HOH Top 60 Goaltenders of All Time (2024 Edition) - Preliminary Discussion Thread

[Professor What]

If you don't have at least TWO European non-NHLers and TWO pre-NHLers on your list then how all-time great can your list be? (Have 1 certainly; get two) The NHL has been great but it hasn't been the end all and be all.

Just 2 Europeans? I think I've got 5 on my working list, and there's another that I suspect will get some votes from people. I'd think it odd if someone didn't have 2 in or near their top 20.

 

[jigglysquishy]

Holocek and Tretiak should be in everyone's top 20, right?

Edit: I can see having Holocek at like 20-30, but Tretiak seems like a lock for top 10.

 

[Professor What]

Holocek and Tretiak should be in everyone's top 20, right?

Edit: I can see having Holocek at like 20-30, but Tretiak seems like a lock for top 10.

Pretty much what I think. I think I've got them 8 and 20 at the moment.

 

[Yozhik v tumane]

Just 2 Europeans? I think I've got 5 on my working list, and there's another that I suspect will get some votes from people. I'd think it odd if someone didn't have 2 in or near their top 20.

Who are your other three?

 

[Felidae]

Is Thomas Vokoun making anyone's list?

played for crappy teams with little fanfare, so probably got less award consideration than he should have. I mean, dude has only 22 playoff games in a 700 GP, 15 year career! Btw, Is that a record for most RS GP with fewest PO GP for a goalie?

Despite all that though, still managed elite numbers for many years alongside a heavy workload for a couple. Though in fairness, as bad a his teams were they were defensively good or middle of the pack for many of the years he put up good numbers, so I'll leave the rest to the talent evaluators ...

 

[jigglysquishy]

I'll throw a name out. Vladimir Dzurilla.

Is he the best non NHL European after Tretiak and Holocek? He looks good in the late 60s, but why do we see the drop in the early 70s? Looks like he misses a ton a time. And then a big comeback in 76-77.

Are there any other non NHL Europeans we should be looking at? Jiri Kralik? Viktor Konovalenko?

What are people's thoughts on Seth Martin? His career is so unique I struggle with how to even approach it.

 

[Professor What]

Who are your other three?

Dzurilla, Kralik, and Konovalenko. And Lindmark is the other one I was talking about that I suspect will get some consideration.

Is Thomas Vokoun making anyone's list?

played for crappy teams with little fanfare, so probably got less award consideration than he should have. I mean, dude has only 22 playoff games in a 700 GP, 15 year career! Btw, Is that a record for most RS GP with fewest PO GP for a goalie?

Despite all that though, still managed elite numbers for many years alongside a heavy workload for a couple. Though in fairness, as bad a his teams were they were defensively good or middle of the pack for many of the years he put up good numbers, so I'll leave the rest to the talent evaluators ...

He's borderline for me right now. I'm also interested in arguments for and against him. I'm having a really hard time navigating how his results might have been affected/determined by the low quality of his teams.

I'll throw a name out. Vladimir Dzurilla.

Is he the best non NHL European after Tretiak and Holocek? He looks good in the late 60s, but why do we see the drop in the early 70s? Looks like he misses a ton a time. And then a big comeback in 76-77.

Are there any other non NHL Europeans we should be looking at? Jiri Kralik? Viktor Konovalenko?

What are people's thoughts on Seth Martin? His career is so unique I struggle with how to even approach it.

I feel like Dzurilla should probably make the final list, though I admit, I do wonder how much milage he gets out of one game. He's like the anti-Mike Liut in that sense.

As for Martin, I asked that question earlier in the thread and there wasn't a lot said. I'm in the same boat you are. His small NHL sample looks good, so it feels like he could have played more and there should be some consideration, but at the same time, only 30 games? I wonder if he'd have gotten more of a chance if he'd been in the minors rather than the senior circuit, but if he'd been a career minor leaguer, we might not even be talking about him. I guess I'm playing the what if game there, even after saying earlier that I don't like to do it, but I don't know how else to approach Martin. I still prefer looking at what actually happened, but in his case, I just don't know.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Is Thomas Vokoun making anyone's list?

played for crappy teams with little fanfare, so probably got less award consideration than he should have. I mean, dude has only 22 playoff games in a 700 GP, 15 year career! Btw, Is that a record for most RS GP with fewest PO GP for a goalie?

Despite all that though, still managed elite numbers for many years alongside a heavy workload for a couple. Though in fairness, as bad a his teams were they were defensively good or middle of the pack for many of the years he put up good numbers, so I'll leave the rest to the talent evaluators ...

He's currently on my "weak/no interest" list.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I'll throw a name out. Vladimir Dzurilla.

Is he the best non NHL European after Tretiak and Holocek? He looks good in the late 60s, but why do we see the drop in the early 70s? Looks like he misses a ton a time. And then a big comeback in 76-77.

Are there any other non NHL Europeans we should be looking at? Jiri Kralik? Viktor Konovalenko?

What are people's thoughts on Seth Martin? His career is so unique I struggle with how to even approach it.

Dzurilla - Still working my way back that direction, so I'm not totally sure yet. But he's not tracking well for me.

It certainly isn't Urpo Ylonen, he stinks.

Can't answer that now, personally.

Absolutely no reason to approach it. We're building a list of 80 names. We don't have to take a chance on anyone like this. No NHL career, but could have. Beating up on fledgling or irrelevant international programs here and there and parlaying that into being.............anything is a lot. I don't want to demean him and his career, but if Seth Martin...why not, I don't know, Josh Harding...?

 

[Michael Farkas]

He's borderline for me right now. I'm also interested in arguments for and against him. I'm having a really hard time navigating how his results might have been affected/determined by the low quality of his teams

Good talent, not great. Had the luxury of quality goalie coaches and defensive teams, which helps with some of the numbers and what not. He did a fine job adapting his game along the way, but ultimately his skating/mobility cap his upside a bit. He played with this narrow stance, so he basically tried to use his stand-up style (that he probably had before he got to the NHL) as a means of getting around because he couldn't really push off strong laterally and he had no shuffle ability. He's a really good play reader though, very good puck tracker.

It's a shame he was lost at the end of the '06 season to some blood thing. Nashville got San Jose in the 1st round, who are always ripe for the picking it seems...

Having four career playoff series, winning one of them - where he got 4.5 goals per game of run support - is tough to look past. He did save the Isles series in 2013 for Pittsburgh, and to be fair, was not at fault for the loss against Boston.

 

[wetcoast]

I have a theory that great goaltending might've died out as a result of the salary cap and we havn't noticed yet.

How does that theory work?

I'll read on as maybe there is more information in this thread.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Craig Anderson?! Never, ever considered him a candidate for the initial Top-80, and frankly, I don't know why I should.

But, hey... I may have missed something out of his career.

This might be a crazy thought, but considering what a bad hand he was dealt in terms of team situations...is the gap between Craig Anderson and Ron Tugnutt really that large? I'm not sure that it is.

 

[wetcoast]

Using that 59-60 season, look at the actual stats (here) - you have 10 goalies of significance, with Riggin Rollins and perhaps Paille being too small a sample. Is that Sawchuk season anything to write home about? He's basically league average that year. He's still 4th in save percentage and 3rd in GAA, because again, 6 teams. He received a bunch of 1st half votes for the all-star team because he had an great October, but it's 10 games, and he has 5 competitors. The same goes for Lumley and Worsley, neither of whom had good years. They both still finished in the top 10 in save percentage though.

Lumley and Worsley are guys I'm really skeptical of - they both had 2 good years, and not much else. I see them somewhere on the spectrum between Varlamov and Quick, to use modern equivalents. Nobody gives those two guys much credit for being the 15th best goaltender in the league in some of their more average years. Sawchuk less so, because of his early peak, but during the save percentage era, he basically spent a decade being league average. If Terry Sawchuk retired after 54-55, and Serry Tawchuk played in the NHL from 55-56 through 69-70, Serry's not making it in the Hall of Fame based on his performance during those years. In fact, Serry Tawchuk's performance in those ~600 games, depending on what years you cut off at the end due to partial playing time, is basically equivalent to Meloche or Peeters in their careers, roughly league average by GA%-, over about the same number of games.

Your premise almost becomes a tautology - the goaltending is great because all these goaltenders are Hall of Famers - Hall of Famers are obviously great goaltenders.

It just ignores the fact that a) making the Hall of Fame isn't reflective of your performance every year, and b) Hall of Famers can have bad years too. (Also c) the Hall of Fame's track record with player election isn't the greatest.)

With regards to percentiles, you'd expect in 2 separate samples of similar sizes, that seasons in each percentile would be roughly equivalent to each other. So if you have say 200 goaltender seasons, and divide them in half randomly, you'd expect that the top 10 seasons in each sample would be the same in both samples, seasons 11-20 would be the same, and so on. There's a fudge factor at the top and bottom of each percentile, but you're not going to get a result where the 50th best season in one sample is better than the 20th best season in the other.

That's basically what you're trying to say, that because all these Hall of Famers make up the majority of this 108 player-season sample, that the 50th best season is better than the 20th best season of a different 100 player-season sample, whether that be in the 80s, 90s, or today. The other aspect of that, is because we have 30+ teams now, the sample fills up much quicker. Here's a comparison just by GAA, of goaltenders playing 50+ games, the first sample being 1917-18 through 66-67, the second sample being 2005-06 through 23-24.

GAA Under	66-67	23-24
2	9	4
2.1	12	13
2.2	20	26
2.3	24	61
2.4	30	108
2.5	42	153
2.6	50	191
2.7	61	225
2.8	65	255
2.9	71	283
3	79	308
3.1	84	324
3.2	90	332
3.3	95	338
3.4	99	344
3.5	100	345
Total	108	349

There are 108 total seasons in the first sample, there are 349 total seasons in the second sample. The top end runs close together, there's 41 player-seasons 2.2 and under pre-expansion, 43 post-lockout, so you're going to end up with a near 50/50 balance if you were to rank the best 100 or so seasons, but look at how post-lockout fills in. You add another 35 player-seasons between 2.2 and 2.3, while pre-expansion needs to expand out to 2.7 before it picks up another 35 player-seasons, and then post-lockout adds another 47 seasons to match the 108 of the pre-expansion total. You rank those 216 seasons, and the last 50-70 seasons are all going to be pre-expansion. Cut it down to the top 125, and you're going to have 30-40 pre-expansion, and 85-95 post-lockout.

Also, this shows the power of controlling the sample size. Setting it at 50 excludes everything prior to WW2, including all the low scoring 20s and 30s goalies, who played 44 or 48 games. You have 108 player-seasons of 50 games, 162 of 48 games, 214 of 44 games, and 235 of 40 games. The equivalent for post-lockout is 349 player-seasons of 50, 381 of 48, 444 of 44, and 533 of 40. The GAA sample changes from 9-4 under 2, to 49-11 under 2. The low-scoring era means that of the 235 player-seasons in the pre-expansion sample, 107 were under 2.4, akin to the 108 the post-lockout sample had. However, reducing the games played to 40 there boosts it to 149 player-seasons, with 211 being under 2.5, and 270 under 2.6, while a similar 92-87 breakdown exists for player-seasons under 2.3. So without normalizing for scoring, the top 200 or so seasons breakdown 50/50ish, but go out to 500, and again the last 90 or so are all going to be pre-expansion, because all 270 of the post-lockout sample is under 2.6, while the last 90 of the pre-expansion sample are above 2.6.

No matter what you do, you're going to run out of great seasons pre-expansion before you run out of great seasons post-lockout.

[I also have some breakdowns on that initial sample of 108 post-lockout player-seasons - they cover every non-shortened year (no 12-13, 19-20, or 20-21), involve 28 of the 32 teams, and 50 different goaltenders.]

Good post and interesting points and while I'm just going to watch this thread for the most part and just read your post reminds me of Bill James and going off memory his theory was that HOFers in baseball for batters had a rough baseline for AB's % league wide, something like 10 or 15% of AB every year were from Hall of fame players that remained somewhat constant across eras and number of teams which seems like a fair starting point and assumption.

Hockey seems to borrow a lot from baseball, often misguided, but then again maybe Bill James notion is misguided as well?

It has been brought up in other all time rankings but the 06 era with only 6 teams seems to have a concentration on all time lists above what one would except and with placements maybe because of it being easier to be in the top 5 or top lists year in and year out?

 

[MXD]

This might be a crazy thought, but considering what a bad hand he was dealt in terms of team situations...is the gap between Craig Anderson and Ron Tugnutt really that large? I'm not sure that it is.

It's probably not, but with all due respect, I'm not quite sure how relevant that is.

 

[Michael Farkas]

It's probably not, but with all due respect, I'm not quite sure how relevant that is.

Heh, I certainly hope not. My list isn't filling up quite as quickly as I would like right now...

 

[Michael Farkas]

Can I just say some random stuff as a way of notekeeping?

- What I wouldn't give for one more post-athletic prime season of valor from Andrei Vasilevskiy. That would give me so much confidence in him being way, way up the list. Like, uncomfortably high. He wasn't very good last year, that's all I'm gonna get before the project kicks off. That might be enough to give me some pause.

- Igor Shestyorkin will be on my list.

- Will Juuse Saros make anyone else's list? I'm pretty sure at this point he's going to be on mine. I love that little guy. He might be the smartest goalie in the NHL right now.

- Olaf Kolzig's positioning and Tom Barrasso's quickness/reflexes sort of offset and net a fairly similar tier goaltender I think. I guess guys like Bobrovsky, Rinne, and CuJo are above these guys...but not by as much as everyone thinks I'm pretty sure...

- I think I better separate my "weak interest" from "no interest" at this point. If I submit a list with Ben Bishop or Corey Crawford I'll never forgive myself...

- Grant Fuhr is tracking way lower for me than I expected. It might be high time that we unhook him from Billy Smith as "the 80's goalies"

- Patrick Roy was a better skater than I recall giving him credit for back in the day.

- Here I was whining about pre-consolidation goalies maybe being third defensemen and how we might want to cry "foul" on that...then I watched more Ron Hextall games and thought...."yeah, you might be on to something here, Mikey. These guys really aren't very good."

- I wish Arturs Irbe and John Vanbiesbrouck had more than two playoff runs, that might help my ranking of them a little bit...I think I might like both more than the field.

 

[Sentinel]

My Top 3:

Hasek
Roy
Tretiak

It gets murky after that

 

[MXD]

- I wish Arturs Irbe and John Vanbiesbrouck had more than two playoff runs, that might help my ranking of them a little bit...I think I might like both more than the field.

Beezer was 34th in the last project.

Lundqvist and Luongo probably passed him, while Vasilevskiy, Price and Bobrovsky had the bulk of their career since. That would put Beezer 39th.

I dont quite see a path to the top-25 for him. But yeah, he does miss one or two longer playoff outings.

 

[Michael Farkas]

With all due respect to the project that I participated in, I'm not using it at all. I think the whole goalie evaluation process needs to be re-imaged in my opinion. I hope that my list helps to reflect that. I also hope that it isn't thrown out - I don't expect that to be the case though.

Some hints at shots vs quality shots going way back...

But, the shot-warnings causing concern in certain comers of the Edmonton Oilers’ forecast are strictly physical. The totals have been staggering—47 against in a 3-3 tie with Washington, 46 in a 6-4 triumph over Calgary, 39 in a 7-4 win in Winnipeg and 47 as the Oilers outlasted the North Stars 7-5 in Minnesota.

Can’t one just hear the verbal snickering from disrespectful eastern climes around the National Hockey League?

The Oilers undoubtedly could care less, but there was a frightening Realistic side…

How long were they expected to remain unbeaten if this barrage was to continue? Or, more significantly, how long were goalies Andy Moog and Grant Fuhr expected to continue holding up mentally and physically under the strain?

...

“A goalie who worries about his average is a selfish player,” he said. “You can’t worry about that when the object is to win the game. This team has a reputation of not giving up a lot of shots when we play the contending teams. Against Boston, what did I have? Twenty shots? The guys checked them into the ground.”

The Caps most certainly rate as one of the powers that be around the NHL.

“There were two types of shots—the shots we let them take and the shots they earned,” Moog said. “It’s obvious we let them have the easy ones, the tough ones they earned.”

According to the Oilers’ shot chart, 17 of Washington’s 47 shots were labelled as “quality.”

“Everybody’s blowing this shots thing way out of proportion,” nonchalantly shrugged assistant coach John Muckier. “The only game in which there were a lot of great shots was in Minnesota (Oct. 18). That’s when we probably should have lost the game. Not probably, we should have lost it. Grant won it for us.

“But the Winnipeg game was never in question, neither was the Calgary game. Against Washington, we buggered up our flow by taking a lot of penalties.

“I’ve never seen our goaltenders so happy. They’re like pigs in mud. They’ve had more protection this year than in the past, because of the low quality of shots. And, when they have been tested, they’ve come up big.”

...

Left winger Mike Krushelnyski, who played for Boston last season, said the Oilers stress offense while the Bruins preached defense.

“Here we attack, there you waited for a mistake,” said Krushelnyski, whose comment is backed up by the fact the Bruins allowed 550 less shots (2,642-to-2,094) last season. “In Boston, if a shot came from the point, Cheesie (coach Gerry Cheevers) would be all over the winger who allowed it."

Ok, no commas in the quote box I guess - this is from 1984.

 

[MXD]

With all due respect to the project that I participated in, I'm not using it at all. I think the whole goalie evaluation process needs to be re-imaged in my opinion. I hope that my list helps to reflect that. I also hope that it isn't thrown out - I don't expect that to be the case though.

Still, I don't think perceptions should change THAT much, and I don't Beezer as someone for whom opinions would wildly fluctuate, like it would for, say, Carey Price.

 

[overpass]

Maybe we can get to the core of the disagreement and wrap things up here.

The reason why I keep saying a player-season is a player-season, whether or not it is against 5 teams or 15 teams or 30 teams, is that while the methods and nature of hockey played has had a ton of changes throughout the years, on a statistical level it just hasn't since basically consolidation.

I disagree. I think you are recognizing that the right tail of talent distribution may look similar whether it's cut off at one point or another.

See the example above. The blue selection is a more exclusive and outstanding selection on the right tail than the green selection. But it might look very similar to the green selection if you blew it up to the same size. That doesn't mean they are equally outstanding!

(And the statistics you're comparing also include a bell curve of team performance and individual bell curves of season to season performance variation, further obscuring attempts to find the actual distribution of talent from statistics alone.)

I feel like we're getting closer to speaking the same language, but we're not quite there yet.

To me, I think your biggest block is almost a romanticism associated with their names. That's why I referred to it as a tautology - it's a TERRY SAWCHUK season, therefore it's good because he's TERRY SAWCHUK. It is exasperated by there just being 6 teams, so an indifferent season from Sawchuk is still technically the 4th or 5th best season.

I know what you mean by romanticism but I would disagree with the label.

I would say that if I'm trying to evaluate a player season, I would like to know all relevant information. Because a line of statistics from a single player season on hockey-reference only tells you so much. There's a lot of questions still open to evaluate that season.

1. How strong was the competition in the league? Was it the best in the world? If not, how close? How hard was it to get a starting position? To keep one?

2. What was the player's team context? For a goalie, how well did his defense play in front of him? What support did he receive? How did his team contribute to his statistical line?

3. Is there any indication the player was unlucky or lucky that season in a way that means his stats don't reflect the quality of his play? For example, maybe opposing shooters hit a lot of posts.

The identity and whole career of the player, and every other player in the league is relevant information for answering those questions and evaluating the individual season! Especially question 1. If I drop a list of names, it's not to say "you've heard of these players so they're good", it's shorthand in lieu of describing their entire outstanding hockey careers. And if I give a list of names when talking about a small league, I'm making the point that the average level of goaltending in that league-season, as well as most other percentiles, were likely higher in that season than in other league seasons that were filled with goalies who had less outstanding careers.

Even for answering 2 and 3, when we have uncertainty we should give some benefit of the doubt to the player with the better established level of play. Mathematically, you could say we regress to the player's average rather than league average.

There is certainly some circularity when I say you evaluate the goalie careers to evaluate the league to evaluate the goalie season to evaluate the goalie career. But we just have to bring in all the relevant information and evaluate as best we can if we want the best results.

 

[overpass]

So I've been looking at minor league goalies from the Original Six era. I think I'm coming down on the side that the quality made the NHL, with the exception of Johnny Bower for a few years. No long term contracts, several goalies at each training camp, goalies were traded and sent up and down. I could and would consider minor league time as having value, but I'd need to see some accomplishment in the NHL to get on the list.

And I don't know how easy it is to measure AHL excellence from that era. For the first few years of the Original Six, Baz Bastien won best goalie for a few years before losing an eye and retiring. Then Gil Mayer won a few times. What did they have in common? They both played for Pittsburgh, Toronto's AHL affiliate. I would bet they had the best defensive system in the AHL. Then Marcel Paille won best goalie three years when Springfield was the best team in the league, and Eddie Shore was turning out NHL defenders. I just don't know who that outstanding AHL goalie was - other than Bower, who proved himself and more in the NHL.

There's one guy who I looked at in more detail, just to see if there's any chance a top quality G slipped through and never made the NHL. Glenn Ramsay had a great IHL career. 18 seasons, 8-time first team all star, 3 time second team. And nothing stands out as a flaw in his game, from what was written about him. Good size. Great skater, his coaches said he skated as well as the rest of the team. Aggressively played the puck and passed it to his forwards. Won awards for Mr Popularity. Was always considered a team leader. He was an all star selection on the best team in the league, and on teams that barely made the playoffs.

Ramsay started off as Montreal property but was assigned to the IHL, behind Plante, Hodge, and McNeil. And he immediately set the all time IHL GAA record on a dominant Cincinnati team. They had won the previous four championships, but their goals against still dropped by 40 in Ramsay's first season. He moved on to other IHL teams, and then played his final 12 seasons in Toledo. The St Louis Blues offered him a tryout when the NHL expanded, but he wasn't interested in leaving Toledo at that point.

So OK, I can understand it would have been really difficult to make the Habs for a goalie born in 1935, with Plante and Hodge ahead of him. But at some point you have to make a move to get a chance at the NHL, right? If Ramsay was happy staying in Toledo, maybe there's just no way for us to evaluate him for this list. No video of him. 3000 people watching his games. Does his career matter?

 

[Dr John Carlson]

Yeah, I really don't know how you evaluate somebody who never played against the best, at any point. I care about guys' senior careers, or even their minor league careers, if they actually made it to the NHL and did something with it, because their senior/minor careers can serve as validation (or invalidation) of their later career.

Bill Durnan gets flak for playing behind by far the best team in the NHL during WW2 and not having many years outside of that. Does that mean he was a product of the team? I don't know... I've gone pretty deep on his Senior career now, and the newspapers have all shown conclusively that those two Allan Cup playoff runs in 1940 and 1941 were not at all on the backs of strong defenses. Durnan was being asked to do a whole lot for those teams, and he came through. In 1941 with the Royals, their defense was so bad that they sometimes just sent five forwards out there in front of Durnan rather than having to ice their defensemen (they only had two on the roster anyway!).

All that leads me to believe that Durnan was a real player instead of a system guy, or a product of WW2, regardless of the team in front of him. Looking at senior/minor hockey for somebody like Durnan makes a lot of sense in this case, but for somebody like Glenn Ramsay, who I'm wholly unfamiliar with, there's really no way to compare his success with anybody who'll be a candidate for the list. Right?

 

[The Macho King]

Can I just say some random stuff as a way of notekeeping?

- What I wouldn't give for one more post-athletic prime season of valor from Andrei Vasilevskiy. That would give me so much confidence in him being way, way up the list. Like, uncomfortably high. He wasn't very good last year, that's all I'm gonna get before the project kicks off. That might be enough to give me some pause.

I mean - last season was his first not good season and it was after major surgery so I'm hoping it was a blip. He was much better towards the tail end of the season, and pur D should be better as well (at least defensively). Last season ot was the Syracuse Crunch ft. Victor Hedman most nights.

 

[Michael Farkas]

So OK, I can understand it would have been really difficult to make the Habs for a goalie born in 1935, with Plante and Hodge ahead of him

I'm quoting this part, but to your larger point...Gerry McNeill? He had some NHL success, but was primarily below that. He stood out to me as a "plus" goalie in old film. Smaller, but very talented.