What Kind of Pace is Schneider On?

At this point in the season, the New Jersey Devils are playing way better than anyone has expected.  The team is sitting at 9-6-1, above .500, and in the middle of things in the tough Metropolitan Division.  To that effect, there is no doubt that one of the key factors behind the surprising start is Cory Schneider.  Anyone who watches the games would tell you the same thing.  Thursday's game against Chicago is a perfect case-in-point.  As John wrote in the recap, the Devils were outmatched and outplayed for almost the entire game, but thanks to some puck luck and the great goaltending of Cory Schneider, the Devils were able to sneak out of Chicago with a win.

While anyone watching would undoubtedly agree that Schneider has been brilliant, what I want to look at today are the numbers.  Is Cory playing above his head to this point, or have his numbers been consistent with his career averages?  Furthermore, how has he been doing as compared to the other top goaltenders in the NHL?  Let's see just how good he has been.  What I really want to know is how much he has been carrying this winning streak as compared to the rest of the team improving its game from last season.  Has the team really improved, or is Cory just carrying them?

The Numbers

The following chart takes information and stats from NHL.com.  It will include some of the top goaltenders this year in terms of performance, with the requirement that the goalie has started at least 10 games so far.  Chart is sorted by save percentage.

Looking at the information, Schneider is definitely on a very good pace.  Apart from Lundqvist and Allen who are absolutely on fire, he is as good as anyone is out there who has played a majority of the games for their team.  His GAA is under his career average of 2.20, and is much less than last season's 2.26.  He also has the second-most wins of anyone on that list, behind only Henrik and tied with Fleury.  So not only has he been playing well, but he has been playing well enough for his team to win.  Guys like Bishop and Andersen cannot say the same thing.

Despite these positives, however, when you really dig into it further, they are not as exceptional as you might expect.  His save percentage is .924, which is under his career average of .927, albeit pretty darn close.  He also is only high on this list because I decided to simply limit it to players with at least 10 starts.  If you broaden the base a little bit, and open it up to goalies who have started at least 50% of their team's games, Schneider all of a sudden falls quite a lot.  Guys like Michal Neuvirth (.939, 8 starts), Petr Mrazek (.938, 8 starts), Carey Price (.936, 9 starts), and Jaroslav Halak (.926, 9 starts) all have greater save percentages than him.  In fact, so do Mike Condon (.936, 8 starts), Jimmy Howard (.932, 7 starts), and Thomas Greiss (.927, 7 starts).  These three don't reach the 50% threshold, but they all have at least 7 starts, which is a quality amount of playing time at this point in the season.

So interestingly enough, when you compare his numbers—especially save percentage—to the rest of the league, Schneider only really looks above average, at best.  This is especially true when you consider that on that chart, Schneider has seen the second fewest shots against, despite tying for the second most starts in the league.  The Devils defense has done a fantastic job at preventing shots.  Now, one could say that it is somewhat easier when a goalie sees more shots because he can get into a rhythm, but I would not agree that this logic applies to this case, considering that Cory does have 367 shots against over 13 games.

So, I have thrown out conflicting evidence.  The eye test says that Schneider has been excellent, and the numbers do not necessarily make this untrue, but when you dig a little deeper, it is clear that he is not other-worldly right now.  He is simply being himself, and producing at a level that is normal for what he is capable of doing, night in and night out.

Finally, I want to throw one more stat out there to give a little clearer picture.  Hockey Reference tracks quality starts, a stat developed by Rob Vollman.  I have discussed it before, but basically it tries to analyze goalies like pitchers in baseball.  A start with a save percentage over his average save percentage for the year is a quality start, unless he faces 20 or fewer shots in a game, in which case he simply needs to produce a save percentage above 88.5%.  The league average for quality starts in a season is around 53%.  At this point, Schneider has 8 quality starts, which is a quality start percentage well over 60%.  So while Schneider may not exactly be destroying it as compared to other numbers, this still proves that he is still better than the large majority of goalies in the NHL right now.

Conclusion

So, to answer some questions from the beginning.  I would not say that Cory is playing above his head right now.  He looks excellent out there simply because he is excellent.  The numbers he has this year so far are not head and shoulders better than other top goalies in the league, nor are they better than his career averages.  However, that should not be taken negatively.  This pace is sustainable for him, and there is possibly even room for some growth and improvement.  It is not like he is playing at an unconscious level and will fall down to earth at some point.  This is who he is, and this is what we should expect from him.  And that is something that we as fans should be very happy about.

Finally, the last thought I posed at the beginning was how much he was carrying this team through its wins, as compared to the rest of the team simply improving from last year.  I think I can confidently say that the improvement we have seen this year from NJ is thanks to the team improving in front of Cory, not the goalie being lights out to save a bad team.  Again, this is good.  It means that the winning can potentially be sustainable.  Or at least sustainable for a longer period of time.  Let's put it this way: I would take that over having a goalie who is playing well above his career numbers would indicate he is capable of.

Your Thoughts

What are your thoughts on all of this?  Were you expecting to see better numbers from Cory right now?  How do you feel about these numbers?  Does it scare you that they are not higher, or are you on the positive side of things, and happy that is not being forced to carry this team as much as may have been expected?  Please leave your comments below, and thanks for reading.