Earlier this month I wrote about NHL goalie consistency using our simple measure of player consistency as used in The Wages of Wins. Our player consistency measure calls NHL goalies that are in the top 20% in consecutive seasons as consistent, and likewise players that were in the bottom 20% in consecutive seasons as consistent. Admittedly, being in the bottom 20% in consecutive seasons is not the type of consistency that fans or GM's are looking for. So, how many NHL goalies are consistent in each 20% "bracket" and who are the NHL goalies that are the most consistent at the top?
Remember that only 26% of NHL goalies kept their same grade in consecutive seasons from 1997/98 to 2010/11. This amounts to a total of 162 of the 616 observations. Of those 162 NHL goalies that kept the same grade in consecutive seasons, 59 of the 162 (or 36%) were in the top 20% ("A" grade) from one season to the next, followed by 12% keeping the same "B" grade, 16% staying in the same "C" grade, with only 14% keeping the same "D" grade, and the final 21% in the "F" grade.
So of those 59 NHL goalie observations that were in the top 20% consecutive seasons from 1997/98 to 2010/11, only a few NHL goalies were consistent more than one time (from one season to the next). Roberto Luongo heads the list with being in the top 20% of NHL goalies seven times, followed by Patrick Roy and Tomas Vokoun five times, Dominik Hasek four times, Ed Belfour, Henrik Lundqvist, Jean-Sebastien Giguere, Martin Brodeur and Sean Burke three times, Cristobal Huet, Jonas Hiller, Miikka Kiprusoff, Niklas Backstrom and Roman Cechmanek two times.
Of course, the time period that I evaluated covers most of Roberto Luongo's career while it covers only a small part of Patrick Roy's career; so drawing any conclusions about NHL goalies career is problematic. Yet if we keep in mind the limits of the time period (1997/98 to 2010/11), we see that Roberto Luongo was the most consistent NHL goalie during this time period.
This got me to thinking, if NHL goalies are as inconsistent as we have demonstrated, then acquiring a goalie that is consistently (say in the top 20%) is rather rare and would make an NHL goalie very valuable. Problem is that so few NHL goalies are consistent over a long period of time. Of those NHL goalies listed above, only Roberto Luongo, Patrick Roy, Henrik Lundqvist and Jonas Hiller were in the top 20% for at least 50% of the observations. That's it; four NHL goalies and Jonas Hiller had two consecutive top 20% performances out of four possible observations. Yet NHL GM's pay goalies like they can predict their performance in the future, which we show is not accurate.