By Steve Farnham, Associate Editor, All Habs Hockey Magazine

LONGUEUIL, QC. — At this time of year, I would like to wish each and every one of you Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and all the best in the new year to you and your loved ones.

Over the past week, I decide to embark on a little project. I wanted to have a better idea of where Carey Price’s goals against were entering the net, this after one of many arguments I had with my good friend Mike, about Carey Price’s supposed weak five-hole, according to him. Of course, goalies often tend to look bad on goals that squeak through their pads and I think that’s because people tend to remember these ‘bad goals’ more than the other goals.

I see this a little like someone who drives home every day from work. For the most part, it’s a simple drive home through goddamn traffic, but one once a while, it’s an even slower drive home because there was an accident. On occasion it’s a bad accident, and you might call someone and tell them about it, tell friends/family as soon as you get home, tweet about it and/or even update your Facebook status because of it. Hell, you might talk about it for days. You see accidents all the time, they aren’t uncommon at all, but this accident was bad and it’s left an imprint on you, the same way the bad goal did. If you recently got into a car accident, I’m sorry that I’m comparing your experience to a goals against, but moving on.

The following data was not data obtained from any source or database, it’s all my own data collected from watching the highlights of every single game played so far this year. The charts you are going to see are my interpretation of where the goals were scored, or where the goals were scored from. In the case of distance, I basically looked at where the goal was scored from and then compared this to charts of hockey rink dimensions in order to establish the shot distance. Quite a few hours of pressing play, pause and watching stupid goddamn Avaya commercials Canadiens dot com. (You’re welcome for the plug, Avaya)

If there’s any margin of error, it’s that some of the angles on these game highlights are absolute crap. Sometimes, it’s a little difficult to tell exactly where the puck entered the net, or whether the puck deflected on a defender in front of the net or not. In any case, I’m confident that for the majority of the goals against, I’m accurate with the data.

When you look at the charts for goal locations below, keep in mind that Carey Price has 62 goals against this season. What struck out at me was how the majority of goals appear to be going in on Price’s blocker side, low and middle. In the case of the five-hole, only three goals against all season so not something I would even want to have another argument about. The majority of the goals going on Price are wrist shots with a total of 28 on the season (45%) while slapshots have only beaten Price clean on three occasions this season.

With regards to shot locations, you’ll notice that the locations for the goals appear to be quite concentrated around the net, with 53% of goals being scored from within 10 feet of the goal line. Many of these were deflections. It shows that Carey Price has been hard to beat from the perimeter and only teams able to get into the red zone have been rewarded. You could argue that the Canadiens need to do a better job of protecting the front of the net, but on the other hand, with the third best goals against average in the league, the Canadiens aren’t doing all that bad for the most part in that area.

I’ve also included stats for goals against per period, which doesn’t reveal much, with the second period being most costly (39%) while the first period is where Price gave us the least goals (27%). It’s by goals against per game situation, where we can see that in his 30 starts, Price gave up the first goal 14 times.

Last are the stats for special teams, where Price excels at even-strength. His .938 Sv% is fifth best in the league. What concerned me was he .903 Sv% on special teams, which I thought was rather low. After verifying, it’s seventh best in the league among starters, so I guess it’s really not that bad at all.

If you’d like to use this data for any of your pieces, feel free, just please credit the source. Thank you!

		Carey Price #31
	Position: Goalie Height: 6-3 Weight: 209 Catches: Left		Born: August 16, 1987 Birth Place: Anahim Lake, British Columbia Draft: 2005 by the Montreal Canadiens Round: 1ˢᵗ round (5ᵗʰ pick)

2013-14 – Regular Season Stats:

Goals Against – Goal Locations:

Goals Against – Shot Types:

Goals Against – Shot Locations:

Goals Against – Average Distance:

Goals Against – per Period:

Goals Against – Game Situations:

Goals Against – Special Teams: