Holtby proving he’s one of the NHL’s very best

Travis Yost

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A couple of Canadian teams – the Toronto Maple Leafs first, then the Ottawa Senators later in the week – are about to get a crack at beating one of the NHL’s best goaltenders.

And no, the Montreal Canadiens aren’t on the docket. Neither are the New York Rangers.

It wasn’t supposed to be this smooth or seamless a transition into a starting role for Braden Holtby and the Washington Capitals. The 93rd overall pick in the 2008 draft had upside at the time, but even after an impressive start at the AHL level, he was still punching upwards at entrenched NHL netminders like Semyon Varlamov, Tomas Vokoun, and Michal Neuvirth.

My, how time flies.

Holtby has emerged as one of the league’s preeminent puck-stoppers, a combination of skill and durability that few other players at his position possess. He’s been the archetype behind Washington’s transition from the fun-and-gun offensive days of Bruce Boudreau to a club that’s capable of slowing down even some of the league’s most prominent offences – an area that, at times, plagued those talented teams of yesteryear.

Holtby is having another fantastic season for the Capitals – ho-hum by his standards, but among the league’s elite once again. In his 26-appearances this year, he’s posted a 94.0 per cent save percentage at 5-on-5 (fifth best amongst regulars this year) and a 92.8 per cent save percentage in all situations (sixth best amongst regular this year). The names above him include the usual suspects like Carey Price, as well as the goaltenders running white-hot to start the season in Sergei Bobrovsky and Devan Dubnyk. 

At aggregate is where you really see the impact Holtby has had. Let’s look at goalie performance over the last three seasons – the time in which Holtby became fully burdened as the number one goaltender for his club. The tables below show save percentage rates at even strength and in all situations over that timespan for all regulars. Holtby’s position speaks volumes here:

Regardless of which way you look at it, Holtby has legitimized his reputation as one of the league’s five best goaltenders. It’s much more than him just winning the Vezina Trophy last season. He’s been outplaying names like Roberto Luongo, Henrik Lundqvist, Corey Schneider and Tuukka Rask for a few years and over hundreds of games now.

There’s one important stat that’s not represented here: games played. Holtby’s been a workhorse for the Capitals, resistant to injury at a position where even the most ingrained and unchallenged starters tend to only play 60 or so games in a given year. His 166 games since the 2014-15 season is most in the NHL, and he’s saved the Capitals an awful lot of goals over that span.

One of the easiest ways to show Holtby's team impact is by measuring how the Capitals would have performed with a league average goaltender in his place. To do that, we can take the league average stop rate and apply it against all of the shots Washington has faced in that time span. The variance is how many goals Holtby has saved his team from above average performance.

Here’s what it looks like over the last three season. Just to be clear, we are comparing Holtby against the merely the league average goalie, which stops around 91.5 per cent of shots over the season:

Forty-one goals over this timeframe is significant, and just think what it would’ve done to Washington’s total goal differential and their respective finishes in the standings. The interesting thing to me here is that Holtby’s 2014-15 season – the year he finished fourth in Vezina voting – looks better than his 2015-16 year, primarily because of a stronger save percentage against a higher volume of shots faced.

Also of note: Holtby has already saved 10 goals for the Capitals this year and we aren’t even midway through the season. If his current performance prevails, Holtby will likely finish with his best season to date. And though competition is fierce in the Vezina race this year, he should pick up a large number of votes.

Considering what he’s meant to the Capitals, it’ll be quite deserved.