Music: {allcanada} Price gets by with less & other goal support facts

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Who is the Felix Hernandez of hockey? Who is the Dice K equivalent, feasting on great offensive support?

Below you'll find the goal production the No. 1 goalies for NHL clubs have received in their starts this season.

This analysis was influenced by a couple of recent events - Montreal's goalless drought of historic proportions, and watching a 1-0 Boston loss to the New York Rangers on the weekend.

And in general, I've always felt it strange that when it comes to goalie awards, things like offensive support and the quality of the netminder's teammates go almost completely ignored in the analysis - see Jimmy Howard getting nominated for the Calder over Tuukka Rask last season.

Boston's 1-0 loss to New York confirmed the notion, having watched several Rask starts this season, that the Bruins generally have given him dreadful goal support. To be exact, they've averaged 2.36 goals in his starts.

The degree to which the Habs haven't helped Carey Price brings to mind their lack of offensive support for him last season when he was a backup to Jaroslav Halak. You could argue it helps burnish Price's Vezina bona fides over someone like Tim Thomas, who's received strong goal support. But a breakdown of the numbers also support the contention that goalies like Henrik Lundqvist and Pekka Rinne and even Jon Quick are more deserving of hardware than Price.

That's the fun thing about stats.

The abbreviations stand for Games Started, Goal Support Average, how many times his team was Shutout By the other club, and the 'No Help' Ratio (those shutout games as a percentage of total starts). Obviously the lower the NHR, the better.

It's not a perfect system but it's worth considering. These stats were crunched in one prolonged session so I'll allow for the possibility of a niggling adding error but nothing that would radically alter the findings.

GOALIE	TEAM	GS	GSA	SOBY	NHR
Martin Brodeur	NJ	50	2.07	5	.100
Jon Quick	LA	55	2.42	5	.091
Niklas Backstrom	MIN	48	2.44	4	.083
Jaroslav Halak	STL	51	2.47	0	.000
Tomas Vokoun	FLA	55	2.47	5	.091
Pekka Rinne	NSH	58	2.50	6	.103
Carey Price	MTL	65	2.55	7	.101
Steve Mason	CBJ	49	2.71	3	.061
Jonas Hiller	ANA	46	2.71	3	.065
Cam Ward	CAR	67	2.73	4	.060
Marc-Andre Fleury	PIT	57	2.74	5	.088
Ondrej Pavelec	ATL	50	2.74	1	.020
Dwayne Roloson	TB	29	2.76	0	.000
Antti Niemi	SJ	55	2.80	4	.073
Kari Lehtonen	DAL	60	2.83	3	.050
Ilya Brzygalov	PHX	62	2.87	6	.097
Henrik Lundqvist	NYR	61	2.88	1	.016
Miikka Kiprusoff	CGY	67	2.96	3	.044
Ryan Miller	BUF	63	3.02	4	.063
Roberto Luongo	VAN	56	3.04	4	.071
Michal Neuvirth	WSH	40	3.05	2	.050
Jimmy Howard	DET	58	3.26	2	.034
Corey Crawford	CHI	47	3.26	1	.021
Tim Thomas	BOS	50	3.36	5	.100
Sergei Bobrovsky	PHI	46	3.37	5	.109

What jumps out?

Corey Crawford and Sergei Bobrovsky have been impressive rookie stories, but they haven't exactly wanted for goal support on the order of a Halak. Bobrovsky on average has received more help, but his team has also been shut out more than Crawford's.

On that side of the goal scoring continuum, it also leads further fuel to the notion that it would be fascinating to see just how good Howard would be on a team not named the Red Wings.

Speaking of Halak, St. Louis managed to pull off the tricky feat this year of being the last NHL club to be shut out while offering middling goal production.

Obviously these stats somewhat mirror a team's overall ranking in goal production, but it's crystallized in better terms when you see a goalie's name attached to the production level.

And there are some variations. As awesome as Thomas has been, the Bruins for the second straight season don't give their goalies comparable goal support for some strange reason. Boston averages 2.99 goals per game - they're way under that standard when Rask plays and way over when Thomas does. Astute Boston fans will know this has been the reverse of last season, where Thomas lost his job to Rask but actually didn't play terribly. He was often done in by a lack of support.

Lundqvist's goal support is somewhat misleading, as New York had a trio of shutout games in which they outscored the opposition by a combined 20-0 (pummelling Washington in two of those games). Those one-sided games bumped up his goal support by about 0.16. But you can strongly argue Lundqvist deserved those nice one-sided nights at the office as he's also presided over a trio of 1-0 wins for New York this season, as well as a 2-0 shutout that featured an empty-net goal with three seconds left.

It was no secret that Niemi struggled early this season in San Jose, but it's also true that the Sharks were shut out four times in his first 23 starts. They've hit the scoreboard in all of his subsequent starts.

The reverse scenario has played out with Fleury. Dan Bylsma's receiving a lot of chatter for Jack Adams for keeping the Penguins in the Eastern title hunt without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, but a lot of the credit has to do with Fleury.

The Penguins have been shut out five times in Fleury's last 23 starts, averaging just 2.17 goals per game. But he's been outstanding in all but a few games, lowering his goals-against average to 2.28 despite the heavy rotation of AHL teammates.

Interesting note about Lehtonen. Dallas has given him decent offensive support, but each of the three games the Stars were shut out were 1-0 regulation losses. A total of zero points gained despite a .958 Lehtonen save percentage in those games. If Dallas should fall one point short of a playoff spot, remember that stat.

Nobody's going to feel sorry for future Hall of Famer Brodeur. But he did endure one stretch where his teammates scored just one goal in seven of eight games played.

The cliche "new lease on life" fits Roloson with respect to his trade to the talented Lightning. In his first 20 starts this season with the Islanders, teammates scored 1.90 goals per game and were shut out three times.

You may have noticed a few teams' goalies were not in the chart, mainly because their goaltending scenarios were too convoluted. We apologize to any offended Islander or Avalanche fans, but when Peter Budaj faithfully allows at least three goals per game, does it really matter? And frankly, New York's use of 14 goalies this season was too frightening to contemplate tackling.

Also worth mentioning - Braden Holtby truly has been amazing. The Caps have scored just 29 times in his 12 starts (2.42) and been shut out twice.

Cancon

A trio of Canadian teams have endured unpredictable goaltending scenarios this season, and are worth discussing.

While it remains to be seen whether Craig Anderson is worthy of his recent contract extension, he's given Ottawa better results than Brian Elliott did with fairly similar goal support (though in fairness to Elliott, his sample size was much larger).

In Edmonton, the Oilers have averaged 2.57 goals when Devan Dubnyk has started, compared to 2.19 when veteran Nikolai Khabibulin is in the crease. In addition to his poor numbers, perhaps yet another plank to support the contention Edmonton should write off as much of that dreadful contract they inked him to in the summer of 2009.

We've left Toronto for last because a) it's the centre of the universe; and b) it's the team that CBCSports.ca and Hockey Night in Canada to a man root for to win the Stanley Cup.

Just seeing if you're paying attention. Seriously, the breakdown is fascinating.

GOALIE	GS	GSA	SOBY	NHR
Jonas Gustavsson	21	2.14	5	.238
Jean-Sebastien Giguere	26	2.42	4	.154
James Reimer	29	3.07	2	.007

You could draw one or both of the following conclusions - that James Reimer is a bit overrated, or that the Leafs love to play for the popular Reimer.

It will be interesting to see next season with more evidence which of those holds must true.