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Don't Expect Too Much from Quick

February 25, 2017, 12:35 PM ET [24 Comments]
Sheng Peng
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So Jonathan Quick is coming back -- season saved, right? Maybe not.

Out of curiosity, I examined how Quick played immediately after the last two occasions he came back from major injury -- his herniated disc in 2013 and serious groin strain in 2014:

View post on imgur.com


(Adjusted Fenwick Save Percentage “shows if a goalie is saving more or less shots than an average NHL goalie would be expected to save if they faced the same quality of unblocked shots.”)

These numbers suggest that some Kings fans should temper their expectations. His -1.21 Adj.FSv% after his January 2013 return indicates below-average work, while his +0.28 in January 2014 is above-average.

All that said, those figures are meaningless. Really. Like I said, I researched them out of curiosity.

Goalies are notoriously hard to predict, so I don't know how Quick will play. Nobody knows. Hoping that he'll return and play out of his mind and save the season is perfectly reasonable.

But expecting it? That's what I'm questioning.

For the past few months, "Quick would've had that" has been an all-too-common refrain -- unfair, because in part, it's an implied criticism of Peter Budaj's truly season-saving work. Budaj has, at the very least, matched Quick's career-average performance:

View post on imgur.com


Just like Quick, Budaj has struggled terribly at times. And just like Quick, Budaj has won games by himself.

That's not a criticism of Quick. Again, I'm just splashing some cold water on the party. I'm also giving Budaj some well-earned love.

On the bright side, Quick does bring a higher ceiling to the table. That is to say, while it's inappropriate to expect him to save the season, he's certainly more capable of doing so than most goalies.

After his middling 2014 comeback, he won 11 of his next 13 (.932 Sv%, +2.19 Adj.FSv%), then backstopped Los Angeles to the Stanley Cup. Going back to his slow start in the lockout-shorted 2012-13 campaign, he took six of his next eight decisions (.904, -0.07), before truly catching fire and leading his squad to the Western Conference Finals. And of course, we'll never forget his wire-to-wire stunning 2011-12.

Indeed, this year's Kings are hoping for some magic, as Darryl Sutter implied to Jon Rosen yesteday:

When he’s ready to play, he’ll be ready to play. It’d be different if we were way up or way out. It’d be different.


Quick's earlier-than-expected return is yet another twist to this dramatic season. Can he help turn LA's fortunes around?

At the very least, he and Budaj should form a more promising tandem:




Stats as of 2/24/17, courtesy of Behind the Net, Corsica, Hockey Analysis, Hockey Reference, Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Puckalytics, and Sporting Charts.

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