Does Henrik Lundqvist's Contract HURT or HELP the NY Rangers?

   There's some debate that Henrik Lundqvist's league-leading salary of $8.5 million per year is too much. More specifically, some Rangers fans feel it hurts the team's chances at a Stanley Cup since all that money is not allocated towards forwards nor defensemen. So with the 2014-15 NHL regular season statistics locked in the books from now to eternity, I thought I'd spend this summer day snooping around this theory. Here we go...

   First I took all goaltenders who faced a minimum of 328 shots in the regular season (or faced a minimum of 4 shots on goal per team game during the season). This narrowed the field to 61 NHL goalies from which to extrapolate our data. Then I looked at their total Goals Saved Above Replacement, a nifty stat meant to compare a goaltender to the theoretical average goalie in the given season. I also jotted down their time on ice (rounded to the nearest minute) & 2014-15 salary cap (Average Annual Value).

   Here's the spreadsheet in case anyone would like to check my work.

   When tabulating the averages of this data, we arrived at:

   - The average NHL goalie stopped 1.037377 Goals Above Average in 2014-15
   - The average NHL goalie played 2,267 minutes in 2014-15
   - The average NHL goalie had a cap hit of $3,011,066 in 2014-15

   Taking these three findings into account, we can bundle them into a single, concise "going rate" of the average NHL goalie in 2014-15:

   - The typical NHL goalie stopped 0.027525 Goals Above Average per 60 minutes, paid at a $3,011,066 cap hit

   So...

   How does King Henrik compare relative to that clearinghouse rate?

   - Lundqvist stopped 10.43 Goals Above Average in 2014-15
   - Lundqvist played 2,743 minutes in 2014-15
   - Lundqvist had a cap hit of $8,500,000 in 2014-15

   Therefore...

   - Lundqvist stopped 0.228144 Goals Above Average per 60 minutes, paid at a $8,500,000 cap hit

   How does Lundqvist directly contrast against our mean findings?

   - Lundqvist's GSAA/hour rate was 8.29 times the NHL's average goalie rate
   - Lundqvist's salary cap hit was 2.82 times the NHL's average goalie cap hit

   In essence, Lundqvist performed over 8.3 times the market rate for only 2.8 times the price!

   If you go to a supermarket to purchase frozen TV dinners... but they have a special offering 8.3 times the amount you intended to get, but for less than triple the price you were expecting to pay... kinda hard to categorize that as anything but a good deal.

   Why did I make frozen TV dinners the example? Because a frozen meal purchased today will likely expire right around the time Lundqvist's play will [historically] decline. Do we see Lundqvist becoming anything less than an above-average goalie at any point in the next few years? It seems highly unlikely, barring a massive injury and/or drop-off. While year-to-year subtle regression is the historical norm, HockeyGraphs analysis suggest at least 3 years before major regression.

   So even with his league-leading super-hefty cap hit, Lundqvist was still an absolute bargain in the 2014-15 season, the 1st year of his 6-year contract.

   Let's look at a few graphs to evaluate Lundqvist's legitimacy as a top-paid netminder in the post-post-salary-cap era:

 

   - Lundqvist has had 10 consecutive seasons of either accumulating 30 wins and/or leading the NHL in wins during a shortened season.
   - Lundqvist, compared to the top dogs of the past decade, has yet to have a below-average season.

    - Lundqvist's first 9 years saw him win the Vezina once (2012), where he received 80% of the votes, smashing the record for most-lopsided Vezina voting result since votes were made public in 1981-82.
   - Though his streak may very well end in a few weeks, Lundqvist has gone 9 consecutive seasons while placing no worse than 6th in yearly Vezina votes. In other words, there has yet to be a season where Lundqvist was not voted one of the Top-6 NHL goalies by the league's general managers
   - Lundqvist has never gone a season without receiving votes for at least 1 NHL trophy.

 
   Lundqvist's contribution to the NY Rangers last multi-round playoff runs the past 4 seasons undoubtedly suggest value, even at the steepest price in the land:

   So, while Lundqvist's heavy cap hit will ultimately depreciate in terms of bang-for-buck, as he is contracted until his late 30's... it is not a liability yet. In fact the numbers suggest that it unbelievably remains a bargain, at least in this point in time. In fact, until we see significant regression, there is no way someone can honestly claim Lundqvist (or his plump contract) has actually hurt the Rangers' chances at winning it all.

   Recent goalies to remain extremely productive and valuable to their team, even north of their 35th birthdays, include...

   Tim Thomas

Dominik Hasek

Patrick Roy

   Has Lundqvist not earned the right to be compared to Thomas, Hasek or Roy? While all these players went on to win a Cup (which Lundqvist obviously hasn't...yet?)... he is inarguably one of, if not the, best goalie of his era. 

   Thomas & Hasek also poke holes in the theory "If Lundqvist hasn't won a Cup by now, he never will!" That contention, plus the absolute myth that Lundqvist himself has cost the Rangers a Cup, is irrefutably flawed. Who can genuinely believe it was Lundqvist's contract which cost the Rangers the 2015 postseason, instead of, oh I don't know... The injuries to Mats Zuccarello, Ryan McDonagh, Dan Girardi, Keith Yandle, & Jesper Fast? 

   If 10 consecutive coinflips are all heads, how logical is it to conclude "since there hasn't been any tails before, their never will be in the future!"

   ... That logic simply doesn't hold water.

   Speaking of injuries... other than a few weeks in 2006, a few games in 2013, and the freak vascular injury suffered last February... Lundqvist's healthiness in his career has been absolutely remarkable. No torn ligaments, no broken bones, no concussions, no major or relevant surgery... in a decade! His high-quality production aside, surely his abnormally high attendance in regular season & playoff games also validate his contractual worth.

   Quality, quantity, relativity... they all point towards Lundqvist being a resounding "positive" on the New York roster.

   We'll be posting more goaltender analytical evaluations throughout the summer, including league-wide goaltender stats we've personally created here at SatherOnWaivers. Follow us on Twitter (@HockeyStatMiner ) to receive further updates, and feel free to leave feedback as well.

   All hail the [now economically validated] King!

Talbot vs Lundqvist? Introducing "The Ludas Rating", a BRAND NEW goaltending stat!

   Is it a bigger accomplishment to receive a (C+) in a very, very difficult class in school... or receive an (A-) in a trivially easier one? 

   In an effort to run some numbers on NYR goaltenders Henrik Lundqvist & Cam Talbot, we here at SatherOnWaivers have accidentally stumbled upon a whole new method of analyzing & evaluating an NHL goaltender’s performance in a season. Initially we wanted to judge Talbot’s performance in net this season versus Lundqvist, particularly this season since filling in full-time for Lundqvist since his injury. So here’s what we did:

• We went through each net minder’s seasonal game log, and noted the amount of ice time each goaltender logged against each NHL team.

• Then, we calculated each goalie's respective opponent’s # of NHL standings points, weighted in average of each goalie's specific icetimes against each opponent

• We took each goaltender’s Goals-Saved-Above-Average and divided it by number of hours of ice time. If you’ve never heard of this stat before, you can read about it here.

• In the name of relativity and perspective, we also found the same data for both goalies in the 2013-14 NHL season as well

• Finally, we procured a weighted average of how many standings points in an opponent each goalie was facing in the average-60 minute game.

   Still confused?

   Let’s say it’s the 2013-14 NHL Season, we want to compare a few goalies, and the NHL league-wide average standings points per team was 92.233. Goalie A played 60 minutes against the Buffalo Sabres, who were the worst team in the NHL (52 points). Let’s say in those 60 minutes, Goalie A had a GSAA of 3.00, meaning he theoretically stopped 3 more goals than the baseline-average NHL goalie would have stopped himself. Now Goalie B, on the other hand, also played 60 minutes that season, except played the Anaheim Ducks, who were the #1 team in the West (116 points). Yet in that game, Goalie B had a GSAA of 1.50.

   Goalie A stopped 3 goals-above-average against a terrible team, while Goalie B stopped 1.5 goals-above-average against an elite team. So which performance was empirically better?

   That was what we were trying to offer a remedy to, but instead created a brand new goaltending analytic: The Ludas Rating. The Ludas Rating offers itself as a measure of inflation/deflation for performance numbers, taking into account what quality of opponent those numbers were generated from in the first place. 

   In other words, the Ludas Rating attempts to tackle  “how many standings points was Hank or Cam facing in the average game? … And even then, how does one compare different performances against varying quality of opponent?”

   To solve this example...

   Goalie A: 

• 3.0 GSAA in 60 minutes
• Average NHL Standings points of Average Competition: 52
• Average NHL Standings points per NHL team: 92.233

52 / 92.233 = 0.5638

3.00 x 0.5638 = 1.691

1.691 “adjusted" GSAA per hour, or a “Ludas Rating” of 1.691

   Goalie B:

• 1.5 GSAA in 60 minutes
• Average NHL standings points of Average Competition: 116
• Average NHL Standings points per NHL team: 92.233

116/92.233 = 1.2577

1.50 x 1.2577 = 1.8865

1.8865 “adjusted” GSAA per hour, or a “Ludas Rating of 1.8865

   … So it would seem Goalie B has a higher/better Ludas Rating, as his traditional numbers were not as good as those of Goalie A, but his quality of competition was much higher, thus making his 1.5 GSAA/hr vs ANH adjustably better than the 3.00 GSAA/hr vs BUF. 

   So now that we’ve explained what the Ludas Rating is, let’s return to the original subjects of Cam Talbot & Henrik Lundqvist. Here’s their relative stats from last year, the 2013-14 NHL season:

   And just like the introductory example into the Ludas Rating, we see Talbot’s .7558 GSAA/hr seems vastly superior to Lundqvist’s .1963. But, taking into account Talbot was playing weaker competition (83.536 standings points/opponent) than Lundqvist (91.716 standings points/opponent), the Ludas Rating adjusts Talbot’s GSAA/hr to be a lower rate. While Lundqvist technically has his lowered too (playing opponents less than 1% below-average), not nearly as much as Talbot’s. 

   Like other analytical metrics into interpreting data, the Ludas Rating is not perfect. A franchise playing against Lundqvist in October may be a very different team than the NHL Standings will reflect 6 months later. Goalies must face 328 shots in an 82-game season to qualify, as their GSAA is not tabulated under a lesser sample size. This is a quality-of-competition adjustor for GSAA-per-hour, using relative NHL Standings Points as a measuring stick to judge opposition’s “quality.” 

   So what about their Ludas Ratings in the current 2014-15 NHL season?

   *Since the season is ongoing, and teams have not completed all their games, the metric of figuring the Average NHL Standings Points per Team is “projected”, unlike prior seasons fully in the books. That is to say, if a team has 60 Standings Points in 60 games so far, they will be treated as though they are an 82-Standings Points team as that is their current mathematical projection. 

   

   Once again we see Cam Talbot has faced overall-lower competition (avg 88.9 standings points per opponent) than King Henrik (avg 94.668 standings points per opponent). 

   In both seasons, the Ludas Rating has reduced Talbot’s impressive numbers to a more realistic amount, as he has not been facing quality competition. Yet it is worth reminding: Talbot, an undrafted net minder who played college hockey at University of Alabama-Huntsville, who stumbled into the NHL following an abrupt mid-season retirement from Martin Biron in 2013… has undeniably played above-average in his time in New York.

   Are we expecting Talbot to play as good, or better than, Lundqvist? Probably not. Are we expecting Talbot to play above-average in the NHL? Of course. These studies show that, while his sharp career numbers are impressive, a little zip comes off the fastball when we hold Talbot accountable for playing sub-average teams for the most part. Overall, it’s hard to truly feel Cam Talbot is not performing satisfactorily... just not as well as Lundqvist.

* Please note: The data required to calculate a goaltender's Ludas Rating is very obnoxious and tedious. We are working on an algorithm to run smooth tabulations of various goaltenders' Ludas Rating, as to expand upon the metric, and provide more relative insight into goaltending leaguewide and in seasons past. We will post new data as it comes in, we ask you to be patient as this is a new equation, and currently takes a long time to configure. We look forward to your feedback!