Breaking down the top candidates for the Vezina Trophy
We're about halfway through the NHL season at this point, and as such it feels like the right time to take a look at the current leaders for the league's various awards.
Over the next several articles, we'll examine the 10 leading candidates for each of the major awards. Today, we'll look at the Vezina Trophy, given to the best goaltender in the NHL.
This is the only award voted on by the league's general managers and their historical preferences for what constitutes the best season of goaltending rarely lines up with just "had the highest save percentage or the best GAA." Specifically, they seem to think that goalies who win a lot of games are in some way driver's of elite team results, and so it's not enough to simply have the best statistics, but also rack up a lot of wins. In much the same way as the league's broadcasters view the Jack Adams award for best coach, the GMs also seem to value goalies who drag otherwise uncompetitive teams to respectable records.
So in that way, this is an award for the best goalie on a great or surprising team, which makes things a little more difficult to project.
Let's take a look at the 10 most likely candidates (presented in alphabetical order):
Lukas Dostal, Anaheim Ducks
Allow me to walk back that stuff about merely being an award for guys on high- or better-than-expected performing teams. Dostal is an exception to the rule, I think, because he's having such an outstanding season (.915ish, 19.6 goals saved above expected, the latter being second in the league) for a team that's still spinning its tires in some awfully deep mud.
The Ducks are once again sub-.500, but it's mostly because they can't really score at all, and Dostal is really turning heads on a regular basis. More than two-thirds of his appearances have been "quality starts," and he faces 30-plus shots quite often. He's allowed four or more goals only a handful of times, which is hard to do when the team in front of you is making it that difficult on you.
I don't think he's a finalist or anything, but he's absolutely having one of the 10 best goalies in the league.
Filip Gustavsson, Minnesota Wild
Gustavsson is having his second great season in three years, but more importantly has clearly become The Guy for the Wild as Marc-Andre Fleury ages and Jesper Wallstedt hasn't yet established himself as an NHLer. You may not personally think correlation equals causation, but the fact that Minnesota is having a big breakout season with him as the No. 1 will resonate quite a bit with voters.
If things continue at this rate, he'll probably be up around 42 wins or so by the end of the year, and if that's true, and the save percentage is still in the .920 range, he's a lock to at least be a finalist. But…
Connor Hellebuyck, Winnipeg Jets
Hellebuyck is, for the second season in a row, the best goalie in the league, bar none. He should be considered the runaway Vezina favorite right now. The gap in quality between him and No. 2 is arguably bigger than the one between No. 2 and probably, like, No. 7 or 8.
As the Jets approach the midway point of their season, they are a .700 team, with their two goalies allowing just 96 goals through 42 games despite allowing the fifth-most shots on goal in the league.
Hellebuyck is now north of 30 goals saved above expected, and the next-closest guy (Dostal) is almost behind him. The reigning Vezina winner has more starts than anyone else, faced more shots than anyone else, and is only 12th in goals against for those with at least 14 games, versus first in expected-goals against. His five shutouts leads the league. And because this is important to GMs: He's got 25 wins, while no one else in the league is currently north of 20.
The only reason he would not win the Vezina if the season ended today is because the last time someone won it two years in a row was when Martin Brodeur did it in 2007 and 2008 (after he also won it in 2002 and 2003).
GMs might not want to put Hellebuyck on that kind of pedestal — it would be his third Vezina in five seasons — but as it stands, he's not really giving them much of a choice. Right now, he shouldn't just be the Vezina winner, he should be the league's MVP.
Darcy Kuemper, Los Angeles Kings
Kuemper missed a couple weeks back in November and so maybe doesn't have the games-played portion of the award right now — GMs love a workhorse, too — but that's the kind of thing that should even out by the end of the year.
And since Kuemper's return, he's been lights out: .930ish as the Kings took off to become one of the top teams in the league. Sure, the players in front of him is making it relatively easy to make saves (only 6.5 GSAx despite a .915ish save percentage), but he's rising to the challenge and has just two total regulation losses in 18 appearances.
Moreover, while the Kings didn't exactly struggle in his absence, backup David Rittich hasn't been lights out behind the same guys as Kuemper has been. If the Kings win the Pacific Division — and they currently have the best points percentage and most banked points in it — he's going to get a long look. And why not? He was seen as something of a liability in Washington, and has rebounded spectacularly.
Jacob Markstrom, New Jersey Devils
Markstrom finished second for the Vezina a couple of years ago and didn't really stand out in the two subsequent seasons, but has returned to form this year, now that he's back on an actual good team.
You can kinda make the same argument for Markstrom as the Wild would for Gustavsson: They changed the goalie setup even more dramatically than Minnesota and immediately started winning games at an insane pace. Obviously a lot of other stuff changed for the Devils, but the fact that the other goalie they brought in has been just okay while Markstrom has been excellent will give him a strong candidacy. He's on track to win like 40 games, and if he plays like this as the games start to feel a little more high-stakes, he's gonna be on a lot of GMs' radar in the second half.
Anthony Stolarz, Toronto Maple Leafs
When the Leafs are good, people notice. Right now, the Leafs are the second-best team in the Eastern Conference and tops in their division by points percentage.
Stolarz, at .927 and almost 15 goals saved above expected in 17 appearances, is a huge reason why. Especially with the unreliability of their other goaltending options, the fact that Stolarz is keeping pace with Hellebuyck in certain statistical categories could be seen as a positive. The wins should be there, because the team mostly looks great. Overcoming injuries to Joseph Woll (and maybe Auston Matthews) would be an interesting narrative twist. The question for me is whether he starts more regularly than his current pace, and keeps up the quality. If he even comes close on the latter front, he'll be in the conversation but not a top-three choice for most.
Logan Thompson, Washington Capitals
Here's yet another team that's having a lot of success in goal after making a big change to the battery.
Thompson is fifth in the league in GSAx (a shade under plus-16.5) and a driving force behind Washington's unanticipated level of success. He's certainly differentiated himself from Charlie Lindgren, but both continue to start the same number of games. Thompson faces more shots per 60, and stops them at a rate of .916, compared with Lindgren's .900.
But whatever they're doing, the coaching staff isn't being given much reason to start leaning on Thompson more frequently, so one wonders if he even gets to 45 starts, let alone 50.
It's something to keep an eye on.
Andrei Vasilevskiy, Tampa Bay Lightning
In the last few days, we're seeing a bit more about how reports of the Bolts' demise were greatly exaggerated. Vasilevskiy hasn't exactly been elite (.915, 7.7 goals saved above expected) but he's been very good, and the team in front of him is winning a lot. Moreover, last season was the first time he was outside the top six in Vezina voting in several years, so that's starting to feel more like a hiccup than a sign he's in decline.
Vasilevskiy is a name brand, a great player, a future Hall of Famer, and his team is doing well with him as one of the most clearly defined No. 1 netminders in the league. One imagines GMs would love to put his name on their ballots.
Karel Vejmelka, Utah Hockey Club
There's a big "if" with these next two: IF their clubs get into the playoffs, they're going to get a ton of consideration.
Vejmelka has long gotten the envious "if he were on any other team, he'd be seen as one of the best at his position" talk top players in Arizona always got. This year, the NHL is telling you he's technically on another team, and Vejmelka is proving all that previous talk right. He's at .916, which isn't quite elite, but his plus-17.4 GSAx is third in the league. As such, he's distancing himself from his batterymates as The Guy and even with a lengthy losing streak that just ended, Utah is well above .500 since U.S. Thanksgiving.
I'm not quite sure the team has the juice to get into the playoffs in a crowded-at-the-top Western Conference, but if they do, Vejmelka will be probably the biggest driver of that success.
Add in, once again, the narrative component of making the playoffs immediately after moving, and he'll get some love on the ballots.
Dustin Wolf, Calgary Flames
A lot of the stuff I just said about Vejmelka applies to Wolf: His stats are very good but not elite (.915ish, 10.5 GSAx), but his team is better than expected. In fact, I think the general consensus on Calgary was that they'd be way worse than Utah, and they're a few points ahead in the standings. Wolf being a rookie could count for him — "Where did this guy come from?!" — or against him — "Maybe it was a fluke" — and GMs won't like that he's getting a straight split of starts with a notably worse veteran 1b option.
But again, if the Flames make the playoffs, he will probably be seen as the team MVP, and that probably counts for something.
Vezina trophy midseason ranking
With all of the above having been said, here's how I would rank the 10 players listed here in terms of likelihood to win the Vezina, based on both performance to this point and the odds they continue or improve on their current situations in the second half:
- Connor Hellebuyck
- Filip Gustavsson
- Jacob Markstrom
- Darcy Kuemper
- Andrei Vasilevskiy
- Lukas Dostal
- Logan Thompson
- Anthony Stolarz
- Dustin Wolf
- Karel Vejmelka
