Very few NHL goaltenders make it to the 40-win plateau. Only 29 goalies have ever accomplished the feat in NHL history, nine of whom are currently active. Of those 29, only 13 have managed to win 40 more than once, and only five managed to do it three or more times.
Martin Brodeur stands alone with an insane eight seasons in which he won 40 or more games and Brodeur also holds the single-season wins record with 48.
For now, anyway.
All of this brings us to Braden Holtby of the Washington Capitals. Currently sitting at 47 wins, Holtby joins Brodeur, Roberto Luongo and Flyers great Bernie Parent as the only NHL keepers to ever hit the 47-win plateau. He has three remaining games to catch and surpass Brodeur for the NHL single season wins record.
Holtby has solidified himself as one of the elite goalies in the NHL and he may even win the Vezina this season. That will be determined by how much GMs value wins as a stat. Based on prior history, there’s a decent chance he’ll win it.
Brodeur and Parent both won the Vezina in their 47-plus win seasons and perhaps the only reason Luongo didn’t win in his is because he won 47 in the same year Brodeur won 48 (2006-07).
So how does Holtby’s season, in which he’s chasing history, stand up to these other all-time efforts?
If we adjust for era we can get a better sense of what he is accomplishing. Last season we undertook a similar effort to compare Carey Price to some of the all-time great goalies. Using a similar method we can compare some other underlying statistical measures for the four goalies who have posted 47-win seasons and see where Holtby ranks.
While we lack save percentage data for Parent’s era, we can easily compare Brodeur and Luongo’s 2006-07 season to Holtby’s 2015-16. Over the past nine years, the average NHL goaltender has improved remarkably, and thus Holtby’s performance in goal is actually far more pedestrian than observers may realize. In contrast, Brodeur and Luongo had to post superlative numbers relative to their peers to reach the win plateaus they did.
| Goalie | Season | Wins | NHL Avg SV% | SV% | Era Adj SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brodeur | 2006-07 | 48 | 0.905 | 0.922 | 0.939 |
| Luongo | 2006-07 | 47 | 0.905 | 0.921 | 0.938 |
| Holtby | 2015-16 | 47 | 0.915 | 0.923 | 0.923 |
*data courtesy hockey-reference.com*
Another measure we can use to compare all four goaltenders is Hockey Reference’s Goaltender Point Shares system, which assigns standings point values to the performance of individual goaltenders based on their performance.
This calculation is based upon the work of Bill James who devised a Win Shares system to value baseball players. Essentially, the concept is to assign Marginal Goals For and Against to individual players and convert those Marginal Goals into standing points. If we compare Holtby’s current season to the results posted by Brodeur, Luongo and now Parent, we can see his contribution to Washington’s performance is far less substantial.
| Goalie | Season | Wins | Goalie Pt Shares | Team Pt Shares | PS% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brodeur | 2006-07 | 48 | 17.3 | 109.5 | 15.8 |
| Parent | 1973-74 | 47 | 19.9 | 134.2 | 14.8 |
| Luongo | 2006-07 | 47 | 17.1 | 116.1 | 14.7 |
| Holtby | 2015-16 | 47 | 11.8 | 122.2 | 9.7 |
What we are seeing here is how much more the Devils, Flyers and Canucks relied on elite goaltending to win games than high-octane offence. Washington ranks second in the NHL in goals for this season and thus take some pressure off Holtby to win games. Brodeur’s Devils ranked 24th in the NHL in goals for, Luongo’s Canucks ranked 22nd, while Parent’s Flyers were fifth in goals in a 16-team NHL.
Much of Holtby’s success this season could be assigned to the offensive production of the team in front of him. If we look at how much time Holtby has played with one-, two- and three-goal leads compared to Brodeur and Luongo in their big win seasons, we again get the sense that Holtby’s workload isn’t as heavy.
*data provided courtesy war-on-ice.com*
Brodeur and Luongo spent far more time protecting tight leads in their dominant 48- and 47-win seasons than Holtby has this year. Conversely, Holtby has spent far more time sitting on large goal differentials in his favour than the other two goaltenders did in 2006-07.
When Brodeur’s team had a lead, he spent 70 per cent of it protecting a one-goal lead, while Luongo had to protect that kind of a lead 64 per cent of the time. In comparison, Holtby has only spent a little more than half (53 per cent) of his time in the lead protecting a one-goal difference.
THE LESSON
While Holtby’s season is exemplary in many regards, it appears he is a less significant component in the winning mixture for Washington than his comparables were to their winning teams.
Holtby has rarely had to carry the Capitals on his back the same way Brodeur, Luongo or Parent did when they chased – and set – wins history.
If Holtby ends up with the NHL wins record, he should probably share the credit with his teammates and coaching staff as much as he should revel in the personal milestone.
But we all know the objective in Washington this year is to win the Stanley Cup. If the Capitals can’t climb that mountain, a wins record for Holtby probably won’t mean a heck of a lot anyway.
