The Osgood Enigma

In light of Red Wing goaltender Chris Osgood's recent 10 day "Mental Break," there has been a lot of speculation surrounding Ozzie's ability to regain his level of play from 2008 which saw him perform spectactularly and lead the Wings to their 11th Stanley Cup. In addition, there's been added questions of whether he'll even get that opportunity, given the stellar performance of Ty Conklin in net for the Wings this season. Many an explanation has been tossed about for the decline in performance between the pipes for #30, the most frequent being that the defense for the Red Wings is underperforming in comparison to last season, and that the result is more shots, and therefore more goals. So, I decided to do a little statistical experiment to compare Osgood to Osgood, and indirectly, 2008 Osgood to 2009 Conklin.

Last year, the Wings allowed 23.5 SOG/g, #1 in the league. Thusfar we're #4 at 27.8. That's a difference of 4.3 SOG/g. Looking at Osgood's numbers (because of the claim that more shots=more goals, "exposed" Osgood) and it really can't be the main factor. Last year his save percentage was .914 and he sported a 2.09 GAA. This year it is a putrid .879 and accompanied by a 3.29 GAA. Last year he faced 976 shots in 43 games (certainly not all entire games, but for these purposes immaterial) and thus faced on average 22.68 shots per game. This year he's faced 829 shots in 31 games for a 26.74 average...but already allowed 16 more goals than he did on 147 more shots last year.

So, at his current pace, if you were to adjust the shots faced to mirror last year's average shots faced, his adjusted GAA for 2008 would jump from 2.09 to 2.76 (shown by taking shots faced from last year: 976 and multiplying it by the save percentage from this year [.879] giving us 857 [saves] which subtracted from 976 shots faced and then divided by 43 [last year's games played] gives us our adjusted GAA.) So, this year in an apple-to-apple comparison, he is allowing .67 more goals a game. Shots be damned, the guy just isn't playing as well as he did last year.

So: 2008 Osgood would still be .76 GA better than 2009 Osgood under a similar defensive environment.

Now, in taking the same approach, I decided to use the 2009 statistics to adjust the performance of 2008 Osgood to the current defensive environment, and compare with 2009 Conklin's raw statistics (the raw numbers for 2009 show Conklin facing .29 SPG more than Osgood, so this is a fair comparison) to determine just how impressive Conklin's 2009 performance has been. Working under the same formula, we get an adjusted GAA of 2.32 for 2008 Osgood under the 2009 Red Wings defensive environment, which would place him 8th in the league, and slightly worse than 2009 Conklin's actual GAA of 2.28.

So: 2008 Osgood playing in the 2009 Red Wings defensive environment would be .04 GAA worse than 2009 Conklin actually is playing.

What does this all mean? Not much, other that shots against is a poor argument for Osgood's struggles and crediting the defense for his 2008 play isn't fair either. My inclination is that Conklin should be the starting goalie for the Red Wings in the playoffs, and his statistics lined up with Osgood's from a year ago reinforce that belief for me.

Babcock: CONKBLOCK THE PLAYOFFS!