Why Goalie Evaluation Is Tricky

This comment about Adam Ghitelman's performance this weekend reminded me of an issue that comes up a lot in my lacrosse experience. Because I am the parent of lacrosse goalie, I often get questions about different goalies and how good they are. For example, I might be at a tournament and people will ask me about a goalie on an opposing team. Usually the question comes in the form of a comparison to a known goalie: "Is that kid better than [insert reference to other goalie here]?" I have learned to preface my comments with something to the effect of, "I didn't see him for enough to be able to judge fairly..." because you never know whether the goalie in question is having a particularly good or a particularly bad game for him.

Since we started with Adam Ghitelman, I'll use him as an example. I have had the opportunity of seeing Adam Ghitelman a couple times live and a bunch of times on TV. I remember the first time I saw him live because of the near hypothermia. Virginia was playing at Princeton on a really cold, rainy day last year. It hapened to be the first regular-season lacrosse game on ESPN. Goaliedude and I were particularly interested in the goalies that day because Princeton's goalie, Alex Hewitt, is a friend of a friend, and Adam Ghitelman was the heralded freshman starting for Virginia. Neither one played particularly well that day and, even though Virginia won the game and he made some big saves, Ghitelman looked out of his depth at times. It was not too many weeks thereafter that Bud Petit took over the starting role from Ghitelman. Had I relied upon my impression of Ghitelman that day, I would not necessarily have expected what came next. Ghitelman of course led the USA to a gold medal in U-19 world championship last summer and has played much better this year. When he is on his game, Ghitelman can be electrifying and exciting; there also have been times when he looked pretty ordinary. Every goalie, no matter how good, goes through some tough stretches.

I see this kind of thing on a regular basis. A particular goalie's performance can ebb and flow over the course of a season or longer. A guy who isn't really an elite level goalie might have a good game and stop everything in sight. A guy whom we probably will watch on TV one day sometimes can't stop a beach ball. And even the rates of consistency vary with goalies. There are some who are pretty solid if unspectacular and there are others that run hot and cold. That is why you want to look at as big a body of work as possible when evaluating a goalkeeper.

I'll leave the point with another goalie story: A very strong team on which Goaliedude was playing had a game against another good club team a while back. This other club team happens to have one of the best goalies around. He is a very steady performer who does not make many spectacular saves but rarely gives up a soft goal. Well, he couldn't make the game because he had a scheduling conflict and so his backup had to fill in. Not surprisingly, the backup isn't quite the goalie that the starter is but happens to run more hot and cold. Of course the backup had the game of his life, made saves the starter never would have made, and his team won the game in overtime. It's a funny game sometimes.