Washington Capitals: The Young Goalies Still Have A Lot To Prove
The Washington Capitals goalies have been a pretty big surprise this season. Coming into this season it was a question on how good the goaltending would be, but I think a lot of people were probably comfortable with the options. Ilya Samsonov, coming off a great rookie season, and Henrik Lundqvist, a future hall of famer and incredibly capable backup.
Lundqvist however had health problems and he pulled himself from the season. Samsonov had health issues of his own forcing him to miss a bunch of time early in the year. That forced Vitek Vanecek to come in and start a boat load of games in a row. For someone who had never played an NHL game before, that was a massive ask.
Something that was already a question coming into the season became a much, much bigger question. How would Vanecek keep this team afloat? How would Samsonov look when he returns? Will Lundqvist eventually be able to play this season?
Well, the two main goalies, Samsonov and Vanecek have been pretty good. Not great by any means, but considering the circumstances they have been good this season.
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The traditional stats won’t blow you away. Samsonov has a goals against average of 2.69 and a save percentage of .902. Vancek is 2.75 and .908. You won’t look at those numbers and think, “OH MAN! These guys are blowing the world away with how dynamite they’ve been!” the numbers are pretty average.
Again, you have to think of what’s happened. Vanecek has never played in the NHL before this season. Those are fine numbers for a guy playing his first season. Samsonov was forced to miss a bunch of time early in the season, and understandably putting him behind a small 8-ball.
They have been good so far. But improvements can definitely be made, and if this team wants to make a serious run come playoff time they may need better as well.
If the Capitals defense can improve that would obviously be a big help. However, we’re fifty-one games into a fifty-six game season now. This is who this Washington Capitals team is. They can hang with anyone offensively, which is good because defensively they are unreliable. If the Caps are not going to allow goals it’s likely going to have to come from their last line of defense, the goalies.
Looking at a couple of important stats the two Caps goalies can be better in two areas, the high danger areas and goals saved above average. If you fix one of those you fix the other, so if the goalies can bail the Capitals out a little more only great things can happen.
Among goalies who have played at least 800 minutes this season the Caps goalies rank too far down in the high danger save percentage for my liking. Out of 55 goalies Samsonov ranks 44th with a .787 HDSV% and Vanecek ranks 39th with a .795 HDSV%.
I’m not asking these guys to be the best in the world. They’re young and they play behind a leaky defense. Still, it would be nice if they had a HDSV% in the low eighties. Just for context, former Capitals goalies are doing well in this stat. Philipp Grubauer is the league leader at .869% and Seymon Varlamov is 4th at .856%. That also showing you what the best in this number looks like.
The goals saved above average stat looks a little better for these guys, but it still shows them to be average, maybe even below average goalies this season. Vanecek is doing better here again, he has a GSAA of -.98 which ranks 33rd out of the 55 goalies. Samsonov is carrying a -3.33 GSAA which is 39th.
Just for people who don’t know and don’t care to keep up with some advanced stats, GSAA is just like it sounds, it’s goals saved above average. Out of these fifty-five goalies Vanecek is allowing about 1 more goal than the average guy, while Samsonov is allowing around 3 more goals than the average. To point out the absurdity that is Andrei Vasilevskiy, he leads this group of goalies to play 800 minutes or more in GSAA saving 23.07 more than the average guy. The next highest is Semyon Varlamov at 20.02.
If the Capitals don’t end up going far in the playoffs this season I kind of doubt we will be blaming the goaltending. This team still has a lot of other issues that could sink them and some of those issues will affect the goalies. If one of these guys can go on a run and clearly cement himself as the number one guy on this team it would be a huge deal.
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Both of these young goalies have been good this season. With that being the truth, there is still a lot these guys have to prove, and the time to do that is rapidly approaching.