In doing the research for my post on Jacob Markstrom, one of the things I did was run the numbers for all Swedish goalies who have played in the NHL over the past 25 years. That chart didn’t end up making the final cut, but it was interesting enough on its own that I want to post it in here in the context of a discussion on the recent performance of Swedish goalies in the NHL and what that might be able to tell us about the effectiveness of that country’s goalie development model.
Here is the complete NHL performance of every goalie from Sweden since 1990, with league-average adjusted save percentages normalized to .914:
Two things stand out from that chart:
1. Sweden has really blossomed as a goalie producing country over the last decade (15 of the 23 Swedish goalies to ever play in the league have made their debut since the 2005 lockout).
2. The save percentage numbers are quite mediocre for the group as a whole, with the exception of the outstanding Henrik Lundqvist.