Well I'll be Jiggered

The Forechecker has taken a look at the goalies doing better when they face more shots issue, and it seems like there isn't too much of an overall trend to speak of. Three other guys (Roloson, Kolzig and Khabibulin) show increases in save percentage when they face more shots, but that's it. Marty Turco shows a downward trend.

Interestingly enough, two years ago when he was in Florida, Luongo showed no increase in his save percentage as he faced more shots. The trend only started occuring when he joined the Canucks. His backups so far on the Canucks also show the same increase when facing more shots. Sabourin last year had a 0.931 save percentage in games where he faced 25 or more shots, and a 0.872 in games where he faced less than 25. Sanford so far this year: 0.927 when facing 25 or more, 0.819 when facing less than 25. So maybe it's the team not the goalie.

You know what's stupid?

Complaining about the quality of play in the all-star game. It's the fucking all-star game! It's not supposed to be real hockey. It's supposed to be a fun little divergence for the ordinary and nothing more. Who cares if there's no hitting? You get 1000 games a year that do have hitting. Do you really need one more that badly? I don't get where this weird consensus comes from that the all-star game is essentially a waste of time because it's not played the same way every single other game of the season is played. Guess what guys, if it was just another game it would be called regular season game number 382 and it would feature two random teams instead of the best players from each team in the league. It's not a regular game. It's a showcase of league talent and it's about everyone getting together and celebrating hockey and all that b.s. So just sit back and enjoy it for what it is.

There, I feel better now.

Short Messages Adressed to Various NHL Players Just in Case They Randomly Stumble Upon This Blog

Markus Naslund: Why do I get the feeling I'll be seeing you in a Ducks uniform next year?

Miika Kiprusoff: Thanks for killing my fantasy teams you Finnish son of a bitch.

Evgeni Nabokov: Are you aware that you've played every single minute for your team this year? That's quite impressive. Well done sir.

Derek Boogard: I know I'm a bit late on this, but "pinky and the two brains"? What does that even mean? Is it supposed to mean they're like pansies or something? Are you saying the Sedins are smarter than Naslund? I just want to know. Everyone else seems to get it but me. It makes me angry and suspicious. Please, I'm begging you, just tell me.

Chris Pronger: I don't care how many cups you win, you're still a douchebag.

Jerome Iginla: Allright, im finally convinced. I will no longer call you overrated, and will stop going out of my way to point out that you were actually born in Edmonton. Tell Kipper to go fuck himself.

George Parros: What's a moustache ride?

Something Strange

I don't really know how to preface this right so I'll just say it. If you divide up Luongo's stats last season between games where he faced less than 25 shots and games where he faced more than 25 shots you get something kind of weird:

His save% in games where he faced less than 25 shots: 0.888
His save% in games where he faced more than 25 shots: 0.931

What the fuck, huh? This is probably too big a difference to attribute to chance. It seems like Louongo actually plays better the more shots he faces(In fact, if you just look at games where he faced 40 shots or more, his save% is an even higher 0.941) This is a bit counter-intuitive. I think a lot of people might have guessed that he'd do better with a lighter workload. Then again, we've all heard announcers say that goalies play better when they get a lot of work.

What I really want to know is wether this is just a fluke for Luongo, or wether it's a more general principle that applies to all goalies. If it does actually apply to all goalies, then it's pretty significant. Based on this, teams may want to rethink the belief that getting as many shots on net as possible is a good thing, for example. The problem's that I lack the necessary Excel/data mining skills to approach this in a systematic manner, so I really can't prove anything conclusively. If anyone who does wants to give it a shot, please, be my guest.

Another thing I should mention is that even if it's established that goalies generally have higher save percentages in games where they face a lot of shots, this doesn't prove that facing more shots actually causes them to play better. There's also the possibility that games where they face a lot of shots are fundamentally different(more shots=lower shot quality, perhaps?), and goalies don't actually do better in these games because they face a lot of shots, but for other reasons(again, shot quality). To test which of these posibilities is true, it might be good to divide shots faced by goalies between "early game shots" and "late game shots" and compare their save % between those two shot types(i.e. compare goalies save% for the first 25 shots they faced in every game to their save % in the shots faced after shot 25) . If it's facing lots of shots that makes goalies better, then the "late game shot" save percentage should be significantly higher. Again, I lack the skills to do this myself, but it might be a nice little diversion for someone who knows what they're doing. (Thinking about it more, I guess there's a good chance that someone has already done this and I'm just wasting everyone's time. If anyone's seen anything like this done on another site please let me know in the comments.)

Canucks Points Per 60 Mins Stats

I really, really wish there was some place to find these easily on the net. Anyway, here they are, for 43 games into the season. By the way don't take the pp/60 numbers for Isbister, Cooke or the other guys who don't get a lot of pp time too seriously because of the small sample size.