2023 ncaa hockey tournament

4/6/2023 – Quinnipiac 5, Michigan 2 – 26-12-3, Season Over 

Goaltending has a strange place in the sport of hockey. It's common jargon among hockey analysts to say that a given team was "the better team" in a given game, if the balance of chances and territorial map of play favors that team. What that phrase ignores is the goaltending component... we say that a team was "the better team" as if the goalie is not part of the team, when in fact goaltenders are the most important part of the team. 

When I analyze hockey, I view goaltending as this final adjustment of sorts. I sit down and look at the two teams' roster of skaters and how they match up to get a sense of the balance of chances, take a peek at the names to get a feel for the caliber of shooters, and then figure out which team is "better". After that, I examine goaltending and adjust my feeling accordingly. In some cases, goaltending is the trump card, which swings a matchup in a direction that the battle of skaters would not suggest. In other cases, goaltending appears to be neutral, with neither team having an edge and thus I assume that the team who has the edge among the skaters will win out. 

Of course, when I price in a goaltending adjustment, I still know that in a small sample size, that estimated adjustment could be wrong. Goalies we know are good have been verified to be good over huge sample sizes, entire seasons worth of evidence. The same for so-called "bad" goalies. But the farther down you drill, the more minute you make the sample, the more erratic the variation is. Even in an NHL playoff series, best four-out-of-seven, you can have unexpected goalie performances that don't make a ton of sense. Joonas Korpisalo was largely a terrible goalie from 2016-2022, an .897 SV% in the regular season that was well below NHL average and atrocious in the advanced metrics. But for nine playoff games in the NHL bubble tournament in the summer of 2020? He posted a .941 SV%, won a preliminary series, and made life difficult on a terrific Tampa Bay Lightning team. 

That's how goaltending can go in small sample sizes. SV% is a famously variable stat from year to year in the NHL, with randomness and puck luck playing huge roles in that variation. It's why analytics geeks argue against paying goalies large contracts and the analytically-minded, forward-thinking teams tend to go cheap on goaltending and sift through different options, rather than getting tied down to one (Carolina, Colorado, and Toronto have all gone this route). There is fear of the randomness of goaltending in a seven game playoff series in the NHL and justifiably so, which makes it all the more asinine that college hockey goes with one game playoff rounds, where the "goaltending randomness" knob gets cranked up to 11. You can go into a single game feeling good about your goaltender, just to see all your hopes crumble and your worst fears come alive. It's why in the NHL you don't want your season to come down to a single game and why in NCAA Hockey the fan experience of the tournament is trauma-inducing on the scale from euphoric to "fucked".  

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[NHL.com]

I mentioned in the opening paragraph that goaltending is the most important of a hockey team and it's true. They spend more time on the ice than any skater, more time than multiple skaters put together in fact. They also have an outsized and direct role on what goals go in the net, which is 50% of the game. A great goaltender can lift up a team in a way that no great skater, even the best of the best can. You can plop Wayne Gretzky at his peak on an awful hockey team and he will make them better, but their improvement will not be as great as if you dropped 1998 Dominik Hašek on that team.

A great example of this are two teams, the late 90s/early 00s Buffalo Sabres and the Florida Panthers of the same era. Both teams had transcendent talents on an otherwise pitiful roster. For the Sabres, that was Hašek, the greatest goalie of all-time at the peak of his powers. For the Panthers, that was Pavel Bure, a dynamic goalscorer of speed and skill at a time when the NHL was trending away from the rush offense and firewagon hockey that defined his game. Both players were having exceptional seasons, Hašek posting SV% clips in the high .930s, which, for the NHL, is patently crazy, and Bure scoring 58 and 59 goals to lead the NHL, totals that were extremely high for the era.

So both teams had poor rosters with one otherworldly talent firing on all cylinders... what happened? Hašek dragged the 1998 Sabres into the third round and the 1999 team to the Stanley Cup Final, while Bure's 2001 Panthers limped to a bottom five finish in a 30 team league, in spite of his NHL-best goal total. A God-Mode goaltender can singlehandedly drag a terrible team very far in a way that no skater can. And likewise a wretched goaltender can sink an entire team, even if that team is winning the chances battle consistently (2012-13 Michigan Hockey may remember this), in a way that is not remotely comparable to a skater having an off night. 

That's true for an entire season and it's true for a specific game. You can play a great game and give the goalie good support, but if the goalie can't make enough saves, you're cooked. And sometimes you get caved in all night long, but the goalie steals it for you. No other position can do that, but a goalie sure can. You need a goalie to play well to win a championship, be it in the NHL or especially in college hockey. When I sang the praises of Erik Portillo in my post-regional column, I made sure to stipulate that "two more like this" was necessary in talking up Michigan Hockey's national title chances because I knew how conditional it all was on goaltending. I just didn't want to have to look back on that column with the thought process "man I'm glad I hedged there". 

[AFTER THE JUMP: How this ties into Michigan]

1 hour and 16 minutes

The Sponsors

Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. Rishi and Ryan have been our biggest supporters from the beginning. Check out their wide selection of officially licensed Michigan fan gear at their 3 store locations in Ann Arbor or learn about their custom apparel business at undergroundshirts.com.

Our associate sponsors are: Peak Wealth Management, HomeSure Lending, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, The Phil Klein Insurance Group, Venue by 4M where we recorded this, TicketIQ! and The Nose Bleeds, which is the Sklars Bros’ reboot of Cheap Seats on UFC Fight Pass.

1. Men's Basketball Transfers

starts at 1:00

Transferpalooza - Michigan gets Caleb Love, Nimari Burnett, and Tray Jackson. They're looking at a total reboot for the men's basketball program next season, this is both good and bad. The future of the roster looks like they're going defense-heavy. Caleb Love has questionable decision-making when he's the ball-handler making offense, he also can't make shots at the rim. Was this a UNC problem or a Caleb Love problem? He can knock down open-looks and pick-and-rolls, though. Nimari Burnett - has a history of injuries and was a 15-20 minute type guy on the #1 overall seed. We have no idea what we're getting with him. Towards the end of his career he became a bit of a defensive specialist. Tray Jackson - a bench player for a bad team, we're not sure about this one. If he's better than Jace then he'll probably be the starter at the 4, though... Michigan is apparently still looking around the portal. 

[The rest of the writeup and the player after THE JUMP]

2 hours and 20 minutes

The Sponsors

Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. Rishi and Ryan have been our biggest supporters from the beginning. Check out their wide selection of officially licensed Michigan fan gear at their 3 store locations in Ann Arbor or learn about their custom apparel business at undergroundshirts.com.

Our associate sponsors are: Peak Wealth Management, HomeSure Lending, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, The Phil Klein Insurance Group, Venue by 4M where we recorded this, TicketIQ! and The Nose Bleeds, which is the Sklars Bros’ reboot of Cheap Seats on UFC Fight Pass.

1. Michigan Spring Game - Offense

starts at 1:00

The spring game happened and most of the starters sat for most of it. JJ had one bad interception but otherwise looked like JJ. Tuttle looked pretty good, him and Davis Warren look at least ok. Apparently Alex Orji has a downfield passing game?? Seth's takeaway of the backup QBs was - let's not get JJ hurt. Ben Hall shined at running back and looked like he might get some legitimate carries this season, and especially in future seasons. Semaj Morgan might be a good end-around weapon. Frederick Moore was a steal. Former walk-on Peyton O'Leay looked like a guy and he made some plays, he out-muscled Amorion Walker on the two-point conversion. Loveland is the guy at tight end but he only played for a quarter (Jake Butt thinks they're alike). None of the transfer offensive linemen are on campus yet so Greg Crippen and Raheem Anderson played center - they both looked good. The guards are young but it's fine because Keegan and Zinter have those spots locked down. Tackle was a little bit concerning, they were letting guys through all day. Sherrone Moore seemed to have a really decent feel for play calling - an improvement over last year's spring game.

[The rest of the writeup and the player after THE JUMP]