What's up everyone.  I used to do this weekly with SMJHL data but as life has gotten busier, I don't have the time (or desire) to do that anymore.  I found some free time today to do these using S68 data from the index.  I remember a handful of you appreciating these so fuck it, why not.

Looking at the statistics, S68 was kind to many forwards across the league which most of us enjoyed.  The antithesis to this was putrid save percentages league-wide.

   

Here is a scatter plot observing minutes played and save percentages.  Don't see your favorite goalie?  To make things easier I arbitrarily decided to make the cutoff for eligible goalies to be 2500 minutes played.  Any goaltender with 2500 minutes played or over is present on the graph.   

What can we take from these data?  Save percentages are not looking great.  The overwhelming majority of goaltenders in the SHL have sub .900 save percentages, which extends to those not included in the graphic.  Montagne and Wall, both playing over 3200 minutes respectively, were the only two goaltenders to have played more than 2900 minutes and to have stopped over 90 percent of shots coming their way.  Time, Smith, and Fantobens were the other notable workhorses of S68, all also playing over 3200 minutes.  

How can we determine the efficacy of an individual goaltender without observing the team surrounding them?  More specifically, their team's defense.

   

Here we can see which goaltenders faced relatively high shots compared to their peers playing similar minutes versus those who did not.  This allows us, to a certain extent, to more closely examine how each goaltender performs relative to the workload they receive while playing.  Granted, there is no accounting for teams who employ a defensive strategy to force a high frequency of low quality shots, and vice versa.  

S68 was a rough one for most goaltenders on the personal stat sheet.  Here is to hoping S69 is just as fun!

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