Jonathan Bernier was acquired in the summer of 2013 to be a long-term solution in net for the Toronto Maple Leafs and to take the reins away from the untrusted James Reimer. Now, however, Reimer has won the No. 1 goaltending position on merit, while Bernier has lost the confidence of his coach.
What should the Maple Leafs expect from the embattled Bernier, who is under contract for another season after this one?
We can’t answer that question directly with statistics; any kind of data-based analysis can only show trends and probabilities, not the future. What we can do is look to the past to see how players in similar situations performed, which gives us a reasonable baseline from which to project Bernier forward.
One thing we can say for sure is that Bernier’s poor performance to start the year should not be seen as fatal. Both Tuukka Rask in Boston and Sergei Bobrovsky in Columbus had similar starts this year, posting save percentages well below .900 for even longer stretches and both managed to come out of their funks. Pekka Rinne, Nashville’s highly-regarded starter, is in the middle of such a funk right now; he has an .895 save percentage over his past 19 games and an .868 save percentage over his past eight contests. Many good goalies go through these hard times.
Bernier may be coming out of his slump. In a recent AHL assignment he played two games and recorded two shutouts. On the other hand, he may not be coming out of it just yet. Sticking with our Rinne example, right in the middle of his 19-game run of lousy play he had a pair of games where he stopped 58 of 60 shots (.967 save percentage).
Although we can’t say much definite about Bernier’s play this season—he simply hasn’t played enough—we can go back over his first two seasons in Toronto and see how they compare to other goalies. Statistically, Bernier was a strong goaltending option at 25, but a substantially diminished one at the age of 26. What does history tell us about goalies who see that kind of performance reduction in those years?
To answer that question, I went back over the save percentage era to find goalies who a) had played at least 40 games in both their age-25 and age-26 seasons and b) had numbers roughly comparable to Bernier in both years. The latter was a bit of a challenge because of the way save percentage changes with era, so I’ve included an era adjustment, translating each goalie’s numbers relative to the league-average save percentage in 2015-16. In other words, if a goalie posted an NHL-average .880 save percentage in 1986-87, we’d convert that to .915, the league average this year.
| Player | Age 25 | Age 26 |
|---|---|---|
| Jonathan Bernier | 0.924 | 0.912 |
| Rick DiPietro | 0.929 | 0.908 |
| Jimmy Howard | 0.928 | 0.910 |
| Martin Brodeur | 0.926 | 0.913 |
| Tom Barrasso | 0.925 | 0.912 |
| Pat Riggin | 0.924 | 0.905 |
Although some of the names on this list are awfully flattering to Bernier, by this point in their careers they were already established goaltenders. Martin Brodeur, Tom Barrasso, Rick DiPietro and Pat Riggin had already spent at least two years as a No. 1 goalie prior to the age of 25; they emerged much earlier than Bernier and so had longer track records. Riggin played so long ago that he’s hard to compare, while DiPietro had some unique injury issues.
The only real point we can take from this quartet is that a step backward at age 26 doesn’t necessarily mean Bernier can’t recover. Brodeur and Barrasso, after all, recovered brilliantly from disappointing age-26 campaigns.
The most interesting name on the list is probably Jimmy Howard.
Like Bernier, Howard didn’t get a crack at an NHL starting job until the age of 25, but when he did get the chance he delivered exceptional results. The next year his numbers fell off dramatically, as did Bernier’s. What has happened in the four seasons since is especially interesting: Howard has had two .920-or-better save percentage campaigns where he’s been a bona fide starting goalie. He’s also had two .910 save percentage seasons when he was pushed for his job by a backup goalie.
Obviously, there’s no guarantee that Bernier will follow the same path, but it would seem to fit. His numbers and career arc are a reasonably good match for Howard’s, and like Howard he’s had good and not-so-good seasons as a No. 1 goalie. It wouldn’t be at all strange if Bernier continued on the same way as he’s started, at times offering his team high-quality play, and at other times opening the door for a competent backup to seize the No. 1 job.
If that’s a reasonable baseline, it’s really not that bad.
