When Calvin Petersen signed his three-year contract extension right before the 2021-22 NHL season started, he was coming off a dominant season with the LA Kings. Petersen put up a .911 save percentage in 2021-22, with a .922 and a .924 in years prior. The contract carried an AAV of $5,000,000. With this contract extension, Rob Blake had made it clear that Cal Petersen would be LA’s future goaltender.
As Petersen was supposed to take the reigns as LA’s full-time starter a year ago, he subsequently began to struggle. He failed to record games where he would put up at least a .900 save percentage. As the season went on, Jonathan Quick took over as the starting goalie. Petersen ended up serving as the 1B, and in only 37 games played, he put up a .895 save percentage. Not particularly good for the suggested “goalie of the future”.
We shouldn’t forget Petersen’s 2020-21 season was very good.
His RAPM chart from the 2020-21 NHL season proved that even with a poor team, he would still be sufficient. Even his shorthanded analytics favored him, despite LA being one of the worst penalty killers in the league that year.
Below is Petersen’s RAPM chart from the season that followed.
The LA Kings got better, but Petersen’s production fell off a cliff. In every single area on the chart, Petersen got worse. What went from a chart full of positives went to being sub-NHL level. It usually takes players years to regress, and still, it’s a slow slope. For Petersen, it all was quick.
Looking back
Cal Petersen was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres in the fifth round of the 2013 NHL entry draft. The Iowa native was coming off a season with the Waterloo Black Hawks of the USHL where in 35 games, he had a .906 save percentage. The following season, he remained with the Black Hawks and had a .915 in 38 games. Petersen had improved, but he still hadn’t blossomed into the player that made NHL GMs interested in him.
For the next three years (2014-2017), Petersen was at the University of Notre Dame where in 110 games, Petersen averaged a .924 save percentage. After his time with the Fighting Irish wrapped up, Petersen was out in the free agency market as a UFA after rejecting to sign with the Sabres. Petersen chose LA as his preferred destination to sign his entry-level contract.
Cal played the 2017-18 season as the starting goalie of the Ontario Reign of the AHL, and he put up a .910 save percentage while winning 23 games. In 2018-19, Petersen played several games as Ontario’s starter, but his numbers weren’t so pretty this time around. Even though he had a .896, he was still called up to the Kings and stayed on the team as he put up a .924 in 11 games. Cal Petersen had arrived, and it seemed like the LA Kings achieved their future starter.
2019-20 saw Petersen fail to make the team out of camp, though. Despite spending the majority of the year with the Reign tallying a .906, he still got in a few reps in the NHL tallying .922 in eight games.
In the “covid year”, better known as the 2020-21 season, Petersen was much improved. Right off the bat, he took over as LA’s starting goalie. Jonathan Quick had been playing poorly for his standards at the time, and Petersen knew that this would be his first test. At just 25 years old, Petersen earned the honor of becoming a full-time NHL starter.
To say that Petersen knocked our socks off would be an understatement.
Petersen served as LA’s starter while he’d take down some elite competitors such as Kirill Kaprizov and Ryan O’Reilly. Despite getting scored on more than a few times because the Kings’ defensive core wasn’t up to par, he still made clutch saves.
Petersen started to get recognition across the league. People finally saw him as the goalie of the future. The hype was legitimate, and at the time, Petersen deserved every ounce of it. Even though the Kings weren’t a good team, it was Petersen who made the games worth watching. And to think, he was only 25 and had so much potential to grow. The hope was that he would be better than he already was.
Cal Petersen tallied a 4.88 GSAx (8th in NHL) and a .933 xFSv% (25th in NHL). It had been his first NHL season, and he was still stretching for the “elite” category. Petersen, widely known for his calmness, has a sense of showmanship whenever he makes a dying sprawling save in a dangerous scoring chance.
The LA Kings wasted no time signing him to an extension as they dropped 15 million dollars on a three-year contract before the 2021-22 NHL season. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake.
Cal Petersen’s blocker side has been one of the worst aspects of his game. Last year was when it started to show. Putting up a .895 in 37 games, Petersen was playing at a backup level. Funny enough, his 15 million dollar contract hadn’t even kicked in yet.
Watching Petersen became stressful because a simple wrist shot at his blocker side would end up in a goal. Awkwardly, he had never recovered from the issue.
The goals that Cal was letting in felt way too light. The fanbase was starting to lose patience as then-35-year-old Quick took over as the starter. Petersen would occasionally have a good game or two, proven when he had three shutouts that year. And as mentioned before, a big part of that frustration was the soft goals he was letting in.
People cut him some slack as the 2022-23 NHL season rolled around. The new mindset is that the last season doesn’t represent the current Petersen. With a new mindset and a will to win after an early exit in the 2022 playoffs, Kings fans were hopeful that 2020-21 Cal Petersen would emerge.
Petersen has played in three games so far, and they’ve all been a difficult watch. The exception was the game in Nashville when Petersen saved the Kings in overtime and the shootout. But that doesn’t excuse that he had let in six goals against the Minnesota Wild and was pulled in Pittsburgh after letting in three goals in the first period.
Albeit, Cal’s performance in Nashville excited Kings fans thinking that he may have returned and his clutch goaltending was back.
Yet, following Cal’s performance in Pittsburgh, it felt like all of that hype was wishful thinking.
Cal Petersen’s blocker side has been the root of all his issues.
The majority of the goals against scored on him in the last 50 games were scored on Cal’s blocker side.
To be able to fix Petersen, you have to fix the blocker side first. Re-teaching goalies their techniques is incredibly difficult and time-consuming. With the recurring issue, it feels like it’ll be some time.
Playing clutch and making basic saves has also been an issue. Goals saved above expected is an analytical tool essentially used to measure the number of high-danger goals to-be-saved. Cal Petersen is third last in the NHL this season in that regard.
Out of the 63 goalies that have played, Petersen has been one of the worst netminders this season. Based on his track record and his contract, this isn’t enough. The Kings need more out of the 28-year-old.
Cal Petersen has been the lesser of the two goalies in LA this season, and it looks like it’ll be Jonathan Quick bailing him out again. With Petersen making $5,000,000 yearly, his play hasn’t been nearly good enough. Naturally, it’s piped up the trade conversation and the concerns for his future. How the Kings tackle this situation remains unknown, but if Petersen does continue this play, it’s hard to see him finishing that contract as a member of the LA Kings.
(Main photo credit: The Athletic)