Life in the creaseA look at the goaltender's role

Time to shake off the cobwebs here a bit.

The one, never-ending discussion when it comes to the NHL is the decline in goal scoring over the past 15 years. It came up a number of times when I was back in B.C. over the holidays, including during a marathon Hockey Night in Canada session that saw four teams play 126 minutes of hockey and score all of five goals.

Last night, I caught the majority of the Flyers-Panthers game, a plodding 1-0 tilt where the only goal came from Derian Hatcher with 10 minutes to play. (The biggest surprise was the fact more than 18,000 fans apparently took in that dog of a game.)

Anyway, that's all old hat. But what it all really comes down to is the goaltenders and just how much players in the position have improved over the last two decades.

Martin Brodeur set two single-season records last season at age 34, one that received a lot of pub and one that didn't. The first — most wins by a goaltender, one season (48) — comes with an easy explanation: With shootouts, there are simply more wins to be had. (Which also explains why Roberto Luongo matched Bernie Parent's 33-year-old record last season.)

The second record, however, is the most minutes played by a goaltender in a season, which Brodeur set with a mind-boggling total of 4,697.

And now, this time around, Evgeni Nabokov is on pace for a 4,875-minute season.

What gives? Are there more minutes being played as the result of more overtime games? Or has the role of the backup, in some cases, shriveled even more into nonexistence because of the salary cap?

It's No. 2:

	Goalies	Mins	Min/G
2003-04	94	149,267	60.678
2005-06	91	148,904	60.530
2006-07	84	148,975	60.559
2007-08	76	68,949	60.376
- projected		148,524	60.376

Games continue to be roughly the same length, but the number of goaltenders that played in 1,230 games last season is on the decline. I didn't pull-up all of the historical data on that, but it's safe to say that, in general, we're seeing less and less of the backups.

A few more trends for the 'tenders... including the fact that, while scoring may be down, empty netters are up (the goals against and GAA figure is only for when netminders were in the goal):

	EGA	EGAA	GA	GAA	%
2003-04	189	0.076	6129	2.46	3.0%
2005-06	178	0.072	7264	2.93	2.4%
2006-07	205	0.083	6877	2.77	2.9%
2007-08	108	0.094	3031	2.64	3.4%
- projected	233	0.094	6529	2.64	3.4%

Why more empty netters? Closer games.

There's not often a lot of analysis done on empty netters, but it's interesting to quantify just how many there are — and 3.4 per cent isn't an insignificant number. (Gabe Desjardins has more about what happens when the goaltender is pulled.)

And, not only are goals going down, but shots against are, too, even as save percentages rise:

	SA	SA/60	SV	SV/60	SV%
2003-04	68821	27.66	62692	25.20	0.911
2005-06	73573	29.65	66309	26.72	0.901
2006-07	72574	29.23	65697	26.46	0.905
2007-08	32682	28.44	29651	25.80	0.907
- projected	70401	28.44	63872	25.80	0.907

Goaltenders like Brodeur and Nabokov may be playing more, but their workload in games is a little lighter. We're projected to see netminders face more than 2,000 fewer shots than last season and see save percentages continue to rise toward historic highs.

A .907 league save percentage would rank the fifth highest in NHL history.

The better goalies are playing more and fewer goals are going in. No surprise there.