Anaheim Ducks: It’s Time for John Gibson to Stop Being Disrespected
Every team has their own lynchpin, the player who the fans love, and is often the bane of their opponent’s existence. For the Anaheim Ducks, that player is John Gibson.
It’s inevitable in a league of 31 teams, there will always be a player who is underappreciated, who doesn’t get the credit they deserve and will be underrated by just about everyone who doesn’t watch that players team religiously. But at a certain point, it turns from being underappreciated to being disrespected, and at that point, someone has to speak up. The Anaheim Ducks have a player currently on their roster who falls into this category, and today I will be speaking up to point out the glaring ridiculousness that is the consistent disrespect of John Gibson.
Recently the NHL Network has been putting out lists of their “top 10” or “top 20” players at each position (center, winger, defensemen and goaltender) and, as expected, there are truly controversial takes: Jaccob Slavin not making the defensemen list at all, Mark Stone not cracking the top 10 in the wingers category, and Evgeni Malkin only being #13 on the centers list are all what would be considered “hot takes” and ones that I personally think are valid criticisms.
However, none struck a chord with me as much as when they released their goalie list. Gibson was ranked 10th on that list, and our own Ciara Durant already covered what an injustice that is. I don’t think it’s enough, however, so today I am going to be doing a deep dive on John Gibson and making a case why he should not only be a lot higher than #10 in a ranking of best goaltenders in the NHL, but why anything short of being in the top 3 is wrong.
Note: I will be using advanced statistics and numbers that go beyond the normal wins, save percentage, and goals-against average that everyone is familiar with (I will be using those as well but less often) but will do my best to explain as I go, unless otherwise noted my statistics will be coming from Corsica Hockey.
The Misconceptions of John Gibson
There are two main misconceptions when it comes to John Gibson and they both are not correct and need to stop.
1. The Ducks should have kept Frederik Andersen instead of John Gibson.
This is a trend that has been going on since the trade that saw the Anaheim Ducks make Gibson their definitive goalie of the future. Frederik Andersen was a fan favorite amongst the Ducks faithful and in building up that fandom, fans look for any shortcoming that John Gibson has, and say, “should have kept Freddie!”
Here’s the thing, Freddie is a great goaltender (and he didn’t even make the NHL Network’s top 10 list, which is a travesty in and of itself) but when you put John Gibson up against Frederik Andersen head to head during their time as starters for their respective teams, there’s a pretty clear picture shown. Gibson has the edge in save percentage (93.01% ahead of Andersen’s 92.66%) he has a higher save percentage in low danger, medium danger, and high danger chances.
When you look at his expected save percentage (the save percentage a goalie should post when looking at league average performance based on the quality of chances he’s faced. Essentially what his save percentage should be when looking at the shots he’s faced) Gibson is 1.16% higher than what is expected of him (save percentage of 93.01% when expected save percentage is 91.85%) while Andersen is only .59% higher than his expected (92.66% save percentage when expected is 92.06%.)
Lastly, when you look at goals saved above average, (really simplifying it is the number of goals that a goaltender has stopped that theoretically, a “league average” goaltender would have surrendered) since 2016, Gibson has saved 45.04 goals above average while Andersen has saved 29.54 goals above average. Gibson has the nod in literally every category that looks at a goalie’s individual performance rather than a team effort. Luckily this opinion has died down a bit over the last year, but it is still out there and it shouldn’t be. The Ducks got the better goalie even if the Maple Leafs got a very good goalie as well.
2. John Gibson is so injury prone
This is by far the most annoying thing that’s said about John Gibson. Yes, Gibson like everyone playing a high impact sport gets banged up sometimes. But to say that John Gibson is always hurt is ridiculous. John Gibson became a full-time starter in 2016, in that time Gibson has played the 11th most games out of any goaltender. He’s played more games than Andrei Vasilevskiy, Tuukka Rask, Mike Smith, Marc-Andre Fleury, Jimmy Howard, Ben Bishop, Jonathan Quick, Corey Crawford, Semyon Varlamov, and Cam Ward among many others. Yet the majority of those goaltenders don’t get nearly the same amount of “injury-prone” claims as Gibson. Gibson is not injury prone.
John Gibson is Off to a Historically Good Start of a Career
John Gibson has only played 236 games in the NHL, during that time he has amassed a .921% save percentage. An impressive feat, but even more impressive when you factor in that as things stand right now he is 3rd all-time in career save percentage among goalies who have played 100 games, the only two players with a higher save percentage are (in my opinion) the greatest goaltender of all-time Dominik Hasek and Canadiens great Ken Dryden who both have a .922% save percentage.
Gibson has started his career in a remarkable fashion. He’s taken the starting job for an Anaheim Ducks team that was on the downswing and kept them afloat. During his reign as a starter, the Ducks have been 17th, 18th and 31st best in the league in goals scored while being 3rd, 3rd and 19th in goals against. The Ducks have been either mediocre or anemic at scoring chances over the past 3 years yet John Gibson stands tall time and time again and is literally the only reason that the Ducks were not dead last in the league this past season.
When you look at this chart from Cole Anderson on Twitter (If you have twitter I highly recommend you follow him, a great reference for goaltender statistics with creative charts. It shows that Gibson (with some help from Ryan Miller) prevented an absurd amount of goals. As well, this chart shows where the Ducks would be had they had “league average” goaltending. Bumping them down from the already disappointing 24th best team all the way down to 30th best. AKA: The second-worst team in the league behind only the Ottawa Senators.
Lastly, I want to take a look at Gibson’s statistics in comparison to all goaltenders from 2010 up until now. Gibson ranks 1st in the entire NHL in save percentage over that time period. Ben Bishop, Rask, Carey Price, and Pekka Rinne make up the rest of the top 5. Bishop was close, posting a .9210% in comparison to Gibson’s .9215%. Gibson is 4th in goals saved above average. Wait… He’s not even in the top 3? Gibson has 87.96 goals saved above average, Sergei Bobrovsky who is 3rd has 89.51, Corey Schneider who is 2nd has 98.3 and Henrik Lundqvist who is far and away 1st has 146.36.
The difference being that Gibson has played 151 fewer games than Schneider who has the next lowest games played in that top 4. Lundqvist has played 519 games, more than double Gibson’s 235. Were Gibson to play as many games as Cory Schneider has played, and continued the pace he is on, he would have a GSAA of 144.44 in 133 fewer games than Lundqvist. Were he to play as many games as Lundqvist and maintain this pace, his GSAA would go to an astronomical 194.21. Yes, all of this is presuming that Gibson was to maintain the pace he is on to reach these numbers, but on a per-game basis, you’d have a hard time arguing that any goalie has brought more to his team than John Gibson has.
John Gibson has done everything in his power to be the best player on the Anaheim Ducks, and he’s succeeded, he’s done everything in his power to be one of the best goaltenders in the world, and he’s succeeded. Unfortunately, the Ducks are not in a huge market like Toronto, New York or Montreal, nor are they a juggernaut of a team like the Tampa Bay Lightning, and that means that John Gibson will likely not ever get the respect he deserves. After all, so far it’s only netted him a single 3rd place Vezina trophy vote (the same amount that Jacob Markstrom received and 8 fewer votes than both Jordan Binnington and Darcy Kuemper.) I’ve come to peace with that realization, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit quietly as one of the best goaltenders in the game continually gets overlooked.
Next. Ondrej Kase Should be on the First Line. dark
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