There is always a hot debate around Jonathan Quick and his stature in the NHL. Is he "elite" ? What does elite even mean? If it is defined as top five in categories like save percentage then he would not be. If it is by accomplishment or a perceived "clutch-ness" to his game, then that is taking in a very small part of the season. Some put a heavy weight on that though.
I do not think anyone will argue that Quick is not a very good goaltender. He is a solid NHL goaltender. He can be otherworldly at times with his outstanding athleticism. He makes saves that most of us pull groins just thinking about. Again, this is just a small portion of the puzzle. How his team limits chances, how structured the overall play is, and how much they possess the puck all factor in.
Quick, and goaltenders in general, are an interesting mental case. There are theories that goalies do better when facing more shots, simply because they can get into the game and get a rhythm. When shots are sparse, or of a low threat level throughout the game, it tends to lull goalies to sleep. It is like a pitcher coming out to pitch after a rain delay. Most time, after sitting for a while, the velocity goes down, the break on your pitches is lessened, and your numbers altogether suffer.
I have always felt that Jonathan Quick is the style of goalie that needs to get into a game mentally by facing a lot of shots. This presents a pretty sticky situation for team defense, because the idea behind it is to LIMIT shots and opportunities.
I kept an eye on this for most of last season and indeed saw a lot of games where Quick was making 30+ saves a night and doing very well. However, his numbers dipped considerably when facing fewer and fewer shots in games in which he stayed in. This season it has been a bit of a mixed bag all around. He has done pretty well in low event games.
Right now the 29-year old is sitting on a .915 save percentage, good enough for 24th in the league. He has only faced over 30 shots four times. One was a shutout against Carolina, the other was last night's contest against Philly where he turned away 36 of 38. The other two were tough games against San Jose and Nashville where he registered an .844 and .912 save percentage respectively in those games.
He has faced 23 and fewer shots in three games, with two of those games being what you would consider good quality games. He logged a .957, .947, and .818 save percentage in those three games.
Historically though, this has rarely been the case.
Going back through three years worth of starts by Jonathan Quick reveals that the Kings goaltender is indeed a FAR better goaltender in games in which he has faced a high number of shots.
The league average shots per 60 over the past three seasons, dating back to the start of 2012, fell in at around 29.4 shots per game. So with that as our average, we took a look at the save percentages of all games where Quick faced over 29 shots, between 29 and 20, and fewer than 20 shots. These were games in which Quick played at least half of the game.
Also, these are for REGULAR SEASON games, and INCLUDE powerplay and penalty kill shots. So it is all situations during the regular season. I also used Adjusted Save percentage since it is altogether a better representation of amount in respect to shot difficulty. Even a low number of shots can come back in a decent save percentage due to the degree of difficulty.
With that in mind let's look at the data!
It is clear that when the Kings allow more shots against Quick he gets better. It is a relatively strange concept given how well the Kings play team defense, and how they routinely finish around the top of the league in shots against.
But what are we without comparisons? Let's take a look at some other goaltenders.
Henrik Lundqvist:
Tuukka Rask:
And let's get one more Western Conference guy in here for good measure, Chicago's Corey Crawford.
For the most part, the numbers decline dramatically across the board from almost all goaltenders I polled when the shot count goes down.
This is from three year's worth of data, and it seems to reflect that the more shots tenders face, the better.
And just so we aren't being accused of sampling only good teams. Here are Jonathan Bernier and the Leafs numbers:
As stated before, maybe there is a bit of a misunderstanding between shot quantity, suppression, team defense, and how it relates to goaltending numbers. This presents a combat of ideas of offense also. If you are allowing a lot of shots, it also means you potentially do not have the puck. This lessens your own chances at scoring. Funny enough, there are a lot of top end shot suppression teams that have had questions about goaltending.
Jonathan Quick is often tossed into that category. As are Corey Crawford, Jimmy Howard, and Antti Niemi. While team shot suppression has correlated to success in recent years OVERALL, it seems that at times goaltending numbers can suffer from a lack of being in the game and engaged in the action. As shot quantities go down, so do adjusted save percentages strangely enough.
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