Dubnyk resurrects career, saves Wild season

Travis Yost

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On January 14, 2015, the Minnesota Wild sent a third-round pick to the Arizona Coyotes in exchange for journeyman netminder Devan Dubnyk. By the front office’s own admission, it was something of a desperation move. The team had invested heavily on payroll, but despite strong performance at even-strength – at the time of the deal, the Wild were the 9th best possession team in the league at 52.5% -- it hadn’t materialized into goals.

Why? The simple answer is that the goaltending was unilaterally sandbagging the team in the win/loss column. At 5-on-5, Minnesota had stopped just 89.5% of shots (88.9% overall), good for dead-last in the league. 

If you were of the belief that Minnesota – by virtue of their payroll commitments and second-round appearance in last year’s postseason – was in a position where they had no choice but to trade for a goaltender, then the Devan Dubnyk deal made a certain degree of sense, though it came with a bit of a gamble.

Ultimately, Minnesota’s bet was that the Devan Dubnyk of the Arizona Coyotes (92.9 EVSV%; 93.3 adjusted EVSV%) had ‘found’ his game. Recall that Devan Dubnyk’s game had purportedly rapidly declined, especially during an ugly 2013-2014 season – Dubnyk (90.1% EVSV%; 91.0% adjusted EVSV%) was beaten up in Edmonton, and after a series of transactions, wound up in the AHL with Montreal’s affiliate.

What’s particularly interesting about that Dubnyk season -- and it’s something I think gets lost often in the narrative about him in light of his great success -- is that it came just months after a strong 2012-2013 campaign with a similarly bad Edmonton team. Further to this point, his 2013-2014 season, in comparison to prior performance, looked like little more than a goalie getting the tail-end of some ugly variance.

Even with Dubnyk’s dreadful 2013-2014 season, we could have made reasonable estimates on him being a decent NHL-level goaltender. For one, Dubnyk’s save percentage prior to this year was 91.8% at even-strength over 3,915 shots– comparable mostly to that of Marc-Andre Fleury in Pittsburgh.

Now, one would assume that over so many shots, it’d be safe to say that Dubnyk was a 91.8% true talent goaltender. But that’s not exactly the case. Brian Macdonald – now the Florida Panthers’ Director of Hockey Analytics – had previously done excellent work on projecting true talent levels of goaltenders based on the estimate of the league wide distribution of talent. I encourage you to click through the hyperlink and read all of the work provided, but the money table is below. Our columns are ‘shots faced’; our rows are the goaltender in question’s save percentage. 

The chart reads like this: if you have a goaltender who had a 90.0% save percentage on 5000 shots, you could reasonably estimate his ‘true talent’ save percentage was somewhere between 90.0% and 91.4%. Recall Devan Dubnyk’s numbers here prior to this season – he had stopped 91.8% of shots on 3,915 shots. Dubnyk would land somewhere in between the four bolded brackets, and our estimate of his true talent would have been somewhere between 91.2% and 92.5%. At the low end, you have a player a shade above replacement-level – probably a solid back-up. At the high end, you have something like Jaroslav Halak.

Even in the worst case scenario (Dubnyk being a true talent 91.2% goalie) still doesn’t seem bad for a guy traded for Matt Hendricks and who spent his age-27 season in the AHL. The best case scenario seems delightful. The middle of the road – 91.8%, or Dubnyk’s career average – still seems rock-solid, and a far cry from what Dubnyk posted in a short 2013-2014 season.

There’s an interesting theory about Dubnyk, though, one that I think merits at least a cut of consideration in light of Edmonton’s futility. Is it possible that Devan Dubnyk – who stopped a respectable 91.8% of shots at even-strength anyway – was kneecapped a bit by Edmonton’s play in front? Alternatively: is it possible that Devan Dubnyk was slightly dinged by something from the shot quality against department?

I’m not sure I, myself, subscribe to the theory, but the data at War on Ice is somewhat compelling. Of goalies who played at least 7,000 minutes at even-strength from 2009-2014 (the timespan in question), no goalie saw a bigger jump between his raw EVSV% and adjusted EVSV% than Devan Dubnyk. The rolling averages of his two save percentages are plotted below:

Our confidence intervals above gave us an idea that Devan Dubnyk’s true talent level was that of an NHL goaltender, somewhere between ‘OK’ and ‘solid starting netminder’. Separately, this graph gives us an idea as to what Devan Dubnyk would have looked like in a system where he faced an average proportion of shots from scoring chance and non-scoring chance areas. Both underline the idea that Dubnyk’s 2013-2014 season was very likely something of an obvious outlier – an outlier so crippling, though, Arizona picked him up for a cheap one-year, $800,000 contract last offseason.

Since joining Minnesota, Dubnyk’s been nothing short of spectacular. He’s 19-4-2, stopping 93.4% of even-strength shots. A far cry from where things were one season ago. Which brings us to the most important question: what should the Minnesota Wild do going forward, and how should they approach his next contract?

First, let’s add his 93.4% even-strength save percentage on 925 shots to Macdonald’s table. In Dubnyk’s career, he’s now a 92.1% goaltender on just about 5,000 shots. Where does he fit on the table?

We’re growing more confident in Dubnyk’s ability, despite the unsustainable downswing in 2013-2014 and unsustainable upswing in 2014-2015. He’s seen a ton of rubber, and we now can be confident that he’s between a 91.5% goalie and 92.7% goalie at even-strength. His worst case scenario is now that of a very good back-up who can spot start without the team missing a hitch. His best case scenario? Sergei Bobrovsky.

And, right smack in the middle (92.1%) of where Dubnyk sits in his career? Something like James Reimer, Cam Ward, Michal Neuvirth, or Marc-Andre Fleury.

For a goalie whose career was in jeopardy just six months ago, it strikes me as obvious that Dubnyk not only belongs in this league, but warrants a contract with some job security come next summer.