Michal Neuvirth's early stats.

by DirtyDanny on Jan 22, 2011 12:25 PM EST

As I was watching Tuesday's Flyers- Caps game, I was irritated when a few minutes into the game, Michal Neuvirth let in ANOTHER early goal. This is not meant to bash Neuvirth, I think he is quite talented and could certainly become a legitimate #1 NHL goalie, but one problem I believe he has is letting in early goals. After that I decided to do some research, and thanks to NHL.com's full play by play stats I was able to analyze his statistics on the first 3 shots of every game.

What I came up with is the following:

In the 28 games Neuvirth has played he has let in a goal within the first 3 shots 12 times. In another he let in a goal on the 4th. In the first 3 shots of the games he's played this year he's stopped 72 of 84 possible shots for a save percentage of .857. Now, I didn't have the time to compare this to other goalies, but to me that seems like a really low number. Does this statistic seem valid or is it too small of a sampling size to jump to an accurate conclusion?

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Legitimately below average.

Bruce Boudreau when asked about Brooks Laich's return to the lineup, he said: "He just adds another dimension to our team. If it was puzzle, he just fits that thing. He completes us."

Brooks Laich completing everything from teams to tires and everything in between.

by breaklance on Jan 23, 2011 1:36 PM EST reply actions

This is quick and dirty:

You didn’t look at whether these came at even-strength, so we’ll assume his underlying “real talent” in these first three shots is his save percentage: 91.1%. Then with a binomial distribution, you come up with 6.8% that he stops that many shots or fewer. That’s not otherwordly small. Conclusion: small sample size slash we should expect that to happen to somebody, don’t worry about it.

by cajuncook on Jan 23, 2011 5:12 PM EST reply actions

is it just me or does Neuvy sort of show signs of Theodore? A great goalie who can make some great saves and seems to know exactly where to be. Has descent numbers. But half the goals that DO make it in seem to be soft ones.

by Brainumbc on Feb 16, 2011 12:03 PM EST up reply actions