It’s no secret – the Buffalo Sabres have a deficiency in net. After the organization neglected to improve their goaltending tandem this offseason, fans have lamented how it might adversely affect the team’s odds of success.

To be quite frank, I am higher on Linus Ullmark than most of my analytics cohorts. Goalie metrics are unpredictable and sporadic at times, but the 27-year-old’s underlying stats were leading me to second-guess why I still had faith in him as a starting-caliber NHL netminder.

For that reason, I took another dive into the numbers and came up with a conclusion – Linus Ullmark is a good goalie, with a critical flaw.

Even-Strength Metrics

We’ll start with an area of the game where Ullmark produced strong underlying numbers in 2019-20. At five-on-five, his rankings among his contemporaries might come as a surprise to some. Of the 30 goaltenders who carried the highest TOI rates at even-strength last season, his GSAx rate of -.017 ranked ninth overall (only eight goalies in the NHL posted a positive even-strength GSAx rate in 2019-20).

That mark put him ahead of well-regarded starters like Jacob Markstrom, Robin Lehner, and Carey Price. Part of the reason for that success had to do with how well he controls rebounds at even-strength. In fact, his rebound-per-shot rate of just .0297 was one of the top marks in the NHL. Comparatively, Hutton’s rate of .0468 meant that Ullmark was about 36-percent less likely to allow a second-chance opportunity.

Ullmark’s aforementioned even-strength GSAx rate represented a vast improvement over where he stood the year prior. In 2018-29, his mark of -10.73 was actually the eighth-worst mark in the NHL among starters.

That improvement is obviously a good thing. In terms of rebound control, he’s always been proficient in that area. During the 2018-19 campaign, only three of his NHL contemporaries were more proficient in that area.

At five-on-five, most of Ullmark’s individual metrics from the 2019-20 season place him in the top-third of starters league-wide. So, why are his overall base stats not as reflective of that even-strength success?

PK and High-Danger Woes

There’s no getting around it – Ullmark’s penalty-kill numbers in 2019-20 were abysmal. It’s worth noting that the team in front of him didn’t help matters. Still, his shorthanded GSAx rate of -5.6 was fifth-worst among NHL goalies who played more than 30 games last season.

Obviously, high-danger scoring attempts come at a much higher rate on the penalty-kill. So, I decided to look into that metric in all situations to see how Ullmark fared against his counterparts. It wasn’t good.

Last season, only five NHL starters/rotational goalies had a lower high-danger save-percentage than Ullmark’s rate of .785. This represented a pretty significant reduction from his 2018-19 rate of .817 (under the same criteria). Still, even at his best, he’s been below-average in this area.

His poor high-danger metrics and crushingly bad penalty-kill numbers kind of go hand-in-hand. Obviously, a higher proportion of high-danger chances-against occur on the penalty-kill versus even-strength.

One important note to make here is that Ullmark’s poor penalty-kill numbers didn’t directly result in the Sabres having one of the worst shorthanded units in the league. Even if we were to adjust his save-percentage to reflect the league-average, Buffalo’s penalty-kill ranking would have only improved from 30^th to 26^th in the league.

A Professional Opinion

I wanted to go a step further in this analysis. The numbers certainly paint a picture of a goalie who excels in stopping low-to-medium danger chances, but struggles against high-danger opportunities, but why? Is it a positioning problem? Issues tracking the puck amid sustained zone pressure?

To try and gain some clarity, I reached out to former Sabres netminder, Martin Biron, who sees things a bit differently than the data indicates (particularly when it comes to Ullmark’s penalty-kill performance).

Knowing Ullmark’s style as a very active goaltender, my initial thought was that perhaps his mobile nature was causing him to over-play the puck in sustained zone-pressure situations. Biron didn’t see that as an issue. Instead, he cited the team’s poor penalty-kill execution, and how they frequently facilitated opposing traffic in front of the net while shorthanded.

“A lot of penalty kills in the NHL are very similar,” Biron stated. “One detail that changes from one team to another is the position of the net-front defenseman. I find that the Sabres play a lot more on the backside post, allowing players to come from the short side and create chaos at the net.”

Based on Biron’s observations, that issue of “chaos”, as he aptly worded it, could conceivably exacerbate Ullmark’s issues as a player who already has difficulty in high-danger situations. Still, I wasn’t quite satisfied, so I pressed a little further, asking if perhaps he was having an issue tracking the puck for extended stretches on the penalty-kill.

Biron didn’t seem to subscribe to that train of thought either.

“To me, it comes down to where the execution on the PK needs to be better,” he said. “It’s as simple as – how many times did they get scored on as a result of a failed clearing attempt? It’s the execution of what they wanted to do on the ice that failed.”

He did go on to say that a goalie’s mentality changes a bit on the penalty-kill in the sense that they need to know who is on the ice, and what their strengths are. At five-on-five, Biron described this as more fluid since players are only on the ice for short intervals.

“On the penalty-kill, the faceoff is in your zone right away. Right then, my mindset was always – who are the five players on the ice? What side do they shoot? What is their usual position on the power-play?”

To be clear, Biron certainly did not indicate that he felt this was a problem for Ullmark, just that the mental process does change a bit in that regard. From someone who spent 14 years in an NHL cage, he seemed pretty steadfast that the execution of those in front of Ullmark was mostly to blame for his shorthanded woes.

The metrics don’t agree entirely, but there is definitely evidence there to suggest that the problem is two-fold (i.e. the execution was bad, and Ullmark wasn’t up to snuff). Still, the individual metrics seem to indicate that he stopped a lot fewer shots than expected on the penalty-kill, and it’s an area he’ll need to address to some extent either way.

Final Thoughts

The Sabres’ 2020-21 campaign will probably require a marked improvement from the goaltenders if the team hopes to bust their nine-year playoff drought. Ullmark is the de facto starter, and with Hutton coming off the worst season of his career, he’ll be leaned on to carry the load.

If he can somehow improve his shorthanded play to more closely reflect what he was able to do at even-strength last season, Buffalo will be in good shape. If he continues to struggle with high-danger opportunities, however, there will be trouble.

The Buffalo defensive corps is an uninspiring unit overall, and the team lacks strong defensive entities at forward. Pair that with reports that Ralph Kreuger wants his club to be more aggressive on the forecheck, it could result in a higher rate of dangerous chances-against. Ullmark will need to be at his best if that’s the case.

As he enters his late-20’s as a player with one year remaining before he becomes a UFA, his ambitions of being a long-term starter at the NHL level could hang in balance this season. Hopefully, he is able to rise to the occasion.

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