Opportunities To Win

When a goaltender has a bad game, it almost always results in a loss. A lot of times, teams don’t need a miracle in net, just an opportunity to win. How have Devan Dubnyk and Nikolai Khabibulin performed when it comes to giving the Oilers a chance to win any given game?

I define an “opportunity to win” as a game where the goaltender keeps his save percentage above 0.900. That’s below league average, but it is good enough that just about any team can outscore their problems. As the charts below show, the Oilers have had a strong chance of winning any game in which their goaltender has managed that particular feat:

In games where the goaltending was 0.900 or better, the Oilers went 19-8-7. In contrast, they’ve won one of 37 games where the goaltender failed to post an 0.900 SV%. What happens when we break that record down by individual goaltender?

Those are strikingly similar records in the given situations. Devan Dubnyk’s record is probably a hair better than his save percentage numbers relative to Khabibulin really deserves; he did win one sub-0.900 SV% game, and his 0.900 SV%+ numbers are a hair better, but overall things are pretty close. The Oilers don’t win when their goaltender fails to stop 90.0% of the shots he faces, and they’re generally quite good when he does.

The key difference is the odds of posting a +0.900 SV% game. In Dubnyk’s case, there’s a roughly 60/40 split – 60% of the time, he gives the team enough to win, and 40% of the time he doesn’t. Those numbers are reversed when Khabibulin finds himself in net – just 40% of his starts are quality, and the other 60% of the time he posts a save percentage less than 0.900. Put another way: the Oilers are 50% more likely to get a quality start from Devan Dubnyk than they are from Nikolai Khabibulin.

Now, obviously there are exceptions. If a goaltender faces a bunch of breakaways and odd-man rushes in a particular game, his numbers are going to be bad. I’m going to dive into shot quality a bit in the off-season, and show where Khabibulin and Dubnyk are facing shots from, but so far there’s little reason to believe that there’s much difference between the two. Dubnyk’s simply given his team a chance to win with far greater frequency than Khabibulin.