Roy was also pretty damn good that year. Tied for the league lead in shutouts. 68 games which is 10/11 more than Hasek/Beezer, .918 save percentage.
He went 13-1-4 between late Jan and late March of 1994. Carried a team that was kinda pedestrian/Cup hangover that looked like it would have an 80 something point season to 96 points
absolutely. if roy had had the same season in '93, he would have won the vezina running away.
the way i like to think about '94 is roy got a gimme vezina runner-up in '91. he was the second best goalie by default, because there wasn't anyone to push him. but he's kind of "owed" on in '94 so it evens out.
1993-94 was the first year of what was to come in the league and the beginning of the super goalie era.
Rookie Brodeur. Hasek has his coming out party. People breaking into the league start to mimic Roy's butterfly style. The goaltending showdown between McLean and Richter was a highlight of the 94 finals. Beezer makes an expansion franchise look credible in their first year, bucking the trend of absolutely sucking.
in retrospect, '94 does seem like a super turning point. i'd never thought of that before.
i think felix potvin and jocelyn thibault are the other names that belong in this conversation. potvin was the first roy/allaire acolyte to step in and be immediately successful and even though brodeur would come in soon after to massively eclipse him, i think potvin was the real signal of this new wave.
potvin's rookie year was like lundqvist's rookie year smushed together with miller's rookie year. he was a calder finalist (ahead of lindros) and a vezina finalist, then made it to the campbell's finals. less than a month after gretzky scored that game seven hat trick to get into the finals, thibault was taken tenth overall in the '93 draft.
It was, but by then we'd got used to seeing guys win Art Ross trophies with 95 points and 118 points looked HUGE. But in 1994, compared to the offensive explosion in 1993, 120 points didn't seem as impressive as it really was in hindsight.
my memory is it felt inconceivable that a guy could come that close to winning the art ross while also being the best defensive forward in the league.
that said, 120 is a big number and looks better in retrospect, but that wasn't exactly a low scoring season. like, i don't think you can compare it to sakic's 118. in 2001, your 3 through 5 in the scoring race are career years by elias, allison, kovalev, and straka, all with 95 or 96 points. in '94, your 3 through 5 are oates, gilmour, recchi, bure, roenick with 107 to 112 points. both in terms of raw numbers and separation from the pack, fedorov's 120, as purely an offensive accomplishment, wasn't
totally agree with you about the goalie numbers, though. in 1994, a goalie falling below 2.00 was like mcdavid's scoring pace this year, just totally unfathomable. but by the end of the decade, when you've seen guys like byron dafoe or ron tugnutt doing it, hasek's numbers aren't quite as mindblowing, though obviously still bonkersly good.
i was actually surprised to find out, years ago and from this site, that Joe had high selke finishes, and a defensive reputation. It never occurred to me while watching and i dont really remember it being a part of the talking heads discussions.
imo, sakic's selke runner up is a grain of salt selke placement, much like martin st louis in 2004. these are good two way players having MVP scoring seasons, and not to be taken seriously as something in the ballpark of what fedorov did. ditto crosby's fourth place finish a couple of years ago.
in terms of seriousness, i'd take fedorov's two way as most legitimately deserving of selke recognition. to this day, i've never seen dominance on both sides of the puck like fedorov's 100 point seasons.
after that, i'd put the best two-way years of datsyuk, barkov, kurri, and modano
then gilmour, forsberg, and yzerman.
then ron francis and brind'amour.
then sakic, MSL, crosby, and so on.
