Randy Carlyle’s effect on goalies
By Cam Charron
11 years ago
Here are a few tables to get you going this year, whether or not Randy Carlyle improves a team’s goaltenders. I used the same methods as I did for my similar pieces on Ken Hitchcock’s and Dave Tippett’s goaltenders, which found that goalies who played in those systems could expect a small increase in save percentages.
So I did the same thing for Randy Carlyle and here are the results. Basically, I looked at how goalies since 1998 through 2012 fared at even strength with Carlyle behind the bench and without Carlyle behind the bench. Given that Carlyle wasn’t working with a full deck last season in Toronto, I excluded Toronto goalies from the study, but his Anaheim goalies from last season are included.
Here are the goalies Randy Carlyle has had in his short career who have spent significant time elsewhere. Another exclusion was Sebastien Caron, who faced 22 shots one year, and it simply wasn’t worth the trouble of splitting the season:
And here are the same goalies without Carlyle:
You’ll notice without Carlyle the goalies have a slightly higher EV SV%, or even strength save percentage. However, since the average goaltender save percentage has risen practically ever year since 1998, we need to adjust it to the realities of the league.
In every year since 1998, I’ve calculated for every goalie who played in the NHL the number of saves an average goaltender would make in that season. By tallying those up, I’ve created an estimated combined save percentage for all goalies within the league year. It just so happens that the combined save percentage for goalies when they were “with” Carlyle is .91862. The combined number for goalies “without” Carlyle is .91914, therefore, due to whatever factors (it could be more timid offences, there was a lot of that last season) goalies could expect a higher save percentage.
EV SV%+ is an era-adjusted rate. A .900 EV SV%+ is the league combined average over the span.
So here’s that for goalies with:
And without:
Curtis McElhinney, Dan Ellis, Jean-Sebastien Giguere, Jonas Hiller and Ray Emery all did much better under Carlyle than another coach. The exception is Ilya Bryzgalov, who spent a good portion of his career under either Carlyle or Dave Tippett.
Combine those together, here’s what you get:
That changes things around, but since Carlyle hasn’t been around too long, I’m not willing to make the bold pronouncement that Carlyle’s system is better for goalies based on 11490 shots, even though the EV SV%+ of his goalies is .003 higher. There aren’t enough shots available that would mean variance could cover the difference, particularly since Carlyle has been working with very, very good goalies throughout his career. Hitchcock and Tippett were raising average goalies to play at a slightly higher level. It will be fun to see what Carlyle can manage now that a star like Giguere, Hiller or Bryzgalov will be the regular starter for him.
A more appropriate title for the post would be “Randy Carlyle’s goalies’ effect on his coaching system”.
Related:
Recent articles from Cam Charron
