Quoting: Nhl_oilers
Ah the Koskinen debate…. Well you all know where I stand. Koskinen is meh, but overpaid. He needs to go. He makes a total of 4.5M for 1 year, and is a backup. Down below is his stats as an NHL goalie….. as you can see, he has never been the best NHL goalie, but he has been okay. Yes, our fan base is one of the worst, but there is a time that we need to win, and our time is now. We need a good starter. If we can get that, then I would have to say that we will be a good team this year. Comparing him to starters like Markstrom, Ullmark, etc is not fair, because he is simply not as good as they are, also, they played on way worse teams then Koskinen has. That will play with your stats a lot in my opinion, which is another reason why it’s not fair to compare. For example John Gibson, he has bad stats, because he plays on Anaheim, even though he is a top 5 goalie in the league in my opinion. Given Koskinen’s last 4 years, I think his 2019-2020 SV% was a fluke, because he has never been that good since. Anyway, goalies are voodoo, most will play good one game, and not so good the next. But is that the case for old Mikko…. I don’t know. He is okay, but you can’t say he is underrated, and you definitely can’t say he is anything other than an okay overpaid backup goalie.
2010-2011: NYI: 4GP, 2W, 1L, 4.33GAA, .873SV%
2018-2019: EDM: 55GP, 25W, 21L, 6OTL, 2.93GAA, .906SV%
2019-2020: EDM: 38GP, 18W, 13L, 3OTL, 2.75GAA, .917SV%
2020-2021: EDM: 26GP, 13W, 13L, 3.17GAA, .899SV%
Your assumptions are WAY off. Anaheim, Buffalo and Vancouver (and Calgary) have not been markedly worse defensively than Edmonton, and yet those goalies are showing similar stats to Koskinen. You need to fact check yourself.
5v5 shots against per 60, 2019-20 - 2020-21 (rank is based on the top 35 goalies by TOI)
22. Markstrom: 30.65
23. Ullmark: 30.7
25. Gibson: 31.07
35. Koskinen: 32.34
5v5 High Danger shots against per 60, 2019-20 - 2020-21
7. Ullmark: 7.03
19. Markstrom: 7.68
29. Koskinen: 8.50
32. Gibson: 8.78
Koskinen actually faced the most shots of the four and had a lot of high danger chances against, too. So your whole premise is shot to pieces here. Now lets look at how each goalie fared.
5v5 save percentage, 2019-20 - 2020-21 (rank is based on the top 35 goalies by TOI)
3. Ullmark: .932
19. Markstrom: .921
25. Gibson: .916
27. Koskinen: .915
5v5 High Danger save percentage, 2019-20 - 2020-21
12. Koskinen: .833
20. Markstrom: .821
22. Ullmark: .819
24. Gibson: .814
Koskinen is certainly in the mix with these starters as far as his stats go. All these guys get paid more, too.