Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Ben Bishop, a Vezina Trophy nominee in 2013-14, has only one year left on his contract. His current deal, which carries a cap hit of $2.3-million, has proved to be a steal for Steve Yzerman’s Bolts. The question now is whether or not the team should commit big dollars and big term to a goaltender who has only been with the team for one full season.
As Cory Schneider navigated his contract negotiation with the New Jersey Devils, I was particularly intrigued and impressed by the research HockeyBuzz blogger Todd Cordell did on the topic.
Firstly, Cordell
compared Schneider’s contract to those of other elite goaltenders around the league. You’ll note in that piece, or on the table I’ve modified below, that Schneider is arguably the NHL’s best goaltender right now. Given that, his contract is more than reasonable.
What followed next was a blog that linked to
Hockey-Graphs’s Marcel projections for Schneider’s future performance. Cordell
articulately notes that Schneider is poised to be an elite goaltender for a long, long time.
With all that in mind, I thought it would be prudent to look at some of those same numbers and projections for Ben Bishop.
To begin, it’s worth mentioning that Bishop doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the résumé he’s built himself over the past four seasons. Among goaltenders who have played more than 100 games since the 2010-11 season, Bishop ranks right up near the top.
Note: Goaltenders who have played more than 100 games since 2010-11 are ranked by save percentage.
One thing that sticks out on that table is the ‘Contract’ column. There’s a lot of big money there. While Bishop’s sample size isn’t quite as large as some of the other tenders listed, he is certainly part of a very elite group. That’s going to cost some serious coinage.
While players undoubtedly derive contract value from past performance, the teams signing them are far more concerned about future performance. How does Ben Bishop’s future look?
Using that aforementioned Marcel system from Hockey-Graphs, which projects save percentage for the next few years, it looks like he will continue to be a very solid option in net.
For those of you who didn’t go through the trouble of reading the methodology behind that forecasting system, it essentially weighs past performance, adjusts for regression towards the mean, and then adjusts again for aging. Bishop’s regression percentage is greater because his sample size is smaller. While not a perfect science, it does appear to provide some accurate fodder for analysis.
The bottom line here is that Ben Bishop is a really, really good goaltender. If he plays well again to start next season, he’ll be in line for a big raise.
This is where things get complicated. Unlike New Jersey, who doesn’t have an all-world goaltending prospect coming up behind Schneider, the Lightning have Andrei Vasilevskiy.
After spending his Junior days in Russia, Vasilevskiy is coming over to North America this season. Steve Yzerman has already hinted that he may see NHL time this season, should he perform well in the American Hockey League with the Syracuse Crunch.
Can the Lightning afford to commit to Bishop with Vasilevskiy waiting in the wings? It’s tough to say.
Having so much strength in the crease is an enviable thing, but it can also become quite ugly if managed incorrectly (See: Canucks, Vancouver). For now, Bishop is the number one goaltender. And, based on these projections, it doesn’t look like he has any intention of relinquishing that title.
You don’t have to look very hard to find someone who will warn you about the dangers of tying yourself to a goaltender. With that said, every piece of evidence we have suggests that Bishop, like Schneider, might be a guy worth inking to a fairly sizeable deal.
As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart has been the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz since 2012. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter. 
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