Around this time last year we checked in with a few ex-Capitals goalies. At the time, New Jersey’s Vitek Vanecek and Toronto’s Ilya Samsonov were excelling with their new teams. One year later, a lot has changed for everyone involved. Let’s catch up with our old netminders.
But really: this is a Charlie Lindgren appreciation post.
When I wrote the story last year, Charlie Lindgren was an afterthought in Washington’s goalie system. And as of me writing this story right now, he is maybe the strongest goalie in the league.
There’s a lot of ways to evaluate a goalie, and a lot of them are pretty bad. One way I like is to compare how many goals opponents “should have” scored on the goalie compared to how many they actually scored. By that measurement, Lindgren ranks fourth in the league, behind Vancouver’s Demko, Vegas’ Hill, and LA’s Talbot – though each of those players have played a lot more hockey. If you take those raw “expected vs actual” counts and express them as a rate based on the goalie’s ice time, Lindgren is tops.
In the visualization above, I’ve marked in red all ex- or current Capitals goalies, even Semyon Varlamov, who hasn’t played for DC in more than a decade. Here’s all those players and their win-loss record, as of Wednesday night:
| Goalie | Record |
|---|---|
| Lindgren | 6-2-1 |
| Vanecek | 10-5-0 |
| Copley | 4-1-2 |
| Varlamov | 5-3-1 |
| Samsonov | 5-1-4 |
| Kuemper | 6-6-2 |
| Grubauer | 5-9-1 |
But that’s a silly measurement for goalies, who rarely score goals. Still, win-loss is popular, so let’s indulge. Here we see Lindgren again ruling the roost, though Vitek Vanecek (.879 all-situation saving) isn’t far behind – thanks to some well-timed scoring from the Devils. LA’s Pheonix Copley is doing fine in backup duty, but then things get hairy. Darcy Kuemper is barely above .500 in win percentage for the Caps, and Philipp Grubauer is an utter mess in Seattle.
But that information is all polluted by offense, which has nothing to do with the guy 190 feet away from the play. Below is just the expected goals (xG) that each goalie has faced and how many they’ve actually allowed (as of Monday).
| Goalie | Opponent Goals | Opponent xG | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lindgren | 23 | 31.8 | +8.8 |
| Varlamov | 23 | 30.5 | +7.5 |
| Kuemper | 42 | 39.1 | -2.9 |
| Copley | 23 | 20.0 | -3.0 |
| Grubauer | 50 | 42.5 | -7.5 |
| Samsonov | 35 | 29.4 | -5.6 |
| Vanecek | 52 | 41.3 | -10.7 |
Watch out for Semyon Varlamov, who has been very strong for the Islanders despite a modest 5-3-1 record. That’s because the Isles rank 24th in five-on-five goal rate, which sounds awful until you notice that the Capitals are four steps lower – meaning its way harder for goalies on those teams to have a good W-L record unless they’re totally lights out.
Charlie Lindgren is lights out. Here’s the goal difference (goals saved above expected) by rate.
| Goalie | GA60 | xGA60 | Diff/60 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lindgren | 2.3 | 3.2 | +0.9 |
| Varlamov | 2.6 | 3.4 | +0.8 |
| Kuemper | 3.1 | 2.9 | -0.2 |
| Copley | 3.2 | 2.7 | -0.4 |
| Grubauer | 3.3 | 2.8 | -0.5 |
| Samsonov | 3.3 | 2.8 | -0.5 |
| Vanecek | 3.4 | 2.7 | -0.7 |
The ranking is the same, but Lindgren’s number is now not just the best in this cohort; it’s the best in the entire league. This is why it’s important to evaluate goalies with consideration to their workload – both ice time and the profile of shots they face. Lindgren’s workload sucks.
The heatmap above is from HockeyViz, and it shows locations where opponents are shooting against the Capitals. The red blobs, which are freaking everywhere but especially right in the crease, mean opponents shoot more from those locations compared to league average. Lindgren is doing a great job against high-danger shots, but he’s also doing great against all the other kinds as well. We can group shots into buckets by danger: high, medium and low. In a crude way, a high-danger shot has a one-in-five chance of going in, a medium-danger shot has a one-in-ten chance, and a low-danger shot has like a two-in-one-hundred chance.
| Goalie | High% | Med% | Low% |
|---|---|---|---|
| League median | 0.81 | 0.90 | 0.98 |
| Lindgren | 0.85 | 0.96 | 0.98 |
| Varlamov | 0.85 | 0.97 | 0.95 |
| Samsonov | 0.83 | 0.88 | 0.96 |
| Kuemper | 0.79 | 0.85 | 0.98 |
| Grubauer | 0.73 | 0.87 | 0.98 |
| Vanecek | 0.72 | 0.93 | 0.97 |
| Copley | 0.69 | 0.87 | 0.98 |
Lindgren is above average in all of the above. We can see Washington’s other goalie, Darcy Kuemper, struggling especially against high-dangers, allowing 15 on 70 shots. Meanwhile, Leafs goalie Ilya Samsonov is doing fine against high-dangers, but he is getting burned by (supposedly) weaker shots and rebounds. Or, put more poetically:
Sammy wtf are you doing, man.
— Steve “Dangle” Glynn (@Steve_Dangle) November 3, 2023
That’s a familiar feeling, and one we don’t have to have anymore. The Capitals are in good hands with Lindgren, who is finally having the breakout he promised all along. The question now is how high he can climb – and how long he can stay there. While Washington remains a flawed team, they’ve got a player in net who can steal games. As long as that’s the case, we don’t need to look around the league and fret about who we should of kept.
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Headline photos: Elizabeth Kong/RMNB, Alan Dobbins/RMNB
