Goaltenders are a tricky bunch to figure out. Fans will either love or hate them depending on how they perform in a ten game stretch. If they stand on their head for and steal a couple of games for their teams, the goalie will be heralded and be a front-runner for Team MVP. Whereas if they have an awful or sub-par stretch for ten games, fans will want their netminder on the first bus out of town and their back-up to get the majority of the starts. We've seen this in plenty of cities over the years (Vancouver and Philadelphia specifically come to mind) and are beginning to see glimpses of it in Carolina with incumbent starter Cam Ward.

Ward is normally beloved in Carolina for playing a critical role in the Hurricanes winning their only Stanley Cup in 2005-06, but his play as of late has left many Canes fans frustrated. He is currently sporting a save percentage of .896 and has given the Hurricanes only four games that fit under Hockey Prospectus' "quality start" guidelines. Goaltending can play such a critical role in winning and losing and what the Hurricanes have gotten from Ward so far isn't good enough to win games. His most recent outing against the Winnipeg Jets was especially bad, as Ward let in three very soft goals which ended up being the deciding factor in a game that the Hurricanes played well enough to earn at least a point.

As frustrating as Ward's start to the year is, I don't think there is much to worry about with him. Some may think that his is a sign of his career being on the downturn but let's not forget that he went through a worse bump in the road in the first half of last season.

The growth of statistical analysis in hockey has come a long way in the last few years as there are now many different ways to analyze players and break down the ins and outs of just about anyone who has played in the NHL recently. However, most of the work that has been done in the last few years has applied to skaters while goalie analysis is still gaining its footing. Just looking a goalie's save percentage usually gets the job done because it's a simple way to tell you how efficient a goalie is at preventing pucks from going in his net. However, another thing we know is that the performance of goaltenders tends to bounce around over the course of a few years and in many cases, over the course of a full season. We saw it this year with Cam Ward and the Coyotes, Blues, Flyers, Kings, Penguins and Lightning also got a taste of how a good or bad season from a goalie can come out of nowhere.

Predicting goaltending performance is tough and it's probably impossible because of how much the team around him can have an impact on his performance. However, what we can do is further the statistical analysis of goaltenders to see what went right and what went wrong for them during a regular season. A goalie with a low save percentage on a team that doesn't give up many shots usually means that the net-minder isn't getting the job done while the team around him is playing fine. On the flip-side, a goalie who has to face a ton of shots and puts up a respectable save percentage despite that deserves more praise than a goalie with similar numbers on a team with a better defense.That's a fair assumption but it would be nice to get a closer look at his performance to see what exactly he is doing wrong and what kind of saves he is forced to make. Does he have positioning issues? Does he get beaten five-hole a lot? Is he the type of goalie who is more likely to challenge shooters or does his defense just make every save incredibly difficult on him?

Now, looking into this might be a tad excessive because it's possible that goalie could inexplicably bottom-out after having a great season and not many holes to speak of, but getting a closer look at a goalie's strong and weak points could be helpful for predicting future performance. Showing where a goalie gets beaten the most can also give fans a better idea of what his tendencies are and so would looking at what types of mistakes he routinely makes. There's a lot more to goalies than just their save percentage and how many shots they face, so doing some further analysis on their performance wouldn't hurt.

How do we do an analysis like this? I made an attempt at giving an in-depth look at Cam Ward last year where I looked at what types of goals the gave up, where most of the shots he faced came from and where he was beaten. I'm going to do the same thing with this analysis but I changed up my methods a little bit. Before, I was going by my own judgement to determine what is a "good" or "bad" goal and for this analysis, I referred to the "soft goal" guidelines drawn up by Rob Parker from Japers Rink. A "soft goal" is one that a goalie has to have and by Parker's guidelines, a shot from outside the scoring chance area where the goalie HAS to make the save. For instance, a shot from a bad angle that squeaks through the goalie short side is a soft goal but a shot from the point that is deflected in or goes through a screen is not. I was a tad less lenient on that front since there are plenty stoppable shots that come from the scoring chance area but my criteria was mostly the same otherwise. Goals that come on shots that most goalies usually stop are considered to have more of an impact, so this is definitely worth looking at.

In addition to that, I did this analysis for all four Carolina goalies who played this year instead of just Ward. The three other goalies didn't play enough for their data to be considered anything significant but I decided to look at them anyway. The data here on Ward will probably be the most intriguing since we now have two seasons worth of data on him and can start to form some more solid conclusions about him. It will also be interesting to see how his play has or has not improved compared to last season. I noted in my analysis last season that Ward was beaten on his glove side a lot. Is that still true this year? Find out after the jump.

Ever since Cam Ward became the incumbent starter for the Hurricanes, the team has had a lot of trouble finding a reliable back-up for him. For the most part, they have been using guys called up from the AHL (see Leighton, Michael; Peters, Justin) or career journeymen like Manny Legace and John Grahame to spell Cam Ward and none of them have been that good in a back-up role. Because of this, Ward has started at least 80% of the Hurricanes games when healthy and it has definitely led to him being fatigued as the season goes on.

There were a lot of people who thought that Ward would get a few extra nights off this season because the team signed veteran Brian Boucher to back him up. In fact, this signing was praised by quite a few people including Jonathan Willis of Hockey Prospectus who had this to say about it.

In 2010-11, the Hruricanes used Justin Peters in the [back-up] role and he was a train wreck, costin gthe Hurricanes 11 more goals than a league-average goalie would have. This contrasts with his replacement, Brian Boucher, who stopped five more goals than an average goaltender would have for the Flyers in 2010-11. While Boucher's ability to have a positive impact will be limited because a) he will play in fewer games this season and b) his career track record suggests that he is a pretty average goalie, he should be able to stem the bleeding that happened every time Peters skated off the bench. If the former Flyers backup netminder can provide an average or even just below-average performance for the Hurricanes, they'll make up all the ground that they'll lose if Ward's save percentage dips next season. The addition of Boucher alone means tht things are much better than they were one year ago.

At the time this piece was written (summer of 2011), it seemed like a fair assessment but things didn't turn out the way most predicted at all. Brian Boucher was injured for most of the season and played in only 10 games. However, when he was healthy, he performed at below replacement level and Ward was ridden like a pack-mule for most of the season. If that wasn't enough, the goalie who Boucher was supposed to replace, Justin Peters, played six games with the Hurricanes and was terrific in all of them, stopping .945 of the even strength shots he faced so the Boucher signing might look like a bust to some.

One thing that a lot of people fail to realize is that goaltender performance is hard to predict and  Carolina has struggled with this since the lockout. What we saw from Boucher and Peters in a combined 17 games probably isn't anywhere near their true talent level. Thus, it is unfair to judge the Boucher signing now and it also too early to say that Peters should be the back-up next season. After the jump, we will take a look at how Ward's back-ups have performed over the years and how Boucher might perform next season.

Cam Ward is a tough goalie to figure out. He is paid as if he is one of the league's elite goaltenders, but his career numbers show that he isn't. He is an above average goalie who is very streaky and I'm sure most of us know that. Goaltender performance is hard to predict but what makes Ward such a strange goalie is that he can go from playing like John Grahame to Tomas Vokoun in the span of a season, and we've seen that first hand this year. We all know that Ward is streaky and that he's played great for the last two months but what you may have not known is that this current hot streak is on is one of the best of his career.

Find out more after the jump

The month of December has been quite a ride for Cam Ward. He's been pulled in two games, has given up three or more goals in all but three games and has a save percentage of .882. On the flip-side, he also played two of his best games of the season against Toronto and Vancouver and has shown signs of looking like his older self. And people wonder why I never try to predict goalie performance....

It's especially difficult to predict how a goalie Ward's age will perform because he is in his late 20's, which is the "prime" age for most hockey players but he also debuted at a young age so that's worth keeping in mind. To make things even more difficult, Ward is coming off his best season as an NHL-er so his performance can really go in either direction at this point. Unfortunately for the Hurricanes, his performance has declined a ton compared to last season and while it's not completely his fault, I'm sure no one saw him having a sub .900 save percentage this late into the season. Some people say that he's still feeling all of the mileage that he took on last year and that's a valid argument. He did play more minutes than any other goalie last season (4318 mins.) and saw 30+ shots in 48 out of the 74 games he played and has been under the same amount of pressure this season (has seen 30+ shots in 17 out of 32 games), so maybe this is just his workload catching up to him?

Over at Broad Street Hockey, they looked at Ilya Bryzgalov's save percentage in line-graph form going by 10-game averages. Bryz has been awful this year and looking at how he has performed over his career and seeing his highs and lows is a good way to determine if his poor play was just a rough patch or him steadily declining. They determined that Bryz is playing the worst hockey of his career but history suggests that he should rebound. When reading that article I thought to myself "Hey, you know another great goalie who is playing bad right now? Cam Ward." so I decided to do this experiment for myself. Every goalie can be expected to go through peaks and valleys so is Ward's current play just one of those? We'll find out after the jump.

Every hockey pundit talks about how teams need to have consistency at the goaltender position in order to be successful but what exactly does that mean? You could be like the New Jersey Devils, New York Rangers or Buffalo Sabres who have had one main guy and a few back-ups since the lock-out and have received solid goaltending with that. Teams like the Detroit Red Wings, Nashville Predators and Boston Bruins who have used over 10 goalies since the lock-out and have gotten average to great goaltending out of all of them. It's true that there are teams who cycle goalies really well but the team's who get the best goaltending are those who do not have to go through a lot of them over the years.

When I wrote my review of Cam Ward's season about a month ago, I said this:

"I wouldn't put Ward in an elite class like his contract indicates but I do think he will provide the Canes with stable and reliable goaltending for the remainder of his contract."

Why would I not consider a goalie like Ward "elite?" He played in 74 games last season and posted a .927 save percentage. He played a huge role in the Canes Stanley Cup victory in his rookie season. He's started 75% of Carolina's games for the past four seasons. What makes him not one of the absolute best goalies in the league right now? Here's why: The difference between the 6th and 18th best goalie in the league is often very little (something like .005 %) and the word "elite" should only be given to those who really excel above the league average (last year it was .920, since the lockout it's .918) and do it on a consistent basis. A couple months ago, I created a few definitions of what makes an elite goaltender, but I discovered some problems with this, mostly with how goalies who were top-level years ago ended up being close to "elite" through this definition (think Giguere and Kiprusoff). With how much a goalie's performance can change over a short period of time, I'm not sure looking at stats since the lockout is the best way to define elite goalies, but there areother things we can do and they will help show where Ward stands among other top-level goalies in the league and if he belongs in an elite class.

Ward may have helped the Canes win the Cup his rookie season, but he was not that good of a goalie his first three seasons. In fact, he had a sub-.900 save percentage at even strength his first two and was below-average in this third. This is why we can't call him an elite goalie since the lockout. However, in his last three seasons, it's been a much more positive story for Ward as he's had even strength save percentages of .926, .924 and .927, respectively and an overall save percentage of .926. The league average save percentage for goalies at even strength during this time is .920 and Ward's overall ES save percentage from 2009-11 puts him very high in the rankings. Goalies who have posted similar save percentages during this period are Carey Price, Ryan Miller, Kari Lehtonen and Ilya Bryzgalov. That's pretty good company to be in, as far as I'm concerned. Goalies who had higher save percentages than him were Pekka Rinne, Tim Thomas, Jonas Hiller and Roberto Luongo. Three of which were the Veznia finalists in this most recent season and the other one would have been if it weren't for injuries. By this, it does not seem too out of the question to put Ward in an elite class but this seems like we're just cherry-picking because we're only judging Ward by the last three years, which conveniently happen to be his three best seasons.

"Elite" is a tough definition to figure out for goalies because everyone has their own viewpoints on it. Would you consider Ward a top-level goalie because he's had three very good seasons? Would you be comfortable putting him in the same class as Roberto Luongo or even Henrik Lundqvist? I am not 100% sure if I would but it's the same case I have with not calling Pekka Rinne an "elite" goalie because he's only played in three full seasons. Is he a top goalie in the game right now? Absolutely. Elite? If he can keep putting up these kind of numbers for another season or two, then yes.

There's a lot of things about Ward that make me confident, though. First of all he's only 27 and in the prime of his career right now so it should not be a surprise to anyone that he has been improving with every season. Ward was one of the main reasons that this team was able to be in the position that they were last year and it's possible that he could be what keeps the Hurricanes in almost every game they play even if the team is struggling. When looking at the best single season goalie performances, a lot of these goalies had the best seasons when they were in their late 20's/early 30's so Ward's best seasons could be very soon. I don't know if I would consider Ward an elite goalie like Thomas or Luongo now but if his trend of improving with every season continues, then maybe I will be in that mindset.  Either way, Ward is on track to give the Canes great and stable goaltending for at least the rest of his contract even if he isn't elite.

On my old blog, I did this for Washington Capitals goalies Michal Neuvirth and Semyon Varlamov and was planning on doing every goalie in the Southeast Division. I figured that I should continue this project here and I will start with Carolina's netminder, Cam Ward. He has been the starting goaltender for the Hurricanes for the last ever since the 2006 Stanley Cup Playoffs where he won the job from Martin Gerber and helped the Canes win their first Stanley Cup. Aside from the 2009-10 season when he was hurt, he has started in 60 or more games in every year, has had his save percentage slowly improve and was rewarded with a six-year contract extension worth $37.8 million which began this season. How did he respond to this? He started in more games than he ever has before (74), saw more shots than any other goalie in the NHL (2,375, closest was Carey Price with 2,147 shots faced) and posted the best save percentage of his career (.923). I am not the biggest fan of his contract because a long-term deal with a cap hit of over $6 mil is something you only give to elite goalies and I don't think Ward is in that calss yet but the good news is that he appears to be improving every season and proved to be very durable this past season and put up solid numbers while doing so. After the jump, we will take a closer look at Ward's 2010-11 season.