The Dallas Stars are onto the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and have a tough test in the St. Louis Blues.
Despite owning home ice advantage against St. Louis, it’s unlikely that the Stars are considered favourites. A big part of that is likely due to their $10.4 million goaltending duo that didn’t earn much respect this season.
Both Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi produced .906 save percentages in the regular season, with Niemi holding a significant advantage in even strength save percentage at .921 to Lehtonen’s .911, and the opposite being true on special teams.
In the playoffs, it’s been Niemi who has been porous at even strength and strong on special teams, with the opposite true of Lehtonen again.
The playoffs are a small sample, and neither goalie looks reliable, but who is most likely to get the job done going forward? In order to figure that out, first we have to know what expected save percentage is for each area on the ice.
We know that nearly half of all goals scored in the NHL are from the Red Zone area, and save percentage there is both more repeatable and more important than other players. But we also now have baselines for the other areas.
Let’s take a look at each goaltender’s save percentages by zone throughout the season and playoffs.
Niemi is technically below average in 6-of-8 zones, though the gap is extremely small in five of those. The big problem for him is that he’s far below league average in the Red Zone, saving just 72.8 per cent of pucks shot on net from there, when a league average goalie is expected to stop 75.5 per cent of them. This would indicate that Niemi is not a strong option. So what about Lehtonen?
Lehtonen is below league average in 4-of-8 zones, including way below average from the Centre Point, and significantly below from the West Point and Outside North East. However, Lehtonen is also above average, significantly so, from the Red Zone.
So Lehtonen is more prone than Niemi is to giving up bad goals, with the Centre Point numbers perhaps suggesting that he has trouble fighting through screens, but he’s better by a huge margin at stopping shots from the highest leverage area.
Because the numbers on those perimeter areas are so likely to fluctuate wildly, and shots from there are much more likely to get blocked, you have to think that Lehtonen is the better choice. Fortunately for the Stars, Lehtonen has also looked better in the playoffs, which is more likely to influence a coach’s decision making than a bunch of numbers.
