Blackhawks need Petr Mrazek to repeat reliability of last season

SALT LAKE CITY — Entering his 11th full NHL season, Petr Mrazek has seen almost everything.

In the preseason this year, he added one more oddity to that list: a faked dump-in turned shot-on-goal by Wild defenseman Jonas Brodin that fooled him and went in. It was a reminder to be more careful, and a reminder that he was thankful came during an exhibition game: "Good lesson," he said.

Over the past two-plus years specifically, Mrazek has thoroughly established himself as the Blackhawks' starting goalie and found his comfort zone in Chicago.

He was arguably the Hawks' team MVP last season, regardless of Connor Bedard's Calder Trophy; he singlehandedly kept them close in many games. His save percentage of .907 was just a few ticks above the league average of .903, but the fact he achieved it behind the Hawks' leaky defense made it far more impressive.

But one thing Mrazek has done only once in his lengthy career is post back-to-back above-average seasons, and those were his first two seasons — way back in 2013-14 and 2014-15. Consistency has not been a hallmark.

After posting plus-2.6 and plus-8.3 GSAAs — that being "goals saved above expected," a holistic stat accounting for the quantity and quality of shots faced — he plummeted to a career-worst minus-18.5 in 2015-16, per Hockey Reference.

Since then, his GSAAs have fluctuated year by year: minus-11.2, then plus-4.5, then minus-5.4, then plus-4.5 again, then minus-9.6 and minus-12.5 in consecutive down years, and then a stellar plus-6.6 last year.

Can he buck that trend and post another positive GSAA in 2024-25? The answer is important, because the Hawks — who needed every bit of his plus-6.6 GSAA last season just to get to 23 wins — definitely need him to.

They do have a better insurance plan now in backup Laurent Brossoit, who has posted fantastic GSAAs of plus-7.4 and plus-14.9 the last two seasons, albeit with a small workload of only 34 total games. The idea behind signing Brossoit, however, was to create a strong tandem, not to simply to increase the odds one of their two goalies turns out to be good.

And Brossoit is still recovering from meniscus surgery, leaving Arvid Soderblom — whose minus-23.0 GSAA last year was one of the NHL's worst — temporarily stuck as Mrazek's backup.

Thus, the pressure on Mrazek is significant. And throwing aside all caveats about a one-game sample size, he didn't deliver a great performance in the Hawks' 5-2 season-opening loss to Utah on Tuesday.

He saved 20 of 24 shots, posting an .833 save percentage and minus-1.5 GSAA. Dylan Guenther's first goal in Utah history was especially stoppable; it went right through him.

Then again, Mrazek had little chance on Clayton Keller's marker, and the other two goals came off deflections (although one hit him in the helmet). He settled in as the game progressed, too, making saves more cleanly and decisively. The Hawks could've flipped the script if Tyler Bertuzzi's shot off the post with 66 seconds left had gone in, completing their rally from 3-0 down.

With 81 games left on the schedule, Mrazek's current .833 mark won't last long and won't make much difference in the end. Even last season, he had five games worse than that — and for that matter, even Vezina Trophy-winning Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck, whom the Hawks will likely face Friday, had three games worse than that.

But the Hawks will nonetheless be watching closely for Mrazek to prove he can repeat last season's reliability.

The upgrades they made to their forwards and defense might not translate into the standings, after all, if their goaltending worsens and cancels out those improvements.