Is Vesa Toskala As Great As We Think He Is?
August 5th, 2008 by SteveThe Toronto Maple Leafs have a history of playing in front of strong netminders. Johnny Bower, Turk Broda, the brief stay of Jacques Plante, Felix Potvin, Curtis Joseph, and Ed Belfour. Over the past 2 seasons we’ve seen various levels of play from Andrew Raycroft and Vesa Toskala. In the future, Leafs fans are hoping (banking on?) that Justin Pogge will live up to expectations.
Next season though, which is obviously the most relevant to those of you reading this site, the Leafs are expecting Toskala to carry the load, with a bit of help from Joseph along the way as his backup. Last season, when many fans in the city were calling for the squad to mail it in, Paul Maurice consistently threw Toskala into the fray, and the Leafs won more often than not. Many credited his strong play over the last 2 months of the season with the teams inability to nose-dive their way into a decent chance at Steven Stamkos.
Based purely on stats, Toskala’s numbers hardly leap out at you. According to the NHL goaltending stats, he was ranked 10th in wins, and 9th in games played. He faced the 9th most shots, and he made the 10th most saves in the league. Unfortunately his save percentage was ranked 31st in the league, alongside Cam Ward, at .904. His GAA was also 31st in the league at 2.74, again right beside Ward and his 2.75.
Personally (and I think most would agree) I think GAA is fairly obviously a team stat, while the Save Percentage is a personal one. That being said, the number, and quality of shots faced, has a fairly major impact on save percentage numbers also. To that end, I turned to the yearly analysis by Hockey Analytics for the 2007-08 season. Alan Ryder and his pals have done some decent work on determining the shot quality teams give up, and as a result the goaltenders face. These values are then incorporated into a Shot Neutral Save Percentage, which basically equates to the Save Percentage one would get from all the NHL goalies if they were to face the same difficulty of shots.
Toronto as a team, gave up the 17th highest average number of shots per game, at 29.3. The quality of the shots being given up was a pretty bad 24th in the league, with a rating of 1.024. That basically means they were giving up chances of slightly lower quality than the Rangers, and slightly better quality than the Avs and Senators. Numerically speaking, Ryder interprets this value as meaning that the shots given up by the Leafs typically had a 2.4% higher chance of resulting in goals than the average shot given up league wide. So we can comfortably say that Toskala was facing roughly the average number of shots, that were above average in difficulty. As a result of the numbers provided, we can determine that Toskala’s Shot Quality Neutral Save Percentage (SQNSV) is a slightly better .906. Frankly that’s still not a stellar number, but it was quite a bit better than say… Andrew Raycroft (I threw up a bit in my mouth as I typed his name).
Part of the reason for Toskala’s less than stellar showing could be adjustment to the Leafs, but it is also entirely possible that he’s being over-rated as a goalie.
All of that being said, over the course of the final 27 games (last 2 months) of the season, Toskala went 16-10-1, with a SQNSV of .908. If you throw out his last game of the season (an 8-2 drubbing at the hands of Ottawa), he actually ended up 16-9-1, with a SQNSV of .914 - which is far more respectable. His record in December was an even more stellar 6-3-1, with a SQNSV of 0.937. Obviously he is capable of solid stretches of play - the main issue for the Leafs is having Toskala sustain such runs of quality netminding.
Even in San Jose, Toskala’s main problem was consistency. He would rack up wins, but his SV% would fluctuate wildly from month to month. Take his numbers from 2006-07. His SV% was .921 in October, .939 in November, then in December it nosedived to .874. Then he righted the ship again temporarily at .933 in January, before dropping off again in February with an atrocious .827. He closed out strongly in the final 3 games in March with a .952, but obviously his play in February led to his seeing limited action the rest of the way.
Perhaps this coming season we’ll see how things pan out as he works behind a Ron Wilson organized D again. Wilson’s Sharks were consistently one of the top 2 or 3 defensive outfits in the NHL over the past few seasons, and he accomplished such a feat with relatively young players throughout his squad. Hopefully Toskala’s numbers improve accordingly.
Considering that the Leafs have dropped many of it’s defensively suspect players (Tucker, Wellwood), in exchange for more consistent performers such as Hagman, Mayers, and Frogen, I would actually expect an improvement in penalty-killing, and overall team attention to D. As a result, I also expect the team will be more balanced and could surprise some people.
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6 Responses to “Is Vesa Toskala As Great As We Think He Is?”
By Chris
on Aug 6, 2008
Great article. I think we’ll see the same Toskala that we saw the last half of the season. He had a bit of trouble adjusting to the team at the beginning so the save percentage from last year doesn’t tell the whole story, I think.
By Joan Hancock
on Aug 6, 2008
I can assure you that Toskala’s stats would have been through the ceiling had it not been for lousy defence, disallowed perfectly good goals, and questionable goals given to the other side. i.e NJ. That game should have been a shutout for toskala, first he was knocked aside and the goal allowed, then he was on his back on the puck and someone pushed the puck from under him - the papers had a lot to say but too late, the game was given to new jersey, there were other examples. with a defence in front of him I would definitely say he is the best in the league right now.
By Steve
on Aug 6, 2008
Ok, I’m sorry, but there’s no way in hell that Toskala is the “best in the league” right now. That kinda reeks of homerism… lets have a dose of reality shall we?
Some points I would make.
1) Disallowed goals have nothing to do with his goals against average or his save percentage. That would affect offensive stats, and perhaps wins. Wins is a team stat, so that’s pretty irrelevant when it comes to measuring up goaltenders.
2) Questionable goals given to the other side - the problem with that argument is it happens to EVERY goalie in the NHL. Unless you have some sort of ‘questionable goal’ stat where you can definitively argue that Toskala was victimized more on questionable goal calls than the other goalies in the NHL, this is sort of a non-starter in any debate around his numbers. If he gets an adjustment for this reason, then every goalie does, and we’re right back to where we started.
3) As for when he has a Defense in front of him, he HAD a defense in front of him in San Jose, and his numbers really weren’t that much more stellar. The team won a lot but he wasn’t the main reason for it. That’s WHY I mention Ron Wilson and Toskala’s years in San Jose in the article. To wit:
I should also clarify something though, during his career with the Sharks, his SV% was .914, which is quite a bit better than his tenure thus far with the Leafs. That being said, over the past 3 seasons, his SV% has dipped to the same number he had last season with the Leafs, .904. As he’s played for more extended stretches, consistency has been a problem. If he can’t maintain focus for extended periods of play, he ISN’T the best goalie in the NHL. He’s still a long ways off from being Roberto Luongo, or Martin Brodeur, or Henrik Lundqvist, or JS Giguere, or even Cristobal Huet and Carey Price.
We’ll see how things work out this season, but he’s got a ways to go before anyone should be crowning him the best in the league. If you really want to see how a great goalie plays with a bad D in front of him, check out Tomas Vokoun. Last season Vokoun was playing in front of one of the worst defensive squads in the NHL (the Florida Panthers). He faced over 100 shots more than the next closest goalie in the league Martin Brodeur (2033 in comparison to 1921), and he played 8 fewer games. He had a .919 save percentage in only giving up 180 goals. By way of comparison, Toskala gave up 5 fewer goals (175) on 384 fewer shots (1649). If you honestly think Florida’s D was “better” than Toronto’s, and that Vokoun didn’t have to deal with as many questionable goal calls, then by all means, continue to think that Toskala is better than every other goalie, but personally I think that might make you a bit delusional. Not completely delusional… just a bit.
By Gerald Norton
on Aug 6, 2008
Hopefully, like Gerber, he will be provided with a better system allowing for improved defensive play around him. There’s no doubt that in the absence of much to talk about, in a positive light, Toskala has been rewarded with an overly rosy treatment from the media and fans. But, to be fair, he certainly has shown to have number one credentials, and has had some success in the post season. I suspect he’ll once again be good enough to avoid wearing the horns, bt on a better squad, his star would not shine so brightly.
By Marco
on Aug 6, 2008
One of the few times I can actually sound like a leaf fan, this guy is a very good goalie. Bails his team out a lot and can give his team a chance to win every night. Very rarely does he blow a game all on his own for us.
By Geoff
on Aug 8, 2008
Others have said it already, but he had a shaky start with the Leafs and improved over the course of the season. Once he got a little more comfortable he seemed to give the team a chance to win almost every night and unlike Raycroft (gugh), he didn’t often give up soft, deflating goals. He certainly hasn’t shown himself to be one of the top goalies in the league but I think he’s at least good and maybe very good. As for consistency, when he started playing better I recall an interview in which he said that he was distracted at first by the intense atmosphere and that he’d had to work on his mental preparation, which he thought led to an improvement in his ability to focus.
And the best thing about him is that I’m not filled with abject fear every time he steps on the ice. Sorry Colorado.