Which goalies face the toughest shots? Using shot distance to consider goaltender performance.

As advanced statistics have assumed an increasingly important role in hockey analysis, goalies continue more or less to be judged by the old standbys. Goals-against average, save percentage, wins and losses still dominate talk regarding who is best in the crease. This has its pros and cons. I like GSAA (goals saved above average) and adjusted save percentage, but I also like the simplicity of appreciating a goalie-job-well-done. You know, it makes it easy to answer the question “Why did the Sens win tonight?” with “Anderson was a beast out there!” There’s something reassuring in the fundamental idea that a goalie has one primary job – to stop the puck. He’s the only one on the ice with the big mitt and the blocker, so maybe he should be treated a bit differently.

Then again, maybe we just haven’t arrived at creating perfect goalie statistics yet.

One statistic that doesn’t always enter into the goalie conversation is average shot distance. While on its own it doesn’t necessarily have deep or clearly discernable meaning for our fantasy teams, average shot distance provides an interesting picture of a goalie’s NHL team, its defensive prowess, its opponents and other things to ponder, like why is Pickard’s average shot distance the highest in the league (five starts or more) at 40.61 feet, while Varlamov’s is 22^nd at 35.48 feet? Probably something to do with small sample size here in the beginning of December, but still intriguing to me.

Frozen Pool’s Report Generator provides a great resource for those interested in determining goalies’ average shot distance. Here, for example are the top 25 goalies this campaign in terms of this metric:

Many of the best first-stringers are on top – Rask, Dubnyk, Price, but Niemi? Hmmm… what to make of that? Again, small sample size maybe. Let’s look at last season’s final totals to see what a larger sample size will do:

Obviously the teams listed here are taken from the 2016-17 campaign instead of 2015-16, but you get the picture. Also, this only includes goalies that played in 30 or more games. Adding goalies here with lower numbers of games leaves too many second-stringers in between the regular goalies, which confuses things even more. So let’s see… 2015-16 Ben Bishop? Ok that makes sense. Braden Holtby down in 9^th place below Domingue and Bobrovsky with the years they all had? Jonathan Quick in 22^nd place below Cam Ward? Yeah, average shot distance alone doesn’t cleanly reflect goalie quality in my mind, even after sample sizes are enlarged.

However, the aforementioned adjusted save percentage, which uses shot distance as a key component, may be one of our best indicators of goalie quality. Please forgive my abbreviated and simplistic treatment of it here, but the crux of it is this: goalies can’t dictate where shots come from, and those on teams with weaker defenses usually permit more shots that are closer to the net than those with strong defenses. Regardless, with traditional save percentage, a goal from 50 feet out counts just as much as one tipped in. Adjusted save percentage weights shots according to assumed difficulty, rewarding goalies for making what we usually consider a difficult save (closer to the net) more than making an easier save (farther from the net).

While offering the caveat that shot distance is not an infallible indicator of shot difficulty, the spectacular former War-on-Ice website (now in blog form) identified three different zones with distinct levels of expected Fenwick-based shooting percentages weighted according to difficulty:

• In the slot and just above that area, with an expected 10% or higher chance of getting past the goalie.
• The central portion of the attacking zone other than described above, with a 3-10% chance of going in.
• The extreme right and left areas of the attacking zone, with a 3% or below chance of scoring.

With penalty killing and power play chances excluded from adjusted save percentage, factors that aren’t often controlled by the goalie are even further reduced.

While determining adjusted save percentage on a nightly basis would be a thankless and insanity-producing task, we can get a glimpse at some further important considerations that go into determining this metric by using Frozen Pool’s Report Generator to determine goalie leaders in terms of shots faced from the 1-15 feet, 15-30 feet, and 30-45 feet distance zones from the goal. In the interest of space, and in keeping you reading if you still are, I’ll trim these lists to the top ten for each distance.

From 1-15 feet:

From 15-30 feet:

And finally from 30-45 feet:

Interesting. Draw your own conclusions, but in my eyes this helps once again provide proof that Carey Price is the greatest goalie on the planet.