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Minnesota Wild Regular Season Review: Tough Year for Dubnyk

By Aaron Heckmann|
ST PAUL, MINNESOTA - JANUARY 05: Devan Dubnyk #40 of the Minnesota Wild acknowledges the crowd before the game against the Calgary Flames at Xcel Energy Center on January 5, 2020 in St Paul, Minnesota. The Flames defeated the Wild 5-4 in a shootout. (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)
ST PAUL, MINNESOTA - JANUARY 05: Devan Dubnyk #40 of the Minnesota Wild acknowledges the crowd before the game against the Calgary Flames at Xcel Energy Center on January 5, 2020 in St Paul, Minnesota. The Flames defeated the Wild 5-4 in a shootout. (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)

For half a decade, the Minnesota Wild could rely on two things: Good Defense and Solid Netminding from Devan Dubnyk. This year Duby just didn’t have it.

Just a reminder that this series of articles covering each Minnesota Wild players’ performance will take into account each player’s contract, offensive production, and overall play using analytics and our perceptions to determine each player’s impact and value to the Wild this season.

Starting from the worst, each article will work its way up until the last article in the series which features the player who, in our eyes, had the best regular season.

#21 – Devan Dubnyk

"Aaron: D-Brandon: FLake: D-"

Devan Dubnyk had a very tough and disappointing regular season. The 2019-2020 campaign was Dubnyk’s worst season since coming to Minnesota. Dubnyk, who has been on the decline the past couple of seasons, looked uncomfortable in net almost the entirety of the regular season. Dubnyk did miss a bunch of games due to a personal emergency. He dealt with a lot of adversity throughout the season and struggled to keep his composure in the net.

According to Evolving Hockey’s GSAx, which takes into account shot quality, Dubnyk’s -27.49 GSAx ranked dead last in the NHL. Dubnyk’s -15.45 Goals Saved Above Average (which takes the league’s average save percentage and applies it to the number of shots a particular goalie has faced. It produces a number of goals that the average goalie in that league would have surrendered if they faced the same number of shots as the goaltender in question.) ranked 80th among all NHL goaltenders.

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Dubnyk finished the regular season with a .890 save percentage which is an immense drop from his career average with the Wild. Dubnyk’s .739 high danger save percentage ranked dead last among all NHL starting goalies, third to last among all NHL goaltenders.

Overall, Dubnyk had a poor season in every metric, which saw him lose his starting spot towards the second half of the season. Dubnyk, who has been on the decline the last several seasons, will look to rebound on the last year of his contract assuming he doesn’t get traded or bought-out.

(Editor’s Note: Goals Against Average and Wins were not included because they are considered to reflect more about the team and not the Goaltender.)

Highlight Of The Year:

The opening night game against the Nashville Predators featured Dubnyk’s best highlight of the season. It arguably should be the save of the year. Duby had several incredible saves: a mid-air redirect against the Coyotes, a skate save preventing the puck from crossing the goal-line against Colorado. The quality of these crazy saves would lead you to believe Devan Dubnyk had a great season, but unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Dubnyk became the 73rd goaltender in NHL history to play 500 games and was honored this season where he was given a silver stick.

All stats are from Evolving Hockey, Hockey Reference & Natural Stat Trick.

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