The first thing I thought when I saw that Chicago Soul goalkeeper Jeff Richey had recorded a shutout over the Syracuse Silver Knights in a Major Indoor Soccer League game on January 4 was, “Good for Jeff.” Richey is a good guy who has been toiling for various Midwestern indoor teams for a decade now, so recording a shutout – a fairly rare occurrence in the high-scoring world of indoor soccer – was a tremendous accomplishment for him.

When I read Richey had been credited with a league-record 45 saves, my second thought was, “That sounds like a lot. Too many.”

Turns out it was.

First, a little perspective: the average number of shots on goal per game in professional indoor soccer has been fairly consistent over time. Since the original MISL began tracking shots on goal (a shot that would have been a goal were it not for the intervention of the goalkeeper, as opposed to simply shots – a distinction which will come in handy later), most games of the top pro indoor leagues have averaged between 52 and 67 shots on goal per game. We’re actually in a fairly fallow period these days, as the skill players have more opportunities to play outdoors than they did in the mid-1980s through mid-1990s and rugged defenders are far more likely to be the norm than scoring wizards. (Today’s environment is also a key point that will come in handy later.)

Yet in looking at the combined shots on goal per game this year in the MISL, I found something interesting: games in two particular MISL venues feature nearly 33 percent more shots on goal than the other five. Here are the numbers of combined shots on goal per game in each of the MISL’s seven venues, through games of Friday, January 25, 2013:

COMBINED SHOTS ON GOAL BY MISL VENUE, THROUGH 1/25/2013
Venue	G	Shots	Average
at Chicago	8	423	52.9
at Syracuse	10	461	46.1
at Missouri	8	350	43.8
at Rochester	9	368	40.9
at Wichita	10	355	35.5
at Baltimore	9	306	34.0
at Milwaukee	8	271	33.9
LEAGUE	62	2,534	40.9
Chicago/Syracuse	18	884	49.1
Rest of League	44	1650	37.5

 

Now look at the games this year in the MISL that have featured the most total shots on goal by both teams:

MOST COMBINED SHOTS ON GOAL, MISL GAME, 2012-2013
SOG	Date	Game (SOG)
69	01/18/2013	Milwaukee (40) at Chicago (29)
62	01/04/2013	Syracuse (45) at Chicago (17)
60	01/21/2013	Wichita (35) at Chicago (25)
56	01/11/2013	Baltimore (32) at Chicago (24)
54	11/03/2012	Rochester (22) at Syracuse (32)
53	12/02/2012	Rochester (23) at Syracuse (30)
52	11/30/2012	Missouri (30) at Syracuse (22)
51	11/24/2012	Chicago (20) at Syracuse (31)
51	12/27/2012	Milwaukee (18) at Rochester (33)
51	12/29/2012	Chicago (28) at Wichita (23)

 

The top four were all games in Chicago. The next four were all games in Syracuse.

Now let’s look at the list of most saves by a goalkeeper in a game (so far) this season. See if you notice a trend:

MOST SAVES, MISL GAME, 2012-2013 THROUGH 1/25/2013
Sv	Goalkeeper	Team	Opponent	Date
45	Richey	Chicago	vs Syracuse	01/04/13
33	Richey	Chicago	vs Milwaukee	01/18/13
30	Vorberg	Milwaukee	at Chicago	12/14/12
29	Richey	Chicago	vs Wichita	01/21/13
28	Richey	Chicago	vs Baltimore	01/11/13
27	O’Quinn	Syracuse	vs Missouri	11/30/12
26	Feenstra	Milwaukee	at Rochester	12/27/12
	Richey	Chicago	at Syracuse	11/24/12
	Vorberg	Milwaukee	at Chicago	01/18/13
25	O’Quinn	Syracuse	vs Milwaukee	12/26/12
	O’Quinn	Syracuse	vs Missouri	12/14/12
	Hannigan	Rochester	at Syracuse	11/03/12

Six of the top twelve games took place in Chicago, while five more took place in Syracuse. Coincidence?

Just how rare is a 40-save game by an indoor goalkeeper? I’ve only been able to find a baker’s dozen* such games in 30+ years of professional indoor soccer. Here they are:

MOST SAVES, GAME, ALL-TIME PRO INDOOR SOCCER#
Sv	Goalkeeper	Team	Opponent	Date	League
48	Joe Papaleo	Dallas	at Monterrey	07/11/93	CISL
46	Roy Messing	S.Francisco	vs. Wichita	03/04/81	MISLI
45	Jeff Richey	Chicago	vs. Syracuse	01/04/13	MISLIII
44	Frank Bucci	Denver	vs. St. Louis	11/22/80	MISLI
	Mike Hewitt	Hartford	at New York	02/22/80	MISLI
43	Slobo Illijevski	St. Louis	vs. Buffalo	02/27/81	MISL I
42	Slobo Illijevski	St. Louis	vs. Chicago	01/23/81	MISLI
	Ardo Perri	Philadelphia	at Denver	01/16/81	MISLI
41	Slobo Illijevski	St. Louis	vs. Wichita	01/18/81	MISLI
40	Jamie Swanner	Canton	at Dayton	01/26/92	NPSL
	Greg Volgas	Milwaukee	vs. Louisville	02/01/85	AISA
	Cliff Brown	Cleveland	at Denver	02/26/81	MISLI
	Scott Manning	Buffalo	at Denver*	01/26/81	MISLI
*Overtime game

That’s not exactly a Hall of Fame roster (except for Illijevski), and that’s not completely unexpected. Goalies on bad teams tend to face a lot of shots (only Papaleo, Illijevski, Swanner and Brown from that list played on a team that finished above .500 for the season), while good defensive teams tend to keep shots from ever getting to their ‘keepers.

(Digression for a second: what a five-week run the late, great Slobo Illijevski had from late January to late February 1981, with three games of 40+ saves. I wondered if any of those games had been on the USA Network’s MISL Game of the Week coverage, thinking they might have kick-started Slobo’s legend, but, no, none of them were. The Steamers were on USA five times that season, while it seemed to me Slobo and the Steamers were always on TV when I was a kid. Illijevski also had a 40-save game in the playoffs against Wichita that spring.)

Another thing you may notice is that most of those performances came prior to the 1982-83 season, when the MISL began keeping the Shots On Goal statistic (after only keeping Shots for its first four years). My original hunch was that they were merely subtracting goals from shots to come up with saves, but in the pre-computer-scoring-program days, things were actually kept by hand.

There seems to be no doubt, though, that saves were easier to come by in the original MISL prior to the 1982-83 season. The league’s annual leader in Saves Per 60 Minutes went from around 24 per game in the first four years to around 17 per game in the first four years after the shift, as you can see below.

ORIGINAL MISL LEADERS, SAVES PER 60 MINUTES
Year	Goalie	Team	Sv/60
1978-79	Shep Messing	New York	24.4
1979-80	Bill Mishalow	Pittsburgh	23.7
1980-81	Roy Messing	San Francisco	25.6
1981-82	Bill Mishalow	Memphis	23.5
1982-83	Chris Vaccaro	Cleveland	17.5
1983-84	Blagoe Tamindzic	Phoenix	19.2
1984-85	David Brcic	Cosmos/Wichita	17.8
1985-86	Alan Mayer	Kansas City	15.1

And in a quick study of 15 goalkeepers who played in at least one season from 1978-79 to 1981-82 and at least one from 1982-83 to 1985-86 showed every single one saw a decrease in his Saves Per 60 Minutes, most by about 20-30%.

ORIGINAL MISL GK COMPARISON
Goalie	A	B	Diff
Bill Mishalow	23.6	15.2	-8.4
Slobo Illijevski	23.9	15.6	-8.3
Mike Dowler	20.5	13.2	-7.3
Victor Petroni	22.9	15.8	-7.1
Zoltan Toth	20.9	14.0	-6.9
Shep Messing	20.0	13.5	-6.5
Manny Schwartz	21.4	14.9	-6.5
Enzo DiPede	19.9	14.1	-5.8
Krys Sobieski	19.4	14.0	-5.4
Alan Mayer	18.9	14.0	-4.9
Scott Manning	17.1	13.0	-4.1
Keith Van Eron	17.8	14.0	-3.8
Chris Vaccaro	18.9	15.1	-3.8
Ardo Perri	19.5	15.8	-3.7
Richard But	18.8	16.9	-1.9
A = Saves Per 60 Minutes, 1978-1982
B = Saves Per 60 Minutes, 1982-1986

Obviously, there was a sea change in how saves were determined starting with the 1982-83 season. (The league media guides of the time period don’t list definitions for statistical terms, but Kansas City’s 1982-82 guide defines a “shot” as “Every attempt to score a goal, provided the ball is destined within the penalty lines extended up including the boards and glass. Kicks that land outside the playing area are not considered shots.”) More recently, a “save” has been defined as “A play by the goalkeeper or defensive player that prevents an opposing team’s shot from entering the goal.” As in hockey, it’s not supposed to be a “shot” if it wouldn’t have gone in without defensive intervention. Unlike hockey, a goalie’s teammate can keep the ball out and be credited with a “block.”

We don’t have any way of going back and looking at video of those games from 1980-81 to see if Roy Messing really stopped 46 shots that night (my theory is that there’s enough evidence to support the theory that it was padded a bit, though Messing did lead the league in Saves Per 60 Minutes that year, barely beating out Illijevski). Joe Papaleo’s‘s 48-save outing in Monterrey is slightly more believable, given (as CISL aficionados recall) La Raza played in, basically, a college gymnasium on a field listed at 162 feet long (38 feet shorter than regulation). Shots were flying all over Monterrey Tech for years, and it’s amazing there weren’t more 40-save performances. (Actually, there might have been. Oddly enough, no CISL Media Guide after 1995 lists a record for goalkeeper saves in a game. I had to find Papaleo’s performance in a Sidekicks guide.)

So, Richey’s performance was certainly one for the ages. There’s just one problem: he didn’t make anywhere near 45 saves that night.

I went back and looked at the on-demand online video of the January 4 game against Syracuse. Counting only actual shots that Richey stopped, I came up with 14 solid ones and 8 more he could have been credited with if a scorer was being generous. But that’s no more than 22, less than half the supposed record total. (Counting anything that could have been considered a shot, I had Syracuse with no more than 39 shots in a game in which they were credited with 45.)

I’m told the stats software (Pointstreak) used by the MISL these days automatically credits a goalkeeper a save on a shot that isn’t a goal, given it’s not supposed to be a shot unless it’s saved (or blocked by a defender). My theory is that Chicago’s stats crew is counting everything that looks like a shot as a shot on goal, and the software is coming up with abnormally high totals for shots and saves because of it. It appears as though Syracuse’s stats people may be doing the same thing, given their games have elevated totals for shots and saves as well.

Want more evidence? Here’s a look at the saves per game by starting goalkeepers in the MISL this season, showing the difference between their home and road performances. In a league where the variance between home and road saves per game is less than one per game, Jeff Richey grabs more than twice as many saves per game at home than on the road. In fact, the rest of the league’s starting goalies, on average, grab about one more save per game on the road than at home, yet Richey is getting almost 13 more at home than on the road.

MISL GOALIES, SAVES HOME/ROAD, THROUGH 1/25/2013
		ROAD			HOME
Goalie	Team	GP	Sv	Avg	GP	Sv	Avg	Diff
Richey	CHI	9	113	12.56	8	202	25.25	12.69
O’Quinn	SYR	9	124	13.78	10	181	18.10	4.32
Waltman	MIZ	5	73	14.60	7	106	15.14	0.54
Pardo	MIZ	4	44	11.00	1	14	14.00	3.00
Feenstra	MKE	2	40	20.00	6	78	13.00	-7.00
Vorberg	MKE	6	111	18.50	2	26	13.00	-5.50
McInerny	ROC	5	67	13.40	6	76	12.67	-0.73
Sanaldo	WCH	5	59	11.80	9	104	11.56	-0.24
Hannigan	ROC	4	63	15.75	3	34	11.33	-4.42
Vanzela	BAL	8	101	12.63	7	75	10.71	-1.91
Hernandez	BAL	2	39	19.50	2	17	8.50	-11.00
Martinez	WCH	2	29	14.50	1	8	8.00	-6.50
Sprenkel	CHI	1	7	7.00	0	0	0.00	-7.00
MISL TOTAL		62	870	14.03	62	921	14.85	0.82

By the way, the record Richey supposedly broke (for the current MISL) on January 4? It was previously held by Jamie Lieberman of the late, lamented Norfolk SharX, who made 38 stops in a game on January 15, 2012.

In Syracuse.
 
 
 
 
 
 
*The 1997 Media Guide for the CISL’s Washington Warthogs lists an opponent’s record for most saves in a game as 42 by Dan Madsen of San Jose in a game on August 4, 1994, but the league guide for 1995 lists San Jose’s record for saves in a game at 27 by Mark Lehnert. Until I can confirm Madsen’s performance, the list above stands.

#For purposes of this discussion, I’m only counting the three versions of the MISL (the second of which includes the AISA/NPSL) and the CISL. I don’t have reliable numbers for the PSA/WISL or the XSL and refuse to try to track down numbers for the AISL or PASL.

Tags: indoor soccer, MISL, soccer, stats, things only I care about

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