This is the second post in a four-part series where I discuss who I think should be the nominees for the major 2013 NHL Awards. The first post covered SJN’s Calder Trophy (Rookie of the Year) nominees. This post will discuss the three goalies I believe are deserving of the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s top regular season goaltender.
The criteria for the Vezina Trophy reads as follows:
“… the goalkeeper adjudged to be the best at this position as voted by the
general managers of all NHL clubs.”
While each person’s definition of what “the best” would be, I have two additional, completely arbitrary criteria of my own when it comes to goaltending:
- To qualify for my Vezina consideration, a goalie must have played in more than half of his team’s games. In other words, sorry Craig Anderson. Playing half of your team’s games is just not enough. I doubt people would consider Justin Verlander for the Cy Young Award if he pitched 16 games or Adrian Peterson for MVP if he played his last game in the first week of November.
- It is difficult to differentiate between a goalie excelling and a defense excelling. You look at Anderson’s .941 SV% and think “whoa”. Then you see that Robin Lehner and Ben Bishop, Ottawa’s other two goalies who played the other 24 games, combined for a .930 SV% over the regular season and all of a sudden, it’s not so impressive. It should be noted that Lehner and Bishop were both officially still rookies this year, too.
With that in mind, here are the three goalies I see as Vezina nominees this year.
Nomination #1: Sergei Bobrovsky (CBJ)
The love for #Lumbus was rampant at the end of the season. This was mainly in jest, but part of it was because people will always love watching an underdog succeed.
The season didn’t start off very well for Columbus; after their March 1st overtime loss to Chicago, the Blue Jackets were 5-12-4, earning 14 of a possible 42 points (33%). After that point, ‘Lumbus went 19-5-3, earning 41 of a possible 54 points (76%). That turnaround was due in large part to the play of Sergei Bobrovsky.
To be sure, Bobrovsky didn’t start the season very well either. Through January and February, Bobrovsky only played in 12 of Columbus’ 20 games and managed a SV% of just .899. Bobrovsky allowed three or more goals six times in his first twelve games and really didn’t look much different from the goalie that was frequently in and out of the net for Philadelphia before that.
After that March 1st loss, however, something happened. There will never be an adequate explanation for it, but what a turnaround. In Columbus’ next 27 games, Bobrovsky would end up starting 26 of them. In those 26 games, Bobrovsky:
- Had as many 3+ goal games (6) as he did in his first twelve starts.
- Would only allow 41 goals over that stretch
- Would face 29.1 shots/game, a good mark defensively but not extreme – San Jose finished 16th in the NHL on the season with 29.0 shots against/game
- Would amass a .946 SV%
And that’s the funny thing about a 48-game schedule. Normally, a 26-game stretch like this would be impressive, but at the same time, it’s not even 1/3 of a regular schedule (82 games). However, a 26-game stretch like this meant over half the season this year and simply cannot be ignored.
This is a season that messed with sample sizes and if Columbus had another 30 games to play, who knows where Bobrovsky would have ended up. As it is, among goalies with at least 30 starts, he finished third in goals against average (2.00), first in overall SV% (.932) and first in even-strength SV% (.941). That EVSV% is important, as it is probably the best measure of the true talent of a goaltender.
Nomination #2: Tuukka Rask (BOS)
As a Montréal fan, it pains me to see either the Bruins or the Toronto Maple Leafs succeed. However, I had Tuukka Rask as my #3 goalie in my preseason fantasy rankings for a reason: He’s been one of the best goalies in the NHL for a few years now.
With Tim Thomas, the usual Bruins starter, taking some sort of break from hockey, the reigns of the Bruins were handed over to Rask. Besides when Thomas was hurt and Rask had to play over half the 2009-2010 season, he has never really been the true #1 for Boston. It was his time to shine, and boy did he ever.
Some people may point to Boston’s defense as being one of the best in the NHL and they would be right, but Rask has been this good for some time now. He has played 138 regular season games and has appeared in at least 23 games each season, never posting a SV% under .918. For a reference, a .918 SV% would have been 16th best in the NHL this year. His career SV% is .927.
But all that is in the past, what did he do this year that’s so special? Well:
- He was remarkably consistent. Rask never had a month below a .906 SV% and he never had any block of five games where he allowed more than 13 goals. In other words, there wasn’t a five game stretch this year where Rask posted a GAA over 3.00. That’s incredible.
- Rask carried the Bruins down the stretch of the regular season; in the month of April, Boston averaged 2.42 goals for/game (averaged 2.65 for the season). Also in the month of April, Rask posted a SV% of .941 and GAA of 1.93. Despite these gaudy numbers, the Bruins offense was so bad that Rask finished below .500 for the month, going 4-5-1.
- He posted the second-highest EVSV% of all goalies with at least 30 starts at .938, behind the afore-mentioned Bobrovsky.
- Rask only allowed more than three goals once in his final 20 games (a 6-5 shootout loss to Montréal on March 27th). He was keeping his team in almost every single game they played, whether or not they were scoring.
For his consistency and overall impressive numbers, Rask definitely gets a Vezina consideration from me.
Nomination #3: Henrik Lundqvist (NYR)
Speaking of goalies that didn’t get much help from their teams at certain points of the season, chalk up another elite season for Henrik Lundqvist. This makes four seasons in a row now that Lundqvist will finish with a SV% over .920 (he was .926 this year). If there was any doubt going into this season, it’s safe to say that Lundqvist is the best goalie on the planet.
Lundqvist just did what Lundqvist does. He finished fourth among goalies with at least 30 starts with a 2.05 GAA and T-4th with that .926 SV%. He was also only one of nine goalies to play at least 40 games this year, finished T-2nd with 43 games. Oddly enough, only Ondrej Pavelec of the Jets finished with more (44). He also finished T-3rd with Detroit’s Jimmy Howard among goalies with at least 30 starts with a .937 EVSV%. These are all fine and good (in fact, really good), but that’s not what impressed me the most.
There were some pretty impressive stretches of play that Lundqvist went through:
- From March 18th to April 6th, a stretch of ten games that included back-to-back games with Pittsburgh (the league’s highest scoring team), Lundqvist allowed two goals or less in each game he played. It’s not like they were light workloads either; only two of those games saw less than 27 shots against and four of them were 30 shots against or more (including a 48-save win in Carolina).
- In his first 33 games of the season, Lundqvist allowed more than three goals twice and in no game this season did he allow more than four. Sometimes there are starts where the goalie is so bad that the team has no hope of winning. Lundqvist didn’t have a single such game this year.
- In the month of April (14 games for Lundqvist), he allowed one goal or no goals in eight of them. Had it not been for mediocre offense, the Rangers may have home ice advantage for the first round.
Lundqvist was just one of the best goalies in the NHL again this year. Ho hum *yawn*
My Pick: Henrik Lundqvist
This was very close for me between all three goalies. They all have a solid case – Bobrovsky’s turnaround, Rask’s all-around solid year – but Lundqvist was the best goalie in the NHL wire-to-wire. He never really had a terrible game and was in net for 43 out of the team’s 48 games. It might seem “boring” to pick Lundqvist, but there’s no way around how good he was this year.
Honorable Mentions
I will say this, I thought Jimmy Howard would struggle without Nicklas Lidstrom around in Hockeytown but he arguably had the best season of his career. The Washington Capitals needed a super-human effort from Braden Holtby to win their division after their terrible start (2-8-1 in their first 11 games) and they got it. Cory Schneider had another solid season for Vancouver and is poised to be a future Vezina winner while Antti Niemi carried the San Jose Sharks at different points of the season (I know, right?)
That’s how I see the Vezina. Do you feel someone else deserved to be in the top three? Let me know!
