Quality Starts

steve laidlaw

2014-12-13

PekkaRinne

Rob introduces Quality Starts and the league’s most consistent goaltenders.

Quality Starts

At last, your fantasy hockey leagues have an alternative to goalie wins and losses: quality starts. No longer can your netminder earn fantasy points merely for playing on a good team with lots of goal support, because quality starts can only be earned when he plays well enough for an average team to win.

Quality starts have actually been around since 2009, but were only available at the end of the season in year-end publications like Hockey Prospectus. Now, at least, they’re available on a real-time basis courtesy of Hockey Reference.

"We’ve added four new measures to goalies on Hockey-Reference.com, Games Started, Quality Starts, Quality Start Percentage, Really Bad Starts. These should be available anywhere you see goalie stats on the site currently, including the Play Indexes." – Hans Van Slooten

Yes, that also means that the new goaltending data goes all the back to 2007-08 season, when Martin Brodeur recorded the unmatched feat of 50 quality starts.

Leader Board

According to the latest data on Hockey Reference, this year’s leader is Pekka Rinne, by some margin. He’s already got 20 quality starts, well ahead of second-place Braden Holtby, who has 15 in 22 starts. Here’s a look at the top 10, just prior to the start of last night’s games.

Goalie Team GS QS QS%

Pekka Rinne NSH 23 20 87.0%

Corey Crawford CHI 18 14 77.8%

Jaroslav Halak NYI 19 13 68.4%

Braden Holtby WSH 22 15 68.2%

Jonathan Quick LA 21 14 66.7%

Ben Bishop TB 22 14 63.6%

Jonathan Bernier TOR 19 12 63.2%

Ondrej Pavelec WPG 21 13 61.9%

Marc-Andre Fleury PIT 18 11 61.1%

Frederik Andersen ANA 23 14 60.9%

Minimum 15 starts

Quality starts adds a brand new dimension to fantasy hockey, adding a key category to the goaltending pool that isn’t subject to factors outside their control, like how good the team is offensive or defensively, nor how much goal support they receive.

Some History

As I wrote in last year’s Hockey Abstract, forget evaluating goalies based on wins and losses. That’s over! If the starting goalie stops at least a league average number of shots in a particular game, assuming he was sufficiently tested, then that’s all that can be fairly expected of him.

.9157

57.4

Ryan Miller

Buf/StL

157

.9171

57.3

Mike Smith

Phx

161

.9203

57.1

Braden Holtby

Wsh

.9183

57.0

Ray Emery

Chi/Phi

.9075

56.7

Craig Anderson

Ott

134

.9172

56.0

Miikka Kiprusoff

Cgy

.9115

55.4

Jose Theodore

Fla

.9114

55.4

Michal Neuvirth

Wsh/Buf

.9105

54.5

Marc-Andre Fleury

Pit

159

.9152

54.1

Ilya Bryzgalov

Phi/Edm/Min

127

.9073

53.5

Jean-Sebastien Giguere

Col

.9137

53.2

Scott Clemmensen

Fla

.9027

52.0

Martin Brodeur

127

.9041

51.2

Al Montoya

NYI/Wpg

.9051

50.9

Niklas Backstrom

Min

105

.9104

50.5

Cam Ward

Car

112

.9106

50.0

Evgeni Nabokov

NYI

121

.9091

49.6

Steve Mason

CBJ/Phi

122

.9075

49.2

Ondrej Pavelec

Wpg

167

.9042

49.1

Devan Dubnyk

Edm/Nsh

110

.9105

49.1

Nikolai Khabibulin

Edm/Chi

.9082

49.1

Tomas Vokoun

Wsh/Pit

.9154

48.4

Jonas Gustavsson

Tor/Det

.9077

45.5

James Reimer

Tor

.9116

44.3

Mathieu Garon

.9001

43.3

Minimum 50 Starts

What should we be looking for? Obviously, a quality start percentage (QS%) below 50% is quite poor, anything over 60% will be among the league leaders, and the average for an NHL regular is 53.4%. Based on the average of every goalie with fewer than 10 starts in a season, the average for replacement-level goalies is 42.8%, but there is some selection bias involved in that criteria, since playing that poorly will generally limit you to 10 starts in the first place.

One final element available for hockey pools is the really bad start (RBS), which is sometimes known as blow-ups or disaster starts, which are awarded when a goalie fails to stop even 85% of the shots. A team has only a 10% chance of winning when their starting goalie fares that poorly. I’ve supplemented each goalie’s RBS with how frequently he’s pulled (for any reason), which is shown side-by-side in order to provide an idea which goalies coaches have had more patience with (relative to the team’s other options). (Ed Note: This section was taken from Hockey Abstract, and updated slightly).

Relationship with Save Percentage

I was recently asked by Neil Greenberg of the Washington Post if adding quality starts would just mean doubling down on save percentage. Based on the leader board, no — save percentages vary widely. Holtby’s save percentage, for instance, is .914, the same as Jonas Hiller and Robin Lehner, who have a combined 11 quality starts in 24 games.

How does that work? Well, two goalies could have a .933 save percentage on the week, with one posting that save percentage consistently, but the other enjoying a shutout while going .900 his two other games. Which goalie would an NHL team rather have? Their save percentages are identical, but one goalie will have three quality starts to the second goalie’s one.

Closing Thoughts

It’s always a thrill whenever one of my creations hits the mainstream, so I want to thank Hans Van Slooten for all his hard work getting this metric added to Hockey Reference.

Now, at last, fantasy hockey pools can get rid of wins and losses forever, replacing it with quality starts. This statistic is independent of a team’s offensive and defensive abilities, and can be achieved regardless of how much goal support he received, and can be maintained even if and when he is traded to another team. Hopefully it serves as a very welcome addition to your league.