11 Games: Before and After Phaneuf

Judging by the marked increases to the Sv% and PK%, I think it’s safe to say that even in the NHL, good coaching is a byproduct of good players. Vesa Toskala was just a horrid goaltender, but that doesn’t excuse the coaching staff and management for allowing a team to severely undermine themselves by not correcting these defensive/goaltending shortcomings much earlier in the season.

for the 31 games pre-Phaneuf.

 He played in the equivalent to 27.7072221 games in ice time (1662:26 in TOI) and he let in 84 goals… that works out to a GAA of 3.02 not 2.61.

Either way, I’m not sure how much of that is a result of the Leafs… if you look at his monthly splits (just as ridiculously short as far as sample size goes), he varied between playing ridiculously well in December (.928 SV% and 1.86 GAA to go along with 1 shut out), and horribly in January (.889 SV% and 3.36 GAA). He didn’t really play a good game in February either… since he only played 1 game.

His hot streak was mainly confined to his 7 game winning streak in March, and he was sub-par in two of those starts, but got great offensive support. I’m not chalking the whole thing up to Phaneuf and Sjostrom when frankly I don’t think either player is superior to White or Hagman respectively from last season.

Perhaps Giguere had an impact as a practicing partner? or a mentorship role? But I’m not going to rack one up for the leadership of our new captain until it sustains itself for a while longer than 7 games.

You also need to consider the competition (which makes sense since the Leafs were sheltering him a tad). Here are the teams he recorded victories against in the order they occurred in the season:

Anaheim, Carolina, Detroit, Tampa Bay, Florida, Montreal, Boston, Florida, Nashville, (then the 7 game win streak happened and he rattled off wins against) Ottawa, Boston, Edmonton, Ottawa, Montreal, Atlanta, and the NY Rangers.

The Anaheim game was the crazy game with 10 Leaf power plays where they scored 5 goals on the PP. Carolina sucked horribly due to injuries early on in the year. Tampa Bay and Florida were both suffering to start out the first half of the season due to injuries (Panthers) and crap goal tending (Lightning).

Montreal was the game where he left for the hospital after the first period to get his second ablation, and yet was still credited with the win after shutting the Habs out for the first 8 shots.

He shut out a Boston Bruins side that was lacking offense all season long. Florida was without David Booth, and Bryan McCabe scored both their goals in a 3-2 loss to the Leafs. Nashville lost due to some atrocious defense, and pulled Pekka Rinne after he let in 3 goals on the first 8 shots he faced… they almost completed a come back late, tying the game at 3 before Phil Kessel won it with a wrist shot.

I could pick apart the 7 game win streak in a similar fashion, I just think that we need to take his first year with a grain of salt and recognize that the number of games Gustavsson won on his own this year was minimal. I’d give him credit for 2 or 3 at most. The Leafs also lost some games that he kept them in close in, so the whole thing balances out, I just think we need to hope for some more consistency from all the players next year if we hope to win more games.

750 GA on 834 Shots is a .899 save percentage.

why not explore Giguere’s numbers pre-post Leaf last year.

He went from having a .900 SV% and 3.14 GAA with Anaheim to having a .916 SV% and 2.49 GAA with the Leafs.

Following the players/environment logic that would imply the Leafs at the end of the year were superior to the Ducks defensively (last season), which I frankly have a hard time believing… but maybe it makes some sense with Phaneuf and Sjostrom on the team? I personally think it’s a bit of that, and a bit of the fact that Giguere was more comfortable with Allaire as his goalie coach, and with Burke as his GM, and with getting more consistent playing time as a #1/1A starter like he was used to in Anaheim.