Lately, I feel like Holtby has been getting treated a bit unfairly by the Capitals, and wonder if he should still want to play for them, or if he should look for a way out.
Holtby played well enough last season that I moved a couple of my more liked forwards to get him and another on my fantasy hockey team, looking for another starter to compliment Sergei Bobrovsky. I ditched James Reimer (good) and Jonas Hiller (bad), so I needed at least a good #2.
At the beginning of the season, Holtby was the undisputed starter for the Capitals. He started pretty good, but as the goalie carousel started to turn in Washington, Holtby saw less time and became maddeningly inconsistent, which was compounded by the fact that Washington's season was really starting to show hints of the oncoming collapse.
The fact is that overall Holtby actually hasn't played badly. When it comes to goalies, I will generally give more weight to save percentage when trying to determine if they're good. Goals Against Average is a tricky stat to figure out and I've always felt it's pretty subjective. Save percentage, on the other hand, is just that. The amount of pucks they've stopped out of the number of shots face. It doesn't account for quality of shots (That's more of an advanced stats thing anyway), but it will give you a good idea of if the goalie is good on a bad team, or bad on a good team.
So with all that said, on the season Holtby is sitting at about a 91.1 save percentage. He is stopping 91% of the shots he faces, despite his GAA flirting with a 3.00 (he's currently around a 2.98). He also sports 3 shutouts on the season. Short of the GAA, his stats are all pretty good.
However, since Jaroslav Halak was acquired at the Trade deadline, Holtby hasn't even be a 1A. He's been a strict Backup. He's played 3 games since trade deadline day, including one the night of the deadline; Halak has played 9.
I did some stats checking for the two goalies since Halak was acquired at the deadline. Honestly I expected they would show Holtby was significantly better. I was surprised to find that his stats are very comparable:
| Date | Score | GAA | SA | SV | SV% |
| 03/30/14 | L 3-4 | 2.77 | 29 | 26 | 0.897 |
| 03/25/14 | L 4-5 | 3.71 | 36 | 32 | 0.889 |
| 03/20/14 | L 1-2 | 0.93 | 28 | 27 | 0.964 |
| 03/18/14 | W 3-2 | 2.00 | 45 | 43 | 0.956 |
| 03/16/14 | W 4-2 | 2.00 | 29 | 27 | 0.931 |
| 03/14/14 | W 4-3 | 3.00 | 41 | 38 | 0.927 |
| 03/11/14 | L 0-2 | 2.05 | 34 | 32 | 0.941 |
| 03/10/14 | L 2-3 | 3.07 | 20 | 17 | 0.85 |
| 03/08/14 | W 3-2 | 2.00 | 33 | 31 | 0.939 |
| 2.392222 | 0.921556 | ||||
| Date | Score | GAA | SA | SV | SV% |
| 03/29/14 | L 2-4 | 4.06 | 36 | 32 | 0.889 |
| 03/22/14 | W 3-2 | 1.85 | 36 | 34 | 0.944 |
| 03/06/14 | L 0-3 | 2.02 | 42 | 40 | 0.952 |
| 2.643333 | 0.928333 |
The top chart shows Halak's numbers with the Caps, and the average GAA and save% over those games; The bottom chart is Holtby since the trade deadline (and the acquisition of Halak).
Honestly, looking at these number, I don't see why Holtby isn't at least getting at least 1 start for every 2 Halak gets, or more realistically 1 to 1. The biggest problem I see is it just looks like the team doesn't play as hard for him as Halak (though again, that's more advanced stats).
So in summation, I don't really understand why Braden Holtby isn't a little more upset. Or maybe he is and just doesn't want to cause distractions during the playoff push. Maybe this off season there will be a 'surprise' trade that sends Holtby to another team. Or maybe they just want him to spend some more time learning and he'll get another shot at Number one next season.
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