Reviewing the Goals Allowed by Martin Brodeur: March 2010

This is the sixth of a series of posts looking at all 168 goals Martin Brodeur gave up in the 2009-10 season for the New Jersey Devils.   The intent of this series is to go beyond the stats and attempt to identify how Brodeur has been beaten, what goals were soft, and whatever information that can be found.  

This is the next-to-next-to-last part of this series as it is the last "full" month of regular season games for Brodeur as well as the 09-10 season.  A short review of April will be the penultimate post; followed a big summary post.  If you're interested, you can review the past five months, or 130 goals (77.38% of all goals allowed), in these posts: October 2009; November 2009; December 2009; January 2010; and February 2010.  I've already done the 2010 playoffs with this review back in April, so check that out if you're curious about the postseason.

March 2010 was an up-and-down month for the team as a whole.  As a result, Brodeur's numbers suffered along with the inconsistent performances of the team.

The stat-line was better than it was in February; but a save percentage of less than 91% isn't usually something to brag about.  Of course, that's a reason why these reviews are so illuminating.  We use stats because they provide a cold analysis of a player's performance without having to witness all of the events that led to the actual value.  In looking at each goal, the stat has a lot more context and so the numbers may look worse than the actual goals allowed. 

So let's jump right to looking at each of the goals Brodeur gave up in March 2010.  Please set your viewing to "Wide" and continue after the jump to see them for yourself:

As I stated last week, all videos come from NHL.com. Links are provided for your own curiosity and convenience, so if you disagree with me on a certain goal or if I made an error in what I found, you can check it out for yourself.  

As a refresher, here's how I'm defining a "soft" goal: I watch how the shot came through Brodeur and determine whether Brodeur really should have stopped the puck.  This means he must have seen the shot coming, the shot was not deflected or change otherwise in motion, he was in position to actually make the stop, and  whether Brodeur made an uncharacteristic mistake that led to the goal (meaning: it wasn't a difficult shot to stop).  If all were true, then I deemed the goal as "soft."  Again, I've included links to all the goals against so you can make your own judgment.

That all, said, here's the chart for all goals allowed by Martin Brodeur in March 2010.

The Chart for March 2010

Commentary

Just like December and January, most of the goals allowed by Brodeur were not his fault.  I've counted 6 that were soft, and I'm a little skeptical of my own decision on two of those.  On Goals #134, 137, and 144, the shooters just caught Brodeur's 5-hole being too wide.  Brodeur just didn't close his legs fast enough, those could have been stopped in my opinion.  On Goal #147, yes, Chris Kunitz shot the puck off a rebound; but it was a long rebound, it wasn't as if Kunitz fired a laser at Brodeur; and Brodeur was in position to make the stop, but he got caught with a big hole under his right arm.  Therefore, I saw that as "soft."

As far as the other two go, I saw Brodeur put himself in a non-ideal position on both goals against.  I felt that on Goal #133, Brodeur put himself in a bad spot by crouching against the post, deep in his net, making it easy for Joe Paveklski to score his goal.  If he was standing or even out a little bit, he would have had a better chance to stop it.  Brodeur also put himself in a bad spot on Goal #159; where he stretched out to block Daniel Briere's pass. He stopped the pass, but the puck went right to Leino, who just put it home easily.  Again, feel free to disagree on both; but I felt because Brodeur put himself in "no man's land," those were avoidable goals against.

Still, 6 out of 32 being soft, or 18.75%, isn't too bad.  An increase over February (2 out of 16); but the same total that I found in January and December, the other two months where Brodeur allowed 30 or more goals. I don't think it's fair to say Brodeur flopped as the season went on. Besides, there was no cluster of soft goals occurring in a specific time frame. It'd be one thing if they all came at the end of the month or the beginning, like 10 allowed in the first three games of the month; but the soft goals happened more sporadically.

Moving onward to the rest of the goals, while this month wasn't as deflection-happy with only 2 goals off deflections (Goals# 146, 161) and 2 goals off re-directions (Goals #145, 157) there were 5 goals on Brodeur's flank (Goals# 136, 141, 152, 157, 162) and 4 off of screens of sorts (Goals# 148, 153, 148, 160). 

However, and I didn't necessarily write this down for every goal, what struck me the most was how often Brodeur was hung out to dry.  I'm not going to harp on every goal against that was "helped" by poor defending, but here are a few examples.

On Goal #131, there was no Devil in a 5 foot radius of Devin Setoguchi outside of Brodeur in the slot.  Heck, Goals #132, 138, 140, 141, 151, and 162 all featured the goalscorer uncovered in some way, much to Brodeur's (and the Devils') detriment. There was also Ilya Kovalchuk got stripped by Curtis Glencross - Curtis Glencross - at the point, leading to a shorthanded breakway, a.k.a. Goal #135.  That was a notable error; but some of these faults were group efforts.  While I termed it soft, Goal #144 was a two-on-one thanks to a neutral zone turnover leaving four Devils to chase the play. Goal #149 came to be because the Blues caught the Devils on a line change.  Not once, but twice did Brandon Prust - Brandon Prust - make the Devils defense look silly in some way en route to Goals #143 and 154.  Speaking of Rangers, I'm still miffed that Eric Christensen somehow deked Patrik Elias right out of his skates and no one came to help as Christensen skated in a direct, straight line to the net.  

My point is that if the defense made better decisions in these situations, some of these goals don't happen. However, much like the inconsistent performances in general, they didn't.  In short, to put the blame solely on Brodeur doesn't match with the reality of how these goals were scored.

Location of Goals Against

All locations are relative to Brodeur himself, not necessarily where the puck goes into the net.  It's pretty simplistic, but it'll do for general information.

Goals coming in low took charge this month.  18 of the 32 goals allowed, or 56.25%, came in low to beat Brodeur. Most of them went through the five-hole (low middle); but Brodeur was beaten to his sides quite a bit.  If not low, then definitely with elevation above the pad but just below the arm for that "middle height."   

There were a few high goals, they tended to beat Brodeur glove-side.  Despite the disparity in which side the high shots beat Brodeur, goals coming to his left and right were close to even. 13 beat him to his relative left, and 12 beat him to his relative right. Given that a couple of goals were on his flank, not to mention a few one-timers here and there, an big jump in both sides shouldn't be surprising.   At least, it didn't surprise me.

Your Take

Now it's your turn to have your say.  Was there anything I missed?  Were you surprised that I only found 6 goals to be soft?   Was there some other pattern among the goals allowed that you noticed?  Does this not further refute that Brodeur's performance fell over time given this casual qualitative analysis?   If not, why not?   Please leave your answers as well as other relevant thoughts and questions in the comments. Thank you for reading.