Senators Sign Forsberg to 3-Year Contract Extension
Like clockwork, the Senators have signed a backup goaltender to a multi-year deal following a small sample size of success with the team.
Bryan Murray rewarded Andrew Hammond with a three-year deal after the unforgettable ‘Hamburglar Run’ in 2015. Mike Condon was largely heralded as saving the Senators’ 2016-17 season in Craig Anderson’s absence. Acquired from the Penguins in the fall, Condon’s .914 save percentage helped keep the Senators’ playoff hopes alive. Anderson would return and help carry the Senators to within one win of the 2017 Stanley Cup Final, but Condon was gift-wrapped a three-year contract of his own for his work. Anders Nilsson was acquired during the 2018-19 season when the organization realized that Mike Condon’s health was not going to allow him to play regularly.
This morning the Senators announced that Anton Forsberg has signed a three-year contract extension carrying an average annual value of $2.75 million. Forsberg’s contract does not contain any signing bonuses and there is no escalation in his base salary. According to CapFriendly, Forsberg’s base salary will be $2.75 million in each of those three years.
For Forsberg, the contract is a real feel-good moment that finally brings some stability to a career that has seen him play for 12 teams (AHL, NHL) over the last eight years.
Forsberg has been on an incredible heater since late January.
After posting a pedestrian 21-35-6 record with a .903 save percentage over his first 71 appearances, Forsberg has rocked a .925 save percentage and been one of the league’s best goalies during his last 18 appearances.
There is no question that Forsberg’s play has brought some stability to the position at a time when the Senators cannot count on Matt Murray’s performance or health and Filip Gustavsson simply isn’t playing regularly enough to get a quality read on. In signing Forsberg, the Senators are banking on that continued reliability.
At $2.75 million per season, Forsberg’s contract is not prohibitively expensive, but giving three years to a backup goaltender could eventually be problematic. I’m not saying that because of the collective failures of the Hammond, Condon and Nilsson extensions. Every player and their circumstances are unique. Hammmond and Condon dealt with hip issues while Nilsson had his career end to a concussion. Injuries played a role in their respective downturns, but one risk that is real belongs to regression.
The goaltending position is volatile enough as is, but it is pretty difficult for goalies to replicate save percentages across seasons. That is especially true of shorthanded save percentages and one of the driving factors of Forsberg’s numbers has unmistakenly been his shorthanded save percentage.
Studies have focused on goaltending performance while shorthanded and one Copper and Blue blog post expanded upon it and statistical regression:
One such study was done by Tyler Dellow who looked at goaltending while on the penalty kill and found that goalies who had a high save percentage one year tended to regress in the following season. About this time last season I looked at goalies who had jumped out to a very good save percentage while penalty killing and predicted that they would, as a group, regress toward the mean and by the end of the year, each of the eight goaltenders who had started the year with a save percentage above .900 had seen their PK save percentage fall. Now, some fell further than others but a very high save percentage on the PK is an indication that a goaltender's overall save percentage has a good chance of declining as the season goes on and a very low save percentage on the PK is an indication that a goaltender's overall save percentage has a good chance of increasing as the season goes on.
Using Evolving-Hockey’s data, only James Reimer and Igor Shesterkin have posted higher shorthanded save percentages to Forsberg’s 91.74.
In actually taking a historical look at Ottawa’s shorthanded save percentage numbers, one of the things that really stands out is how many contracts were awarded to goalies after seasons in which their shorthanded save percentage was higher.
Shorthanded Save Percentage (SH Sv%):
Andrew Hammond: 92.07 (2014-15)
Anton Forsberg: 91.74 (2021-22)
Anders Nilsson: 89.13 (2018-19)
Mike Condon: 88.93 (2016-17)
All of these numbers represent career highs for each of the players and that’s the concern.
Hockey-Reference puts the league average all situations save percentage at .909 this season. The league’s average shorthanded save percentage clocks in at .864. Forsberg’s numbers are above both of those figures, so it feels fair to assume that there will eventually be some normalization in the future that returns his numbers closer to his career norms.
I’m happy for the player and his performance. It’s a great story to see him bring some much-needed stability to the position and his career. My only concern is that the term and cost could put the Senators in another situation down the road where they could have reallocated this money to address another position of need.