Podcast Segment for Goalie Parents – Episode 274

In our Parents Segment, presented by the Stop It Goaltending U app, we start a three-part series about the value and downside of keeping statistics for your young goalie.

Transcript:

David Hutchison 0:00
Darren, if a goaltender faces five shots in a period and one of them goes in, does it mean he had a bad period? Depends on the goal. If he faced 20 shots in a game and one went in, that’s a 950 save percentage. Is that automatically a good game?

Daren Millard 0:19
That’s a good automatically, a good game, not really depends, right?

David Hutchison 0:23
What if three went in, then it’s an 850 is that a bad game?

Daren Millard 0:27
Yeah, the stats say you’re below average.

David Hutchison 0:29
Do you believe that? No, okay, okay, no, let me give you another one. There’s a goalie at one end of the ice, and I’m keeping the numbers small and easy to calculate, because woody wants to keep up with the math here, if a goalie at one end of the ice faces eight shots and one of them gets by him, that’s just an 875, but, but what if he was great with his rebound control? Maybe one went to the gut and he trapped it perfectly. Maybe a couple of them hit him right in the pocket of the glove, nice and clean. Stop the play. Now there’s a guy at the other end that never happened. Never happens, but just keep it. Keep up with my math here. Woody, now there’s a guy at the other end, and maybe he faces almost the exact same shots, but he doesn’t catch him cleanly. Couple of rebounds pop out, one on the chest bounces out. So he’s faced the same number of shots before the rebounds, and look good. Goaltender makes the saves on the rebounds, and now he stopped nine out of 10 instead of seven out of eight. He’s got a 900 is he having a better game?

Speaker 1 1:28
Well, the stats would say yes, but in reality, the eye test would say no, yeah.

David Hutchison 1:34
It’s the old I test, right? It’s, it’s not telling the whole story, and it’s not telling you about your game and how it went and, and, you know, could even be some of those rebounds, maybe the team just cleared them. You know, lots of things, like, every game is not the same and, and the reason I’m talking about this today is more and more things popping up beginning of season. Parents asking online, what’s a good app to use to track shots on goal for my son or daughter, and I just wanted to point out, as soon as I hear that, I think of these scenarios that illustrate how imperfect save percentages as a stat. And I know we’ve talked about it before, but we’re going to go a little bit of a different direction here and and maybe take it a little further over the next couple of weeks. It’s just limited information that you’re being given. You know, in the first example, I think we can agree four out of five versus five out of five. We can’t categorize that as a good period, because, as you said, Darren, it depends on what are the chances like so, so if they don’t tell us too much for a period, what’s magical about a game that lets save percentage tell you whether it was a good game or a bad game? Why is one period versus three period change things. I think they’re all too short for those numbers to tell us very much. And I’d like you to ask yourself, as a parent, why are you taking those stats? You want to be involved. You want to help your kid. I understand it. But today, we’ve got John Stevenson on the show. He is a performance coach, but he’s also a sports psychologist for a lot of kids, and it got me thinking, if you’re reporting to your child shots on goal and goals against average save percentage, what is it you’re focusing on? I think John and every other expert we’ve had in the field talking would tell you, we want them to focus on the process and not on the results. But a save percentage, especially one that’s out of context is all results. It’s just giving your kid results, without giving them information, and getting them to focus on just different results than than the actual score. Now you may be doing it because you want to say to your kids, look the results on the scoreboard. Don’t tell the whole story. You gave up a lot of goals, but your save percentage was good, okay? But as we said, those things don’t always tell the whole story. And and while save percentage might be better than goals, I don’t know that it is much better than goals, as as we said, because of those scenarios. And look, I still think about it, that magical 900 save percentage is still in the back of my mind when I’m watching a game, because it’s so ingrained in us, but, but I don’t know that those results are real. So the other question I have for you is, what are you going to do with that information when you get it? Hey, Johnny 950, save percentage. Great game. Okay, we all like to hear that. That’s great. But other than helping his confidence, what are you achieving by telling him that, or Jimmy, 850 save percentage today, not not a good game. Are you going to deliver that info to your child and tell them it wasn’t a good game? How did that 850 save percentage help them as a goaltender? More importantly, how does that help them this week in practice? What are they going to do with that 950 or 850 when they go into practice this week and help them become a better goaltender. Is Johnny going to sit back and relax because he got a 950 is Jimmy going to be all frustrated and worried in practice, or is he magically going to work harder because it was an 850 now a lot of us used to say to our kids, okay, you lost, but you gave up six, but look at your save percentage. It’s really. Good fair enough, but I think there’s better ways to deliver that information that they had a good game and to help them develop as a goaltender and a person. More than just giving them those numbers, you’re just teaching them to focus on the result, and how does that help? So leave aside the fact that we should probably let the coaches do their job. I recognize that many of our kids don’t have goalie coaching support, and as a parent, you really want to help them. And a nice, easy way, it would seem, is to start counting shots and tell them these stats. And we do want to raise healthy, happy young goaltenders who learn from their games and grow as a result of of being a goaltender. But rather than make this, you know, into a 30 minute parent segment, I’m going to leave that part of it how we can help our kids after a game. I did say today that I’m not a fan of tracking shots on goal. I’m not a big fan of goalie stats as we see them next week. Let’s go a little deeper into it, guys, and I’m going to talk about how you can reflect with your child or a goaltender that you coach after a game to help them improve in a way that’s more significant than stats. And then after the week, after a week later, we’re going to talk about some stats that maybe you can take, some tools you can use that will help your child in a more significant way after a game, if you really do want to track things during a game. But before we finish, I’m going to give you a little bit of homework. Parents, maybe even Woody and Darren watch a couple of games this week. Ask yourself about save percentage. And are you seeing anything on the ice that isn’t telling the same story that you that maybe that saved percentage is telling find one thing as well this week on your child or another goalie. If you don’t have any games to watch yet in the season, find one thing that they did well in a game and one thing that they could improve on, even if it didn’t result in a goal, something that maybe could be worked on. Two things, little bit of homework for you, if you want to share your homework with me, or if you want to tell me that you disagree with anything or agree with anything I’ve said, hit me up parents at in goal mag.com, I

Speaker 1 7:04
have a question that I would like to ask you, your honest opinion about when it comes to save percentage. You seem that that’s a major foundation of of taking stats and evaluating each individual game. I personally, I don’t think say percentages should be reported on individual games. It’s become a trend in the National Hockey League, different outlets are putting it out. And it’s, it’s a new presentation, how many shots or what? What’s the minimum number of opportunities against your child or a goaltender, where, say, percentage becomes appropriate. Ooh, one game is too small. Is two games enough to start looking at it is, is three games for like, where you know how a lot of stats say minimum five games played, minimum 20 games played, to qualify for a certain stat bracket, where does, where does save percentage become relevant or or become a large enough sample size?

Kevin Woodley 8:20
Okay, so I think this is two separate questions I’ve had it posited to me

Speaker 2 8:28
in terms of evaluating, like as an outsider at the National Hockey League level, looking at numbers that you can’t really tell you need 20 games before the numbers start to normalize him, 2020, Darren, but that’s more than I thought. Yeah, that doesn’t help a parent. Like, that’s not, you know what I mean? Like, because if you’re like, oh, let’s just wait till 20 games before we look at your numbers. Like, like, we’re talking about two different things here, analyzing an outsider, like, like, I think that. And that’s once you hit 20 games, they somewhat normalize, you’d have to go in extremes the other way to move them significantly.

Daren Millard 9:06
Yeah, it’s almost set at 20. So

David Hutchison 9:07
here’s how it helps a parent, though, because your kid might not get 20 games in a season. There you go. It doesn’t mean anything, or it means something, but not nearly what most of us like to to put on it. Look, people were looking for something better than goals against average, and they came up with this. But it’s so imperfect that look you especially the further you get down, maybe the National Hockey League level, where there’s a relative amount of parity any team could win on any night. As you get lower down, you know, junior hockey, there’s more disparity between the teams that are rebuilding and the teams that are loading up for a run as you get down into minor hockey now you’ve got teams that are absolutely dominant. The environment the two goaltenders are facing are completely different the further you go down. And so to say that They normalize even at 20 games, you know, I would disagree Absolutely. Absolutely And again, we can talk about this as we get into a little further in the next couple of weeks. But, but, you know, little Johnny comes across on a two on one to make a save on a one timer on the back door, and it’s from a guy who’s ready to move up to major junior, and he fires it at him at 80 miles an hour. And then down at the other end of the ice, the best shot this kid might face might be 50 or 60. Like it’s they’re completely different, and they won’t normalize, because those teams are so different and the way they play. And some have structure, and some don’t have structure, but, but I do love Darren that you’re at least getting into this concept of minimum number of games. And when do they mean something? But I think the lower you get down in hockey, the less they mean.

Speaker 2 10:40
Well, sample size. And here’s the thing I don’t I stopped including goals against average in my nhl.com articles at times, to the chagrin of my editors, who have to put it back in a long time ago.

Kevin Woodley 10:53
But as an analyst, outside of that environment where I have to use the the numbers that are published, where I can refer to clear sight and adjusted numbers and somewhat account for, and I would argue the best accounting for, although nothing is perfect, the quality that they are facing, I don’t look at, say percentage. I’ve been asked about guys on the radio. And I don’t even know what their say percentage is. I just know what their adjusted number is. I mean, Eric Comrie is a prime example. People were done with them because of what he did last year. I think his say percentage ended up around 880 last year. Well, as expected, was 858, and if you look at his performance relative to environment, he was in the top half of the league, not the basement. And so it’s interesting that we say, like it can differ from one team to another.

Speaker 2 11:52
There was a 40 point difference between him and the other guys in the Buffalo saber like, that’s on the same team. So it can depend what opportunities, who you play against what your team plays like in front of you. There’s just so much that goes into it. And to your point, you know, I’m sure we’re going to get into some of the tools you can use at the minor hockey league level to quantify for some of those things in the future segments. But right now, like, I don’t need you know, anybody worth a lick of salt at the National Hockey League level isn’t using, say, percentage either they’re using adjusted numbers,

David Hutchison 12:22
and the one thing that say, again,

Speaker 1 12:26
that’s the only option you have, is say percentage, it is.

David Hutchison 12:30
And some parents may be listening to this, thinking, hang on. The reason I’m doing this is because the person counting shots in our league is doing a horrible job, and that happens everywhere. And I’m not blaming those people, because they’re usually standing in the Timekeepers box and they can’t see half the play, and they’re just doing their best. I definitely know of a number of people who speak quite loudly on the internet saying, we have to do a better job of counting shots, because people are using these same percentages. And so a parent who wants to see them counted properly, I understand you wanting to do that, but I still question whether it means anything, and whether it’s helping your kid. It does make you feel a little bit better, because you hate to see people talking about your kids save percentage, and you know it should be better, but at the end of the day, we’re trying to help them become a better goaltender, we shouldn’t be worried about that outside noise. And so let’s talk, as we move forward, about some some ways of helping them better.

Daren Millard 13:20
I don’t think I got an answer there. How many games?

David Hutchison 13:24
What it for me, it’s infinite. It doesn’t I just say, especially since I’m looking more rental level, I don’t think it means anything. I don’t care how many games, it’s not going to normalize, especially at the minor hockey level. Yeah, that’s, that’s my answer to it. If you’re not looking at shock quality, if you’re not looking at situations, you’re not getting something. I don’t believe that they equal out maybe at the National Hockey League level, in which case I like Woody’s 20 game answer. I think that’s great.

Speaker 1 13:50
That’s fascinating. I love it. And again, that’s not the answer I was expecting, really. And I understand the same percentage of question when it comes to the validity of it, but if you’re looking for a stat to track and get some idea of where things are, I thought there would be a number there, but it doesn’t appear that there is based on your expert opinions.

David Hutchison 14:16
I mean, look, it’s going to be better than goals against average, but, but, but maybe barely.

Speaker 2 14:21
You can say, hey, he’s had a good five game stretch. He’s had a good 10 game stretch, but like, I don’t think they normalize for the season until you’re at that 20 game mark, and then it becomes very you have to go on an absolute heater, or go the other direction hard to really make those numbers move.

Speaker 1 14:37
Maybe that’s a good thing too, that you keep it in segments 510 and then at the end of the year, you

David Hutchison 14:42
but again, I’ll go back to what’s that information do for you? How does it help you become a better goaltender?

Kevin Woodley 14:47
Yeah, which is what this conversation for parents is all about. Different again, and that’s why I said different for me trying to evaluate an NHL goaltender or other people trying to evaluate an NHL goaltender, than it is for how do I as a parent use these numbers? In an effective way?

Parts 2 & 3 :

Podcast Segment for Goalie Parents – Episode 275

Podcast Segment for Goalie Parents – Episode 276