Thursday Morning Fly By: Preach on Jose Theodore

Maybe you guys don’t realize this, but he’s actually tall. With a long reach. Like Chara or Pronger or Myers. Are you saying those guys need to go back to the AHL too?

/This is what my life feels like lately.

He wasn’t Bryz’s agent.

You said that for Boosh and Bob too. Look what happened!

Theodore was coming of a 0.924 ESS%…..which was only 0.001 worse than Luongo, Howard, and Rinne

He was 0.001 worse than Luongo and Rinne 2 of the 5 Vezina candidates.

Over the last four years, he has a 0.917 ESS%. Perfectly average NHL backup. Costing $1.5 million.

perfectly average NHL backup

Goalies are really hard to analyze by statistics some much factors into all their numbers. Team play and style etc.. Stats were used to argue Dan Ellis as a perfectly good NHL starter coming over from Nashville last year. How much is the Preds system responsible for his numbers and why was he so bad in Tampa? Backups might also get the easier matchups. MIN is also a system team and Theodores numbers are identical to Backstrom it is hard to judge goalies based on stats.

Thanks for that Don looks interesting. I am like that that article is acknowledging shot quality. And that Rask and Vokoun of two years ago are some of the few goalies who actual save percentage is higher than predicted by the DIGR rating. Which would indicate to me and correct me if I am wrong they face weaker shots compared to the rest of the NHL.

Thanks for linking this. I’ll have to look more closely at it later due to work time constraints today, but this looks pretty interesting.

There’s a difference between “clutchness” and “talent” though. They would say two different things.

Two different subjects.

HA this is the other topic I started on before and got lost trying to figure out what would even be considered clutch.

I sat behind the net in one game he played last season, and I came away impressed [place incredibly-small-sample-size caveat here]. It made me wonder if he was being overlooked.

I wanted to add him as a sub to my fantasy team. No dice.

Caps fans have been more kind to Theo than any other former-fans. That three-or-more narrative and all the hating started somewhere else, and nobody rips on them for being ignorant asses.

The other guy in the AHL (Leggio) actually outplayed him but Enroth is probably a better goalie.

Plus Leggio wasn’t drafted (and doesn’t have a contract) so its not like he’s making the team.

Too clever for Homer.

I don’t think we would mind exceeding the cap this summer….in less we trade somebody, we are bound to have that happen. I believe Darcy’s plan is to bury or trade Kotalik and Morrisonn (~$5 mil) by the start of the season. Signing Gragnani, Sekera, and Enroth while placing those two in the AHL or trading them would make us just barely be under the cap.

On a side note, this dance near the cap ceiling is really strange to us…how do you all manage it every season?

Troubled waters 1996-99.

And yet the way you use it often suggests otherwise…

And note that even with the improved metric, Theodore’s year still looks very strong — still 13th in the league, just a smidge behind Luongo and Vokoun.

you just need to look at his career numbers and not cherry pick

Exactly this. We know goalies’ numbers vary a lot from year to year. It’s not at all unreasonable that Theodore might have had a year where he performed at the same level as Miller (at least to within our ability to measure), but with the larger sample size it’s clear that he’s not the same kind of talent.

Circling back to the original question though, it was about his contract, and then we’re left guessing to what extent GMs pay on recent performance and to what extent they pay on career numbers. He was coming off of a good year, which may or may not mean that he would be treated like a good goalie on the FA market.

I think this might not be true if we had the 500 PPs a year like we got in 05-06.

Most goalie stats fluctuate goaltending in general is all other the place. Only one or two goalies are truly consistent top 5 year after year. Look at Miller from this playoffs 2 shutouts and a bunch of 4 goal games same for Roberto. And the there is also the once ubeatable GIguere and now Tim Thomas goes from 5 million dollar backup almost buyout to the second coming of Bernie Parent and the savior of Boston.

I hadn’t planned on having it but when I showed J.P. he told me he could import it. It allowed us to look at who was getting lucky/unlucky in terms of soft goals. In particular, Alzner had the highest soft-goals-on-ice number and he was also a stud for us defensively, so his numbers really should have looked better.

Well you’re doing it wrong. If you see a point shot that might or might not have deflected, go to the score sheet. If the guy who took the point shot has the G, then it wasn’t deflected. If a guy that was somewhere around the slot (or just didn’t take the point shot) has the G, then it deflected. Deflections off of the D are tougher but the G’s and D’s reaction is usually a good giveaway.

My problem would be that I’m a goalie apologist, so I’m less likely to call a goal soft.

But what does Keith Jones think?

He’s currently 20, and will be 21 in two weeks.