Awesome piece Plank. I’ve also been a huge skeptic of many fans’ claims that he’s best when he makes a ton of starts, if for no other reason than he’s human and will benefit from occasional rest like any other human. That, and he’s 34 (we actually share the same birthday month and day). Considering how Greiss stood on his head against a surging Phoenix team on New Year’s Eve, I’m amazed he hasn’t gotten more starts on his own merits, let alone for the purpose of giving Nabby some rest.

I like Nabby, I think he’s a very good goalie but Im still alittle worried about my Sharks and this years playoffs. Especially if we play Detroit or Anaheim.
Nabby’s got to play like like he did in the 2004 playoffs. If he doesn’t play good in the first couple of games I think they should ride Thomas Greiss

but the data still isn’t proving to me that Nabby is better off with fewer games. Out of the three years that are shown on the line graph, all of them end within 5 100ths of each other, including a year where he played less and ended with a worse save percentage.

I see your point in 03-04 where he only played 59 games and ended with a SV% DIF of +1.4. However if you look at year 08-09 where he only played 3 more games than 03-04, Nabby had an atrocious -2.0 SV% DIF. (granted that was the year of his injury).

My only argument for giving Nabby more games lies within the line graph. He has a pretty consistent SV% in year 07-08 from around game 55 through the end of the regular season. So even if the SV% isn’t great, it at least seems to me that Nabby is physically and mentally consistent.

IMHO

But the biggest factor is much simpler in my mind:

Evgeni Nabokov’s best years were wasted on very middling Sharks teams.

It takes a lot to build a winner. You need solid D, depth at forward, and great goaltending.

Should this current team fail to win a Cup, I think we’ll be asking ourselves what could have been if we had the pre-lockout Nabby with Joe. In Joe’s first season with the team, he was all-world. He’s still one of the best, no doubt, but he’s far from HIS best. Before the lockout, Nabby was the best goaltender in the world for my money. But, he’s a Warren Strelow goaltender, and age catches up to them. Kipper has admitted to age being a factor in his modest decline. Toskala is all but washed up.

Nabby is still a darned good goaltender, but he’s not his best anymore either.

I do still believe this team can win a Cup, but they’re going to have to fight that much harder for it.

How fitting is it that you have a post on Nabby and Behind the Net has a post the same day about Are Expensive Goaltenders Worth the Money? with Nabby as the main mention.

I’ve been looking at this from the other side of the debate, actually. I wanted Nabby to get fewer starts because I wanted to get a look at (and the team to get a look at) what they had in Greiss. With Nabby being a UFA this offseason, it would have been really, really beneficial to know what we had in Greiss, and to get him some real NHL experience, so if we did have to roll with him next season, it wouldn’t be a complete unknown. It baffles me that the Sharks didn’t seem to care what they had in Greiss and essentially let him waste an entire year riding the pine behind Nabokov.

As far as how Nabby will play in the playoffs with his current workload…well, only time will tell. He could be lights out, he could fade. I think it’ll be pretty impossible to tell until we get there. Goalies are streaky.

What if we let Nabby walk in the offseason and go after a guy like Dan Ellis from Nashville and platoon him and Greiss next year?

We’ll get a better look at Greiss and see what we actually have, and have a proven NHL goalie in the tandum?

I don’t know how much Ellis is going to command, but I can’t think it would be Nabokov money.

Even if there is a lot of healthy (and definitely reasonable) disagreement in here, at least it made the front page of Nhl.com:

Score one for controversy.

Obviously we don’t have enough data to definitely say that Nabby plays better when he gets lets starts, but at the very least the data should tell us that he probably doesn’t play better when he gets more starts; and taking into consideration the fact that he’s a human being who’s in his mid 30’s, it should be common sense to assume that he’d play as good or better with fewer starts and more rest. I think that’s what Plank is getting at really.

No matter what, Nabby shouldn’t have gotten so many starts. If Nabby really does play better when he’s playing a lot of games, then we could’ve just had him start every game for a week or two going into the playoffs, but theres no reason he should’ve played so many games earlier in the season.

They should’ve let Nabby rest more and given Greiss a better look since he could (should imo, assuming he looked good) be our guy next year.

http://www.bay-area-sports-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/evgeni-nabokov-poseidon-mask.jpg

I DIDNT POST THAT ONE BECAUSE ITS FREAKIN HUGE

YOURE WELCOME

A lot of negativity here, my friends. I’m working on a piece today on Nabokov for tomorrow that will hopefully instill a small hope or two in your souls as we approach the dreaded end of the regular season. Let’s beat the subject to death and leave it at rest.

It is a human tendency to only remember the present while completely ignoring the history.

New Nabokov article here.

When you look at the numbers you can get burned…see anyone who has relied on Toskala after he “padded” his stats in San Jose…(and I always liked Toskala)

Maybe the Sharks as a whole are making Nabby look better than he is? or maybe as many, including the Mr. have suggested, Nabby is the team MVP and declines in his playoff numbers are a reflection of what happens between the teams out in front of him during pressure packed playoff pushes.

When you look at his save percentages in the playoffs, his best years were when he played less than 60 games..Now he is in his middle 30’s and they are playing him more than ever..Whats that all about??

Now one other thing I must mention in Nabby’s defense, the Sharks haven’t play with the sense of urgency and passion that their opponents have in the playoffs, so his numbers could also reflect that..

The playoff problem is team wide, its certainly not all about Nabby, even though his five hole last year was wide open, but I also remember game four of the Anaheim series when the whole team didn’t show up..

God these memories suck and lets hope we can make some positive memories in this playoff season..