If there has been anything garnering the most attention in Philadelphia when it comes to the Flyers, it is whoever has the displeasure of being in between the pipes wearing Orange and Black. The three-headed creature of Sam Ersson, Ivan Fedotov, and Aleksei Kolosov has led this team down a path to having the worst goaltending in the league and by a fairly large margin.
In all situations, according to our pals at Natural Stat Trick, the Flyers are dead last in the NHL when it comes to save percentage at .872. The second-worst team are the Vancouver Canucks, surprisingly, and they have earned an .882 save percentage. That large gap is substantial. The distance between the Flyers and the Canucks at 32nd and 31st overall respectively, is the same between the Canucks at 31st and the New York Islanders who sit at 19th in the league with a .892 save percentage. That is insane.
But somehow, the Flyers aren’t at the bottom of the standings. They might be allowing the 30th-most goals in the NHL, but they aren’t specifically the worst when it comes to the defense in front of whichever goalie is in the crease that specific night. The Flyers have allowed the seventh-fewest shots on goal, so the job should be much easier than the teams that are just letting their goaltender get shelled every single game.
So, what if the Flyers suddenly just had a tandem capable of bringing league-average goaltending? We’re not asking for someone to suddenly look like 2015 Carey Price in Philadelphia, but just magically having bang-average goaltending.
As of Sunday morning, the median average save percentage — since the Flyers will certainly bring down any average calculated the other way — is Utah’s .914 save percentage at 5-on-5 and the Los Angeles Kings’ .859 save percentage on the penalty kill. In all situations, it’s Utah again with an .895 save percentage. Let’s use that all-situations number just for some clean calculations (because it is Sunday morning).
Through the 47 games played, the Flyers have allowed 1238 shots against in all situations. Currently, that save percentage has led them to allowing 158 goals and have earned a miserable minus-15 goal differential which is 21st in the NHL. If this team mustered up enough goaltending talent to have the current average save percentage of .895, but still allow the same amount of shots on goal, that would mean just 130 goals against on the season and their goal differential would rise to plus-13, making them tied with the Toronto Maple Leafs at 10th in the overall standings.
Now, what does that mean for actual wins? It’s difficult.
There have been numerous people trying to come up with the How Many Goals Can Count As A Win In The NHL equation, but nothing has truly been cemented because of course it is extremely hard to narrow down. But taking a look at the Goals Above Replacement model from Evolving-Hockey the estimation is that approximately 3 to 3.3 goals above replacement means one point in the standings. We’re no math genius (we would not be writing for a hockey blog if we were) so take everything we come up with with a handful of salt. But, if we turn that over to the Flyers suddenly allowing 28 fewer goals on the season if they were to have league average goaltending, then we can conservatively guess that that would mean an additional eight points in the standings.
By taming down the conversion to every 3.3 goals, doing some rough math and coming up with 28 divided by 3.3 is 8.48 — that horrible math spits out a big loogie of rounding down to eight points.
With eight more points, the Flyers would sit at 56 points on the season and just one point below the Carolina Hurricanes, two below the New Jersey Devils, and extremely comfortably in the first Wild Card spot, having a five-point advantage over the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Simply put: The Flyers would be a playoff team if they were to have NHL average goaltending.
So, that’s fun! Go Birds.