Login

Matteo · 01-18-2022, 04:53 PM

It’s now been 10 whole seasons since the SHL made the switch to FHM, and I’ve been around for 8 of them. Ever since I created as a goalie though I’ve always been hearing one thing that everyone says: “Goalie TPE doesn’t matter.” I decided to see for myself if that was true by painstakingly looking at every starting goalie’s stats for the regular season and playoffs from the index, then going through each of their update threads to figure out how much TPE they had for each season. So does goalie TPE matter?

Short answer: Not really

Long answer: Not really?

Full disclosure, I’m much better at the data entry and gathering data part than I am at the analysis, but I did my best. Here is a link to all my beautiful data.

Methodology:

Sorted the goalie section for each season in the index by games played, then copied every goalie’s stats with over half that season’s games played into a google sheet.
Individually added each goalie’s playoff stats and team stats alongside.
Calculated what percentage each team finished ahead of by doing (number of teams - position in standings) / (number of teams - 1). This way if you finished first it will show as 100%, and last as 0%. This is important to be able to compare standings with 16, 18, and 20 teams in the league.
Went through the index archive to determine the start date and end date for each regular season.
Went through each goalie’s update thread to find TPE at the last update before the start of each season and the last update before the playoffs, and took an average of the two numbers.

For fun, the first thing I did with my data was figure out what the average starting goalie in the SHL looks like, because to be honest that’s the easiest thing I could do. So looking across all seasons in the FHM era, the average starting goalie:

Has just under 1300 TPE
Plays over 95% of their allowed games after backup starts and around 80% of their teams’ total games
Allows about 3 goals per game in the regular season and 3.2 goals per game in the playoffs
Gets around 4 shutouts per season including the regular season and playoffs (surprisingly barely increased much going from 50 games to 66)
Puts up a .914 save percentage in the regular season and a .915 save percentage in the playoffs
It’s kind of interesting that the average GAA and the save percentage both increase from regular season to playoffs. This means that teams are shooting more and allowing more shots in the playoffs

After doing all of this, I can now look at what I think are the two most important contributors to a goalie’s success, TPE and how good the team is, along with the easiest stat used to determine goalie success, the save percentage (I know that there’s more than that to evaluate a goalie but for simplicity’s sake this is a good stat to see how good a goalie generally was in a season). So if we compare save percentages with TPE and save percentages with positions in the standings, we should be able to determine which is a bigger factor to a goalie’s success.

[Image: 1pPmKXt.png]

Based on this it would seem that a goalie’s TPE matters more than the team that they’re on, though both contribute to how well a goalie does. For TPE, a goalie that’s given a starter’s share of games right off the bat can be expected to put up around a .910 or .911 save percentage on average, whereas a goalie that’s peaking at 1900+ TPE can reasonably expect to put up a .918 to .919. This may seem like a small difference, but allowing an extra goal every 3 or 4 games can affect things like playoff seeding. The difference between the average goalie on the worst team in the league and the average goalie on the best team in the league is a little bit smaller, with the worst team’s goalie putting up an average of a .911 and the best team having a .916 save percentage.

“But Matteo,” you may say, “The title of this article is ‘what does a successful goalie in the SHL look like,’ I want to see what the average Challenge Cup, President’s Trophy, McBride, and maybe Razov trophy winners look like.” Well it’s funny that you say that, because I’ve already put together what the average of those goalies look like as well.

The average McBride winning goalie:

Is closing in on 1600 TPE
Is usually on a team that’s better than three quarters of the rest of the league
Only allows 2.3 goals per game in the regular season
Gets between 6 and 7 shutouts in the regular season (although that varies a lot)
Puts up an incredible .924 save percentage in the regular season
Is aggressively average in the playoffs
If the hardest season to win this trophy is when the average save percentage is the highest, then the hardest season to win it was S56, when Knox Booth of LAP won with a .934 save percentage, fitting because two other goalies also put up > .930s
(Not so) fun fact: No McBride winning goalie has won the Challenge Cup in the same season in the FHM era

The average President’s Trophy winning goalie:

Is actually below the average amount of TPE with 1261
Performs above average in both the regular season and playoffs
2.14 GAA, 5.6 shutouts, and .918 save percentage in the regular season
2.43 GAA, 1.7 shutouts, and .917 save percentage in the playoffs

The average Challenge Cup winning goalie:

Is closing in on 1500 TPE by the time the playoffs roll around
Almost always is on a team that finishes in the top 3 of the regular season
Has a relatively average regular season (aside from shutouts) with a .913 save percentage but turns it up in the playoffs with a .925 on average

The average Razov winner:

Is a goalie (goalies have won 6 out of the last 10 Razov trophies)
If it is a goalie, it’s always the Challenge Cup winning goalie
Is usually on a team that’s better than 90% of the rest of the league
Also has a fairly average regular season (aside from shutouts) with a .914 save percentage, also turns it up in the playoffs with an incredible average of .933

Conclusion:

Sometimes earning a lot of TPE will help you become the best goalie in the league, and sometimes FHM will FHM and you’ll have seasons where you’re over 2k TPE and still don’t crack a .910 save percentage. Statistically though, earning will help you to become a better and more consistent goalie in the SHL, and if you’re lucky enough to be on one of the better teams in the league then that’ll help as well.

One other thing to note is that build is important. I didn’t go through each goalie’s build because one, that would have taken forever, and two, I assume that most goalies have more or less the same build. If you’re maxing out your passing, skating, puckhandling, and poke checks before your other attributes then I don’t know what to tell you except do what makes you happy I guess.

I often see people talking about what can be done to fix the goalie position, and truthfully I don’t know if there’s anything to be done with FHM being what it is, but one thing I see more often that I don’t necessarily agree with is to not let people create as goalies anymore and just give each team the same one. Speaking from personal experience, while it can be frustrating to watch my goalie fall apart in the playoffs or only play well every second season, it’s also comforting to know that I can always do well next season.

Looking at skaters, most of the time they’ll have a short peak when they hit their peak in TPE then slowly regress, but with goalies you can be effective regardless of if you have under 1000 or over 2000 TPE. I like the way that you’re probably more likely to do well at higher TPE levels but that doesn’t mean you can’t do well at lower levels, and I kinda wish more skaters would be unpredictable like this as well.

In any case, thanks to anyone who read through it, I hope people enjoyed it and maybe it helped shed some light on the “does goalie TPE matter” conversation. And as a final note, like I said I’m not the best at data analysis so if anyone wants to use what I gathered for their own media pieces then feel free, just be sure to tag me because I’ll definitely be interested in reading it.

Code:
1477 words plus spreadsheet and graphs

***WannabeFinn*** · 01-18-2022, 05:46 PM

A successful goalie just looks like @FourFour @grok @Evok tbh

***Chevy*** · 01-18-2022, 07:43 PM

:sadge:

FourFour · 01-20-2022, 12:59 AM

01-18-2022, 05:46 PMWannabeFinn Wrote: A successful goalie just looks like @FourFour @grok @Evok tbh

fax

High Stick King · 01-20-2022, 05:18 AM

This was very interesting, nice work!

Henrik · 01-20-2022, 07:30 AM

You misspelled Antonescu.

Seriously though, interesting read

*Carpy48* · 01-20-2022, 12:55 PM

You can still only win a cup if you're on one of the few good teams and that's what everyone wants or not?

Tate · 01-20-2022, 11:31 PM

Knox Booth 4 McBride!

Panthers

***honkerrs*** · 01-21-2022, 03:47 PM

goalies are probably the smartest position in this league tbh, nice job taking the time to do all this. just a bit of a curiosity though, did you just guesstimate tpe levels from previous seasons or do we actually have that info now?

im sure @Duff101 could prob add more to this convo.

Another thing to take into account is i think goalies started to matter a tiny bit more after update scale change a few seasons ago. could be another thing to look at too if youre ever bored

you could compare that save percentage vs tpe graph against points vs tpe for forwards and id imagine its much more significant for forwards than goalies. at the end of the day, thats the problem (?) with fhm i suppose, maybe future sims it will change

Matteo · 01-22-2022, 02:07 PM

01-21-2022, 03:47 PMhonkerrs Wrote: goalies are probably the smartest position in this league tbh, nice job taking the time to do all this. just a bit of a curiosity though, did you just guesstimate tpe levels from previous seasons or do we actually have that info now?

im sure @Duff101 could prob add more to this convo.

Another thing to take into account is i think goalies started to matter a tiny bit more after update scale change a few seasons ago. could be another thing to look at too if youre ever bored

you could compare that save percentage vs tpe graph against points vs tpe for forwards and id imagine its much more significant for forwards than goalies. at the end of the day, thats the problem (?) with fhm i suppose, maybe future sims it will change

For the TPE levels I figured out the start date and end date for each season then went through each update thread to find what they were at at each point, so while they're probably not 100% perfect I'm confident that they're accurate enough to be able to paint a good picture.

For the update scale I didn't even consider that since the goalie scale stayed the same, but that's true, all the skaters changing would absolutely have a big effect on how goalies perform at certain TPE levels and on certain teams. Definitely could be something worth looking into, I like it.

JNH · 01-22-2022, 05:17 PM

nerd

Matteo · 01-22-2022, 05:20 PM

01-22-2022, 05:17 PMJNH Wrote: nerd

I learn from the best @juke

wumaduce · 01-23-2022, 10:10 AM

01-20-2022, 11:31 PMTate Wrote: Knox Booth 4 McBride!

Hi buddy

SlashACM · 01-23-2022, 01:21 PM

No goales are sucsful

***Ragnar*** · 01-23-2022, 01:24 PM

So what you're saying is if I were to have stayed a goalie, I wouldn't have to build my player anymore than I already have.

Instead, I'm over 1600 TPE and producing less points than a 1000 TPE and 900 TPE player on my team.

Neat.

Sigs by Me, Merica, High Stick King, Rum_Ham, Jess, vulfzilla, enigmatic, and Carpy

❤!! RIP to the big homies 701 and Mac !!❤

Navigation

Extra Menu

About us