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Displaying pretext
The decision to award the American League Cy Young Award to Felix Hernandez, despite his unremarkable 13-12 win/loss record, is being hailed in sabermetric circles as proof that baseball writers are collectively moving away from a traditional understanding of pitchers (it's all about the W) and realizing that focusing on run prevention is the way to go.
Perhaps the best recent goaltending equivalent of Felix Hernandez's 2010 season would be Roberto Luongo's performance in 2003-04. Both Hernandez and Luongo had outstanding years on teams that gave them little support, but unlike Hernandez, Luongo was not named the best player at his position. The general managers voted Luongo as only the third best goalie, although to their credit the writers did vote him a Second Team All-Star.
Despite a 25-33-14 record, Luongo posted the highest single-season Goals Versus Threshold number of any goalie in the last decade. I think it would be instructive to compare him to the goalie with the #2 ranked season by GVT (Jose Theodore in 2001-02, a campaign that saw him named both the top goalie and the league's most valuable player) to illustrate the importance of goal support in goalie award voting.
Even a simple glance at the two goalies' statistics suggests that Luongo had a similar level of performance to Theodore. Each started a lot of games and were effective despite a heavy workload (both led the league in total saves). Both goalies posted .931 save percentages and both recorded 7 shutouts. On the surface there doesn't appear to be enough of a distinction to justify Theodore taking home two major trophies and Luongo leaving with none, especially given that Theodore was competing against a great season by Patrick Roy as well as Dominik Hasek one year removed from a Vezina, while Luongo was only up against a routine year by Martin Brodeur (i.e. routine for Marty, not routine for just any goalie) and a great half-season by Miikka Kiprusoff.
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In The Crease (11/30)
1 comment has been left for this article. 
Good article. I can tell a lot of work went into it. A key factor is that Theodore played in Montreal. Nobody cares about Florida. Including the hockey writers.