2013 NHL Awards: Bobrovsky for Vezina

It's not just those of us who follow the Blue Jackets closely who know how good Sergei Bobrovsky is.

We all call him Bob, though the chin area of his goalie mask would tell you perhaps he prefers "Bobs". No matter what you call him, adding the phrase "Vezina Trophy Winner" before his name sounds oh-so-good, and he fully deserves the honor.

The Vezina Trophy is of course given annually to the league's best goaltender.

Rewind to January 19th, the date of the season opener for the Jackets. Columbus was on the road in Nashville, opening the book on a shortened season. Though the Jackets weren't playing at home, there was excitement in the air surrounding the team, and hockey in general. The Jackets were coming off their most active offseason in club history, trading their superstar and adding versatile forwards like Artem Anisimov, Brandon Dubinsky and Nick Foligno. One offseason move received little fanfare- the acquisition of Bobrovsky from the Flyers. Nobody knew what to expect from the new goalie, but one thing we did know- he was starting the season opener.

Center Ice on the television, tuned to the Columbus-Nashville game-check. Suds-check. Snacks-check. Jersey-check.

Puck drop, and the 2013 Columbus Blue Jackets season has begun!

Awwwww what the $#*@!

Just 0:39s into the new season, Nashville's Martin Erat skates across the Columbus blueline, wristing a soft shot past the new guy. One of those goals you always hear the color guy saying "he'd love to have that one back".

I know I wasn't alone in thinking, "here we go again..." when I see our new goalie look just like the old goalie, and the one before him, and the one before him...

It took a few games for us all to change our tune on the new guy. He started to play better and better, and was gaining the trust of the fans, and most importantly- the trust of his teammates and coaches. He went from being the new guy, to our beloved Bob. You can go back to a game in the beginning of March to see where this transformation started to take place. Coming off of a hard-fought overtime loss to the Blackhawks with Steve Mason in net, the nod was given to Bob to start the next game against the lowly Avalanche. It was the first game of an extended home stand, and though the Jackets didn't play their best game, Bob looked good and the Jackets won in extra time.

Two days later, the Oilers were in town, but Mason got the start. That lasted until seconds into the middle period, when a Magnus Paajarvi goal chased Mase, in favor of Bob. Bob absolutely shut the door the rest of the way, stopping two in the shootout en route to the victory. It was from that game on that the new guy became our Bob, transformation complete.

Bob went on a tear to close out the regular season, and it was no coincidence that the Jackets were in playoff contention the rest of the way too. He finished the regular season with stellar numbers:

GP	GS	RECORD	SV%	GAA	SO
38	37	21-11-6	0.932	2.00	4

It's difficult to prorate Save Percentage and Goals-Against Average, but you can project wins and shutouts. A rough projection of a full season for Bob could look something like this:

GP	GS	RECORD	SV%	GAA	SO
65	63	35-18-10	0.932	2.00	6

Compare that with the numbers for the past five Vezina winners:

NAME	RECORD	SV%	GAA	SO
Henrik Lundqvist '11-'12	39-18-5	0.930	1.97	8
Tim Thomas '10-'11	35-11-9	0.938	2.00	9
Ryan Miller '09-'10	41-18-8	0.929	2.22	5
Tim Thomas '08-'09	36-11-7	0.933	2.10	5
Martin Brodeur '07-'08	44-27-6	0.920	2.17	4

Bob's prorated numbers for a full 82-game season put him right in the conversation with previous winners. To see just how well he compared to the other goaltenders this season, I came up with a very basic evaluation- I ranked the 26 goaltenders who started a minimum of half of their teams' games (24 starts). I took their relative rank in three categories- wins, goals-against average and save percentage, and summed the ranking. The lower the number, the better, as that would indicate the player was ranked high in the respective categories.

NAME	GS	WIN RANK	GAA RANK	SV% RANK	SCORE
Henrik Lundqvist	43	1	4	5	10
Antti Niemi	43	1	7	6	14
Ondrej Pavelec	43	3	21	14	38
Jimmy Howard	42	3	6	7	16
Pekka Rinne	42	7	11	12	30
Niklas Backstrom	41	1	14	13	28
Evgeni Nabokov	41	2	15	12	29
Ilya Bryzgalov	40	4	20	18	42
Ryan Miller	39	6	22	10	38
Carey Price	38	3	18	14	35
Sergei Bobrovsky	37	3	3	2	8
Devan Dubnyk	37	8	16	8	32
Jonathan Quick	36	5	12	16	33
Braden Holtby	35	2	17	8	27
Kari Lehtonen	35	7	19	9	35
Tuukka Rask	34	4	3	3	10
Mike Smith	34	7	17	12	36
Semyon Varlamov	33	11	23	15	49
James Reimer	31	4	13	6	23
Marc-Andre Fleury	31	2	10	9	21
Cory Schneider	30	6	5	4	15
Martin Brodeur	29	9	8	17	34
Corey Crawford	28	4	2	5	11
Jonas Hiller	25	7	9	11	27
Craig Anderson	24	10	1	1	12
Miikka Kiprusoff	24	14	24	19	57

From this basic evaluation, you can see that Bob was the only goaltender who started at least half of his teams' games to finish with a single-digit score. His numbers were that good. Henrik Lundqvist and Tuukka Rask weren't far behind. Corey Crawford finished third in my format, and Craig Anderson fourth, but he only just qualified at 24 starts. Antii Niemi, Corey Schneider and Jimmy Howard weren't far behind. These eight goaltenders were a full tier above their caged cohorts, and represent the 2013 regular season elite. Bob was the best of the bunch from a strictly numbers perspective.

When looking at these elite eight, you can immediatly see something that could work against Bob in the Vezina voting- Bob is the only one who's team failed to qualify for the playoffs.

The Vezina is voted on by the 30 NHL General Managers, and though making the postseason shouldn't be taken into account when voting for a regular season award, it can be a tiebreaker if a GM is on the fence while voting. That said, Bob's season was spectacular and I'm sure every GM not named Paul Holmgren will agree.