The Value of NHL Goaltending

When word came out that Ilya Kovalchuk's contract was rejected, eyebrows were raised when arbitrator Richard Bloch called out other mega-contracts. Soon, Vancouver Canucks GM Mike Gillis acknowledged that Roberto Luongo's contract was still under investigation. The funny thing about this situation was the reaction from Canucks fans — a significant portion of them joked that maybe the Canucks could get out of the deal, and the mainstream media even picked up on the meme, suggesting that Vancouver could ditch Luongo and sign Antti Niemi for a cheaper price.

With Evgeni Nabokov in Russia and Marty Turco playing for bare bones in Chicago, times have certainly changed in today's NHL. It used to be that you built from the net out. Think of the past 20 years and you'll see successful teams adhering to this formula: the Buffalo Sabres and Dominik Hasek, the Washington Capitals and Olaf Kolzig, the New Jersey Devils and Martin Brodeur.

Of course, when you look at this list, you come to realize that of the teams that made the Stanley Cup Final, the ones that relied on magical goaltending almost always failed to capture the big prize. In fact, the New Jersey Devils are the only team really to fall under this definition, and you could chalk up the 1995 Cup to a combination of Brodeur and the still-new neutral zone trap, while the 2004 version was a quietly high-scoring team with the likes of Patrik Elias, Scott Gomez, and Jason Arnott. The rest of the finalists? Behold, the corpses of the 1996 Florida Panthers (John Vanbiebrouck), the 1998 Washington Capitals (Olaf Kolzig), the 1999 Buffalo Sabres (Dominik Hasek), the 2003 Anaheim Ducks (Jean-Sebastian Giguere), and the 2004 Calgary Flames (Miikka Kiprusoff).

In each of those cases, you could argue that the losing goaltender should have won the Conn Smythe (and in Giguere's case, he did). But they didn't capture the big prize. Overwhelming offensive talent won out in the end.

Consider the flip side of the equation — teams that could roll lines and score on the power play could win the Cup with above-average goaltenders that most likely wouldn't make the Hall of Fame. The 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning featured a high-flying attack of Vincent Lecavalier, Brad Richards, Martin St. Louis, and a strong supporting cast including Fredrick Modin, Dave Andreychuk, and Ruslan Fedotenko. Was goalie Nikolai Khabibulin the best netminder in the playoffs that year? No, not really; in fact, Khabibulin had essentially lost his starting job to John Grahame that year. But he got hot at the right time and his high-powered offense showed up when necessary.

Last year's Cup winner featured a goalie with less than 50 games of NHL experience in Antti Niemi. The 1999 Dallas Stars may have had an all-star in Ed Belfour, but they wouldn't have won the Cup without Brett Hull, Joe Nieuwendyk, Mike Modano, Sergei Zubov, Darryl Sydor, and a host of others. Would Chris Osgood have won all those Stanley Cups if he played on teams that weren't loaded with the Detroit Red Wings' talent? Most people would argue no.

So what is the value of goaltending? There's no doubt that it can help a thin team get to the playoffs and wreak havoc. If you took Ilya Bryzgalov or Ryan Miller off of their respective rosters last year, things would be significantly different. In the case of a one-line team playing a defensive style, an all-world goalie can tip the balance towards a team's favor just enough to boost their playoff contention — and if they get hot, he can steal a series or two.

In other words, it's the recipe for success, but not a championship. Championship teams have distributed scoring and a dynamic defense, along with above-average goaltending. In most cases, the team that wins the Cup only sees goaltending as part of the equation.

Thus, when Roberto Luongo is on the books for another dozen years with a high cap hit, suddenly Canucks fans are thinking that maybe the NHL should go ahead with that investigation. In a perfect world, you'd want a Hall of Fame goalie in the pipes behind an all-star cast (like Patrick Roy and the 2001 Colorado Avalanche), but that was never entirely realistic from a budget perspective — and it's nearly impossible now in a salary cap world.

The goal, then, is to find a goaltender that's steady with the potential to steal a series. Antti Niemi was decidedly average in the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but he became unbeatable against the high-powered San Jose Sharks. He fell back down to earth against the Philadelphia Flyers, but the Flyers had equally erratic goaltending, and eventually it came down to a battle of talent and depth. There's the difference: the Flyers relied on a career journeyman who was claimed off waivers in Michael Leighton while the Blackhawks had a goalie who was untested, yet pushing for the starting job. Neither would be consideration for the Vezina, but Niemi came with plenty more upside and it showed.

Build from the net out? Perhaps not to win a Stanley Cup; no, in order to win a Cup, the formula appears to be a balanced and very deep mix of emerging youth and savvy veterans, along with a goalie who's just good enough to possibly steal a critical series. That last bit means that there's a lot of luck involved, and it also shows why the NHL is more unpredictable than ever before.