Mëds wrote:
If you adjust Miller and Lack's GP by 60 minutes of TOI Miller got the "W" 68.4% of the time. Lack only got his team 2 points 46.5% of the time.
If you only want to count games started, then the Canucks won with Miller 64.4% of the time, but still only 51.4% of the time with Lack.
Point to whatever other stats or intangibles that you want to, at the end of the day the decision comes down to which guy the team wins more games with, and that's who you go with if you are in the Canuck's position right now with several other young goaltenders in the pipeline.
The Lack vs Miller trade isn't even up for debate.
Yeah, it really isn't, but not in the way you think. You're failing to consider the quality of starts each goalie got. Until Miller got injured, he played every easy game, with Lack playing something like 80% of his starts against playoff teams. Lack also played the second end of back to backs every time. Note how Miller got all 5 games against the Oilers - normally you'd expect the team's worse goalie to get more games against bottom of the barrel teams like that.
Also, I hope when you are doing your calculation, that you are adjusting out the 4 times Lack had to mop up Miller's mess after he got pulled (21 mins in, 40 mins in, 25 mins in, and 28 mins in after giving up 5, 4, 4, and 5 goals respectively) - hard to win coming into that, wouldn't you think? That time should be added to Miller's side, as he had already lost those games. You'll see about a 5% swing in each way based on that, so ~63% Miller and ~52% Lack.
Yes, Miller had 6 shutouts - but five of them were against EDM, NJ, CBJ, PHI, CAR, and one against PIT (Lack also had a SO against PIT). Miller had a .911 SV% despite 5 shutouts against crap teams. Look at the game logs between the two goalies and honestly ask yourself which goalie had the easier schedule.
Note also that when Lack was finally given a chance to go less than 2-3 weeks before starts after Miller got injured (22 games in 46 days), he posted a .929 SV% and took the Canucks into the playoffs, helped by two clutch wins against LAK (.968 SV% over two games, 63 shots against). Your boy Miller put up a .887 SV% against the Kings last year for comparison, getting pulled in both starts.
Also, consider this:
Miller started 9 games against Western Conference playoff teams (only 4 wins). Lack started 15 (9 wins) - that's 44% for Miller and 60% for Lack against western playoff teams. To me, that is a more meaningful winning percentage statistic than the one you cite as proof of Miller's superiority. I'm sure Miller could pump his up even higher in the AHL.
Like you said, it's not up for debate. Lack was the better goalie, played the better teams, got the better results against the stronger teams. But he was turfed out due to politics so that Jimbo wouldn't have to admit that he made a horrible mistake in giving Miller that term and money when there was no other team interested in him last summer. The way the two goalies were deployed last year screams of management/coaching trying to protect Miller to make their erred investment look better, yet he still ended up with a bottom 5 SV% among starting goalies.
Some of Jimbo's reasons for trading Lack have been 1) Miller got more wins, 2) The league thinks of Lack as a backup, and 3) Lack was going into UFA and would be expensive to re-sign. I think I've addressed 1) above - it's BS. Don't 2) and 3) just kind of contradict each other? If Lack is the scrub Jimbo wants us to think everybody in the league thinks he is, why would he cost much to re-sign? I know hardball has proven to be an incredibly difficult concept for the guy, but he could tell Lack to go ahead and test out UFA if he thinks he's better than the low-potential scrub of a backup he's been smeared as. Also it was abundantly clear that Lack loved it here and wanted to stay above all else.
For the future of this team's sake, I hope that they don't do the same with Markstrom, and instead let him build his confidence in this league instead of throwing him in against tough opposition to protect the washed up $6 million man.