What Teams Could Use Dryden McKay?

Dryden McKay went undrafted a couple of years ago and is now able to sign with any team that he wants to. McKay won the 2021-22 NCAA Hobey Baker Award for the best player in college hockey and he is the all time leader in shutouts after beating Ryan Miller’s record earlier this season.

From: sportingnews.com

It wasn’t until today that I found out that he was originally supposed to play for the College of Holy Cross but his family couldn’t afford it. So he uncommitted and played for Minnesota State instead. In his 4 seasons of NCAA D1 Hockey he posted a 113-40-2 record with a .932 Save Percentage and 26 shutouts.

So since he can sign with anyone, the question that needs to be asked is: “What team needs Dryden McKay?”

So I decided to do a little math. What I did is I took every single goalie that has played this season, and averaged that out with all the other goalies that played with that team. Sounds confusing? Basically I just averaged each team’s Save Percentage.

As of April 11, 2022, 122 goalies have played in the NHL. And those goalies are from a wide variety of teams. Like the Calgary Flames, who have only played 2 goalies the entire season: Jakob Markstrom and Daniel Vladar. But then there’s the New Jersey Devils, who have played a total of 7 goalies the entire season. This is on a range of 23 games, all the way to only playing 2.

Now what I found was interesting, the top team was the Pittsburgh Penguins. This was probably because of a 1 game 0.976 Save Percentage outcome from Louis Domingue. Now that is one of the things that explains why this formula is actually flawed. There will be goalies that have played 1 or 2 or maybe 3 games with a super high or super low Save Percentage.

There is also the looks alike of the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Carolina Hurricanes at the bottom of the list. Tampa is at the bottom because of a 1 game performance by Hugo Alnefelt where he gave up 2 goals on 7 shots. Carolina is near the bottom because Jack LaFontaine let in 8 goals on 39 shots in 2 games.

So when trying to figure this out, you actually have to take in account the average Save Percentage along with how many goalies a team has played that year.

Now on the top of that list would be the Arizona Coyotes, the Montreal Canadiens, and the New Jersey Devils. Now that’s where you get your answer. All of these teams have played 5 or more goalies this season and they are at the bottom of the Save Percentage rankings.

- The Coyotes have a solid rookie goaltender by the name of Karel Vejmelka but they have set to find a capable backup to help him out.

- The Canadiens are just at the bottom of the Save Percentage rankings all together. Their highest Save Percentage is from Jake Allen with a .905, so they need someone to help boost that.

- The Devils highest Save Percentage is .902 from James Reimer and Mackenzie Blackwood hasn’t been playing his best hockey lately. So the Devils could use some help on the back end.

Stats from: hockey-reference.com, eliteprospects.com, wikipedia.org