Seth Martin
- The best senior amateur goaltender in Canada for over a decade.
- An excellent international performer, considered the best international goaltender in the 60s by most Europeans.
- In demand by the NHL and played well in his brief time
Senior amateur hockey
Martin was born in the small community of Rossland, BC, located in the mountains of south central British Columbia. He played goalie for over a decade with the famous amateur club Trail Smoke Eaters of the WIHL, based in Trail, BC, which is 6 miles from Rossland. Trail's economy has always been based around the Teck-Cominco lead-zinc smelter. It had a population of 12,000 in 1951, which has declined to under 8,000 today. Martin's day job was as a firefighter.
The Smoke Eaters had a proud history, having won the 1938 Allan Cup and the 1939 World Championships. And, with Martin in goal, they won the 1961 World Championships and the 1962 Allan Cup. After over a decade playing with Trail, Martin moved on to coach and play for Nelson, Rossland, and Spokane teams in the WIHL. He won the Allan Cup with Spokane in 1970 and 1972, although the amateur competition level had probably declined by this time after the expansion of pro hockey.
Martin's GAA in WIHL play was pretty high, often around 4, but that's because the Western leagues played wide-open, offensive hockey. For example, take Trail's 7 game victory over the Saskatoon Quakers in the western final of the 1962 Allan Cup playoffs. Martin allowed exactly 6 goals in 4 of the 7 games, and Trail still won the series because they won game 6 by a 7-6 score.
International hockey
Internationally, Martin played goal for Canada in four World Championships and one Olympics. He was named the best goaltender in four of these five tournaments, a remarkable record. This included the 1961 WC, 1963 WC, 1964 Olympics, and 1966 WC. In the 1967 WC, Carl Wetzel of USA beat him out for best goaltender. Martin was the starting goalie for the 1961 Canada team that was the last Canadian amateur team to win the WC.
Martin had a 17-7-3 record in international play, with a 2.17 GAA. European hockey people in the 1960s considered Seth Martin to be the best international goalie.
NHL hockey
Martin finally agreed to play in the NHL for the St Louis Blues, after the 1967 expansion. He signed a three year, $20,000 a year contract, with a $6000 signing bonus. $20,000 was twice the NHL minimum salary of $10,000 for that season, and half of what veterans Glenn Hall and Terry Sawchuk were making. As part of his contract, Martin demanded the Blues provide him with a fully furnished house in St Louis for himself, his wife, and their four daughters. Scotty Bowman drew the assignment of getting the house ready. He was a bachelor at the time, and said furnishing that house for a woman and four girls was the hardest part of his job.
Martin played 30 regular season games at age 34, splitting time with the 36 year old Glenn Hall. Their regular season stats were nearly identical, as was their strength of schedule. Hall was the starter in the playoffs, not surprising considering his brilliant NHL career and his $40,000 salary.
Martin decided to return to amateur hockey after the one NHL season. He would have lost his 18 years of service for his fire department pension if he didn't return, and he chose the fire department, the pension, and home life over the NHL salary and lifestyle.
Video
I think there's one of Martin's games available on video. Unfortunately, it's his worst NHL game, statistically. He allowed 5 goals on 25 shots in 2 periods, including 3 goals in the first 3 minutes of the game.
His defense really let him down on those first 3 goals. But he could have been better on the 4th and 5th goal. On the 4th, he sold out to save Keon's shot from right in front, but then he was absolutely nowhere on recovering for the rebound. For the 5th goal, he came off his goalpost a little and allowed Mahovlich to score off his pad from behind the net.
Assessement
Martin's career is one of a kind, and difficult to rank.
Being the best amateur goalie for a decade in the age of pro hockey is a unique accomplishment. It's probably necessary to get Martin in contention for the list, but nobody else has a comparable amateur career. So we basically pass over his 502 regular season games in the WIHL because we don't really know what to do with them. We're giving them enough credit by considering Martin for this list.
Martin's international hockey accomplishments and reputation are his #1 selling point. If you want to include goalies from outside the North American pro system from before 1970, it's hard not to conclude that Martin was better than any of them, based on performance and on reputation. But that's only 28 games out of Martin's career, And maybe none of the pre-1970 European goalies should rank very highly. This board's top 50 non-NHL European project included 5 goalies in the 50 player list. All were born at least 9 years later than Martin, and only Vladimir Dzurilla had an international career that overlapped with Martin.
Martin's NHL career was very brief, but it's something. I hesitate to compare even save percentage across teams from the 67-68 season when you see how both goalies on each team usually had pretty similar stats. For example, all Detroit goalies were at the bottom in SV% and the leaders in SV% were both Toronto goalies followed by both Philadelphia goalies. But I think it does mean something that Martin matched all-time great Glenn Hall statistically.
It also says something about Martin's reputation in 1967 that St Louis was willing to offer good contract terms. He wasn't at the top of the salary range, but he was doing much better than the average NHL rookie, and he got a 3 year guarantee and a signing bonus as well.
To sum up,
- Martin was the best senior amateur goalie of the professional era. Which puts him ahead of probably no other relevant players.
- Martin was the best pre-1970 international goalie. Which puts him ahead of Viktor Konovalenko, Nikolai Pushkov, and some others who weren't going to be very high.
- By reputation, salary, and performance, Martin was a good NHL goalie at age 34. OK, but many others have done the same.
I don't think any of those are enough on their own. If you add them up, can you get Seth Martin in the top 80? The top 60?
fr.wikipedia.org
