One of the things I find sort of interesting heading into the next season is how Paul MacLean's going to allocate minutes to his goaltenders. Ottawa's kind of in a weird position in that they don't really have that ideal #1 goaltender, but they do have two guys who are starting goaltender caliber.
Paul MacLean hasn't really made it much of a secret that Craig Anderson's the number one, with Robin Lehner the number two. But the latter is
negotiating a new contract, one that probably sets himself up as the official heir apparent to Craig Anderson's throne.
Anderson, meanwhile, is an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.
I don't see either guy shying away from competing for the starting role, even if the veteran has a leg-up right now. A lot was made of Robin Lehner's 'off' season (and, to a large degree, it's a defensible argument -- not his best run as a professional goaltender), but this is still a guy who has stopped 91.8% of shots over a 1,741 shot sample. It's small and not ideal, but it's encouraging.
Over at
Hockey Graphs, Garik16 introduced a forecasting system for goaltenders. It's more or less a branch off of the old
Marcel numbers that have been fairly prominent in baseball. The theory behind the forecasting system in tl;dr terms is that all past data is important, but the more recent data holds more important predictive value.
Where do Marcels have Craig Anderson and Robin Lehner landing for the next
three seasons?
Here's Lehner (and his group):
Not bad. Here's Craig Anderson:
Again, not bad. Not as good, but you kind of get the theme of why Anderson and others land here. It's age regression, which is
quite cruel to guys who hit 35 and beyond. Craig Anderson? 34 next May.
To bring this back to where Paul MacLean's going to allocate the ice for next season: I think we're going to see a genuine 60-40 split between Anderson minutes and Lehner minutes, another step in the direction of Robin trying to land the starting spot in 2015-2016. That obviously changes if Lehner plays better .. or worse than expected.
How do you see the goalie timeshare shaking out next year and beyond?
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