Goat-lending

I wasn't going to make this topic so soon (we have a whole summer, after all, but I have some other stuff planned for then) but it has come up in the last few GDTs, because our goalies can't stop beach balls, but our defense! But our goalies.

 

I knew it was a problem but it only recently became apparent how big of a problem it is. Lehner and Johnson were both horrendous. For starters,

 

Lehner: 40th in save percentage, .908

Johnson: 57th in save percentage, .893

 

Not pretty, especially considering our team save percentage as a whole dropping from .921 to .904 as a whole, and Lehner put up .920 last year (backup Nilsson with .923). 

But how can we expect our goalies to play behind THIS defense? I mean it was truly awful! They break down all the time. It sucks. Except literally every team's defense breaks down plenty of times. Just for shits and giggles during the intermission tonight I grabbed a few highlight clips from games the lowly, offensively-inept Sabres played against top 10 teams in terms of goals allowed this year, and grabbed these in about 15 minutes:

 

Like I say at the end, I know the Sabres don't hold a candle to these teams defensively, but the point is that defenses quite often have horrible breakdowns and part of a goalie's job is to save their bacon at least some of the time. Ours failed to do this. Furthermore, there were so, so many games that we were in and playing well, only to be deflated by goals at the end of the period, or on soft shots. The amount of goals scored by the other team in the first or last 2 minutes of a period, and the amount of downright softies, was three times as high this season as any other I ever remember watching. It was pitiful. And don't even talk to me about OT and the shootout. Horrible. 

Why do I pin this drop in goalie performance for Lehner (and awful Johnson) on him, and not the Sabres? Even though Lehner is the same guy, but our team probably just got worse? Well, here's the thing about our team getting worse defensively - by any measure, they simply didn't. Here are pretty pictures: 

 

This was last year's heat map, shown where shot attempts were taken by our opponents relative to league average. Here's how they did this year:

 

 

Despite playing "run and gun" (they didn't), the shots from that dangerous center swipe decreased greatly, and they did an overall better job keeping them to the outside. That red area by the net has to be because everyone and their mother knows Lehner can't hug a post to save his life. 

 

Don't like charts, want raw numbers? The Sabres allowed 2656 shots on goal this year compared to 2803 last year. They allowed the SIXTH FEWEST scoring chances against this season at 1697, behind only Boston, Minnesota, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Dallas, all of which except Calgary finished top ten in goals against (gotta be able to PK).

 

Where did the Sabres finish in goals against? Third ###### last. Now, I said the Sabres improved at this: last year they were 21st, in the bottom third of the league, in scoring chances against, with 1810. Only instead of giving up 278 goals like these goofballs did this season, Lehner and Anders gave up 231. That means 47 more goals allowed despite clear evidence that they were not hung out to dry as much this season as they were last. Despite shot totals against being down all year, and shot differentials actually being in our favor more times by game 50 this season than in 82 games last season. 

Still not happy? Well, just like you can weight shot locations based on shot type, whether it's a rebound, whether it's a rush, how far from the net you are, and what league shooting percentage is at that spot, you can also calculate what a goalie is expected to have as their save percentage based on those things being taken into account for in the shots they face. Lehner and Johnson should have been league average, as we had the 15th highest expected save percentage in the league, but Lehner, instead of posting his expected .927, gave us .908. Johnson, the same: .921 -> .893. 

 

In the plus minus thread, I posted an article that showed that while scoring chances for better correlate with future goals than corsi, corsi against better correlates with future goals allowed than scoring chances against, so I'll also throw out that the Sabres were 13th in the league in Corsi-against this season.

 

Between this and our 6th-ranked scoring chances allowed, and every memory of painful goals against being floaters from the point, dribblers under gloves, and bank-ins off of Lehner, along with Chad's utter lack of talent, and Robin's inability to maintain any fundamental base, abandoning it completely to lumber around slowly and close his eyes hoping pucks hit him, there is no surprise to me where we are in the standings, considering what league-average goaltending would have given us with our league-relative defensive zone statistics. Yes, our defense was worse than average in front of him, but worse than average defenses can still limit chances and ours actually did it effectively even though they were often painful to watch. That's the point of the video above. 

League average goaltending, naively calculated, gives us 232 goals against instead of 278. Don't tell me those 46 extra goals couldn't have swung a few games for the team that lost by far the most one goal games in the league, especially given all the late stinkers that totally sucked the momentum out of the bench. 

 

It wasn't until I looked into this stuff that I realized how important it is to fix that position for next year. We need everything. Wingers that can score, wingers and D that can skate, D that can score, D that can play D. But get average goaltending out of this team, and all of a sudden this season doesn't look so dire. Get average goaltending in front of this team and make some smart, nifty upgrades at forward and d, and the optimist will correctly tell you that we have a better chance at getting a lot better than you think we might be able to. 

 

Thoughts?