|
Since the Stanley Cup Finals ended on June 15th, there has been plenty of off-ice activity to focus on in the NHL. With the draft and free agency dominating headlines, memories of the final seven games fade a little and only a few storylines tend to stick in the average fan's head.
However, a post at Matchsticks & Gasoline by Arik James got me thinking. Exactly how bad was Roberto Luongo when his team's fortunes were on the line? It's understandable when the blame is heaped on a player who doesn't come through when his team needs him the most.
Any goalie who can't top a save percentage of 90% in three of his team's seven most important games of the season deserves what he gets right? Good, go yell at Miikka Kiprusoff for ruining the Flames playoff hopes, because he couldn't get it done in the final seven games of the regular season with a playoff berth on the line.
The point is, Luongo had a pretty horrific performance on a very big stage. That said, it doesn't mean he's a poor goaltender or the opposite of "clutch". What it does mean is that he had a very inconsistent and possibly unlucky stretch of seven games in the midst of a pretty good playoff run. As I wrote before the Finals started, both Luongo and Thomas were having comparable postseasons to Patrick Roy and Dominik Hasek's best playoff runs.
To start with, let's evaluate Luongo's performance over his entire career, to establish his true talent level. If he's going to be labeled a choker, it would imply that he was pretty good to begin with.
According to Hockey-Reference.com, here are the NHL's career save percentage leaders:
1. Dominik Hasek .9223
2. Tim Thomas .9215
3. Roberto Luongo .9193
At third all time, it's safe to say that Luongo's talent is elite. Career save percentage is important, especially for predicting playoff save percentage, as Gabe Desjardins showed here. While save percentage is likely the best measure of a goalie's true talent, it can be useful to evaluate their overall impact on their team as well.
In order to look at the total value Luongo brought to his team over eleven seasons in the NHL, let's use Goals Versus Threshold (GVT) as compared to the best goalies of all time.
1. Patrick Roy 431.1 in 1004 games (0.429/game)
2. Dominik Hasek 410.1 in 714 games (0.574/game)
3. Jacques Plante 371.6 in 825 games (0.450/game)
4. Glenn Hall 341.1 in 889 games (0.384/game)
5. Martin Brodeur 304.7 in 1111games (0.274/game)
6. Bernie Parent 301.3 in 586 games (0.514/game)
7. Ken Dryden 278.4 in 389 games (0.716/game)
8. Roberto Luongo 266.6 in 642 games (0.415/game)
Luongo is eighth in all-time goalie GVT, and his per game pace is superior to such "clutch" players as Martin Brodeur and all-time great Glenn Hall. In fact, his closest per game comparison on the list is Patrick Roy.
I know that you're thinking something along the lines of "thanks for showing us his regular season performance but we all know he melts down in the playoffs". This is more a matter of rhetoric than actual fact.
This year in the playoffs, even-strength save percentage for goalies playing more than 10 games was ranked as follows:
1. Tim Thomas .949
2. Jimmy Howard .940
3. Pekka Rinne .935
4. Roberto Luongo .931
At fourth-best, he hardly let his team down. Furthermore, Luongo's even strength save percentage for the last three seasons in the playoffs has been .930, .930 and .931. As a reference, Jaroslav Halak's miracle playoff run last year netted him a .933. But Halak was a hero and Luongo was a scapegoat. And before we decry that at least Halak came up big in the biggest games, remember that Montreal lost in five games to the Flyers and Halak posted save percentages under 90% for three of those five games. And it wasn't just against the Flyers as he had sub-.800 save percentages for three of the Canadiens 18 playoff games. That's one stinker per series.
So why does Luongo get such bad press? Maybe because it makes for a good story, and maybe it's because our memories trick us into what we want to believe. The facts tell us something completely different. Bobby Lou had one of the most enigmatic Cup Finals in recent memory as he capitulated between shutouts and red light sunburn, but he's still one of the best netminders in the game today.
Ryan Popilchak is an author of Hockey Prospectus.
You can contact Ryan by clicking here or click here to see Ryan's other articles.
| 
Top 10 Prospects (07/15)
3 comments have been left for this article. 
A couple of comments:
1. I've never been a fan of comparing rates of current players to players who have played their whole career (this is particularly present in mainstream coverage of baseball), including the decline phase of their career. Let's see how Luongo ranks in GVT per game when he's played through age 38 or 40. I'm guessing less favorably.
2. Regarding Halak, I completely disagree; he had a spectacular playoff. It's not just you, Ryan, but I've seen him get a raw deal in a bunch of similar analyses. Would you be crowing about his postseason had he just lost in seven games to Pittsburgh, and not had the five Flyers games tacked on the end? Montreal pulled off an enormous upset against Washington and then a reasonable sized upset against Pittsburgh and it's largely because Halak had a Tim Thomas type performance in 2010.
3. While I think notions of clutch and choking are vastly overplayed by fans and mainstream media, I do believe there is something to them on a case by case basis, and we can lose sight of them in sabermetrics. Do you know for a fact that Luongo didn't choke because of pressure in various key games this playoffs? Because that's what my eyes told me. If Luongo confided in you candidly that he did feel extra pressure which might have contributed to his failure, how would you reconcile that fact with the stats? I mean, it's gotta happen now and again in sports, right?
1. It makes sense. Although I also think it would probably be best to compare different "phases" for players. Who had the best 5-year peak? Who had the best secondary stretch outside their peak years? I can totally see your point.
2. I don't think I explained my point very well. I actually thought Halak had a fantastic run in the playoffs. His series against Washington was absolutely absurd. My point was that even Halak had some bad performances during a stellar run, but was forgiven them more than Luongo was.
3. Clutch and choking absolutely exist in my mind. I just think we're too quick to label every bad performance as a choke and every good performance as clutch and we discount the role of luck. People forget that Luongo won the gold medal just a few months before. He seemed pretty clutch back then, so which one is it?