When the Penguins and Rangers meet tonight Pittsburgh won’t have many excuses. Sure, they’re still without Matt Murray, but Bryan Rust should return to the lineup and help out. More importantly, the Rangers were sellers at the deadline and Henrik Lundqvist will not be in net tonight. The two points are there for the taking.
As for the Penguins goaltending situation Matt Murray once again was on the ice taking shots. He remains out of action. Casey DeSmith will start his second consecutive game after beating Dallas the other night. So far this season Casey DeSmith has an all situations save percentage of .919 which is really good.
There is even more goaltending news. Marc-Andre Fleury secured victory number 400 in Philadelphia of all places. He stopped 38 out of 40 shots and did not receive one of the three stars. Earning 400 wins cannot happen if you are below average goaltender. Fleury is certainly not that. However, 400 wins can happen when you are on one of the top scoring teams while putting up average to above average results. I rarely talk about goalie wins as a stat because I don’t think that tells me much about the actual individual and I extend this logic to pitchers in baseball. Also, the fact of the matter is that shootouts have watered down the flimsy wins stat even more. Hockeybuzz’s Sheng Peng had a good piece about that today.
There is less reason now to use old goalie wins standards now than there used to be. Even more important is that there are way better options available to analyze a goaltender’s performance. The idea that Fleury’s win totals are deserving of a Hall of Fame induction is a bit ludicrous. He is not one of the best goaltenders of his era by any save percentage metric. For the same reasons Chris Osgood isn’t a hall of fame goaltender neither is Marc-Andre Fleury. Of the top 40 goalies of all-time in save percentage 30 of them are active players, including Fleury. The Flower is 35th on the list at .913 and some of the names above him aren’t screaming hall of fame ie: Roman Cechmanek, Pekka Rinne, Ben Bishop, Cam Talbot, Frederick Andersen, Martin Jones, Jonathan Quick, Robin Lehner, Devan Dubnyk, Jaro Halak, Semyon Varlamov, Ryan Miller, Craig Anderson, Jimmy Howard, Jonathan Bernier, James Reimer, Mike Smith, Cristobal Huet, and even Jake Allen.
The fact that 30 active players make up the top 40 of this list tells you a lot about the era as well. Goal scoring is down. However, no individual had more goal support than Fleury during their career. How many of these goalies would also have 400 wins backstopping the Penguins. Pretty much all of them with the only variable being injuries.
The 400 wins are a great achievement that speaks to Fleury’s longevity in the league and his ability to stay at average or above. The criticism here is on the goalie win statistic and the merits of it being a qualification for the Hall of Fame. It doesn’t really mean as much as some want it to.
Thanks for reading!
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