New York Rangers' Henrik Lundqvist Still an Elite Goaltender
Henrik Lundqvist has not played to his usual caliber this season, culminating in his recent benching. How does this affect his ranking amongst his peers?
Antti Raanta did something unprecedented in recent Rangers history last week, taking four consecutive starts away from Henrik Lundqvist. This, and Lundqvist’s declining play over the past few seasons, begs the question: Is Lundqvist still a top-tier goaltender? And if not, what tier is he? To make an educated assessment, one must first look at Lundqvist himself.
Lundqvist’s Declining Play
This season, he carries a record of 15 wins, 8 losses, and 1 overtime/shootout loss with his .920 save percentage and 2.34 goals against average. Even after his stellar return to the net this past week, he ranks fairly lowly among his fellow starting goalkeepers, and fares even worse when backup netminders with over 10 starts, like Raanta, are included. Lundqvist’s slump is not relegated to this season, though.
Mandatory Credit: Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports
Since the lockout shortened 2012-2013 season, Lundqvist’s stats have steadily fallen, barring his injury riddled 2014-2015 season. While his overall save percentage and goals against average have stayed consistent, hovering between .922 and .920, and 2.20 and 2.50, respectively, his more in-depth numbers have steadily dropped.
His high danger save percentage has dropped most significantly, dropping almost a full percent every season, from .837 to .807, leading into this season.
Simply put, over the past four seasons, Lundqvist has been saving fewer of the shots he must: the high-danger, less frequent shots. In this same period of time, Lundqvist’s medium and low danger save percentages have stayed relatively consistent, meaning he has only been letting in more of those high-danger shots.
Along this same trend, Lundqvist’s Fenwick save percentage, a stat showing the untouched shots vs saves, has stayed almost exactly the same around .943, only changing at most .28 percent. This shows that Lundqvist has primarily let in more of those tough-to-follow deflections.
However, this trend is reversed while the Rangers are on the penalty kill, with Lundqvist making more saves on high-danger shots as the seasons have passed.
The Competition
A few goalies have stormed to the front of the pack, joining, or even surpassing, Lundqvist. To get a more accurate assessment of which tier Lundqvist belongs in, let’s look at goalies across the league.
Carey Price
Insofar this season, Price is 17-3-2, touting a .936 save percentage and 1.90 goals against average. These numbers place Price among the league leaders, and for good reason. His underlying stats are just as absurd. He is currently making a save on 89 percent of high-danger shots against him, and this is only one of, well, every, stat that has risen during his recent, injured career.
His overall save percentages have consistently stayed around .930 and his goals against average has ranged from 2.59 to his current 1.90, but it has consistently gotten better.
Price’s stats across the board, not only have been better in recent seasons, but also only stand to keep improving. Even after winning a Vezina Trophy and subsequently missing nearly all of last season, Price is a leg up on the rest of the NHL these past few seasons.
Braden Holtby
Last season’s Vezina winner has gotten off to a start similar to Lundqvist’s: 14-7-2 with a .925 save percentage and a 2.08 goals against average. The similarities do not end there, however. Holtby has had similar overall stats to Lundqvist throughout these past four seasons.
His overall save percentages have consistently stayed around .920, and his goals against averages have been around 2.35. The main difference between these two has been consistency. Lundqvist’s underlying numbers, mainly high-danger save percentage, have consistently decreased over the past four seasons, whereas Holtby’s have been borderline inconsistent.
His high-danger save percentage has varied from as high as .852 to as low as .824. These both, however, are higher than Lundqvist has had in two of the past four seasons.
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Where Does Lundqvist Rank?
All of this shows that Lundqvist is undoubtedly still an elite goaltender. Is he the best in the NHL? No. Will he be the best in the NHL again? Most likely not.
Still, Lundqvist remains among the best. Even after his slump, Lundqvist’s stats are currently rivaling those of last season’s Vezina winner. That in itself proves that Lundqvist’s decline relative to his colleagues is vastly overstated.
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