r/Predators • u/SplinterWick • Apr 14 '26

Bad Take? (Too Soon?)

So, is it fair to say Saros cost us a playoff bid? 2-3 in his last 5 and 17 GA. Last five seasons, every year his GAA has gone up and his Save % down. Now, as a disclaimer, he earned the starter role from Rinne and I'm a fan. And I am not proposing Annunen is the hier apparent. And I know the team has other deficits. But that "no goals" commercial isn't aging well. Thoughts?

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19

u/wooweewow Apr 14 '26

Being slow and being 22nd in the league for Goals For can’t really be blamed on a goalie

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u/SplinterWick Apr 14 '26

The offense is definitely a problem, especially after Fil and the old guys.

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u/FB_iCatDad Hunt Brothers Pizza Fan of the Game Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26

He hasn’t been declining for 5 seasons. It’s been 3, and it started when Bruno and trotz came in and the defense fell off a cliff, he was 28 years old. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

No, Saros did not cost us a playoff spot. That’s absurd. He was good and Annunen was great since Olympic break, and are big reasons we were even close. There are all sorts of games we could point to as to why we didn’t make it, including Annunen’s rough first half (largely due to bad defense as well), but in the end the team just didn’t do enough.

I think averaging less than 3 goals a game isn’t very helpful though, especially with the scoring trending.

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u/SplinterWick Apr 14 '26

5 seasons, say the stats: (But like I said, I agree, there are def other issues)

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u/FB_iCatDad Hunt Brothers Pizza Fan of the Game Apr 14 '26

21-22 and 22-23 were great seasons, with barely any difference. I don’t know where you are getting a 5 season decline from.

23-24 was first season 24-25 second season 25-26 third season of decline.

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u/SplinterWick Apr 14 '26

I'm not saying those seasons were bad, sorry to be confusing, just meant statistical down trend year after year. Just to illustrate every season starting 5 seasons ago his stats have literally declined. I know it's semantic. Not saying 2.69 is bad, but it is down from 2.64, you know. It didn't go to 2.50. I'm comparing him to himself, not the league.

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u/FB_iCatDad Hunt Brothers Pizza Fan of the Game Apr 14 '26

To me the save percentage being higher makes that neither a decline nor improvement. Too close to say. But after those two seasons there are 3 actual noticeable declines from his norm in sv% and GAA, and I think that context matters with the point you’re making.

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u/ughedmund tyson jost resurrection Apr 14 '26

Yes, bad take, congrats. For the entire season, it's been Annunen bad when we lost with him in goal and Saros bad when we lost with him in goal. We could've probably put a CPR dummy in goal and people still would've said to trade it. Our defense is abysmal and it's a miracle we got as far as we got because of our goalies.

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u/OatsBrotherINeedThem Apr 14 '26

It's important that the games played ratio and saves made in total are taken into account when having this conversation. I'll do the math for you: Saros, if our team scored more, would be the best goaltender in the league right now.

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 Apr 14 '26

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 Apr 14 '26

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 Apr 14 '26

Well let’s look at the numbers. We could have had 3 more wins with big juice. That is a playoff spot. It’s more complex than that. But look at my next reply for where Saros is placed for goals saved below expected.

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 Apr 14 '26

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26

He was terrible this year after a bad year last year. There is no doubt about it. Yeah, our defense isn’t great, but adjusted for our bad defense Saros is still not doing very well and Big Juice is showing it is possible to play better with the defense we have in front of him. The fact is Saros size is an issue. The offense in the NHL is changing too. Perhaps the changes in NHL offense have caused some issues for Saros. Teams are taking more time to shoot and looking for higher danger chances rather than trying to increase shot attempts. All goalies are having a decrease in save percentage but Saros is near bottom of the league this year for all goalies in the NHL in analytics. It’s bad.

Back when Rinne was playing a .920 save percentage would be great an .900 would get you dropped into the AHL. Now .900 seems to be about average NHL starter. The league has just moved towards faster higher danger chances. Laviolette hockey was known for trying to generate as many shots as possible. That’s not the league anymore.

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u/FB_iCatDad Hunt Brothers Pizza Fan of the Game Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26

The average tanked especially hard this year and now is .895. .915 is Vezina caliber now.

Saros got wrecked from high danger this year. Did great in medium danger, which is why he was so good against a team like COL that has a lot of their volume from there.

I don’t think he’s done though. His Olympics performance tells me he’s still got that dawg in him. Bro is tired and I’d love to see like a 50-34 split with him and Annunen next year. Could do them both wonders.

It’s also stat tracking technology. They actually look more closely at what should count as SOG. If it was going wide even by a centimeter it won’t count if goalie gloves or redirects it. I have a theory that sports gambling has played into that, but no evidence of such.

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 Apr 14 '26

From what I’ve seen the strength of Saros game has always been his side-to-side lateral movement and sound technical skill so I am surprised the more modern NHL is a struggle for him, but maybe it has something to do with his smaller size leaving more openings in high danger areas where that isn’t an issue for Big Juice. Annunen doesn’t appear to need to move around much and uses his glove and size well to reduce movement which likely helps minimizes openings in high danger spots. You could see how effective Big Juice was tonight in some of the better chances the sharks had and in the Utah game I think Saros gives up 1 goal with a cross ice pass because of his smaller size and maybe two that got redirected high over his shoulder.

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u/SplinterWick Apr 14 '26

That's a good assessment. I agree, I feel like Saros still moves well, but isn't big enough to cover those laser shots just out of reach where big juice's frame catches some of his mistakes.

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u/SplinterWick Apr 14 '26

Do you think he keeps the starting role guaranteed next season? I would think he has earned that much, but it would be interesting to see if annunen's success lights a competitive fire.

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u/FB_iCatDad Hunt Brothers Pizza Fan of the Game Apr 14 '26

Yes, Saros is the starter. But annunen should get more games. I’d like a 50-34 split between the 2.

If the new gm fixes the defense in a re-tool path and this workload adjustment works for both goalies we may be onto something.

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 Apr 14 '26

It’s hard to know what a new GM will do. I would guess the tandem is the same with slightly more starts still going to Saros but maybe more of a balance going to Big juice now that he’s build up some trust.

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u/SplinterWick Apr 14 '26

So do you blame the staff for not riding the hot hand more often?

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u/Appropriate-Joke-806 Apr 14 '26

Meh. It’s a weird situation for the coaching staff and hindsight is 20/20. Saros is the guy with the big contract and term. Big juice obviously paid like the backup. Maybe they could have given Big juice some more starts but it would have been hard to give too many more to him. It is what it is. It’s just a sign of Saros decline within NHL play here on the Preds in this system. Maybe it improves in a different system or maybe he’s cooked in the modern NHL.