This week on Frozen Tool Forensics we turn our attention to goalies. We are going to take a slightly larger view – not necessarily a breakdown of specific games, but an overview of how much goalies are playing for their various teams and how impactful those games have been.

In order to do this, I am pulling up the goalie Big Board report to get each goalie who has played this season's basic info. I am interested in start volume but am not going to be using straight games played. A big part of this is the fact that so far teams have all played differing amounts of games. The range at the time of pulling the data was 15-20, which would have a pretty dramatic difference on total games. Instead, I am using percentage of total team games played (GP%). Essentially if a goalie got into five of the team's ten total games, we would see a 50 percent number. I am using games played rather than games started as that is what I had the easiest access to in the reports.

In addition to a player's games played percentage, I am also comparing that number to their projected percentage. I am using these two numbers to figure out which goalies are getting more games than we expected them to at the beginning of the year. For this data I am pulling from an early Dobber Guide. The guide is updated through the preseason etc., but I am using data from a little bit earlier to get an idea of what we were thinking in preparations for our drafts. Because the guide gets updated continually the numbers using the most recent copy may look a little different.

Finally, I am also looking at save percentage and quality start percentage. I am including these two to give us some context for how the goalie is performing given the volume of games they are getting.

Oh and given my own holiday schedule, the data is pulled on November 22nd. It will miss a game or so from some teams, but the trends will remain consistent.

First up, we are going to look at which goalies are playing a lot more games than anticipated.

I was going with a top five, but felt a little bit like Jonas Johansson was cheating here so we have a top six. Just to get him out of the way though, this data was before Andre Vasilevski was out injured so it is not at all surprising to see him lead the way here.

Mackenzie Blackwood also shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone this season. He has been playing the vast majority of the games in San Jose. This is one of those 'great to know, but maybe not helpful' situations as San Jose has not seemed to be a good place to have a goalie. Blackwood's personal numbers actually aren't as bad as expected though. Johansson has been rostered most of the season, but he has a worse save percentage and quality start number. In fact when compared to goalies who have played more than 55 percent of their team's games, Blackwood has a better save percentage than guys like Juuse Saros, Connor Hellebyuck, Viteck Vanacek, and Alexandar Georgiev. Now they all have more wins than he does, but if saves and a temperamental save percentage are helpful in your settings there might be some value here.

I am going to get to Cam Talbot in a second, but I wanted to also touch on the remaining three on this list. They are a good grouping as they all are young up and coming goalies who are taking on bigger roles than anticipated. Devon Levi probably had the most buzz, and he started strong (at least in terms of games played), but has faltered significantly lately. Overall his save percentage and quality start percentage is the worst of the three and he is part of a three headed monster in Buffalo. It all combines to make his value essentially zero at this point. Lukas Dostal is a bit of a surprise here getting quite a few more starts (essentially alternating) with John Gibson. Like with Levi there has been a bit of buzz with Dostal, but I didn't see anyone projecting a 1B situation to start the season, it was always more of a down the road, or take over in a injury situation. Gibson for his part has actually been quite good (and better than Dostal) and recently they have moved to more of a two starts one game off for Gibson, which certainly lowers Dostal's value.

Joseph Woll has certainly been found money for managers thus far. He has taken over from Ilya Samsonov in Toronto at times this season, but the results have been inconsistent. Given it's Toronto there is always a shot at a win, but his quality start numbers are not excellent.

Looking at this data begs the question, who are the top performing goalies that are getting better volume than anticipated?

The answer of course is Cam Talbot. There was some hesitation regarding Talbot going into the season. He hadn't been exactly great recently and Pheonix Copley was coming off of a reasonable, if not entirely remarkable relief season. Talbot was likely going to get the start game one, but there was no guarantee he was going to run with it. But it turns out he has. LA is a good team providing great protection and Talbot is crushing it. Almost 70% quality starts, a .930 save percentage, and volume. In a lot of formats Talbot has been the top goalie to roster thus far. It is hard to maintain a .93 throughout an entire season, and part of his success comes down to a very unsustainable .932 on the penalty kill (it should be down closer to .85), so this level of success might not continue, but he should be the top goalie, on a good team, giving excellent protection going forward.

Not to belabor the challenges other folks may be experiencing, but we are going to briefly take a look at goalies who are playing less than expected, and performing poorly in that time.

There was some hope for Jack Campbell, but that experiment seems to have run its course for the moment. Copley, Eric Comrie, and Kaapo Kahkonen all went into the season with question marks, both with them personally and with the competition in their crease. As it stands now, they have all lost out and clearly their own performance had a lot to do with it.

The guy I wanted to briefly touch on is Darcy Kuemper. This is not the season he or managers were hoping for. The Capitals were really struggling to start the season, he has spent time injured, and when he has played he just hasn't been very good. To make matters worse for him Charlie Lindgren has played well in Kuemper's absence, and even got an extra game with Kuemper helathy. We might not be in full blown controversy land yet, but the situation is not positive for Kuemper.

That is all for this week.

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