Penguins goalkeepers: counterpoint

*This message is a comment on my friend Rick Buker’s last post about the goalkeepers of Penguins

When was the last time one Pittsburgh Penguins‘Prospect has a national, top ten prospects list made for a function? I can’t even remember. Certainly, not during the nightmare Mike SullivanBlack Hole era.

Jake Guentzel turned out to be a star, but he was a 3^RD Round Draft Pick who ended his career at the university before he became professional. Sullivan tried to bury him in the minors like so many other prospects in his first professional season. He started the 2016-2017 season with the Wilkes Barre – SCRANTON (WBS) Penguins Until injuries to the attackers of many penguins save him from the darkness that condemned so many other prospects in the Sullivan regime. Injuries and the possibility to skate with Evgeni Malkin And Phil Kessel Gentzel gave the chance to score great in his first match, a goal in his first service and also the second goal and only other goal that a penguin scored in that match.

Well, finally received a Penguin outlook recognition from national writers; On July 17^one The NHL website mentioned Joel Blomqvist As one of the top ten goalkeepers younger than 25. Unfortunately, the young Finn, although obtaining abundant love from national scouts and writers, gets nothing but hate from Pittsburgh writers, bloggers and fans. A certain blogger on another site only mentioned Blomqvist third among the goalkeepers of Penguins under 25, behind 2 goalkeepers who did not make the national list at all. But again, that blogger showed his ability to evaluate goalkeepers, or by writing that Dubas was needed to sign that great fisherman Tristan Jarry at all costs, so that Ersatz -keeper tons of pucks could fish from the nets of Penguins.

Now even my colleague, Rick Buker Shows a lack of consideration for the best keeper in the Penguins system, a young keeper almost everyone who is not blinded by Penguin Writers ‘and bloggers’ prejudices greeted as one of the best young goalkeepers in the NHL.

As a former keeper I speak from experience when I comment on what a keeper plays and looks like, not of the naivety of a fan or even a player who played somewhere else than a goal. When I wrote my glowing exploratory report from Blomqvist, all those years ago, when he was drawn up, I not only quoted scouts or other self more important writers or bloggers or I threw around buzzwords to sound smart. I quoted observations of game films framed by the fact that I stopped pucks and know exactly how the position is played from the inside. When I wrote that he follows the puck extremely well, even before almost every other explorer said the same thing there, I commented on what I saw in GameFilms.

Now to get to my friend Rick. He has been bullying me for a while to post an article, to see what I thought about the goalkeepers of the Penguins – will have to wait a lot of it for another day, Rick. However, I want to tackle a certain problem with your last message and that is how dangerous it is to try to compare apples with oranges.

Looking at the last season totals for Jarry, Alex NedeljkovicAnd Blomqvist is roughly unfair for Blomqvist. More than half of the matches that Blomqvist played, he played before November 11, 2024, a time when the Penguins defense was absolutely terrible as proof of the team that 3 ranking 3^RD The worst in the competition in terms of shots against per 60 minutes (SA/60) 5-on-5 and 2^ND The worst in terms of opportunities with a high danger against per 60 minutes HDCA/60) 5-on-5.

So, so, RickAs you would like to say, let’s jump on board Mr. Peadodys Wabac machine and turn the settings to November 11^oneThe last day, Blomqvist regularly received playing time before he was sent to WBS to protect him against the pathetic excuse that the defense of Sullivan was and look at what was going on. Table one shows how bad the defense of Sullivan was when Blomqvist still got a bit of a chance.

Now let’s look at the statistics of the Penguins -goalkeepers during the same time frame in Table 2, when the defenses were pathetic.

The only goalkeeper who received some protection against his defense was Nedeljkovic. Ned was confronted with the least amount of SA/60 and high danger shots against (HDSA). Ned’s defense also kept the opponents away from him than the other goalkeepers, proven by his average shot distance (ASD) of 37.82. Of course, the former Penguin also helped its defense best by only admitting rebound attempts by shots against (RAA/SA) to a team of 16.4%.

Blomqvist, the Rookie,, on the other hand, was subject to 38.03 SA/60, the highest in the team, but was the best in terms of the total savings percentage (SV%) and a high danger rate (HDSV%).

At the time, Jarry was the worst of the goalkeepers of the Penguins. The best paid keeper of the Penguins was confronted with a little more SA/60 than Ned, but much less shots than Blomqvist. The pathetic fisherman of a keeper coughed the most RAA/SA, almost ¼ of his SA was of extremely poor rebound control of the experienced keeper, good for his considerably lower ASD and team high in HDSA/60.

What makes viewing the season statistics so unfair for Blomqvist is the fact that Sullivan finally started to adjust the defense of his team. From November 12^one Up to the end of the season, the Penguins defense climbed 10 places of the 3^RD The worst of the 13^one Worst team in the competition in terms of SA/60 and 11 places in terms of HDCA, from 2^ND The worst until 13^one worst.

Also confuse the statistics, show you, Rick, my friend, that of the three penguins -goalkeepers last year, Blomqvist was given the least consistent playing time. Almost half of the matches The Rookie, the boy who needs the most consistency, was played with 4 or more days of rest (often more than a week) as noted in Table 3 and almost all were played by more than 3 days. While more than half of the matches of Nedeljkovic and Jarry were played at half time between 2 and 3 days.

The sample volumes for Blomqvist for playing games on less than 4 days are so small that any comparisons between the statistics of the goalkeepers are illogical, unfair and unscientific. In terms of how the goalkeepers have done it in 4+ days, peace is useful and Blomqvist comes pretty well as seen in Table 4.

All in all, Blomqvist is the best keeper in the system. He is the technically solid of the goalkeepers. The worst two goalkeepers are Jarry and Arthur Silov. Both goalkeepers are floppers who take themselves out of the play and try to guess what will happen. Even Sergei Murashov is an athletic keeper (code for goker). In the case of Murashov, however, he actually has athletics, such as Marc-Andre Fleury To come back and make the storage. He also follows the puck much better than Jarry or Silovs; I lost the count of the number of times I saw Jarry looking to the right while the puck past him on the left or vice versa.

The bottom line is that the NHL website writers are doing well when they Blomqvist called a top 10 under the 25 goalkeeper prospect, Rick, you don’t have to worry about the child; Repair the defense and give him consistency and it will be fine.