This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
John Gibson
Anaheim Ducks Goaltender
A .899 behind the worst defensive club in hockey, and a career .912 that says it is not him.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | ANA | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1.33 | 1 | 87 | .954 |
| 2014-15 | ANA | 23 | 13 | 8 | 0 | 58 | 2.60 | 1 | 674 | .914 |
| 2015-16 | ANA | 40 | 21 | 13 | 4 | 79 | 2.07 | 4 | 992 | .920 |
| 2016-17 | ANA | 52 | 25 | 16 | 9 | 109 | 2.22 | 6 | 1437 | .924 |
| 2017-18 | ANA | 60 | 31 | 18 | 7 | 139 | 2.43 | 4 | 1872 | .926 |
| 2018-19 | ANA | 58 | 26 | 22 | 8 | 153 | 2.84 | 2 | 1838 | .917 |
| 2019-20 | ANA | 51 | 20 | 26 | 5 | 149 | 3.00 | 1 | 1552 | .904 |
| 2020-21 | ANA | 35 | 9 | 19 | 7 | 101 | 2.98 | 3 | 1042 | .903 |
| 2021-22 | ANA | 56 | 18 | 26 | 11 | 172 | 3.19 | 1 | 1789 | .904 |
| 2022-23 | ANA | 53 | 14 | 31 | 8 | 200 | 3.99 | 1 | 1983 | .899 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 431 | 180 | 179 | 59 | 1164 | 2.83 | 24 | 13266 | .912 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
53 games, 14-31-8, a .8991 save percentage and a 3.99 goals-against average, with 1 shutout on 1,983 shots faced.
Both numbers are the worst of his career and neither is really about him. Anaheim conceded 338 goals, last in the league by a distance, and gave up the most expected goals against per sixty at even strength of any club in hockey at 3.592. He faced 1,983 shots in 53 games — 37 a night.
The club’s goaltending was measured at 5.4 goals worse than expected across the season, 18th in the league, which on that volume is close to neutral.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 209 and he plays a controlled, positional game rather than an athletic one. He is square to the puck early and he does not chase it, which is what has kept the career save percentage at .912 through a decade of bad teams.
The rebounds are the flaw and always have been. On this club the second chance goes to an unmarked forward more often than on any other, so the weakness and the situation compound each other.
The Mental Game
This is the hardest job in the league and has been for five years. Thirty-seven shots a night with no forecheck in front of you is a specific kind of test, and the honest observation is that the compete has held while the results have not.
What has slipped is the second half of games. A goaltender who concedes four in a losing effort forty times a season is being asked to do something no technique survives.
The Intangibles
Thirty-ninth overall in 2011, ten seasons, 431 games and a career 2.83 goals-against on clubs that have mostly been bad. He was among the best goaltenders in the league at twenty-four and the numbers said so.
He is 30, signed through 2027, and both he and the club have said the right things about the rebuild. The uncomfortable arithmetic is that his contract runs almost exactly as long as the rebuild does, and the version of him that arrives at the end of it will not be this one.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
“He is square to the puck early and he does not chase it”
“The rebounds are the flaw and always have been.”