My good friend and co-author David Berri and I published a paper in the Journal of Sports Economics in 2010 on how GM's evaluate NHL goalies. Basically what we found was that GM's are good at evaluating current player performance by using Vezina voting for the best NHL goalie and using past player performance in setting NHL salaries. Unfortunately, GM's on the whole are not so good at setting salaries in relation to the goalies future performance.
I have used this model to evaluate NHL goalies at the end of the 2009-2010 regular season, and have decided to pick up with this evaluation again. So to be clear, here is how we measured NHL goalie performance. WAA is our measure of NHL goalie productivity and is based on the absolute value (since a goal against has a negative effect on team wins) of the marginal value of a goal against divided by two (since each win is worth two standings points) times the number of shots on goal that goalie faces times the difference in the save percentage of the goalie and the average save percentage of all goalies for that season (or in this case up to the trading deadline).
So here are the results for each goalie. The goalie data comes from nhl.com. Hopefully, there is no surprise as to the best goalie in the league (Tim Thomas), who is having a sensational season up the All-Star break. Some of the other results (both positive and negative) were surprising to me.
So here are the results for each goalie. The goalie data comes from nhl.com. Hopefully, there is no surprise as to the best goalie in the league (Tim Thomas), who is having a sensational season up the All-Star break. Some of the other results (both positive and negative) were surprising to me.
| Player | Team | WAA | ||
| Tim Thomas | BOS | 4.754 | ||
| Jonas Hiller | ANA | 2.736 | ||
| Ondrej Pavelec | ATL | 2.358 | ||
| Pekka Rinne | NSH | 2.099 | ||
| Henrik Lundqvist | NYR | 1.985 | ||
| Roberto Luongo | VAN | 1.875 | ||
| Marc-Andre Fleury | PIT | 1.796 | ||
| Tomas Vokoun | FLA | 1.714 | ||
| Carey Price | MTL | 1.591 | ||
| Cam Ward | CAR | 1.570 | ||
| Niklas Backstrom | MIN | 1.365 | ||
| Jonathan Quick | LAK | 1.142 | ||
| Sergei Bobrovsky | PHI | 1.103 | ||
| Semyon Varlamov | WSH | 1.079 | ||
| Kari Lehtonen | DAL | 0.969 | ||
| Ilya Bryzgalov | PHX | 0.968 | ||
| Dwayne Roloson | NYI, TBL | 0.832 | ||
| Corey Crawford | CHI | 0.824 | ||
| Tuukka Rask | BOS | 0.788 | ||
| Brent Johnson | PIT | 0.689 | ||
| James Reimer | TOR | 0.631 | ||
| Cory Schneider | VAN | 0.618 | ||
| Scott Clemmensen | FLA | 0.567 | ||
| Ryan Miller | BUF | 0.485 | ||
| Andrew Raycroft | DAL | 0.457 | ||
| Devan Dubnyk | EDM | 0.424 | ||
| Cedrick Desjardins | TBL | 0.412 | ||
| Brian Boucher | PHI | 0.384 | ||
| Martin Biron | NYR | 0.377 | ||
| Kevin Poulin | NYI | 0.359 | ||
| Anders Lindback | NSH | 0.334 | ||
| Alex Auld | MTL | 0.330 | ||
| Anton Khudobin | MIN | 0.311 | ||
| Martin Gerber | EDM | 0.271 | ||
| Jose Theodore | MIN | 0.243 | ||
| Antti Niemi | SJS | 0.238 | ||
| Jason LaBarbera | PHX | 0.225 | ||
| Michal Neuvirth | WSH | 0.169 | ||
| Matt Climie | PHX | 0.050 | ||
| Richard Bachman | DAL | 0.040 | ||
| Braden Holtby | WSH | -0.023 | ||
| Pascal Leclaire | OTT | -0.056 | ||
| Curtis McElhinney | ANA | -0.065 | ||
| Joey MacDonald | DET | -0.072 | ||
| Jacob Markstrom | FLA | -0.081 | ||
| Mark Dekanich | NSH | -0.081 | ||
| Michael Leighton | PHI | -0.081 | ||
| Robin Lehner | OTT | -0.101 | ||
| Mike McKenna | NJD | -0.102 | ||
| Jhonas Enroth | BUF | -0.173 | ||
| Peter Mannino | ATL | -0.192 | ||
| Chris Osgood | DET | -0.216 | ||
| Jaroslav Halak | STL | -0.218 | ||
| Nathan Lawson | NYI | -0.244 | ||
| Henrik Karlsson | CGY | -0.306 | ||
| Mike Brodeur | OTT | -0.353 | ||
| Patrick Lalime | BUF | -0.355 | ||
| Jimmy Howard | DET | -0.409 | ||
| Mathieu Garon | CBJ | -0.442 | ||
| Antero Niittymaki | SJS | -0.522 | ||
| Craig Anderson | COL | -0.628 | ||
| Johan Hedberg | NJD | -0.661 | ||
| Jonathan Bernier | LAK | -0.680 | ||
| Marty Turco | CHI | -0.856 | ||
| Jean-Sebastien Giguere | TOR | -0.865 | ||
| Miikka Kiprusoff | CGY | -0.985 | ||
| Justin Peters | CAR | -1.052 | ||
| Chris Mason | ATL | -1.086 | ||
| Steve Mason | CBJ | -1.111 | ||
| Peter Budaj | COL | -1.149 | ||
| Ty Conklin | STL | -1.173 | ||
| Mike Smith | TBL | -1.184 | ||
| Jonas Gustavsson | TOR | -1.299 | ||
| Rick DiPietro | NYI | -1.318 | ||
| Martin Brodeur | NJD | -1.372 | ||
| Brian Elliott | OTT | -1.496 | ||
| Dan Ellis | TBL | -1.662 | ||
| Nikolai Khabibulin | EDM | -1.928 |