalies: Each goalie shows a similar pattern: over the first nine games or so, there is a general downward trend, and beyond that there are so few games that the data gets pretty scattershot. When they are combined, the downward trend over the early part of the streak becomes very clear, and it becomes hard to argue that there is any real benefit to extending the streak further.
There is no evidence whatsoever that a lot of consecutive games will help a goalie get in a rhythm.
BACK TO BACK GAMES
Not that this is shocking, but goalies don’t do well in net when they’re playing back-to-back games.
The one thing that obviously sticks out is the giant jump from zero days of rest to one. For the most part, once you get past that initial day the results aren’t that far off between any given two amounts. All neatly packed between .910 and .914.
But the difference between performance in back-to-back appearances and even one day off is not only noticeable, it’s staggering. In 95 appearances this year on the tail end of consecutive appearances, goalies are only stopping 89.2% of shots. In all other situations combined, that number is 91.2%. That’s a 2% drop, which is huge
the difference in performance there is outstripped by the difference in goaltending quality as a whole when guys are forced to play on the tail end of back-to-backs.
GOALIES SHOULD ALMOST NEVER START BACK TO BACK
Goalies playing on a second consecutive night have a save percentage much lower than goalies who have at least one off day between games. Goalies playing for the second consecutive game had an average save percentage of .892, versus .912 if they had at least one day off.
Rested goalies playing behind a tired team had the exact same .912 save percentage as Kurt found overall for rested goalies – which presumably means that rested goalies behind a rested team were also at .912, and that the team’s rest has no impact on the goalie’s save percentage. The entire 0.020 difference would then be due to goalie fatigue.
We can say with reasonable confidence that a rested goalie stops about 1 percent more shots than a tired goalie, even when both of them are playing in front of a team that played on the previous day.
When you add in the possibility of increased susceptibility to injury resulting from playing on back to back days, there is a strong case to be made that goalies starting back to back games should be a relatively rare occurrence.
SV% AND SHOTS AGAINST
If we look at all goaltenders over the past two years, goalies who faced 20-30 shots had a save percentage of 90.51%, while netminders who saw 30-40 shots fared better at 92.42%.
The trend is pretty clear, as shots against rises, save % tends to increase as well.
One possible explanation is that there are some score effects creeping in and the high shots against games are coming when the winning team is sitting back and allowing many low percentage shots from the outside.
SHOTS AGAINST AND EVSV%
Total Sv% tends to increase logarithmically as shots against increases,
save percentage tends to increase as shots against goes up, although it’s not always absolutely true.
ARE GOALIES BETTER WITH HIGHER SHOT VOLUME
(March 25, 2014)
It becomes difficult to register anything over .900 when facing lighter than a 20-shot workload.
If you see a goaltender drop a .940 save percentage during a 40-plus shot game, keep in mind that statistically the performance is average, almost expected, not the work of a phenom.
DO SHOTS AGAINST INFLATE SV%
For the forty active goaltenders to play at least one hundred NHL games over the past four seasons, there is no substantial relationship in them playing better -in terms of save percentage- when facing more or less shots against.
There is absolutely no evidence that high shot totals have an inflationary effect on goaltender save percentage.
an NHL goaltender’s save percentage is predominately a construct of natural variance and goaltending skill.
HIGHER CORSI RATES BOOST SV%
the more shot attempts you give up the higher the goalies save percentage will be.
If you are generating a ton of shot attempts it probably means you are spending a lot of time in the offensive zone and if you are in the offensive zone generating shots, they are not the tougher rush shot variety. Thus, if you are generating a lot of shots it probably means they are of lower quality on average.
· There appears to be a correlation between CA60 and save percentage.
I believe it is reasonable to suggest that there is in fact a positive relationship between CA60 and save percentage though it can be dominated by the impacts of changing teams or significantly changing rosters or playing styles in front of the goalie.
CORSI AGAINST DOESN’T CORRELATE WITH SV%
Teams allowing more shot-attempts against having a noticeable impact on their save percentage to be essentially zero.
There is still little to no evidence relating the Corsi Against a goaltender and their Save Percentage.
SPLITTING BACK TO BACK'S NOT ALWAYS THE RIGHT CALL
(Nov 2014)
Goaltenders see a drop of about 1% in save percentage when starting a second game in two nights – at least versus starting a fresh goaltender in that second game in 48 hours
It’s important, though, not to extrapolate as far as to say that this means that starting the fresh goalie is always the right call in these situations.
The column to the far right is the difference between the estimated true talent save percentage of the team’s current starter (based on games played this year) and backup. As you can see, slightly more than half of the teams have a difference of greater than 1%.
If he feels that wins now are more important than wins later, for some reason, then yeah.
WORKLOAD AND SV%
(Feb 2015)
There seems to be just as many goalies struggling to stay above the league average on the right side of the chart as the left! Shot attempt quantity doesn’t seem to be as big of a negative factor on save percentage as originally thought.
Teams will judge workload by using a variety of different statistics, but shot attempts continues to be one of the best ways of fully understanding how much strain a single game puts on a goaltender’s body.
BACK TO BACK GAMES & GOALIE PERFORMANCE
(April 2015)
The reputation for tired goalies has apparently been made based on the two worst years in our record; in fact, in three other seasons the effective change in save percentage is positive.
“tired” performance persists, but only at 3 and a half points below their usual performance, not 11.
while we still don’t have a good idea if it’s there’s greater risk for injury, or other unknown factors, we can be confident that coaches aren’t completely nuts if they send their Number One out back to back.
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