Has the Change in Goalie Coaches Made Any Difference in Ottawa?

Written By: Trent Raynard

I know it has been said many times already, but I’m going to say it again: the goaltending has been atrocious for the Ottawa Senators this season. There has been many suggestions made about how the situation could be improved in the future (SENS TALK blogger Luke Muise made a great one in his recent post). President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Steve Staios has not made any chances for the players in net for the Senators since he joined the team in September, but he did make one change to the department halfway through this season.

On January 15th, it was announced that Zac Bierk (who had been the team’s goaltending coach since April 2021) was being re-assigned to a scouting and development position and that Justin Peters had been promoted to the role of goaltending coach with the Ottawa Senators. Peters had previously been the goaltending coach with the Belleville Senators, Ottawa’s AHL affiliate team. We all knew that any change would be slow, but now that it has been two and a half months since the change, I think it’s time for us to take a look at the numbers. Has there been any improvements in the play of Anton Forsberg and Joonas Korpisalo since Justin Peters took over?

Under Bierk

Forsberg had spent all but eight games of his tenure as a Senator working with Zac Bierk. The first full season that Forsberg spent in Ottawa (2021-22) was his best, going 22-17-4 with a 2.82 GAA (goals against average) and a 0.917 SV% (save percentage). Unfortunately, his play since then (including this season) has been disappointing. Before Peters took over as the goaltending coach this season, Forsberg had a record of 7-8-0, a 3.35 GAA, and a 0.889 SV%. 

Forsberg had a tendency to let in the first shot early, allowing the first goal within the first five shots against in six of his 15 starts before January 15th. The fragile team was not usually able to recover from those early goals against, going 1-5-0 in those six games. There were also multiple winnable games where Forsberg’s play essentially sealed their loss. The worst of these was the team’s 5-2 loss against the Canucks on November 9th when Forsberg allowed five goals on 16 shots. 

GA/100xGA is a goalie statistic that compares how many goals against a goalie lets in compared to their “expected goals against,” which is determined by how many shots they face and the quality of those shots. A goalie with a GA/100xGA value of 100 has stopped exactly the same amount of goals they “should” have stopped. The further below 100 a goalie is, the better they have been compared to “expected”, and the higher above 100 a goalie is, the worse they have been compared to “expected.” Forsberg’s GA/100xGA before January 15th was 114.57 (55th out of the 64 goalies who had played at least 500 minutes over that span).

As poorly as Forsberg played during the first half of this season, Korpisalo was arguably worse. Expectations were high for Korpisalo going into this season. He had put up good numbers in 2022-23 with both the Blue Jackets and the Kings (2.13 GAA, 0.921 SV%), and the hope was that he would be able to replicate numbers at least close to those in Ottawa. That has not been the case. Up until the hiring of Justin Peters, Korpisalo had an 8-15-0 record, a 3.70 GAA, and a 0.884 SV%, all numbers near or at the bottom of the league. 

Like Forsberg, Korpisalo also had a tendency to let in an early goal, allowing the first goal against with the first five shots in ten of his 23 starts. He showed plenty of athleticism and flashes of brilliance, but more often than not, he followed these up by allowing a soft goal. In fact, Korpisalo was third last in the league in LDSV% (low-danger save percentage) during this period. Finally, his GA/100xGA was 120.11 (60th out of the 64 goalies who had played at least 500 minutes).

Under Peters

I want to be clear about two things. Firstly, I know that along with switching goaltending coaches in January, the team also changed head coaches in December. It would be hard/impossible to definitively attribute any team improvements to either or both of those things. Secondly, hockey teams win or lose as a team. It’s easier to play well as a goalie when the rest of the team is playing well too, so it would be hard/impossible to say for sure whether the goalies are, in fact, playing better or if it is just the team as a whole playing better. With that being said, we can look at their stats to see if their results have improved since January 15th. 

For Forsberg, he has improved in some areas and regressed in others. On the positive side, his GAA has gone down a bit from 3.35 to 3.17. His GA/100xGA has also gone down from 114.57 to 109.17. His winning percentage has increased from 0.467 to 0.600, but most people will tell you that wins don’t really tell you the whole story for goalies. Wins are a team stat, so good goalies can lose on a bad team and bad goalies can win on a good team.

The main concern with Forsberg is that his SV% has not been as good as it was earlier in the year. His overall SV% has dropped from 0.889 to 0.880. This may not seem like a huge drop, but it is noticeable when it comes to goalie performance. The main area of difference was in medium-danger shots where Forsberg went from a 0.852 MDSV% before January 15th to a 0.825 MDSV% since. In general, when a goalie struggles with these types of shots, it means that he is lacking focus during the game or is out of position too often.

Korpisalo, on the other hand, has improved in every area, and noticeably so. His GAA has dropped nearly a full goal from 3.70 to 2.79. His GA/100xGA has decreased from 120.11 to 103.78. His SV% has increased from 0.884 to 0.899, and (perhaps more importantly) his high-danger SV% has increased from 0.783 to 0.810. Korpisalo has been seeing the puck better and being in a better position on a more regular basis.

His numbers are still not anywhere near the top of the league, but they are almost league average, which has corresponded to the team having a 6-2-1 record when Korpisalo has started in the month of March. I think this showcases something important for this team. They don’t need their goaltending to be the best in the league; they just need it to be ok. It is possible that both Korpisalo and Forsberg had put a lot of pressure on themselves at the beginning of the season to be “game-stealers.” Hopefully. the last few months have shown them that if they can just play a solid game, they have a good enough team in front of them to win. 

What does this mean for next season? I’d say that it’s still unlikely that the Senators start 2024-25 with Korpisalo and Forsberg as their tandem. But perhaps the future is not quite as bleak for Korpisalo as it seemed like it was at the beginning of the season.