Word came down Monday afternoon that John Tortorella has been fired as the Head Coach of the New York Rangers.
To say this is shocking would be a bold-faced lie. Anyone that follows me on Twitter knows I’ve been raving for most of this season for Tortorella to go. He wasn’t getting most of his superstars to perform to their expected level (which cost Marian Gaborik a semi-permanent vacation to Columbus) and never got to the Stanley Cup Finals despite expectations to do so, warranted or not. Oh there was also this.
There has been no replacement named yet but whoever it is will come under the same scrutiny that Tortorella did. They are still a couple of parts (Read: scoring forwards) away from really being contenders, but they’re off to a good start.
We have all summer to dissect what the new systems and players mean for the team, but there’s something that’s worth having a discussion now. What does this do for the value of Henrik Lundqvist in fantasy hockey?
Without a doubt, Lundqvist has been one of the top goalies in the league for a few years now. Since 2009-2010, Lundqvist has never finished lower than 7th in the NHL in even-strength save percentage among goalies that started half their team’s games and has finished 4th two years running now.
In a run that is nearly parallel to Lundqvist’s run is that the Rangers, as a team, have not finished outside the top-6 in the NHL in blocked shots as a team for three years straight now. They also lead the 2013 NHL playoffs in blocked shots with 249, nearly 20% more blocked shots than second-place Pittsburgh. This article isn’t a bashing of Lundqvist (I picked him for the Vezina this year) rather it is an appeal to reason. Fantasy sports are about context as much as they are about numbers, and the context for the New York Rangers has changed dramatically.
Why do I bring up blocked shots? Well, hockey is a game of possession. The more you have the puck, the less the other team has the puck. The less they have the puck, the fewer opportunities they will have to score. The Rangers were pretty good at this in the 2013 season, finishing ninth in the NHL in Corsi% (ratio of shot attempts for/against). Despite being good at possessing the puck and having the first overall team in even-strength team save percentage, they were 22nd in team shooting%. This, and the 23rd ranked power-play, meant a 6th place finish in the Eastern Conference.
Whoever comes in will have to change the philosophy. The team needs to score and even the 8th most efficient-shooting team two seasons ago needs a shake up. So I think we can expect less blocked shots and a more offensive game from whoever comes in. I say that with no inside knowledge, just an educated guess that a status-quo system won’t fly with management. This is not good news for Lundqvist.
Even as the greatest goalie on the planet, the smallest changes in anything can alter your value as a fantasy hockey goalie. Jonathan Quick went from a .929 SV% in 2011-2012 to .902 in 2013 with the only difference being time off from offseason back surgery. Pekka Rinne posted the lowest SV% of his career in 2013 with the only real loss coming from Ryan Suter making his way to Minnesota last offseason. Surely, a change in the coaching scheme can cause a similar disruption.
It’s not like it would be out of nowhere, either. Lundqvist’s splits over his eight-year career:
2005-2009 (Pre-Tortorella): .917 SV% in 263 games.
2009-2013 (Tortorella Era): .925 SV% in 246 games.
That might not seem like a huge difference, but it really is. This year, a .925 SV% would have been good for 7th in the NHL, same as last year too. This year, however, a .917 SV% would have been good for 16th in the NHL, last year it would have tied for 16th with three other goalies. Over the course of a season, that eight point difference (eight goals per 1000 shots or about 16 goals in a full season) could mean the difference in about 20 Goals Against Average points. In other words, you could have a 2.40 GAA instead of a 2.20 GAA (all dependent on number of minutes played).
The whole point was to show that Tortorella’s system (all-out shot blocking) may have been a significant factor in Lundqvist’s rise to prominence. It’s not all related to puck possession: the year before Tortorella got there (2007-2008), the Rangers had the 3rd-best Corsi%, meaning they had the puck a fair amount more than the opposition. However, their depth players were pretty bad – 71% of their regulars were below-average defensively – and had only 1013 blocked shots, 325 less than they had last year, or about four per game. Those extra shots, by nature, will include higher percentage shots (scoring chances). Once you take away the shot blocks, what is left is whether or not they led to goaltending excellence or if it was just there all along.
**Remember, that’s 325 shot blocks over the course of a season. If Lundqvist is in net for 75% of the games, that would be 243 shot blocks. That’s 243 more attempts at the net that either miss the net, or he has to save. Recall what I said earlier: the difference between average and elite is 16 goals a year. It would be foolish to not think that you can’t get 16 goals from 243 shot attempts.
Until we know more about a new coach and what new personnel there might be, the picture won’t be very clear. Any way you look at it, removing a defensive system will always be bad for a goaltender’s fantasy hockey value. He is still a keeper in all formats but my analysis for preseason rankings is going to change. We had better prepare for the all-too-real possibility that Henrik Lundqvist will not be an elite goaltender next year.
