Claimed: A Case for the Tuomas Tukio Trophy ;)

[Higgins 3,618]

A Case for the Tuomas Tukio Trophy

 

Okay, don't let the name piss you off, it's just hypothetical and soon you will see why I actually named it that. After some discussion in the suggestions forum about awards where @Beketov mentioned an award for the goalie with the lowest Goals Against Average (GAA) it turned my brain back about 20 seasons. I wrote a magazine article around the time Tukio was in his infancy in the league. The award I coveted so much while playing for the Titans alluded me every season I played in Helsinki, and that was the Shaw Trophy for Top Goaltender. Tukio had a great team in front of him, and would have great stats including wins, shutouts and GAA, but that save percentage would cost him that Top Goaltender award. When you are a good goalie on a good team you will face fewer shots, fewer shots means your save percentage is harder to maintain.

 

Anyways back to the my magazine article. I did research looking back from S1-S30 or so on goaltenders. I compared Top Goalie award winners to the goalies with the lowest GAA. I found that the large majority of the time that the same goalie would win both awards. My dream of a GAA award died with my own research unfortunately. I really wish I could find that article, it's on my external hard drive but I don't have access to it right now. Maybe my methodology was wrong though.

 

 

It shouldn't be for the goalie with the lowest GAA. It should be for the goalies on the team with the fewest goals against. We saw a bit of controversy at the end of the season about back up goalies. Well what if there was actually something on the line here? Managers would strategically play that back up in hopes of getting the easy match-ups and keep the dream alive for their starter. Or it would promote the usefulness of a non-CPU backup goaltender.

 

Now to the point. I went back through the awards of the expansion era (S31-S52) and compared the Top Goalie award winner to the team with the lowest goals against. It was REALLY close most season with teams finishing with 2-5 goals less than the second lowest. Here are the results I found, to see if I could actually justify the creation of a new award after 50 seasons.

 

 

To my surprise there were a total of 6 seasons where the Shaw Trophy Winner would have also won the Tukio Trophy. I thought it was going to be at least over 50% of the time, but it turned out to be 27%. There was one interesting season, S38, where the Top Goalie winner actually did play for the team with the fewest goals against, BUT Brick Wahl was the back up goalie on NY so it was important to include that as a separate winner. There has been so few seasons with 2 goalies on a team and it's pretty telling that 2 of those times ended up on this list in S38 and S43.

 

Does it justify creating a brand new award after 50+ seasons of just the Top Goaltender award though? As conservative as I can be I actually think it does. I now ask, what's your take?

 

 

[Devise 4,475]

You know even if a team doesn't have a back up goalie, something like this may encourage a GM to set their back up smarter as well even if it's just a CPU. Because if it's a team award, the GM would benefit from playing their worst player the 8 games where they are most likely to give up the least amount of goals. I think there is certainly merit to this idea, and it's probably one of the easier awards to implement since it really doesn't interfere with anything we already do. 

[Kesler 1,514]

Tommy Taco imo.

[Smarch 3,194]

I would have won an award!

[BluObieZ 1,125]

I think a Robbie Zimmers Trophy is needed. What it's for I don't know

[Da Trifecta 1,902]

I'd back this

[Frank 5,258]

We don't need a Most Overrated Goalie Trophy we already have enough awards tbh...

[Higgins 3,618]

Just now, Frank said:

We don't need a Most Overrated Goalie Trophy we already have enough awards tbh...

 

savage

 

top leader ---

>>> wave good-bye

to the pile with Bratislava >>>

[Devise 4,475]

6 minutes ago, Higgins said:

 

savage

 

top leader ---

>>> wave good-bye

to the pile with Bratislava >>>

 

Top leader should be a forum award and we should have a few more forum awards as well and give those out every season too. Best graphic, best ms, etc. Should be voted on by the pt staff too since grading means less.