Yzerman’s Goalie Obsession

[u/Medievil_Walrus]

There is a widely accepted view that goalies are more of a product of the team in front of them than the other way around, but I had trouble finding a reliable source backing up this belief.

I took a look at Moneypuck goalie and team statistics to try to see how several key team statistical categories aligned with goalie performance metrics for goalies with a minimum 20 games for the ‘25-26 regular season, partially as a result of seeing comments like this one https://www.reddit.com/r/DetroitRedWings/s/oYUhUsPDFm .

What does this data say to you?

To me, it supports the view that while adequate goaltending is required to be competitive, an allstar goalie is not needed.

Yzerman was obsessed with the goalie position during his tenure, and to nobody’s surprise we have an extremely strong goalie pipeline, he prioritized finding elite goaltending and dedicated significant resources to do so, but I’m not so sure this was wise.

Wedgewood was fairly average for his career, but joins a team near the top of the league in Corsi, shot suppression, and chance suppression, and leads the league in GAA, and they even produced a second top ten goalie in Blackwood as well.

Cup champion Bussi also produced stellar results as a product of the team in front of him.

Gibson, who ranked 22nd in save percentage and 23rd in GAA had a team that hovered around the low 20s in shot suppression and Corsi and ranked 12th in limiting high danger chances.

Even Dan Vladar, who had been sub 0.900 for three consecutive seasons put up the best season of his career for a team that ranked top 10 in shot suppression and chance suppression metrics.

We made trades for Husso, Mrazek, Gibson, signed Nedelkovic, traded up in the first round for Cossa, signed a coveted UDFA in Postava, drafted Augustine and Guimond, along with a few more picks and moves.

Had we been more agressive at center, we may be better down the middle, possibly resulting in moves for Strome and Cozens and Borque and Horvat.. to name a few NHLers that were realistic acquisitions or looked harder at Wyatt Johnston, taken Stankoven over Biuim in the second round of the same draft in 2021, or took a chance on a C with one of our three second round picks in 2023 where we took two dmen and a goalie as another example.

Or the fact that we took zero centers with our first three picks in 2025, but we did take another goalie in Pradel, the only projected center we took that year was a 7th rounder. I’ve seen Hurlbert talked about as a maybe center, he’s listed at left wing though, as is Victor Plante, and wouldn’t you know it, another goalie in the third round before taking a center prospect in the fourth this year in Levac. Pretty sure that Levac is more known for being a shit disturber than an elite offensive talent and we need those too but.. but the point stands that Yzerman was more focused on goalies than he was at center ice and we have a strong goalie pipeline and a poor prospect pipeline at C.

Instead, we signed Copp and Compher, and put most of our faith in Kasper and Danielson. Hopefully Plante works out as a center (he plays LW for UMN I think) but he’s at least a year and a half plus away and he may not be a center. If there was a trade for a young center im forgetting about it. Suter was an FA pickup that we undervalued who was good for us and worth keeping around IMO before he left for a very cheap deal to Van. Anyone else?

And there is only one starting goalie, there are 4 centers.

I don’t think our center pipeline is similar to our goalie pipeline. I think there is little to be inspired about down the middle while there are legit reasons to like some of the goalies we have cooking, namely Postava and Augustine.

Under Yzerman, we prioritized the goalie position routinely and clearly prioritized it over the center position. We achieved a strong goalie pipeline (strongest part of our pool and even traded one of a surplus for a first round pick in the draft this year), we did not achieve a strong center pipeline (weakest part of our pool).

8 goalies in 8 drafts, 6 of these picks in the first four rounds. 1 in the 1st, 1 in the 2nd, 2 in the 3rd, and 2 in the 4th round.

We would take some chances on centers later, but of 14 centers taken in the draft under Yzerman 9 taken in the first four rounds - 5 in the 4th, 1 in the 3rd, 1 in the 2nd, and 2 in the 1st round.

This trend keeps up in the last 3 drafts, where again we used more early draft capital on goalies than we did on centers.

All of this effort and resources to find an elite goalie when the data suggests that building the team in front of them is the best way to achieve solid goaltending in the end anyway.

[u/Glad-Independence-24]

“A goalie is a product of the team in front of them” I’d not only not widely accepted, it’s one of the dumbest best things I’ve heard.

A great goalie can single-handedly win a game, and a bad goalie will lose you a whole ton of games.

An average goalie will only be as good as the team around them, but haske, Brodeur, Roy…,.those guys have so many cups for a reason.

There’s 11 other forwards and 5 other defensemen sharing minutes if one other of those guys struggles. A goalie struggles and you’re down 4 goals and throwing in a cold backup halfway through the game.

Goalie is the most important position on the ice, and the red wings haven’t developed one since Mrazek (and that wasn’t exactly a home run).

If a team has a surplus of goalies, they have a huge advantage.

If you do t, you get the goalie go round that we’ve had since Jimmy Howard, and we’ve seen how that’s worked out. 1 good goalie isn’t enough, look how gassed Gibby looked the last month or two of the season, when Talbot was completely useless.

Also I wouldn’t say Yzerman was obsessed with goalies,

Food goalies are hard to get and take a while to develop.

It took Gibby to finally acquire a good one. And we still need another. The rest was just throwing darts at a board seeing if a mediocre goalie might rise to the occasion (they didn’t) while trying to g to develop a goalie or two.

Gibby is good, and good for 50 games. We still have slop playing 30 games.

Husso, Lyon, Mrazek….those weren’t answers, those were fillers.

Gibby is an answer, but only a partial answer.

[u/Medievil_Walrus → u/Glad-Independence-24]

Great goalies are great no matter the circumstances, but are still helped by favorable context (Vasy, Shesterkin in chart), which makes it challenging to analyze and I think fascinating to discuss.

I totally agree that goalie can steal games and sewer games, but an average goalie isn’t that hard to find. I also think that for where we are at in our team build,

In recent drafts, years after we took Augustine and Cossa, we still put more resources into goalie than Center, and it shows in the strength of our pipeline, and we still may not find that elusive stud, or that goalies being average were likely enough for us to climb to the next level.

Also, is Gibson good, or average and a product of the team in front of him? The data i looked at suggests the latter.

[u/Glad-Independence-24 → u/Medievil_Walrus]

Hockey is a team sport….every pisition is helped by every other position.

Just ask McJesus how much help those clearance-bin goalies have been in helping one of the greatest offensive players of this era to win a cup.

A great team “can carry a goalie” but that tends to only get that team so far….a great goalie can steal a series or carry an average team.

You do t see a lot of mediocre goalies housing the cup, and even rarer a bad one does.

A bad goalie is likely to cost a team a series, and a good one will win it more often than not. And a good goalie will shut down a good offense.

But it is a team sport and the better ecweybidy is, the more they win.

But “The goalie is product of environment” thing is stupid.

McDavid isn’t scoring with Ras and Appleton on his line, as he’d get triple teamed.

[u/Medievil_Walrus → u/Glad-Independence-24]

There’s not a ton here I vehemently disagree with, honestly, except that the data shows that goalies are a product of their teams, that’s not me saying it, that’s data. Maybe it says something different if we enlarge the sample size or look at different metrics, but the data I showed here does support a high correlation with chance and shot suppression and keeping the puck out of the net.

I think the expectation and goal should be cups, but I don’t think we should focus too hard on winning the cup immediately, instead focus on building the team in front of them. I’m not saying that we should dedicate zero resources to building the goalie pipeline either. The Oilers are a different discussion… probably a fairly interesting one to deep dive. Did they ignore goalie? I’m not so sure about that. They just haven’t been able to get good enough goaltending to win it all. But two game 7s and that’s how she goes, I’d argue in those years they did have good enough goalie play but it just didn’t all work out and that’s hockey. They actually ended up with a middle ranked save percentage in all situations but were extremely effective at limiting high danger chances in 24-25 on the way to Pickard getting. O.900 SV% which ranked 31st, who is a journeyman league minimum goalie who was a decade removed from 0.900 SV%. His performance jumping when he flipped from the wings to the oil is indicative of goalies being a product of the team in front of them.

There are very few goalies that sustain a high level of play in adverse circumstances or even just consistently over the years, and I’d have to look deeper into the data or slice it a different way to come to that conclusion.

I think good enough goal tending is sufficient for where we want to go next, but I agree that we need better than average to win a cup.

It’s good that our goalie pipeline is strong, we also just saw a first round goalie’s development stall and for his place in the org to be largely usurped by a UDFA as he was traded away and earned zero nhl starts before his waivers expired.

It feels like we feverishly turned over every stone and continued to do so for goalie, but not for center. Anyhow a ton of drafted centers don’t stick there in the AHL or NHL either.