But I noticed it was used in the headline and not in the actual body copy.

I just think he became one of the best goalies in the league over time. There isn’t a whole lot separating the best from average at that position (or at least not much we can objectively tell), but I think he met his potential and then some. He’s had some really crappy playoff games, but that happens. I doubt when his career is over his playoff stats will look bad.

He will have to actually win something to be that in my book. But he has been head and shoulders better than DP has for us. Even forgetting the contracts, who wouldn’t make a DP for Bobby Lu trade right now…even if DP were completely healthy?

Bertuzzi has never shown the ability to get what wasn’t handed to him or drawn in crayon right in front of him by coach after coach after coach. I didn’t want to trade him, I didn’t want to see him finally evolve for someone else, but I’m a loss as to whether it would have ever happened without several shocks to the system that entailed 1) a trade, 2) Keenan as your coach, 3) Burke as your GM before it started to click.

As for the value HWSNBN got for him in that trade…well that’s simply inexcusable.

Sather had NO IDEA what he was getting in Lundqvist. If he did, he would not have passed on drafting him over and over and over and over and over, along with the rest of the NHL. To give him credit as if that was anything BUT dumb luck is unreasonable.

It’s losing a game because the guy on the other end, who is normally terrible, suddenly channels the ghost of Georges Vezina. In a winner-take-all single-elimination, that’s something of a problem. Then you go to the next game and watch a team you know you could beat score four softies on him and win going away.

Not that I particularly care.

I see, so Ovi is also not an elite player?

You, sir, are hopeless.

So you’d agree, then, that by your standards Bourque was not an elite player until the last year of his career when he finally won a cup with the Avs?

Hockey’s actually kind of pathetic about this stuff. I can find Ty Cobb’s average splits against lefties in May when an usher spilt beer in the second deck of Shibe Park, but not something as basic as overall sv % for the league per season…. not without adding it all up by hand. Gigantic hassle.

Anyway – to give you an idea of how I’m thinking of this, I’m trying to control (as best I can) for team effects. If a goalie has poor offensive support, it’s worth noting. If he faces a lot of shots, it’s worth noting. All things being equal, a guy facing ten more shots per game than another is going to earn my regard a little more.

I’ve seen people attempt to calculate goals saved vs. average – take the lg av sv%, apply it to shots faced, and see how many more or fewer goals a particular keeper actually stopped. That accounts not only for the difference in percentages, but also the workload – if I face 30 per 60, and you face 28 per 60, then I’d come out ahead in GSvA even if our sv% were equal.

Given all of that, I consider the guy one of the five-best goalies in the league. I’m not going to lie – it’d be much easier for all concerned if the guy won a Cup. I appreciate that. And it’s why they play. I’m just more unwilling to hold him primarily or solely responsible, or say that it invalidates everything else he’s done. “When it matters most” just seems a lot to me like an invitation to selection bias: when he gets eliminated, presto! He “failed in the clutch.” But winning the opening round somehow isn’t “succeeding in the clutch” when, really, it’s the same situation – win four of seven, or golf. He succeeded those three times, and played fantastically in one of the three eliminations. Those other two years are dings on him: you’re well within your right to say that, for you, it takes him back out of the top five. Not quite for me; those were two excellent Chicago teams, the Canucks let a lot of shots through, and the talent levels involved are such that one just can’t command the result. To me, what you’re asking of Luongo is not elite performance, but godlike performance, where no matter what happens, his team wins. Nobody can do that. Hasek couldn’t do it, and he’s in the conversation for greatest goalie who ever lived. Roy couldn’t do it; Brodeur couldn’t do it.

Briefly – I don’t have a large elite group. Mentally I put guys in levels, and at most there’s five goalies in that top level. Then maybe ten in the second, a hunk more in the third, and then a mass to follow. Luongo’s been good enough long enough to get into that top- five (Vokoun, Lundqvist (dammit), Thomas, and Miller are the others). The next level is Brodeur (despite this year), Hiller, Brzgalov, Kiprusoff, Ward.. with guys either coming (Rinne, Rask, maybe Backstrom – not sure how much of that is the Wild and how much him) or going (JS Giguere). Then you get your pretty good starters and your up-and-comers, then your “guess we’ll have to make do,” and then “break glass in case of LTIR.”

Kidding. :)

You make some good points in this post, although I fundamentally disagree that you can’t compare goalies to other position players. That is precisely the sort of thing that GVT can and does do — but that’s an entirely separate discussion.

I also disagree that it’s somehow childish to call a position discrediting. I think Dom put it best above when he said (paraphrasing) that if Luongo isn’t considered elite, then the term becomes pretty meaningless. And that’s what I meant by discrediting — just in terms of this particular argument, if your definition is a null set, that’s a pretty decent indication to me that it’s wrong.

But, we’re all Islanders fans and there are precious few of us, so we should probably stick together on things. I like to dial up the rhetoric because I find it amusing. Apologies if some of you have taken actual offense.

To end on a positive note: :)

.900 save percentage instead of .915 save percentage.

You realize that this would be 1.5 goals over 100 shots taken right…which is about 3 games, which is about .5 goals per game. It really is negligible game to game. So if Crosby gets held to .5 instead of 1, that does make them relatively equal. Again, as long as you are not giving up 40-50 shots a game, that is not a huge deal. Considering the amount of skaters there are, if you can hold several below their averages, then it can be far more significant than .900 vs .915.