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Displaying pretext
Remember Jaroslav Halak's performance last season? That was just the latest example of a goalie catching fire and stealing a series from a higher seed. For as often as it happens in the NHL playoffs it still appears to be totally unpredictable. Well, perhaps not.
Before each of the last two playoffs, Hockey Prospectus and Insider set out to forecast goaltender performance, as measured by save percentage. Last postseason, we got pretty close to nailing Halak dead-on (.926 predicted, .923 actual), even noting "Jaroslav Halak ... has the profile of a potential giant killer" and "Don't underestimate the Canadiens -- even against mighty Washington."
While goaltender performance can vary greatly over the small sample size of a short playoff run, we can do our best to predict which netminders may succeed or fail. Over the past dozen postseason campaigns, the best performance indicators have been career playoff save percentage, current regular-season save percentage and current regular-season shots on goal against. In addition, for very young goaltenders (those under 24 years of age), the current regular season's workload has a large impact proportionately.
Compared with last postseason, there are relatively few neophytes this time around. If we ignore the seven career shots against that Corey Crawford faced in relief of Antti Niemi in 2010, he, Washington's Michal Neuvirth and Philadelphia's Sergei Bobrovsky are the only three playoff rookies among the probable starters. That means you should see some very familiar names atop our rankings, but there is one surprise out West.
Legend
CrPO: Career playoff save percentage
RegS: Current regular season save percentage
SOGA: Current regular season Shots On Goal Against
Predicted: Predicted postseason save percentage
Rank Goalie Team CrPO RegS SOGA Predicted
1 Tim Thomas BOS 0.926 0.938 1811 0.925
2 Ray Emery ANA 0.904 0.926 272 0.923
3 Roberto Luongo VAN 0.919 0.928 1753 0.919
4 Ilya Bryzgalov PHX 0.925 0.921 2125 0.918
5 Corey Crawford CHI 0.857* 0.917 1545 0.916
6 Dwayne Roloson TBL 0.915 0.914 1596 0.915
7 Ryan Miller BUF 0.917 0.916 1964 0.913
8 Pekka Rinne NSH 0.911 0.930 1905 0.912
9 Jimmy Howard DET 0.915 0.908 1830 0.911
10 Marc-Andre Fleury PIT 0.911 0.918 1742 0.911
11 Antti Niemi SJS 0.910 0.920 1741 0.911
12 Henrik Lundqvist NYR 0.907 0.923 1965 0.907
13 Michal Neuvirth WSH N/A 0.914 1283 0.904
14 Jonathan Quick LAK 0.884 0.918 1631 0.894
15 Sergei Bobrovsky PHI N/A 0.915 1527 0.893
16 Carey Price MTL 0.894 0.923 2147 0.870
*Only one game (7 shots faced)
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