Time to Kill Now – A hockey history blog by Ben Massey

Patrick Roy and the Incredible Improving Goalies

July 1, 2026 Statistical history 3,676 words

Here are the first eight full seasons of a goalie's NHL career and then, in the last row, his career totals. You know who this is, because his name is in the title and his picture is over there, but let's take a second and pretend. What would you think when you saw these?

Season	Age	GP	W	L	T	GA	Sh	Sv	Sv%	GAA	SO
1985–86	20	47	23	18	3	148	1186	1038	0.875	3.36	1
1986–87	21	46	22	16	6	131	1206	1075	0.891	2.94	1
1987–88	22	45	23	12	9	125	1248	1123	0.9	2.9	3
1988–89	23	48	33	5	6	113	1226	1113	0.908	2.47	4
1989–90	24	54	31	16	5	134	1522	1388	0.912	2.53	3
1990–91	25	48	25	15	6	128	1362	1234	0.906	2.71	1
1991–92	26	67	36	22	8	155	1806	1651	0.914	2.36	5
1992–93	27	62	31	25	5	192	1814	1622	0.894	3.2	2
8 Seasons		417	224	129	48	1126	11370	10244	0.901	3.14	20
Career		1029	551	315	131	2546	28346	25800	0.910	2.54	66

Even forcing the fact that this is Patrick Roy out of your mind with a bulldozer, you'll recognize a very fine goalie of the late '80s and early '90s. Then you'll look at the career stats and say "yes, of course, all-time great." I do not propose to surprise you with that. Everyone knows Patrick Roy was a great goalie and everyone is right. Sometimes, conventional wisdom is wise.

But see those season-by-season save percentages, then look at the bottom, to Patrick's career save percentage. Six of Roy's fisrt eight full seasons had save percentages below his career average; often quite a lot below. It is something of an article of faith in statistical circles that, and this fully deserves capital letters, Goalies Don't Improve; that by the time a goalie gets to the show he's enough of a finished article that you can't expect a lot more from him. Patrick Roy went from a .901 save percentage in his first eight seasons to a .910 overall; a difference of thirteen, fourteen goals against a season. If a skater goes from 36-goal seasons in his mid-twenties to 50-goal seasons in his thirties we have no trouble recognizing an improvement, though we might find it somewhat mystifying. Sure, Roy went from the high-scoring 1980s to the low-scoring 2000s, he played in an era where save percentages went up, but Patrick Roy was still the same goalie. The passage of time did not improve his reflexes. In fact, the conventional story is that Roy, by popularizing the butterfly, had a lot to do with what made his era one with high save percentages; in short, Roy should have been way ahead of the field early on, as a pioneer, but come back down to earth as the butterfly became ubiquitous. This, as you can see from that table and as you remember from his career, is not what happened.

July 1, 2026 Statistical history 3,676 words

Hipster Hockey in New York Before It Was Cool

July 29, 2026 Random entertainment 1,747 words

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The philosopher Conan once said: "What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women." True at the time, but the best in modern life to cheer with the smallest group of fellow-fans required for it to technically count as a public event. It is called being a hipster and it is the only way to be. Tragically, as hockey fans, hipsterdom is not easy, for these days most organized North American hockey is either affiliated with or aspires to affiliation with the NHL, and going to a midget game to cheer one someone else's kid is a bit creepy even for those of us with giant mustaches reeking of IPA. So we must look back into history, at some of the great hipster hockey teams that can never become too mainstream, because the river of time has passed them by.

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July 29, 2026 Random entertainment 1,747 words

SUCS Values for WHA Players, 150+ GP

July 4, 2026 Subscriber Bonus Posts 881 words

This post is available to subscribers at CAD$15 and up.

Following up on the Dominion Day article on WHA players, here are the 285 players who got into 150 or more WHA games and the SUCS score I assigned them by clicking around Hockey Reference and vibing out their careers. What a great opportunity! It's a 200-odd row table, which would have distorted the main article slightly, and since I'm now asking for your money in exchange for bonus posts, I get to tease you with what a bonus post might contain.

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July 4, 2026 Subscriber Bonus Posts 881 words

How Good Was the WHA: The Subjective Factor

July 1, 2026 How Good Was the WHA? 3,888 words

The World Hockey Association was major league-quality hockey when you look back at its best players and the overall quality of its teams, as well as the finest defensemen in a very forward-first league. A major league is defined by having players who can star in other major leagues, and teams that could compete with those in other major leagues; both boxes the WHA has already been shown to check.

We have not yet, however, explicitly looked at the ordinary WHA players who didn't earn as much money as Bobby Hull but added up to far more ice time. Such players were not the key factor on the ice or in history, but hockey is a team game and not even Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl win on their own. Depth players matte and, to quote myself quoting Bill James, as he discussed baseball's Union Association, traditionally but unworthily considered a major league:

The Union Association had big-league players. James counted 272 players who played at least once in the UA; 179 of them either had no other major league experience or mere cups-of-coffee, there were 53 otherwise-fringe major leaguers, 26 players who had been or would be major-leaguers but were either too old or too young at the time, 14 “legitimate major league players,” and, for James, zero stars. The WHA did have NHL stars; besides Hull and Tremblay, Gerry Cheevers, Bernie Parent, Derek Sanderson, and Paul Henderson played in the WHA in their prime. But several major-leaguers, in both the UA and WHA, put up numbers way above their otherwise-established level, while no established pros that James could found particularly disappointed in the UA and few did so in the WHA. As James put it:

Doesn’t it seem pretty obvious what the level of competition in that league was? It was a league that made .270 hitters into .400 hitters, and .450 pitchers into Sandy Koufax. In modern baseball, Al Martin is a career .280 hitter. Let me ask you: if there was a new league now, and if Al Martin hit .400 in that league, and Donovan Osborne went 23–4, would you accept that as a major league?

285 men played 150 games or more in the World Hockey Association, which adds up to two or three seasons as a regular in a league that lasted seven. Of those 285 players, how many of them were playing at an NHL standard during their WHA careers? The best way to find out would be to play hockey history over again in a control universe where the WHA never existed, but that is beyond the scope of this post, so we have to hit the encyclopedias instead.

July 1, 2026 How Good Was the WHA? 3,888 words

Time to Kill Now is Offering Memberships

June 30, 2026 Site business 778 words

Like you, I have a horror of excessive panhandling. At the same time, if there's no way to support the site, nobody will. Thus, Time to Kill Now is now taking subscriptions for a small (or a medium!) monthly fee. In exchange for your generous support, you get regular posts a week early, and get access to bonus content that will primarily appeal to those interested enough to pay for it.

If you'd like to support the site, please do become a subscriber and choose the tier that is most comfortable for you. Subscriptions are run through this site, with payments handled securely through Stripe and your information kept here rather than used on someone else's marketing list, but if you prefer to use your Patreon account, there is also a Time to Kill Now Patreon. As to the tier names, if you know you know.

Time to Kill Now is and shall remain a free-friendly site. You will not have to pay a dollar, not even a Canadian dollar, to get the good stuff. The goal of taking subscriptions is not just to make money and allow you to show your appreciation, but also to improve the free content that the site will continue to deliver as regularly as practical.

June 30, 2026 Site business 778 words

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