A Thought Experiment about Goaltending, Fenwick, and Lineup Construction

Before I go any further, I must note that this piece is an introduction, and to be honest, I don't quite know exactly where it will go.  I do know that I'd like you, the readers, to give any input in the comments, as this topic will certainly be revisited in the future.

One of my favorite elements of NHL analysis is looking at line-up construction in the context of the salary cap.  My favorite team, the Blackhawks, are like a number of other teams in that they will almost always spend to the externally imposed cap, but frankly, this analysis can extend to every team in the league, as they will almost always be working with internally imposed constraints.  

The question is simple: What is the best way to put together a line-up that can consistently compete to win a championship?

Here is where Fenwick and Goaltending come into play, to illustrate my point, I ask these questions below:

What is the lower bound of goalie performance for a team with legitimate Stanley Cup aspirations?  Is it saving 87% of shots? 88%? 89%?

What about Fenwick (puck possession)? Is it 44%? 46%? 48%?

Spending big money on a goaltender likely comes at the expense of signing better skaters.  What is the optimal solution? Is it the team that has a goalie saving 90.5% of Even Strength shots but has a Fenwick of 55% more likely to win a Cup than the team that has a goalie saving 93% of Even Strength shots but gets crushed territorially, only managing to Fenwick 46%?

While we can safely assume that there is a correlation between salary and ability in goaltenders, we cannot escape the reality that dollars are fixed, and money spent on goaltenders cannot be spent on skaters.  This makes it difficult for teams that spend large chunks of salary on goalies to build teams that dominate at even strength. There are exceptions to this to the first rule, both in terms of mediocre goalies making big money (Cam Ward), elite goalies making back-up money (Tomas Vokoun, though this is only one year), and in terms of teams who have managed to build a team with excellent goaltending and excellent puck possession (Montreal and Vancouver come to mind), but by and large, teams that spend big money on their goaltenders put themselves at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to competing for a Stanley Cup.

My position is that goaltending, like rebounding in basketball, doesn't matter until it matters.  That is to say it is not as important as say, winning at even strength.  I recognize that this is a controversial position, and I hope that this opens up some discussion.  I will come back to this with more data throughout the season, but right now I want to limit this to a philosophical discussion.

Boston showed us last year that a team can be mediocre 5v5 and still win a cup, so long as the goaltending is on point, but there are few who peg them as favorites to repeat, which is pretty telling when we consider that most of their team will return.  People generally recognize, whether it is conscious or not, that relying so heavily on your netminder is not a recipe for success over multi-year timeframes.

Winning at even strength is important, but are we in the statistics world overrating its importance?  Is it as important as having a world-beater between the pipes?  How does a rising cap change this picture?

Let us know your thoughts, we believe this is a pretty interesting topic.