Ek's note: We welcome our new NYI writer Ben Shelley. Ben is in his fourth year of Ryerson's journalism program and comes to HockeyBuzz with a writing background and knowledge of the game, including some work done for The Hockey News."
Robin Lehner is someone you can’t help but cheer for. In the offseason he opened up about battling bipolar disorder and he’s rebounded from a rough 2017-18 season to be one of the NHL’s top goalies.
But is his stellar play this year really that unexpected?
After registering just a .908 save percentage in 53 games with the league-worst Buffalo Sabres, Lehner didn’t even receive a qualifying offer and headed to free agency. A .908 save percentage isn’t going to win you any awards but for the worst team in the league, it’s not horrible.
Lehner’s counterpart last season, Chad Johnson, had an .891 save percentage in 36 games. The year before, Calvin Pickard played in 50 games for the Colorado Avalanche, where he had a .904 save percentage. Fellow Avalanche netminder Semyon Varlamov had just an .898 save percentage in 24 games that year. This season, Craig Anderson holds a .903 save percentage in 44 games with the last place Ottawa Senators.
The point is, a goalie on a bad team is usually going to have some unappealing stats. This isn’t to let Lehner off the hook but instead just take into consideration that his .908 save percentage isn’t as bad as that of many others who’ve also taken on the task of backstopping a terrible team.
Flash forward to this season where Lehner has an excellent 20-11-5 record to go along with a .927 save percentage. His career save percentage of .917 is even with two-time Stanley Cup Champion Matt Murray. It’s ahead of Jonathan Quick and Connor Hellebuyck who hold a .915 save percentage and just slightly below Carey Price and Braden Holtby’s .918 save percentage.
Robin Lehner is someone we should’ve seen coming.
Looking at his career save percentage and how it’s changed throughout his career is one sign. Lehner had played 219 NHL games before signing in New York. Below, he’s measured against goalies around the same age, who started their career around the same time. Below shows how their career save percentages fluctuate every 10 games, between their 50th career game and their 219th career game.
*It’s important to note that tracking career save percentage wouldn’t be very effective for more than this period of time. For instance, if a goalie who has played 500+ games hits a bad stretch, it probably wouldn’t even make a dent in his career save percentage. Up to the 219-game mark, it’s still quite accurate.*
Lehner’s career save percentage before coming to New York was very solid all throughout his career. After a strong start to his career up to the 70-game mark, he fell to a .914 career save percentage in February 2015, his last season in Ottawa. For his next 80 games, his play was very solid, rising his career save percentage all the way to the .918 mark which he maintained through March 2017. It was only really last season with the Sabres where he hit a sharp decline.
But generally, Lehner hovered between a .915 and .918 career save percentage for the majority of his time in the NHL before coming to New York. For reference, this season only 10 goalies carry a save percentage above .918 and only 14 goalies have above a .915 save percentage. Comparing him to others…
Jake Allen also hit the 219-game mark between this season and last. His career save percentage of .913 wasn’t that far off of Lehner’s .915 save percentage but how he achieved it was different.
While Lehner was ranging between .915 on the very low end and .918 on the high end, Allen spent the majority of his career hovering around a .913 to .914 save percentage, if not lower. His peak was only .917 which was hit just once at the 80-game mark.
Reimer’s .914 save percentage at his 219-game mark, reached on Nov 3, 2016 is pretty accurate.
His stats fluctuated most up to the 120-game mark, then hovered right around a .914 in the last 90 games.
Martin Jones’ 219-game mark came on March 26, 2018. His stats have fluctuated heavily, hovering around an excellent .919 to .920 save percentage all the way up to his 140th game, before his play crashed and fell all the way to a .915 save percentage by the 200-game mark.
Jones was essentially trending downwards from game 100 to 200 and his stats from the 160-game mark onwards look very similar to Lehner's.
Frederik Andersen’s stats show to be extremely consistent. His 219th game was hit on Dec. 14, 2017 and Andersen, despite a slight peak and slight slip, mainly stayed between a .917 and .919 save percentage.
The point here is that Lehner's stats have generally been very good. He blows Jake Allen and James Reimer out of the water here, hovered around the same stats as Martin Jones as Jones' play levelled out closer to the 219-game mark and they were very similar to Frederik Andersen's between game 130 and 190.
Lehner’s carried a very respectable average save percentage, even during and after his last season in Buffalo. Including this year, Lehner has held a .920 save percentage or above in three of the last four seasons. Lehner had all the signs pointing towards being a starting goalie.
Two seasons ago, he had a .920 save percentage in 59 games with a Buffalo Sabres team that finished in 26th place. The season before, despite just playing in 21 games, he had a .924 save percentage.
In his one OHL season, Lehner finished third in save percentage of goalies who played at least 20 games, despite being a year younger than both goalies who finished ahead of him. Lehner also had the highest save percentage in the AHL in 2012-13 as just a 21-year-old.
If Lehner's past shows anything, it's that he can perform at very high levels.
The question with Lehner isn’t about talent, it’s about consistency from year to year. If he can maintain the same performance we've seen this season, he can establish himself as one of the NHL’s best. But how well he’s performed this season shouldn’t come as a surprise.
*All charts powered by Piktochart*
New York Islanders Blogger • 
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