Sports Reference Blog

Hockey-Reference has now added goaltenders' Shots Against data back to the 1955-56 season; we previously only had that back to 1983-84. This addition enables us to calculate season and career save percentages for all goaltenders, including several Hall of Famers. For example, a contender for greatest goalie of all time, Jacques Plante, is now listed with a career .9196 SV%, putting him at eighth all time and fifth among retired players. Plante also now occupies two of the top five spots in the single-season Save Percentage leaderboard. Johnny Bower is the top addition to the career Save Percentage leaderboard, as his career .9219 SV% puts him at third all time and second among retired players, only trailing Dominik Hasek.

We also now have data available that gives us precise Time On Ice numbers for goalies down to the second, going all the way back to the beginning of the NHL. As a result, there have been some changes to the Minutes Played data, and subsequent re-calculations of everyone's Goals Against Average. This pertains, mainly, to goalies prior to 1999. We always had Time On Ice data for goalies from 1999 onward.

We pride ourselves on providing the most accurate information available and we hope fans of NHL history enjoy this addition. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2018 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Announcement, Data, History, Hockey-Reference.com, Leaders, Statgeekery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.