If Connor Bedard has been the Blackhawks’ early-season bright spot that everybody saw coming, Petr Mrazek has been the Hawks’ early-season bright spot that nobody saw coming.
The 31-year-old veteran goaltender, coming off consecutive years with save percentages below .895, has been nothing short of spectacular in his first eight appearances.
His .921 save percentage ranks 14th in the NHL (out of 58 goalies with 200-plus minutes of action so far) and his plus-4.7 GSAA ranks 11th.
And even those stats understate how impressive Mrazek has been, given the massive workloads the Hawks’ leaky defense has forced him to handle most nights. He has faced the fifth-most shots per minute out of those 58 goalies.
“He reads plays so well,” Hawks forward Taylor Hall said recently. “He seems to think like a shooter or a passer a lot of the time, and he plays very instinctively. When he’s on, he’s really on. You can see that. He has been really, really good for us this year.”
Mrazek’s biggest key has been his health. Last season, he was not only sidelined for several different stretches with recurring groin injuries but he also felt less than 100% healthy even during the stretches he was playing. He improved as the season went on — his save percentage was .875 as of Jan. 16 and .907 after that date — but he remained far from perfect.
This season, however, he finally feels 100% healthy for what he believes might be the first time since 2018-19.
“This month was probably the healthiest I’ve been in five years,” Mrazek said Wednesday. “You never know; anything can happen tomorrow. But the way I was handling myself this month and the things I changed [this past] summer helped me going forward.”
But what has Mrazek’s firmer health actually allowed him to do better in the net this season? Digging deeper into the numbers, it’s interesting to discover the most significant difference stems from his ability to limit soft goals against rather than to stop an outsized number of likely goals.
His save percentage against high-danger shots (such as rebounds, shots after seam passes and shots on odd-man rushes) is .806 this season, which is exactly the same as it was last season. That ranks 32nd out of the 58 goalies league-wide, meaning slightly below average.
During the peak of his career, a three-year stint with the Hurricanes from 2018 to 2021, his high-danger save percentage was .822 — substantially better than this season.
Conversely, his save percentage against medium- and low-danger shots is .961 this season, which ranks sixth out of the 58 goalies league-wide. He has allowed only seven out of 179 such shots to cross the goal line, meaning there have been very few situations where he would — as they say — “want it back.”
With the Hurricanes, his medium-to-low-danger save percentage was .943. Over the last two seasons, that dipped to .921 (with the Maple Leafs) and .929 (last season with the Hawks). So far this year, he’s sitting well above even his Hurricanes mark.
“When you feel good on the ice and you feel confident, sometimes the puck hits you even more than usual,” he said. “When you’re confident, you know you’re stopping that puck, no matter what. Obviously, sometimes you’re going to give up bad goals, but you just have to shake it off and show the big save and get the confidence back.”
The Hawks’ spaced-out schedule up to this point and the coaching staff’s commitment to splitting the goalie starts almost equally with young Arvid Soderblom has probably helped Mrazek stay fresh, too. His seven starts and one relief appearance — out of 13 games — have been spread over the span of 37 days.
That will inevitably change soon, though. The Hawks’ matchup Thursday against the Lightning begins a jam-packed stretch of 16 games in 29 days.
