This past weekend I heard a number of hockey announcers state that the most important player in the playoffs was the goaltender. That reminded me that I had not finished the regular season NHL goalie analysis. For our purposes, the NHL goalie measure analyzes the number of wins above average a NHL goalie produces in a given time period (in this case the lockout shortened season). So here are the top 10 NHL goalies using our
Wins Above Average measure of an NHL goalie. The updated coefficient on goals against is -0.341814 over the seasons from 1995/96 to 2013. Using that measure of the impact of goals against on standings points, yields the following top 20 NHL goalies during the 2013 regular season.
|
Player |
Team |
|
WAA |
|
SV% |
| 1 |
Sergei Bobrovsky |
CBJ |
|
3.720 |
|
0.932 |
| 2 |
Craig Anderson |
OTT |
|
3.364 |
|
0.941 |
| 3 |
Henrik Lundqvist |
NYR |
|
2.863 |
|
0.926 |
| 4 |
Tuukka Rask |
BOS |
|
2.860 |
|
0.929 |
| 5 |
Antti Niemi |
SJS |
|
2.518 |
|
0.924 |
| 6 |
Cory Schneider |
VAN |
|
2.152 |
|
0.927 |
| 7 |
Jimmy Howard |
DET |
|
2.137 |
|
0.923 |
| 8 |
James Reimer |
TOR |
|
2.054 |
|
0.924 |
| 9 |
Corey Crawford |
CHI |
|
1.850 |
|
0.926 |
| 10 |
Robin Lehner |
OTT |
|
1.745 |
|
0.936 |
| 11 |
Devan Dubnyk |
EDM |
|
1.563 |
|
0.920 |
| 12 |
Braden Holtby |
WSH |
|
1.550 |
|
0.920 |
| 13 |
Viktor Fasth |
ANA |
|
1.025 |
|
0.921 |
| 14 |
Ben Bishop |
OTT, TBL |
0.968 |
|
0.920 |
| 15 |
Ray Emery |
CHI |
|
0.792 |
|
0.922 |
| 16 |
Jason LaBarbera |
PHX |
|
0.791 |
|
0.923 |
| 17 |
Chad Johnson |
PHX |
|
0.777 |
|
0.954 |
| 18 |
Kari Lehtonen |
DAL |
|
0.732 |
|
0.916 |
| 19 |
Nikolai Khabibulin |
EDM |
|
0.712 |
|
0.923 |
| 20 |
Ryan Miller |
BUF |
|
0.668 |
|
0.915 |