The Struggles of Steve Mason: Part 2

Earlier this season we took a look at the struggles of second-year goalie Steve Mason. Here we are nearly two months later, and the nightmare season continues for the reigning Calder Trophy winner. He enters play on Thursday (Columbus is visiting Edmonton) with a 3.31 goals against average and a .890 save percentage. Both numbers place him in the bottom four of NHL goalies, while his play likely cost him a potential spot on the Olympic roster for Team Canada.

Let's take another look at Mason's season, and again try to determine how much of the blame falls on the 21-year-old goalie, and how much falls on a team that might not be playing as strong defensively.

During Mason's last start, a 7-3 loss against the Canucks, he surrendered six goals on just 17 shots and was lifted for the sixth time this season. He was pulled just once during the 2008-09 season.

When we first looked at Mason's struggles back in November, he was not only giving up more goals per game, he was also facing almost four more shots per game than he was at the same point in the 2008-09 season.

The increased shots could have explained at least some of why he was allowing more goals. Here's how the numbers stack up through his first 33 games.

Steve Mason: The Numbers Through 33 Games
Year	Shots	Shots per game	Saves	Save %
2008-09	891	27.0	824	.924
2009-10	920	27.8	819	.890

The numbers of shots faced have started to balance out, and Columbus has done a far better job of limiting shots on goal since our last look at this. Perhaps the return of Jan Hejda -- who missed nearly a month from October-November -- on the blue line has had something to do with this improvement. Of course, while the shot numbers have decreased, the goals allowed haven't. At least not much.

Through Mason's first 14 starts his save percentage was an embarrassing .879. In the 19 starts since then he's been .899. Better, but still not good enough, and not what Blue Jackets fans grew accustomed to seeing a year ago. Next, let's take a look at where the goals are coming from. The blue X's are goals from starts 15-33 last season, and the red plus-signs are goals from starts 15-33 this season (you can see the chart for starts 1-14 here).

And, once again, here's the big difference. That's a lot of red in the middle of the ice between the circles, and it's because of this that I'm not ready to toss Mason aside as the second coming of Jim Carey.

Yes, he's clearly struggling this season, and yes, he's allowed to make a big stop on a shot from a high-percentage scoring area (hey, it's what great goalies do). But if the Blue Jackets keep allowing a high numbers of shots from those areas (and they are), their goalies are going to keep giving up more goals.