For hockey fans of a certain era, it was the single most important goaltending statistic.
Goals-against average, generally reduced to the acronym, GAA, is simple to calculate. It’s merely the number of goals allowed by a goaltender over 60 minutes of play; i.e. the total number of goals allowed per full-length game.
It’s an old idea, going all the way back to the birth of the NHL. When Toronto (just Toronto; the team had no official name in 1917-18 because it was a stand-in for the Eddie Livingstone-owned team that was barred from the league) won the Stanley Cup in 1918, they used just 12 skaters all season and starter Hap Holmes posted a 4.73 GAA.
That’s ancient history, of course. In a roundabout way, that’s the point. GAA is a relic of the past, a statistic with no value outside the historical for the entirety of my lifetime—a dated reference that should have been dropped around the same time Return of the Jedi opened in theatres.
In 1983-84, the NHL started tracking the save percentage of goaltenders league-wide. The new statistic was not only manifestly superior t ...
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Article written by Jonathan Willis
Goals-Against Average Should Be Abolished from the NHL’s Statistical Lexicon
July 16th, 2014 by Jonathan Willis Leave a reply »
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