The Penguins need a backup goaltender. Today they waived the woefully underachieving Antti Niemi. At one point in time Niemi was a very good NHL goaltender. Those days are over and it has been trending that way for a little while.

His .797 all situations save percentage isn’t going to cut it. This goes way past how the team was playing in front of him. That does play a role, but that’s what we have expected save percentage for.

His expected save percentage was 87.8 given environment. His actual save percentage was 79.7. We have data to account for this. https://t.co/gxY3Of9viO

— Jesse Marshall (@jmarshfof) October 23, 2017

Niemi was never a sure fire signing. There is a reason Dallas was eager to get rid of him. Last year his actual save percentage was way lower than his expected save percentage.



You’ll notice that he used to outplay the expected save percentage and even the years he didn’t the bars were still higher. Now the bars are lower and he is underperforming. I said over the summer that this was a dirt cheap signing that could be easily fixed if it didn’t go right. I still feel the same way. It doesn’t look like this signing is going to pan out and that is fine. The team shouldn’t struggle to find a goalie who can do better than .797. For example, Calvin Pickard was just on waivers recently.



Pickard is just getting his career off the ground, but the early returns on his 86 NHL games are positive and come in above Niemi at any point in his career.

Sometimes signings don’t work out. It’s good when they have no term and don’t cost anything

Thanks for reading!

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