Goaltender Workload and Its Effect on Save Percentage

With the advanced stat revolution taking the hockey world by storm, it’s easy to forget that some of the data collected was originally used to monitor the workload of goaltenders.

This week, the NHL finally unveiled a new website that allows users to look up shot attempts and unblocked shot attempts, along with a variety of other advanced statistics. Although these stats are in the forefront now, they have actually been around for a very long time.

Shot attempts were collected by Jim Corsi, who is currently the goalie coach of the St. Louis Blues, while he was coaching with the Buffalo Sabres in the early 00s. Instead of using the data collected as a proxy for puck possession, he was using the information to gauge how much action his goalies were seeing each game.

Every goalie knows that it doesn’t require a shot to expend energy. Simply having the puck in the offensive zone requires the goaltender to be ready, and shot attempts are a more accurate way to judge how busy a goaltender has been.

By examining shot attempts against, it’s easy to find out which goalies have been the busiest this season, and which goalies have not seen as much action.

To remove the bias of goaltenders that play more consistently, calculating the average length of time each goalie has to wait before seeing each shot attempt is a more fair and intriguing way to look at the numbers.

Let’s break it into three categories:

Heavy Workload

Name	Team	Average Length Between Shot Attempts (In Seconds)
Michal Neuvirth	Buffalo Sabres	52.15
Jhonas Enroth	Dallas Stars	53.49
Calvin Pickard	Colorado Avalanche	56.38
Semyon Varlamov	Colorado Avalanche	57.92
Jonathan Bernier	Toronto Maple Leafs	57.99
Kari Lehtonen	Dallas Stars	59.52
James Reimer	Toronto Maple Leafs	60.26
Jonas Hiller	Calgary Flames	60.32
Devan Dubnyk	Minnesota Wild	60.41
Carey Price	Montreal Canadiens	61.67
Mike Smith	Arizona Coyotes	62.38
Viktor Fasth	Edmonton Oilers	62.46
Sergei Bobrovsky	Columbus Blue Jackets	62.84
Curtis McElhinney	Columbus Blue Jackets	62.91
Karri Ramo	Calgary Flames	63.21
Ray Emery	Philadelphia Flyers	63.30
Dustin Tokarski	Montreal Canadiens	63.91
Steve Mason	Philadelphia Flyers	64.10
Craig Anderson	Ottawa Senators	64.17
Antti Niemi	San Jose Sharks	64.39

Predictably, the goaltenders high on the list play for teams that are terrible at possessing the puck. It’s interesting to see that it doesn’t really matter which goaltender is in net, teams that are terrible at possessing the puck will be terrible even when their backup is in.

Since it’s an average, it may not seem like much, but a ten second difference in rest time becomes more significant when you put it in the perspective of an entire 60 minute game. An extra ten seconds of resting in between each shot attempt can make a huge difference by the third period.

Now let’s check out the goalies that are seeing an average workload.

Average Workload

Name	Team	Average Length Between Shot Attempts (In Seconds)
Justin Peters	Washington Capitals	64.63
Frederik Andersen	Anaheim Ducks	64.76
Keith Kinkaid	New Jersey Devils	64.85
Scott Darling	Chicago Blackhawks	65.01
Henrik Lundqvist	New York Rangers	65.56
Braden Holtby	Washington Capitals	65.56
Eddie Lack	Vancouver Canucks	65.81
Anton Khudobin	Carolina Hurricanes	65.96
Ryan Miller	Vancouver Canucks	66.29
Alex Stalock	San Jose Sharks	66.45
Andrei Vasilevskiy	Tampa Bay Lightning	66.54
Carter Hutton	Nashville Predators	66.69
Robin Lehner	Ottawa Senators	66.77
Thomas Greiss	Pittsburgh Penguins	66.88
Jaroslav Halak	New York Islanders	67.03
Ben Scrivens	Edmonton Oilers	67.04
Pekka Rinne	Nashville Predators	67.21
Tuukka Rask	Boston Bruins	67.42
Cam Talbot	New York Rangers	67.43
Darcy Kuemper	Minnesota Wild	67.48
Anders Lindback	Buffalo Sabres	67.87

Some interesting names appear on that list. Ben Scrivens has seen far fewer shot attempts than most would initially have guessed. Pekka Rinne and Tuukka Rask are not nearly as busy as some of the other Vezina candidates. A few goaltenders that have struggled this season, like Anders Lindback and Robin Lehner, can’t pass it off as an unusually high workload – at least according to this data.

Which goalies have had an easy go of it this season so far?

Light Workload

Name	Team	Average Length Between Shot Attempts (In Seconds)
Michael Hutchinson	Winnipeg Jets	68.03
Cam Ward	Carolina Hurricanes	68.22
Al Montoya	Florida Panthers	68.72
Roberto Luongo	Florida Panthers	68.89
Ondrej Pavelec	Winnipeg Jets	68.94
Antti Raanta	Chicago Blackhawks	68.98
Brian Elliott	St. Louis Blues	68.99
Cory Schneider	New Jersey Devils	69.05
Marc-Andre Fleury	Pittsburgh Penguins	69.14
Niklas Svedberg	Boston Bruins	69.31
Chad Johnson	New York Islanders	69.40
Jonathan Quick	Los Angeles Kings	69.74
Ben Bishop	Tampa Bay Lightning	69.88
Niklas Backstrom	Minnesota Wild	70.03
Jake Allen	St. Louis Blues	70.12
Corey Crawford	Chicago Blackhawks	70.95
Evgeni Nabokov	Tampa Bay Lightning	74.78
Petr Mrazek	Detroit Red Wings	75.54
Jimmy Howard	Detroit Red Wings	77.39
Martin Jones	Los Angeles Kings	78.47

A lot of the information can be skewed by sample size, but all of the goaltenders on the list have played at least 400 minutes on the season by February 18th, 2015 – when this information was collected.

Goalies that play for strong possession teams unsurprisingly get a longer time to rest between shot attempts, but breaking it down this way gives a new perspective on how much action these particular goaltenders have to face each game, and shows which goaltenders deserve a bit more credit because of how much extra work they have put in.

The difference between the busiest goaltender in the league (Neuvirth) and the least busiest (Jones) is 26.32 seconds between shot attempts.

Does workload have an effect on a goaltender’s save percentage?

Common sense would say yes, but it yields some interesting results when this data placed on a chart. The busiest goaltenders are on the left side, and the least busiest are on the right. The red line is the league’s average save percentage:

There seems to be just as many goalies struggling to stay above the league average on the right side of the chart as the left! Shot attempt quantity doesn’t seem to be as big of a negative factor on save percentage as originally thought.

Shot quality is not taken into account because of its difficulty to quantify, and that may have the biggest effect on save percentage of all.

Although the save percentage numbers may not show it, workload is still something that NHL goaltenders have to deal with and manage every day. When a goalie faces an absurd number of shot attempts against, it is probably a good idea to give him a rest.

Teams will judge workload by using a variety of different statistics, but shot attempts continues to be one of the best ways of fully understanding how much strain a single game puts on a goaltender’s body.