On Saturday, Jonathan Quick passed Rogatien Vachon’s record for most career wins by a Los Angeles Kings goaltender.
And any day now, Quick will pass Vachon for most career losses by a Los Angeles Kings goalie.
Both these things are true even though, entering yesterday’s action, Quick had played 67 fewer Kings games than Vachon – almost a season’s worth of action.
This anomaly highlights a problem in making meaningful comparisons across NHL eras.
The reason is that in the summer of 2005, the league abolished ties. This means every game has a winner and a loser. If a game is tied after three periods, they play five extra minutes. If that does not settle things, they go to the shoot-out, which fans love. (In the playoffs, though, they keep playing 20-minute periods until someone scores; this can take well into the night and early morning.)
The problem is that before the change, an average goalie would have, say, 30 wins, 30 losses and 10 ties.
Today, that same goalie might have 35 wins, 35 losses – and no ties. Same calibre, but more wins.
Across eras, a sturdier statistic than wins is winning percentage, with the ties counting as half-wins, half-losses.
If we look at winning percentage, Vachon and Quick in Kings jerseys are cut from the same cloth. Vachon’s 171 wins, 148 losses and 66 ties make for a winning percentage of 53.5 per cent. Through Saturday’s shutout over Florida, Quick, with 172 wins and 146 losses, is at 54 per cent.
rmckenzie@thenational.ae
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