The “what-if” of the 2015-16 playoff season still lingers heavily in minds across Stars fandom.
There were a few of them that season. What if Tyler Seguin was healthy? What if the Stars had landed Dan Hamhuis instead of Kris Russell? But the largest one on everyone’s mind was “what if the Stars had gotten consistently solid goaltending?”.
Outside of maybe the first season of Jim Nill’s Dallas career (and even that ended with a bit of a dud against Anaheim), goaltending has been a big question mark for this team. Many thought that question had finally been answered this offseason with the buyout of Antti Niemi and the acquiring of Ben Bishop.
While we still reside in the first month of this NHL season and Bishop’s career as a Star, it’s time to look at some of the early returns on that key offseason acquisition.
5v5 Performance
We’ll start with the area of the game where most of the hockey is played, at 5v5.
Bishop has appeared in 10 games so far this season, logging just over 415 minutes of 5v5 ice time during those games and saving 91.35% of shots he has faced during that time. That mark puts Bishop 22nd among the 34 qualified goaltenders (at least 200 minutes played at 5v5) in the league.
For reference, Kari Lehtonen saved 92.49% of shots faced in just over 2600 minutes at 5v5 last season. Save-percentage can fluctuate quite a bit early on in the season so it certainly isn’t anything to panic over right away. It is, however, something to closely monitor moving forward.
Because the sample on Bishop with Dallas is so small, I’m not sure how helpful it will be to dive into a bunch of percentages at this time. Instead, let’s look at some rate statistics to see how some performances translate to a game-by-game rate.
The Dallas Stars as a team are giving up a little over .4 more shots per 60 minutes of 5v5 play so far this this season than they were last season. They are also giving up over .3 more goals (2.6 this year vs. 2.32 last year) per 60 minutes of 5v5 play.
This is where I begin to get a little concerned.
The Stars are giving up expected goals at a rate of 2.18 per 60 minutes at 5v5, compared to 2.49 last season. So they are giving up slightly more shots but the quality of those shots are quite a bit less than it was last season. That combined with the Stars giving up .3 more goals per 60 minutes is a moderately troubling trend, goaltending-wise.
Penalty Kill Performance
Hey, the not-as-good stuff is out of the way as now we can talk about how big of a difference-maker Ben Bishop has been on the penalty kill.
Kari Lehtonen had one of the worst penalty-killing save-percentages in the entire NHL last season. I don’t want to pin it all on him as it was pretty well-documented how horrendous the team as a whole was on the PK, but the Stars definitely needed some clutch penalty-killing saves from a goalie this season.
So far, they’ve gotten them. Repeatedly.
Bishop has allowed just two goals on the penalty kill so far this season. His .941 save-percentage is among the best goalies in the NHL who have played at least 40 minutes of penalty kill time this season.
Sure, part of that can (once again) be traced back to the team as a whole. Special teams are much less chaotic than 5v5 hockey, generally, and therefore the success (or lack of it) is largely traced back to the team as a full unit. Still, coming up with a big save with the opposition on a powerplay is a welcome sight after what Stars fans went through last year in that department.
What to Expect?
While some were perhaps expecting a savior like Carey Price or Henrik Lundqvist out of Ben Bishop’s performances for the Stars, that is likely not going to be the case. With that being said, the Stars have a team in place that really just needs consistently solid goaltending.
That is what Dallas has been missing over the past several years. Kari Lehtonen is not a disaster of a goaltender, he has just become more inconsistent as the years have gone on. Bishop was brought in to stabilize the net.
So far, it’s a mixed bag. The PK has been fantastic, but the 5v5 performances leave something to be desired. This certainly won’t be the only check-in on Bishop as the year moves along, as the Stars have invested a lot of money and faith into the big goaltender. We’ll see how things progress as we approach 2018.
All statistics via corsica.hockey unless otherwise stated.