As I told a group of collegiate and professional-level goalie coaches at a conference this spring, we stats guys have been letting down the goaltending fraternity as a group since the dawn of hockey. Considering save percentage was not even tracked at the NHL level until the mid-eighties, it’s not much of a stretch.
That gulf between the quantity and quality of data available for goalies and skaters has only widened with the advanced statistics revolution. For skaters, not only could we pinpoint and quantify the differences between good and bad players, but to a certain extent, we can also use the numbers at our disposal to differentiate between the right and wrong players to send out in a certain situation.