Goalie rest: how needed is it?

I’m really curious about a couple of things:

1) When you looked at “back-to-backs”, did you compare stats in Game 1 versus Game 2?
2) What exactly does “with rest” mean?
3) When looking at goalies getting worn down, did you look at how spread out their final 10 games were?
4) Did you then look at how those goalies fared in the playoffs?
5) Like I said in the thread, I’d love to see something that can be more easily applied to Leighton. In other words, what about goalies who are first-time starters with a drastically increased work load?

I definitely think the part about goalies who have never had to handle this many games before should be researched further, since Leights isn’t exactly a guy who played 60+ NHL games last year, or any year. He did play 58 regular season games in the AHL in 2007-08 and win the ‘best goaltender in the league’ award, so we have to hope that will translate well this year, since we’ve already hedged our bets on him.

While I’m not against your numbers or conclusions, I think the troubling thing with analyzing goalies in this matter is that goalies have such a different mindset than other positions; they’re off in their own little world, and sometimes they get a reputation for being head cases. Whether they’re actually a little off-kilter to begin with or not, their performance is going to be affected by their mental state. It’s hard to determine ahead of time whether a particular goalie has the mental fortitude to handle playing that many games in a row under pressure, and I think that’s a factor where only time will tell.

Your essentially commiting a Mcnamara Fallacy (i’m not busting your balls…obviously things are informal here and your working out an idea) but as a follower of advanced baseball metrics I’ve encounter this even from the authors of the Book (baseball sabermetrics bible, ssh don’t say anything lest I be burned at the stake). In this fallacy, " the thinker(s) forget the degree of abstraction involved in thought and draw unwarranted conclusions about concrete actuality." In this case the abstraction is statistics, and as branch of mathematics is primarily a decuditive science that provides logical form for quantifiable, empirical data to be related. The only truth this logical form provides is the validity of the argument not the truth of the premises (empirically gathered data, facts). Therefore the premises have to be true but you really haven’t established them…
     As it stands there’s a wealth of empiricaly gathered and tested knowledge about physiology involved in athletics so much so sports science/medicine is it’s own discipline. The princples they outline are tested and peer reviewed and are used as guidlines by which a trainer or coach can design a program that best fits their athletes needs vs. a team or competition scheledule. Ideally these principles should be used in every sport by every coach and team, but they are not esp. baseball, the worst offender by far.
 Anyway HuckNZ, I am not saying that you premises here are wrong just not substianted enough considering they should be measured against the principles put forth by an accepted field of study. Could be pretty interesting. If things are contradicted something else is going on, but that has to be tested. Injuries, age, recovery rates are inherently complex to just measure with past performance. By the way, so I am not cast out the sports blazer with suede elbow patches and hush puppy shoes ivy tower of baseball sabermetrics I’ll say this. In The Book there is alot a great work done on analyzing performances, quantifying skill from luck, how a metric can be translated into a Win value and then correlated with a player’s monetary value. This is fine. It’s working within parameters set by the game: the empirically gathered data refers directly to performance whose value is defined the said parameters.

how good a day or two’s rest will do for a goalie. I’m not saying every time there is a back to back game, rest your starter on the second day. It’s not so much as there’s a plan and statistics to look at for letting a goalie rest. It all depends on his energy and soreness level. Personally, before back to back or one game in 3 days, my coach would always ask me if i was ready to go.

As for the game yesterday, it wasnt just Leighton that looked tired, the whole team did.

this could either be a blessing through tragedy or just flat-out bad news written all-over-it.

We (the Flyers) can either use this situation, knowing the importance and severity to which our team has now been placed into and use it in a positive manner. Playing harder, playing smarter, more responsibility for one’s own actions (accountability).

Or….

We could just be flat and let it pan out like most teams are hoping it does, in utter flaming glory…right in our faces. (again) – also read the new site motto here at BSH. says it all, really.

basically the Flyers players are really into control of their team’s destiny right now with the effort they put forth on the ice here on out…Playoffs are here and a lot of these teams going to be even tougher in the post with their houses rockin’…Can we respond in kind???