Last season, Carter Hart's performance on home ice at the Wells Fargo Center was one for the Flyers franchise record books. His overall home statistics (20-3-2 record, 1.63 goals against average, .943 save percentage) ranked among the top three seasons among all goalies in franchise history. As a matter of fact, Hart's .943 save percentage was the best single season at home in that category spanning the team's entire history.
Hart to Beat at Home
Goalie week continues with a look at Carter Hart's performances on home ice
In terms of overall numbers at home, the top two overall statistical seasons are Bernie Parent's 1973-74 season (27-6-2, 1.40 GAA, .938 SV%) and Roman Cechmanek's 2002-03 home performance (14-8-6, 1.59 GAA, .934 SV%). Hart ranked third.
On a leaguewide basis in 2019-20, no goalie in the NHL won more games at home than Hart. Tampa's Andrei Vasilevskiy and St. Louis' Jordan Binnington tied him for the league lead with 20 wins apiece. Hart's goals against average at home ranked 2nd to Columbus' Elvis Merzlikins (1.61 GAA) among all goalies who made at least 10 home starts. Ditto home save percentage, with Merzlikins posting a .948 home SV% in 15 appearances.
Although Hart is only 22 years old (he celebrated his birthday on August 13), he may be hard pressed to duplicate his home dominance to the same degree. On the flip side, Hart has significant room to improve upon his road performance from last season (4-10-1 record, 3.81 GAA, .857 save percentage).
For his part, Hart downplayed the disparity last season as an anomaly. For one thing, he says that he never looks at his stats, whether things are going well or during a rough patch. For another, he does not alter his game-day routine whether the team is at home, on the road or, during the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs in the neutral "Bubble" in Toronto.
"I've always prepared the same no matter where we are, no matter if we're in New York or in Prague at the beginning of the [2019-20] year. It doesn't matter where you're at, you've just got to go play the game," Hart said.
It also should be pointed out that, as an NHL rookie in 2018-19, Hart actually had slightly better road stats than home numbers. Likewise, during his junior hockey career, his home and road statistical splits were comparable.
Additionally, no matter whether the Flyers were at home or on the road, Hart played at a very high level during the weeks leading up to the pandemic-forced pause and eventual cancellation of the remainder of the 2019-20 NHL regular season in mid-March. At the time of the NHL stoppage, Hart was 10-2-0 overall his final 12 starts with a 2.17 goals against average and .926 save percentage.
"He's still learning the game at this level, and he's already very good," Flyers head coach Alain Vigneault said on January 11.
"This is the first [goalie] I've seen grow before my eyes and I'm really enjoying it. I can't say if he'll get to that level like [Roberto Luongo or Henrik Lundqvist at the height of their prime]. You're talking about two Hall of Famers there. But I can say that what I've seen so far, the attitude, the time he puts in to be the best, and the quality of the kid. He's a good kid. If I was a betting man, I'd bet on him."
Hart was the NHL's youngest goaltender in his rookie 2018-19 season and the second youngest in Flyers franchise history to appear in a game (youngest to win a game). Over the past five seasons, an average of 22 goalies under the age of 25 per season have played at least one game in the NHL. On a leaguewide basis the average age of NHL debut among goaltenders is roughly age 24.
Hart, at age 22, already ranks 20th in Flyers franchise history in wins by a goalie (40 to date). Among all Flyers goalies who have appeared in at least 50 games for the franchise, he will enter his third pro season ranked 6th in goals against average (2.59) and tied for fifth in save percentage (.915).
Even if Hart's 2019-20 home-game stats end up being a career-best over however many years he plays for the team, he figures to have better overall seasons in his future, without regard to home/road splits. That, after all, is the biggest test of a goalie's mettle.
One of the main knocks on one of Hart's predecessor Flyers goalies, Steve Mason, was that he had trouble winning on the road and his performance in away games did not come close to what he accomplished at home with sufficient consistency.
Over Mason's 231-game career with the Flyers, he posted 2.30 GAA, .924 SV%, and 8 shutouts. Those numbers were comparable to home splits over the same period of NHL goalies who were considered the game's elites, including Sergei Bobrovsky (2.29 GAA, .925 SV%), Braden Holtby (2.15 GAA, .926 SV%), Pekka Rinne (2.21 GAA, .917 SV%), Marc-Andre Fleury (2.31 GAA, .922 SV%), Tuukka Rask (2.09 GAA, .925 SV%) and Henrik Lundqvist (2.34 GAA, .919 SV%).
However, unlike the Vezina-contending goalies, who often had similar road numbers to their home excellence, Mason's road splits (36-50-22 record, 2.72 GAA, .909 SV%, six shutouts) fell in line with the road performance of goalies who were a tier down in the NHL pecking order, including Eddie Lack (2.69 GAA, .909 SV%), Thomas Greiss (2.72 GAA, .913 SV%), Darcy Kuemper (2.75 GAA, .909 SV%), Kari Lehtonen (2.75 GAA, .911 SV%), Ondrej Pavelec (2.68 GAA, .912 SV%), Antti Niemi (2.84 GAA, .907 SV%), Jonas Hiller (2.73 GAA, .908 SV%) and Cam Ward (2.88 GAA, .900 SV%).
As Carter Hart continues to gain NHL experience, for him to vault from the "good starting goalie" to the "elite caliber netminder" category, he will need to bring his home/road splits in closer alignment in similar fashion to what the latter group of goalies do for far more seasons than not.
The good news: Hart is eminently capable of doing just that. He will have to stay healthy, and the team in front of him will have to do its part, but the potential is certainly there for both the near and long-term future.
