Sorokin, Ullmark both have strong case for Vezina

I drew a bit of criticism last week – fairly so, I might add – when I argued on Twitter that this year’s NHL awards races are as cut and dry as they have been in a long time.

For the most part, I think my argument holds up. Edmonton Oilers’ superstar Connor McDavid will coast to the Hart Trophy, San Jose’s Erik Karlsson should be a lock for the Norris Trophy, and Boston Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery locked up the Jack Adams Trophy sometime in December. Such is life when you turn in one of the best regular seasons in league history.

But the one award that drew some push back was the Vezina Trophy. Bruins goaltender Linus Ullmark, the odds-on favorite to win it all, has turned in a remarkable season and is an exceptional candidate. But I think New York Islanders netminder Ilya Sorokin has had the better year of the two. And though I still think Sorokin should get serious consideration, I recognize the daylight between the two may not be significant.

The debate between Ullmark and Sorokin boils down to one key question: Do we recognize the dominant goalie behind the dominant team, or do we recognize the dominant goaltender behind a group of players still fighting for their playoff lives?

Goaltenders are routinely measured by save percentage, and for understandable reason – their primary responsibility is to stop shots, and the more effective they are at doing so, the higher their stop rate. Although both netminders have been exceptional relative to league averages this year, Ullmark was an obvious standout:

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The challenge with save percentage is that team defensive play has a significant impact on save percentages, which muddies the waters. And while many would argue – maybe correctly – Ullmark has outplayed Sorokin this year, they would not argue he had an easier job doing so.

I also plotted the save percentages of Boston’s Jeremy Swayman and New York’s Semyon Varlamov here to reaffirm that point. Both teams are reasonably strong defensively, and all four goaltenders will end the year with stop rates well above the league average. (That said, there is obvious daylight between Ullmark and Swayman, and Sorokin and Varlamov, respectively. That’s part of their Vezina Trophy argument.)

One way to tease out how much defensive play is muddying the waters is to leverage a measure like goals saved relative to expectations. The benefit of goals saved relative to expectations is that it neutralizes the effect of defensive play much better than save percentage – you are looking at each goaltender’s shot profile faced, which includes shot volume and the quality of those shots faced (based on historical conversion rates), and measuring how many goals a goaltender added (or subtracted) to his team’s goal differential.

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Again, both Vezina candidates outplayed their backups by a considerable amount. But at no point in the year was Ullmark outperforming Sorokin, which is the complete opposite of what we observed in raw save percentages. And that’s the case because the shot profile Sorokin faced was simply much more difficult. Consider where each team ranked respectively in high danger shots faced on the year: Boston sixth best in the NHL (11.4 per game); New York 26th in the NHL (13.5 per game).

All this to say that I think both goaltenders are deserving candidates, and though I too sharply discounted Ullmark’s argument for the trophy, I do think Sorokin has a credible one – much in the same vein of Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck, who each year looks like one of the best goaltenders in the world behind an otherwise troubled team.

This debate could get a bit more interesting if the Islanders cross the playoff threshold – they are about 81 per cent likely to qualify with four games remaining. If they do, Sorokin will be the biggest reason why.

Data via Evolving Hockey, NHL.com, Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference