This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Juuse Saros
Nashville Predators Goaltender
Sixty-seven games — more than any goaltender in the league — at .9179, from one of the three smallest men in the position.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | NSH | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3.10 | 0 | 23 | .870 |
| 2016-17 | NSH | 21 | 10 | 8 | 3 | 47 | 2.35 | 1 | 614 | .923 |
| 2017-18 | NSH | 26 | 11 | 5 | 7 | 61 | 2.45 | 3 | 810 | .925 |
| 2018-19 | NSH | 31 | 17 | 10 | 2 | 74 | 2.62 | 3 | 870 | .915 |
| 2019-20 | NSH | 40 | 17 | 12 | 4 | 98 | 2.70 | 4 | 1142 | .914 |
| 2020-21 | NSH | 36 | 21 | 11 | 1 | 78 | 2.28 | 3 | 1073 | .927 |
| 2021-22 | NSH | 67 | 38 | 25 | 3 | 173 | 2.64 | 4 | 2107 | .918 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 222 | 114 | 72 | 20 | 534 | 2.54 | 18 | 6639 | .920 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
67 games, 38-25-3, a .9179 save percentage and a 2.64 goals-against, four shutouts on 2,107 shots. That is 8th of the 53 goaltenders who played twenty-five games.
Sixty-seven games is the most in the league — Connor Hellebuyck played 66, Thatcher Demko 64. Only Hellebuyck faced more shots, 2,155 to his 2,107.
Ninety-ninth overall in 2013, seven seasons, all here.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 180 pounds. Three goaltenders in this book stand 5-11 and only three weigh less than he does. He is among the smallest men playing the position at a time when the position has never been larger, and he has just played more hockey than any of them.
The record is the argument and it is unusually flat. .9235, .9247, .9149, .9142, .9273, .9179 across six seasons of real work — 6,639 career shots at .9196, never below .9142 and never above .9273 once he became a professional starter.
Six years inside a 131-point band is not a trend, it is a level, and it is the most stable thing in this chapter.
The Mental Game
The workload is the story that needs care. Sixty-seven starts on a club that took more short-handed minutes than any other in the league, at 5:55 a game, behind a blue line that finished 17th in chance share.
Nashville’s goaltending rated 18th in the league at minus-4.1 goals saved below expectation. That is a club figure and it is not his: David Rittich and Connor Ingram played the other twenty games between them and both have gone. The club rated 6th in expected goals against per 60 at even strength — this is a good defensive structure, and the crease behind it came out slightly below the model.
The two facts sit oddly together and the record cannot resolve them from here. What it can say is that .9179 across 2,107 shots is the largest sample any goaltender in the league produced bar one, and that it sits 8th of the 53.
The Intangibles
He is 27 and has never played anywhere else. The club finished 12th in goals scored off the 26th-best chance rate in the league, and 16th in goals against off the 6th-best suppression rate — which is to say the skaters in front of him did the hard half of the job and the crease gave a little of it back.
Nothing here measures how he moves post to post, what he does with a rebound, or how he finds a puck through traffic. What it measures is that a 180-pound goaltender played sixty-seven games, faced more shots than all but one man in hockey, and landed inside the same narrow band he has landed in every year since 2016.