Saying Farewell – Martin Jones
- Updated: August 11, 2015
We recently said farewell to Justin Williams and Jarret Stoll, and today we say goodbye to Martin Jones. As we did with Williams and Stoll, we’ll try to evaluate what the Kings are losing in Jones and how they plan to replace his production. So how big a loss is Jones?
After a lot of analysis and research, here’s my answer:
“I don’t even know who Martin Jones is!” – This guy^, probably
Just kidding… sort of. For reasons I detail below, I do think he’ll be good, but it’s kind of hard to tell. He could be the next Patrick Roy. He could be the next Jamie Storr. Most likely he’ll be somewhere in between, but guessing how good a goalie will be is pretty much a crap shoot. Here, I’ll let respected hockey prospect analyst Corey Pronman explain it:
Save percentage is the only stat that is really useful for NHL goaltending performance, and it is really unreliable. You need years worth of save percentage data for it to be a useful stat for determining the true talent of a goalie, and you will still be wondering if it is even accurately tracked. Once you have waited years and found out how good a goalie really is, unless you have one of the very best or very worst starting goaltenders, chances are the other 20-25 goaltenders are not all that different skillwise from each other.
When it comes to prospects, scouts have not been able to identify the top amateur talents during their draft season. Even when they were to identify them correctly, even the best goaltending prospects take many years before they can get to the NHL and establish themselves in a starting role.
So the best stats we have for goalies are unreliable, and scouts are even more unreliable than the stats? Fantastic. Well, since all we have are stats and scouting reports, we’re going to use them both and hope we can come to a reasonable conclusion. Let’s start with the stats.
Since 2012, Jones’s .923 SV% ranks 10th amongst all active goalies who have faced at least 500 shots. He’s nestled in nicely between two slouches you might have heard of: Sergei Bobrovsky (2013 Vezina trophy winner) and Henrik Lundqvist (2012 Vezina trophy winner). Hmm, we’re off to an inauspicious start.
Further, Jones was not some slouch in the minors that just popped out of nowhere. His .921 SV% over nearly 5,000 shots in the AHL is very good. Stephan Cooper found that, on average, we can expect about a .7% drop in SV% from the AHL to the NHL, so we would expect to see a .916 SV% from Jones in the NHL. So while this suggests that Jones’s .923 SV% is probably above his true talent level and that it is unlikely that he will continue to have a higher SV% in the NHL than he did in the AHL, even a .916 SV% would make him about a league-average starter, which is pretty darn good. From 2012-2015, that performance would put him on par with the following goalies:
http://www.puckalytics.com/goaliestats.html
Of course, even strength save percentage (EVSV%) is a superior measure of a goalie’s true performance over large periods of time, so let’s take a look at how Jones fares in comparison to other goalies over the past 3 years and awww man that just makes him look even better!
http://www.puckalytics.com/goaliestats.html
There he is, 4th from the top. I know what you’re thinking. “OH EM GEE, THE KINGS TRADED A 25-YEAR-OLD HYBRID OF CAREY PRICE AND HENRIK LUNDQVIST!”
Well, maybe. But probably not. When evaluating goalies, we need to keep this chart in mind, because it helps to keep us from overreacting to small sample sizes.
Arctic Ice Hockey: Fooled by Randomness: Goaltender Save Percentage
This graph is basically telling us that when a goalie comes up to the NHL and posts a .930 EVSV% (Jones has posted a .934 EVSV%), he needs to face about 1600 shots before we can say with 95% confidence that his results aren’t just luck. Jones has only faced 624 shots to this point in his career. According to this chart, that means there’s about a 15% chance that his play has been just luck-based. So while there’s definitely still uncertainty about how reflective his EVSV% is of his true talent level, I’d be pretty happy with those odds if I were the Sharks.
Ok, so the stats say he’s probably at least a league-average starting goalie going forward. What do the scouting reports tells us? Is his NHL success out of nowhere and counter to what the scouts predicted? Well, yes and no.
It’s out of nowhere in the sense that Jones was never considered an elite talent in the WHL before he was eligible for the draft. In 2008, all 30 teams passed him over for all 7 rounds of the draft. So scouts completely whiffed on Jones, which is not uncommon for goalies. But the Kings’ scouts saw something in him, and signed him to an entry-level contract after the draft. After that point, all he did was impress in the WHL and AHL. In his last full AHL season, Hockey’s Future rated him a 7.5 C prospect, meaning it saw his upside as a journeyman #1 or regular #1 starter that had a decent chance of reaching that ceiling. So in that sense, his performance has not been a surprise and he is merely achieving what some saw as his NHL ceiling.
His ceiling is as high as his hair
So what can we take away from all this? On one hand, Jones is unlikely to be as good as he’s shown in the NHL thus far, and the data we have, while positive, just isn’t enough to be conclusive that his elite play to this point is reflective of his true skill level. On the other hand, his AHL track record, his NHL EVSV% and the scouting community consensus all suggest he’s definitely deserving of the chance at a #1 goalie job. I think the Sharks will be pleased with their gamble.
All that said, the Kings were right to move him when they did. They have shown their commitment to Jonathan Quick by signing him to a 10 year deal in 2012, so while I think Jones is definitely the better bang for the buck (and might, ahem, might even be the better NHL goalie) there’s no way they were moving Quick, so moving Jones was the right decision. I just don’t think they got enough for him. When Jones got flipped by the Bruins to the Sharks, he fetched a first rounder, not to mention that a league-average starting goalie at $3 million is a lot of surplus value. So by including Jones in the trade, the Kings essentially departed with TWO #1 picks, plus arguably their top D prospect. That is a very steep price to pay for one year of Milan Lucic – even a half-price Lucic.
The good news is the Kings did well to replace Jones by signing 27-year-old Jhonas Enroth, a former 2nd round pick who is better than his reputation. I was as shocked as you probably will be, but his EVSV% over the past 3 years has been about equivalent to Quick, Antti Niemi, Eddie Lack, Jaroslav Halak and Kari Lehtonen.
Not bad company at all, considering all those guys, except Lack, have been unquestioned #1 goalies for their teams. At $1.25 million for 1 season, this is a great signing for the Kings as a bridge goalie until they decide whether JF Berube or Patrik Bartosak are NHL ready next year. So while Enroth isn’t as good as Jones, Jones was a luxury the Kings couldn’t afford, and Enroth is about as good as you can expect in your backup goaltender.
So, in closing, as good as Jones could be, they’re unlikely to miss him a great deal next season as he wasn’t going to play much anyway, and the drop-off from him to Enroth is not as great as it would initially seem. Where the Kings are more likely going to miss Jones is a few years down the line, especially since he ended up in their division, despite the Kings’ best efforts to prevent that very thing from happening. By the end of next season, we should have a much better idea of exactly what type of NHL goalie Jones is, and just how much his departure will hurt.
As is now tradition, I’ll leave you with a favorite highlight from the recently departed King. Jones’s career began on a remarkable note, filling in for Ben Scrivens who was filling in for Quick, and going 8-0 in the first 8 games of his career. Of those, his very first start was the most memorable, stonewalling the rival Ducks 9 times in the shootout to get the win. Fare thee well, Joner.
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