Jose Theodore, Best Goalie in NHL?

Winning 70% of the games you start is incredible. I also like the .911 save%. However, I don’t think you can call him best in the NHL. There needs to be more games played I think.

Put it this way, if he were to play 65 games like Brodeur, and have 45 wins(70%), then you can make a case.

And Varlamov is the 2nd best goalie in the league because he has a .684 win percentage? I think there might be a common link between the two…..

I definitely am on board with you Capsfan07, I think that if theo had the same winning percentage with the same number of games as Broduer that it would be really really impressive.

In my defense I am definitely not saying that Theo is somehow “better” then anyone on this list, I just think it helps put into perspective what he has done this season.

Also I only posted Varlys winning percentage to show that it was lower then Theo’s because a lot of people always whine about how much better Varly is when, both Theo and Varly have the same SV% and Theo wins more…. so how is Varly better?

Varlamov would have to play a ton more games before I would put him in the list of twenty I went into detail with above.

I give Theo a lot of credit, he has having a career year, despite that little bump earlier in the season. But when I think best goalie in the NHL, I think a goalie who can consistently steal games and/or has a number of shutouts. Can Theo steal a game here and there? Sure, we all saw him do it against Detroit. Can he get a shutout? Sure, one. Theo doesn’t have to steal games for the Caps, and that’s fine, that’s not who this team is or who he is. But if I wear a team that needs a goalie to keep me in things on a consistent basis, Theo’s not the guy I’m going to call.

That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see him hoisting that big silver thing in June. Because I believe he can.

…Not!

But he’s sure been pretty good lately.
It doesn’t hurt your win % a lot when your team’s GF per game is far beyond everyone else.

After being pulled last year in round one, Jose has a chance to wipe the slate clean and show everyone in a contract year that he can be top flight again. For lots of reasons, I hope he does it.

This is an example of how team play can have an effect on individual stats. Theodore has certainly performed much better than I expected this year. However, if you put him on the Panthers they aren’t winning anymore games than they have so far this season. In fact, they’d win a couple less. I still count 12 goalies I’d definitely take over Theo if I had the choice. No offense to Theo, but he’s an average NHL goalie.

When Jose Theodore was signed by the Caps, he real job was not to be a Vezina Candidate (although no one would complain if he was…) but rather to play well enough to not cost the team games. His other responsibility was to be the care-taker of the goalie position from the time that Olie Kolzig left to the time that one of the prospect goaltenders was ready to take on an NHL workload.

He has done that admirably, considering the circumstances he has been under since he came to DC. When the Caps lost to the Rangers in the playoff opener last year, those of us who were fans thought maybe Theo’s time here was over, but he overcame a hardship and situation that I would wish on no one and has become a top-notch goaltender.

Is he a great goaltender? Probably not, but he has won the Vezina and the Hart Trophy, so the guy can play. Is he good enough to win the Cup? That’s the question. If you look at Theo’s career, and his play now, and look at the goaltenders who were good enough to win a Stanley Cup in recent years: Giguerre, Osgood, Hextall (he lost in Game 7 to an Edmonton team that had 6 Hall of Fame players….no one was close to the Oilers that year), Vernon, etc. Theo compares favorably to some. In the case of someone like Vernon or Osgood, they were on a team that was loaded with talented skaters.

Well take a look, the Caps probably have the most talent in the NHL when it comes to forwards, and on defense, well, there’s a Norris nominee, the NHL’s top +/- guy, etc.

Theo doesn’t have to be the best goalie in the NHL to win the Cup. The best goalie doesn’t always win the Cup…if they did, the Caps would already have a couple (in the mid 1980s), and everyone would be talking about the Sabres dynasty of the 1990s. He has to not lose games….

Finally, for anyone who thinks a goalie’s Won-Loss record doesn’t matter. It does matter. The point is to win games, and being the goalie in a win is significant. But, like plus-minus, the Won-Loss record definitely is impacted by the rest of the team…

For reference, MAF had a .905 sv% on the way to the Cup last year (and sub-.900 against the Caps, lower than Varly’s sv%, if I recall correctly). If Theo maintains .905-.915 range for the playoffs, the Caps are in good shape, especially with continued apocalyptic offensive production and the unquestionably improved backend (A Hasek + Roy roided-out alien hybrid couldn’t have saved the Caps from their horrid playoff “defense” last year).

Look at last year’s final 4 teams: Cam Ward was the best goalie among them. And he didn’t even get to the SCF (though his team bounced Brodeur, then Vezina winner Thomas consecutively). While having an elite G is a nice perk, that factor taken by itself has pretty much zero correlation to actually winning championships. Or, at least no more than having the best single F, as the Caps can attest to.

The one thing Win% is indicitive of: the Caps are trusting Theo to keep them in games, even if they are behind, and Theo knows that being down after the first period means the Caps still have a 60% chance of winning. The trust factor, which was murky at best last year, is at least quite visible this year, if not in-your-face obvious. Every Cap is benefitting from the synergy of the team right now, and we are just flat-out winning hockey games.

flipped on NHL network coverage post the pens game. a ton of praise for JT after the game (1030 coverage). Dan: “is Jose theodore going to get any love playing for the captials”

response: absolute incredible run. Its amazing how little respect he’s getting. he was acrobatic, aggressive. he did a phenomenal job."

nice.

Congratulations, you’ve just proven that the Caps have the best offense in the league.

Seriously, when will people finally admit that “goalie wins” give goalies full credit for something which they are only at most 50% responsible for even in the most extreme cases, and most of the time much less than that, since the defensemen play a role as well? Being very generous, the goalie is probably something like 25% responsible for wins if you assume (oversimplifying a bit) that goals-for are contributed 100% by the forwards and goals-against are 50% defensemen and 50% goalie, and even that probably understates the contribution of the defense. Actually if that were true than the Hart candidates should all be goalies every year, since the average goalie would get 25% credit for wins and the average forward or defenseman would only get about 4% credit. Is a goalie really worth as much as the sum of all 6 defensemen or all 12 forwards?

You (and anyone who values goalie wins as a legit measure of performance) would do well to read this post on the relative merits of various goalie stats:
http://brodeurisafraud.blogspot.com/2010/03/one-stat-argument.html

In this comment, Mattusmximus references only win percentage. We seem to be in agreement that that’s an incomplete picture of a goalie’s performance. I came across this on “Habs Eyes on the Prize”, which I thought could give a more complete picture …if only I had the time and technical skills to put it together for goalies other than Price and Halak (lol)

The Price vs. Halak analysis gives a breakdown of the October 2009 performance of the two Canadiens goalies where the poster " [has] pieced together as many statistics I could for you to make your own judgments. [He has] tracked every goal. … where the shots are coming from, how many are blocked, how many are wide, where they are being scored from on the ice, where they are being scored on the goaltender, even strength, powerplay and save percentage from each distance." and [He has].. also tracked where the goals beat the goaltender. [he]I illustrated it below with the five main zones + the zone across the bottom which represents goals scored into an empty net (cross crease feed or tap-in)".

 I hope to see those charts become more common over the next few years, since they give a clearer picture of a goaltender’s performance from night to night. (I’ve been spoiled by Major League Baseball’s Gameday pitch charts, with pitch type, speed, trajectory and placement relative to the strike zone, whether the pitch was a ball, strike, fouled off or put in play, and the results of each at bat.)

He also “[goes] through each goal individually and try to assess blame. I tried to assess the goaltenders positioning. Were they playing too deep in the net? Were they over committing to the shooters? Were they over pursuing the play and creating opportunities while scrambling back in to the play? How was their gap control, puck tracking, anticipation and rebound control? Were they exposed because of defensive zone turnovers? Deflections? Poor defensive zone coverages? etc etc.” While this is somewhat more subjective, I think that kind of analysis is helpful to be able to differentiate the goalie’s performance from that of the team.

Interestingly enough, one of the comments references Clemmenson’s comments on Panther’s 7-4 loss to Caps on November 7, 2009, which notes

Clemmensen quickly has figured out he’s not playing for the defense-first New Jersey Devils anymore.``I’m still learning how to play for this team,‘’ he said. ``It’s very different from what I’m used to in the past with New Jersey. For me, at this point, it’s been kind of survival.’’

Among goaltenders with 40 games played since the lockout, Jose Theodore is 60th in save percentage. If he’s such a winner, why does he let so many goals in?