Kevin Cheveldayoff Dislikes Analysis

Kevin Cheveldayoff indicates Ondrej Pavelec will return as the Jets number 1 goalie next year.  This is terrible news for fans hoping to make the playoffs.  Scrolling through the stats on NHL.com Pavelec 45th in GAA (fairly useless stat but I'll use it to illustrate Pavelec's overall terribleness) and 46th in save percentage (a fairly predictive stat).  I guess his three assists count for something since he outscored James Wright?

From Chevy:

“He’s a relatively young goaltender when it comes to being a starting goaltender,” Cheveldayoff said. “When you give those young players those opportunities to excel, there’s going to be some bumps along the way.

“As far as statistical data, we could sit here and have debates all day about different percentages or goals against ... at the end of the day, everyone gets judged on the results. If we sat there and broke it into 10-game segments, I’m sure there are some great segments there that Ondrej would have had. You take some other 10-game segments and there’s probably some that he’d like back.”

I have a couple problems with this.  First, here are a number of goalies with a younger birth year than Pavelec's 1986 that had better seasons in terms of SVP:

Tuukka Rask BOS (1987)
Semyon Varlamov COL (1988)
Carey Price MTL (1987)
Frederik Andersen ANA (1989)
Sergei Bobrovsky CBJ (1988)
Jonathan Bernier TOR (1988)
Steve Mason PHI (1988)
Braden Holtby WAS (1988)
Darcy Kuemper MIN (1990)
Robin Lehner OTT (1991)
Eddie Lack VAN (1988)
Jhonas Enroth BUF (1988)
James Reimer TOR (1988)
Marek Mazanec NAS (1991)

Some other 86 goalies include Jonathan Quick, Anton Khudobin and Ben Scrivens.  

So Chevy he's not that young relative to other goalies anymore.  He's consistently proven his mediocrity.  He's 73rd out 105 active goalies in SVP.  This isn't a guy that is going to lead the Jets to the playoffs unless the Jets turn into Boston and Chicago and start scoring a ton of goals. 

I know what people are going to say: but a good defence would change this.  I'll say no morons-the inclusion of Bernier, Reimer and Enroth in this list (and Ryan Miller had he been younger) would have shown that a defence doesn't dictate SVP.  People smarter than me on fangraphs have also shown that SVP varies little with changes in shot area and quality.

The next issue I have a problem with is Chevy's snide comments about save percentage and statistical analysis.  You're the GM of a $200+ million dollar NHL franchise and you're throwing this metric under the bus (a bus that could likely drive through Pavelec). The problem with looking at 10 game averages and saying you can remove the bad ones is that those games count towards a team's final position.  These games do not disappear.  The other issue is that there are 45 guys that posted consistently better 10 game averages.  All these 10 game averages influence a team's season.  Pavelec is near the bottom of this metric which is highly indicative of a goalie's contribution level.  I don't care if Pavelec has won 10 game stretch where's he awesome.  He needs to have a bunch of these over the course of the year and he has shown that he is incapable of this.

If Pavelec magically has a career year and posts a league average save percentage, I'll be thrilled, but 288 games is a good sample size and if past save percentage is an indicator of future save percentage, than he is likely not to get substantially better.