2022–23 NHL goals saved above expected comparisons across the league: Week 13

The past week of goaltending in the NHL was essentially the Juuse Saros show. Setting franchise records and making saves left, right, and centre, he was even the league’s best goalie in terms of GSAx. Let’s see how the rest of the NHL goalies fared over the past seven days.

Goals saved above expected as of January 10, 2023

If you’ve seen these plots before, please feel free to scroll right down and start checking out the visualisations. Otherwise, here’s a quick explainer on how to read the GSAx charts.

One way to objectively compare goaltenders is to evaluate their goals saved above expected (GSAx). For every shot, there’s an assigned expected goal (xG) value, and as a goaltender makes or doesn’t make saves based on expected values, the difference between their xG against and their actual goals against will start varying compared to other goaltenders.

With the randomness of goaltending seemingly happening not just season over season but at times even week over week, we can plot every goaltender’s GSAx to see how they stack up compared to the rest of the league. Using data visualisation, comparing goaltenders can be done quickly with a lot of context in each chart.

Each set of charts will be weekly from Wednesday’s games through to the following Tuesday’s games. This is to capture the additional slate of games typically played on Tuesdays, for no other reason than to have the most data available in a timely, yet weekly manner.

In addition to weekly GSAx plots, season-to-date charts will also be looked at to see how goalies stack up against one another over the course of a season. This will help highlight which goaltenders are among the best and who should be frontrunners for the Vezina Trophy. All data is from NaturalStatTrick.com.

Weekly goals saved above expected plots

The plots are split into each division, and then teams are ranked in order of the highest total team GSAx to the lowest. Each goaltender will then sit along the x-axis based on their GSAx totals. The colour of each goaltender is determined based on total shots against compared to the whole league (as opposed to per division)—the more shots a goaltender faces, the brighter and yellower their point; the fewer shots, the darker and bluer.

Similarly to the shots against colour being league-wide, the x-axis per plot is also scaled league-wide, based on the two individual goaltenders with the highest and lowest GSAx. This makes visual comparisons between the four plots a bit easier.

Pacific Division goaltenders

It was a bit of a wild week as seen by the plot range. The GSAx values go from -10.0 to 10 which means at least one goalie fell under -5.0 GSAx and at least one goalie had more than 5.0.

As seen in the Pacific, all goalies were relatively close. The streaking Seattle Kraken were powered by strong performances by Martin Jones (3.02 weekly GSAx) and Philipp Grubauer (0.93) to lead the division. For Anaheim, Anthony Stolarz (1.95) had himself a decent week to finish second in the division in GSAx, helping to push the Ducks to second place.

At the bottom, Spencer Martin (-2.52) and Collin Delia (-0.71) were off their game as they bottomed out the division, but it was actually Jacob Markstrom (-2.73) who had the worst GSAx in the division. That said, the Pacific didn’t have the best nor the worst week for GSAx and ended pretty tight altogether.

Central Division goaltenders

As mentioned, the Central had a brickwall named Saros (6.64) as he was one the busiest goaltenders. Facing 105 shots in just two games, he only ceded three goals in total. The only goalie with more shots faced was Alexandar Georgiev (1.18), who saw 110 shots over three full games.

Jake Oettinger (5.00) also had a very strong week too. In fact, given that he only faced 56 shots, his GSAx total was highly impressive. He made plenty of saves on high-danger chances which boosted his GSAx total. It was a light workload, but not an easy one.

A good handful of Central goalies all finished above zero in GSAx, but a few goalies struggled. The biggest surprises here are that two regularly strong goalies are at the bottom of the division. Karel Vejmelka (-3.81) and Connor Hellebuyck (-3.21) both had uncharacteristically bad weeks.

Metropolitan Division goaltenders

Last week, I specifically pointed out how the Columbus Blue Jackets had the best GSAx in the Metropolitan Division for the first time this season. And this week, they’re back at the bottom where they’ve usually resided. Elvis Merzlikins (-4.70) had a poor showing in his return, and the play of Joonas Korpisalo (0.65) was not strong enough to pull them out of the depths.

Atop the division, Vitek Vanecek (3.80) and Darcy Kuemper (3.43) had pretty solid weeks—the former being fairly busy too, facing 95 shots. Ilya Sorokin (2.18) didn’t have his best week but his still positive GSAx padded to his season lead (more on that later).

Carter Hart (-3.28) and Casey DeSmith (-3.53) had poor weeks for their teams while their respective counterparts—Samuel Ersson (3.02) and Dustin Tokarski (1.26)—were both better in their limited play.

Atlantic Division goaltenders

Finally in the Atlantic Division, the week’s worst goalie is revealed and it’s Ville Husso (-5.12). He was the only goaltender to be below -5.0 GSAx this week and it was barely just. All other goalies in the division were quite tight together—similar to the Pacific.

Aside from Husso, no goalies stood out as having great weeks in GSAx or having heavy workloads. It was all a tight group with a few above-average and a few below-average showings.

Season-to-date goals saved above expected plots

Now turning to season-to-date plots, let’s check out how the season stacks up. The colour palette for the season-to-date charts is also changed to differentiate them from the weeklies.

The plots are rescaled to account for different maximum and minimum GSAx values, but as above, all four divisions are scaled together to make the season-to-date comparisons easier. The scale has extended to now span -25.0 to 25.0 GSAx. That means between the best and the worst goalie, nearly 50.0 GSAx separates them!