Ten years ago, if a goalie had a save percentage under .910, they were considered pretty meh—now, that’s a solid goalie. Ten years ago if they had a save percentage under .900 they weren’t playing—now, that’s one third of the starting goalies or those who share the net and half of the goalies who’ve started at least one game this season.
The last ten years have seen an incredibly rapid decrease in average goaltending numbers like GAA and Sv%. The average Sv% has decreased or stayed the same every year for nine years now, trending toward its 10th, dropping from .915 to .903 last year, and .900 where it sits now. The average Sv% has not been below .900 since 1996.
Goalies stats over time
For interest sake, here is a graph of the average GAA and Sv% for every year since the league started, or in the case of Sv%, since the stat started to be tracked in 1956.
Here average GAA is shown in blue and average Sv% is shown in red.
The average GAA doesn’t stabilize much until the 1960s, and the spike in GAA during the Second World War is interesting. Frank Brimsek, Tiny Thompson, and Turk Broda were All-Star goalies whose careers were interupted by their brave military service. Johnny Bower also served but his NHL career didn’t start till after the war.
The ‘60s were marked by solid goaltender play, with numbers similar to a decade ago. After that though, it dropped off quickly in the seventies before bottoming out in the ‘80s.
We are all familiar with the ridiculously prolific scoring of the ‘80s. In ‘1982 the average Sv% was .873 and the GAA 3.95. Keep in mind this was a time when goalies wore 832 pounds of equipment and players were shot for excessive deking, so the goalies were often found challenging at the blue line. Jokes aside though, the game started to change in the ‘70s and ‘80s, players started to deke more often, the game got faster and more competitive, players like Wayne Gretzky started exposing not only goalies but defencemen’s poor positioning in response to novel or improvisational play.
Goalies were able to adapt in that era, partially though smarter, more positional play and partially through advances in goalie equipment, allowing them to move faster and expend less energy. By the time 2000 rolled by, the average Sv% was back over .900.
Goalies in today’s games
Something similar seems to be happening in this era. It’s hard to place your finger on the reason since it’s a relatively subtle change but shooters are becoming more dominant. According to Andre Vasilevsky, shooters are not only better, but teams in general are becoming more choosy. Instead of a shot on net being thought of as an opportunity to score, or as getting the puck to a dangerous place, it is being thought of as a risk of losing possession. When you look at it that way, you don’t want to shoot unless you have a pretty good chance of scoring.
This Vasilevskian observation rings true in the stats as well. The average goals per game played has actually dropped each of the last three years, even though the average Sv% has also dropped. This is only possible because the average shots per game has also been dropping, signalling the switch in mindset for players and teams.
You might say that the goalies have gotten worse, as opposed to the shooters getting better, but the decrease in goalie stats has been so rapid that a lot of goalies who were putting up those high numbers seven to ten years ago are putting up significantly lower numbers now, they can’t all have suddenly forgot how to play.
As the linked article above mentions, long range shots are down, especially unscreened shots from long range. According to NHL edge the average Sv% on long ange shots is .970, so you can see why teams are shying away from those shots that turn into 50/50 pucks whether the goalie freezes it or not. In the past the thinking may have been that, hockey having such a high rate of turnovers, trying to hold onto the puck too long in order to find a high quality shot was also foolish, you run the risk of losing the puck and never getting any shot. It was the Great One himself who advocated for shooting the puck.
Yet the decrease in Sv% would seem to imply that teams are making the right choice in waiting for the right opportunity, maybe they have simply struck the right balance between waiting for the perfect opportunity and firing every chance they get.
The future of goaltending
Unlike in the ‘90s, goalies aren’t likely to be saved by equipment improvements or better informed positional play, it’s hard to imagine how equipment could get any lighter while still protecting the goalie.
Maybe the answer lies in better defensive structure, a forward designated to be especially defensively responsible.
Will we see the average Sv% drop all the way to where it was in the ‘80s again? The graph does appear to be cyclical so if that does happen, how will it come back up?
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
