![]() ![]() David Rittich is nothing special at this point in his career, a goalie that’s pretty close to replacement level, but that’s still better than Pekka Rinne in his current state. What also helps the goaltending picture is the upgrade the team made at backup. Without him, the Predators would be closer to an 80-point team. This model uses both, with a heavy slant towards goals saved above expected, but regardless, Saros comes out looking like a top-five goalie next season. At the same time, there’s also the possibility that expected goals are undervaluing Saros’s contributions - that there’s something missing from the equation that isn’t being accounted for. What that suggests from an analytical standpoint is that Saros benefitted a fair bit from the team in front of him, a team that deserves a lot of credit for keeping pucks out of the net. Saros may have saved m eight goals above expected, but he saved 20 above average which could cloud the discourse around him. That’s a bit lower than some might expect based on his save percentage and the hype surrounding his season and that’s because there was a big difference between his saves above expected and his saves above average. His 2020-21 season was the second-best goals saved above expected of his career and was good for ninth last year. That is consistency that is rare to find at the position. In that time, Saros ranks fifth among all goalies with 34 goals saved above expected. In 36 games, Saros saved nearly eight goals above expected, his fifth straight season above even. 927 save percentage, a career-high and one of the best marks in the league. It was a similar story last season, though this time he was even better and he finished the season with a. After a rough start to the season for both goalies, Saros came back from injury a new man and took over, looking every bit like the elite goalie many expected he could be after such a strong start to his career. It was in the back half of 2019-20 where things started to click, however. That’s partially because he struggled to gain a foothold in his third and fourth season, putting up only slightly above average numbers as his role increased. Juuse Saros (James Guillory / USA TODAY Sports) The rest of the roster doesn’t look close to good enough. While it’s likely true that Nashville has one of the league’s best goalies to lean on, that’s rarely ever the safest bet and being a playoff team requires much more. It was a berth built upon goaltending alone, an extremely volatile solution to team-building that is prone to year-over-year regression. The biggest issue though is the reason the Predators even made it to the playoffs last year in the first place. The rest of the division got stronger while the Predators did the opposite. It signalled that the team is going in a new direction, but there’s also the fact that every other team in the Central improved on top of that. The team is on a downwards trajectory and it doesn’t help that they moved out both Ryan Ellis and Viktor Arvidsson this summer, two staples of the previous core. It won’t get much worse than that because Arizona exists, but it’s tough to envision the Predators climbing up the standings this season. Nashville has a legitimate chance to make the playoffs, but the team is still projected to finish seventh in the division, a spot it lands in 30 percent of the time. The Predators may find themselves in the league’s bottom third of teams. It’s the lowest chance this team has had in a long while as the Predators have been a playoff mainstay over the last seven seasons, only technically missing once in that time frame due to a pandemic-altered season. Nashville enters the 2021-22 season with a roughly one-in-four shot at the postseason. Nashville made some big trades this summer with eyes towards the future, and the end result is a team that is projected to finish outside the playoff picture. Repeating that feat may be difficult this season as the team begins to shift priorities.
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