I flipped through the Game by Dryden to see if there was anything relevant.
"For me, the greatest goalies must always be Hall, Sawchuk, Plante, and Bower."
I know Dryden grew up in the Toronto area, but it's interesting that Bower is included in the former group.
From Scotty
"Plante was also different in another way. He was a competitor, as all the great players are, and he wanted to win, but unlike every other goalie before or since—except Hašek—he was also an artist, and goaltending was his art. And so he needed to play up to, and live up to, his art. If he couldn’t—if he felt sick or injured and couldn’t be at his best; if an opponent was too good in some way and would get in the way of him expressing his art—he didn’t want to play. Sometimes, especially later in his career, that was a problem. But at this moment in the mid-1950s, he had a more pressing problem.
Oftentimes, someone uses style to hide an absence of substance, and if you’re able to get others to focus on that style, maybe they won’t notice you aren’t any good. Unfortunately for Plante, the reverse was true for most of his goaltending life. His style and his weirdnesses got in the way of others seeing how good he was. A guy who knits, wears a toque, and dons a mask was simply hard to take seriously. It had gotten slightly better for him. His critics had even noticed that the year before—1954–55—his goals against average was 2.12, higher only than those of Sawchuk and the Leafs’ goalie, Harry Lumley. Yet after the season, when there were rumours that Sawchuk might be traded and Canadiens GM Frank Selke was asked if he was interested, Selke didn’t say, “No, we’ve got our guy in Plante.” He said he would be interested. Plante still would need to prove himself. But soon his teammates, the fans, the media, and even Selke and Blake would learn what Plante always knew—that difference is acceptable, if you’re good."
"Hašek was like Jacques Plante. He was a competitor, but also an artist—more than competing against his opponent, he competed against his art and himself. He had faced Patrick Roy once before in a showdown game—in the semifinals of the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan. The game had ended in a 1–1 tie. Then came overtime, and with no goals scored, the ultimate showdown: a shootout. Of the five shots taken by each team, Roy allowed one goal—Hašek none.
It was hard to play mano-a-mano games with Hašek. He was unaware of what Roy was trying to do, or he didn’t care, or maybe he thought it didn’t matter; he had his art and himself to live up to. “That sixth game was 1–0 until the middle of the second period, then we got another.” And, as Scotty says, Hašek was “spectacular.”"
“I remember watching [Sawchuk] play,” Scotty says. “He was big, about 190 or 200 pounds. He started his pro career at 18 in the USHL, then was in the AHL. He hardly played junior. Even by this time [1951–52] he was only 22. He had five straight seasons with [a goals against] average below two. When they talk about the goalies of that era, they talk about Sawchuk, Plante, and Hall, and I had two of them in St. Louis [Plante and Hall]. If you look at longevity, Plante played the longest. Hall played the most games, and I’m a big Glenn Hall supporter.
But as big a fan as Scotty is of Hall’s, as he relates: “Sawchuk is still rated by people as the best of those three. I think the fact that Sawchuk had a checkered career after winning those Cups in ’52, ’54, and ’55 took a lot away from his reputation. He got some kind of malaise, or disease—I don’t think they ever found out what it was. He lost a lot of weight. He was in Boston then, and when he came back to Detroit they were on the decline, then he was in Toronto. But after he left Detroit the first time I don’t think he was ever the same goalie.” Yet in the early 1950s—in 1952: “Nobody was close to him.””
Another difference for Scotty: Harvey was great, Johnson was good, but together the four Wings defencemen were more solid. And then Sawchuk. No matter how good Plante was, in the 1952 playoffs Sawchuk had four shutouts in eight games. His goals against average was 0.62.
"Behind Kelly and Goldham, Pronovost and Reise, was Terry Sawchuk. At 22 years old, it was his second full year in the league. He was big for a goalie in those days—almost six feet tall and 200 pounds, occasionally more—but playing in a deep crouch, coiled, he was remarkably agile. He would play in the NHL for 20 years and for most of those years he was good to very good, but for his first five seasons in Detroit he was great. A few other goalies might lay equal claim to the recognition of being the best ever, but it’s almost certain that nobody has ever had five years better than these. During that time, the Wings won the regular-season title five times and the Stanley Cup three times. Sawchuk’s goals against averages: 1.97, 1.90, 1.89, 1.93, and 1.96. “I talked to Ted Lindsay about him,” Scotty says. “Ted is a smart guy. He said, ‘There’s never been a goalie in his prime like Sawchuk. He had all the mechanics. He had his glove. He just was so focused.’ ”"
"Behind Kelly and Goldham, Pronovost and Reise, was Terry Sawchuk. At 22 years old, it was his second full year in the league. He was big for a goalie in those days—almost six feet tall and 200 pounds, occasionally more—but playing in a deep crouch, coiled, he was remarkably agile. He would play in the NHL for 20 years and for most of those years he was good to very good, but for his first five seasons in Detroit he was great. A few other goalies might lay equal claim to the recognition of being the best ever, but it’s almost certain that nobody has ever had five years better than these. During that time, the Wings won the regular-season title five times and the Stanley Cup three times. Sawchuk’s goals against averages: 1.97, 1.90, 1.89, 1.93, and 1.96. “I talked to Ted Lindsay about him,” Scotty says. “Ted is a smart guy. He said, ‘There’s never been a goalie in his prime like Sawchuk. He had all the mechanics. He had his glove. He just was so focused.’ ”
" When things went wrong—and things always do—Hall couldn’t prey on their minds the way Sawchuk could. He couldn’t haunt them and make them so miserable they wouldn’t dare to play that way again. Sawchuk had been a brooding conscience on the Wings. He had seemed at times to be more trouble than he was worth—until, as the Wings would find out, he wasn’t there."