HOH Top 60 Goaltenders of All Time (2024 Edition) - Round 2, Vote 1

[Michael Farkas]

Dryden is not, for me.

 

[VanIslander]

TIER1: Hasek & Roy as 1A & 1B, interchangeable.

Is their a 3rd on this tier?

I think not.

But the top of tier 2?

When i was young, Habs fans galore extolled Plante.

But over time, the 10-year 1st/2nd all-star relentless 500+ games of not only durability but recognized greatness AGAINST dynasty goalies in Montreal and Toronto... of Glenn Hall of lesser stocked Chicago... has made me think the longstanding take-your-pick trio of O6 greats from the era ought to be led by Hall.

 

[VanIslander]

Dryden is not, for me.

Dryden-Tretiak... i dunno how old you are, but thousands of voices have put them in convo as -at least - near each other, same tier guys.

To kick Dryden out of a club and admit Tretiak is to split hairs.

 

[Dr John Carlson]

Lots of interesting avenues of discussion today... me and @Professor What are not quite satisfied that we're going to be able to flesh all of it out by Sunday.

How much appetite is there for this opening vote's discussion to be extended for another week? Seeing how it is the first vote, we want to make sure we get this 'right'... but if people are set to vote, then we'll be set too.

We're gonna go ahead and make this official. Voting for this round will open next Friday, October 11 instead, and the OP will be edited to reflect this.

So if anybody was thinking of cooking something up, but was concerned about time constraints... go crazy!

 

[VanIslander]

Giving a week's notice is always a good thing.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Dryden-Tretiak... i dunno how old you are, but thousands of voices have put them in convo as -at least - near each other, same tier guys.

To kick Dryden out of a club and admit Tretiak is to split hairs.

That's all well and good. Call me the Hair Splitter then. Tretiak is a tier better for me.

One unrelated note, but just out of curiosity...Brodeur, Belfour, Nabokov, etc. etc. trace their roots to Tretiak and base their game on Tretiak.

Who are the Dryden disciples out there?

 

[bobholly39]

Here's a question.

Does anyone here have either Tretiak or Dryden top 6? In my opinion - there seems to be a pretty clear top 6.

It might make sense to add the top 6 to the final list after the first vote, especially if we're going an extra week, assuming the voting comes out with a clear gap for the 6.

If anyone does think Dryden or Tretiak should break up the top 6 - I'd love to hear the argument, and I'd love to hear how high you'd slot them, and who goes down to 7th and/or 8th.

 

[MXD]

Here's a question.

Does anyone here have either Tretiak or Dryden top 6? In my opinion - there seems to be a pretty clear top 6.

It might make sense to add the top 6 to the final list after the first vote, especially if we're going an extra week, assuming the voting comes out with a clear gap for the 6.

If anyone does think Dryden or Tretiak should break up the top 6 - I'd love to hear the argument, and I'd love to hear how high you'd slot them, and who goes down to 7th and/or 8th.

Terry Sawchuk, for reasons already mentionned in this thread (slight distrust about his peak due to being achieved on easy mode, back 3-quarters of his career as a below-average starter).

 

[jigglysquishy]

For the record, this top 8 was not my top 8. I had Dryden at 9.

As much as it bugs me to have the entire top 6 from only 2 eras, that's how I'll be voting. Would love to hear an argument otherwise.

 

[VanIslander]

That's all well and good. Call me the Hair Splitter then. Tretiak is a tier better for me.

One unrelated note, but just out of curiosity...Brodeur, Belfour, Nabokov, etc. etc. trace their roots to Tretiak and base their game on Tretiak.

Who are the Dryden disciples out there?

Disciples?

Hasek disciples are in asylums, eh?

WHO copied a tall butterfly, pop-up quick goalie known to stack and poke check? Who cares whether "disciples" resulted?

If anyone does think Dryden or Tretiak should break up the top 6 - I'd love to hear the argument, and I'd love to hear how high you'd slot them, and who goes down to 7th and/or 8th.

If you are all ears... Sawchuk was netminding a dynasty of Howe, Kelly, Lindsay, and Plante played BEHIND Harvey, Richard and Beliveau, among others (a boatload of HOFers).

Hasek & Hall had no dynasty help. Tretiak faced the NHL's best!

(Is Tom Brady the best QB ever? No way. He is the "greatest" due to team accomplishments he was a significant part of.)

 

[Dr John Carlson]

Here's a question.

Does anyone here have either Tretiak or Dryden top 6? In my opinion - there seems to be a pretty clear top 6.

It might make sense to add the top 6 to the final list after the first vote, especially if we're going an extra week, assuming the voting comes out with a clear gap for the 6.

If anyone does think Dryden or Tretiak should break up the top 6 - I'd love to hear the argument, and I'd love to hear how high you'd slot them, and who goes down to 7th and/or 8th.

I guess I don't mind saying this - a majority of our lists did not have the canonical top six of the three 90s guys plus the three O6 guys as their top six. Mostly, one of them was left outside of the top six, sometimes two. So I'd like to hear more from those people.

I am a part of that group. I like Tretiak a bit more than Glenn Hall. From the film I watched, I preferred Hall the least versus Plante and Sawchuk, as I felt he was a bit less 'in control' than the other two, but that may just be personal preference on how I like my goalies to play. I think Hall's all-star and awards records are overly-generous from both his enormous games played numbers as well as the fact that he played behind worse defensive teams than Plante/Sawchuk did, and award voters historically tend to prefer goalies who had less help. Also, I like guys who were trend-setters, so Hall gets points on that, but so does Tretiak, through his coaching career and how many guys looked to him and his game as being influential.

Plus, and this may be a stupid way to look at it, but... from watching games, I really think Tretiak is a lot better than the next non-NHL European goalie, both before and after his time. Like, a lot better. So then, the question for me is, how did he become so much better than the others without having elite guys to look at and train under? If he had been dealt the hand Hall had been, developing in Detroit 'under' Terry Sawchuk, then only given the starter reins as a seasoned 24 year old rather than as a green 19 year old... would Tretiak have been even better?

But it's really splitting hairs. I had them one spot apart on my list.

 

[Johnny Engine]

That's all well and good. Call me the Hair Splitter then. Tretiak is a tier better for me.

One unrelated note, but just out of curiosity...Brodeur, Belfour, Nabokov, etc. etc. trace their roots to Tretiak and base their game on Tretiak.

Who are the Dryden disciples out there?

I always heard comparisons with Mike Liut.
Not sure if there's a true line of influence, or if he's too early to really count.

I also remember a Coaches Corner segment with Don going on about a young Stephen Valiquette looking like Dryden, but that's just something that's pushing several loved ones birthday's out of my brain.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Does anyone here have either Tretiak or Dryden top 6? In my opinion - there seems to be a pretty clear top 6.

I have neither Tretiak nor Dryden in my top 6...nor Hall.

Coming in, I have Tretiak then Hall (back to back) then a decent gap then Dryden. I think Dryden belong a tier lower...Bower/Parent/Smith territory...not this group.

 

[VanIslander]

Discounting 1st team all star votes?

And putting Tretiak on a pedestal over any Czechoslovakian or other non-NHLet?

That is quite a day for you!

It's a great move to defend a dynasty goalie by saying accolades that non-dynasty goalies could have had a chance to get were biased by voters BECAUSE they weren't on dynasty teams??!

 

[jigglysquishy]

There's a fairly strong relationship between goalie all star voting and the GAA statistic pre ~1980. Then a fairly strong relationship between goalie all star voting and the SV% statistic afterwards.

I'm not saying the AS voting is wrong. I'm just saying the statistical correlation is high enough that I don't think we learn very much new from it.

 

[Michael Farkas]

If you're talking to me, VI, I built my list with a heavy, heavy influence on actual talent. So, Vezinas, first-team votes, dynasty or no dynasty, they could be Rumanian, they could be Bubarian, they could be Albanian, they could be Hungarian, doesn't matter to me...

I went back through ~100 years of film and built my list on that with only a slight influence on accomplishments (which mostly served as my "who to watch" list).

 

[Dr John Carlson]

I assume it's directed towards me. Nobody's discounting anything.

It's just that Sawchuk > Hall was the general consensus for decades, and a big part of the case supporting the opposite is that Hall wiped the floor on post-season accolades when the two were in the league at the same time. I just don't know how much stock to put into that when voters love guys who play a ton of games, and historically, were more eager to recognize somebody who gets less help. Does Hall's better all-star and Hart voting record mean that he was actually a better goalie? Again, the general consensus has been no. I think it may be more of a reflection of their situations.

And the keyword here is 'may'. I could be totally wrong. They are not far apart at all.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

That's all well and good. Call me the Hair Splitter then. Tretiak is a tier better for me.

One unrelated note, but just out of curiosity...Brodeur, Belfour, Nabokov, etc. etc. trace their roots to Tretiak and base their game on Tretiak.

Who are the Dryden disciples out there?

And what does that have to do with who the better goalie was?

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

If you're talking to me, VI, I built my list with a heavy, heavy influence on actual talent. So, Vezinas, first-team votes, dynasty or no dynasty, they could be Rumanian, they could be Bubarian, they could be Albanian, they could be Hungarian, doesn't matter to me...

I went back through ~100 years of film and built my list on that with only a slight influence on accomplishments (which mostly served as my "who to watch" list).

Why are goaltender rankings so different from player rankings? Seriously.

The player rankings are based heavily on accomplishments. No one is putting Alex Kovalev or Alexander Semin in their top 100 players.

But you seem to be ranking goalies primarily on how they appear, like a lumberjack!

 

[Michael Farkas]

And what does that have to do with who the better goalie was?

"Unrelated note". Just curious...a lot of these guys are listed as "this is the goalie I wanted to be"...I realized that I had never heard that about Dryden, was wondering if anyone knew anyone that did.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Why are goaltender rankings so different from player rankings? Seriously.

They shouldn't be. But goalies are easier to do in this respect. They're always on the ice (no shifts to deal with) and they're only involved in very obvious game instances. So you can cover a ton of ground relatively quickly.

For more explanation of why I'm putting such an emphasis on goalie talent instead of other people's stat-led goalie votes, this is among a few posts on the subject here: HOH Top 60 Goaltenders of All Time (2024 Edition) - Preliminary Discussion Thread

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

"Unrelated note". Just curious...a lot of these guys are listed as "this is the goalie I wanted to be"...I realized that I had never heard that about Dryden, was wondering if anyone knew anyone that did.

Jeff Laperriere.

Played on my son's youth hockey teams.

One of the best 9-year-olds I've seen.

 

[Professor What]

The thing is, everything needs context. And with all-star voting, prevailing attitudes and customs are valid considerations. For years, the custom was to give the first-team all-star selection to the guy that won the Vezina. The problem with that? The Vezina, even if given to the goalie, was a team award. How and how well a team defends is going to drastically affect the number of goals given up. Of course a talented goalie can reduce that, and a guy who's not so good is going to let more in, but it's not just on him. It's almost as bad as wins being a goalie stat.

 

[jigglysquishy]

I want to take everything into account.

Plante has the technical praise and the awards.

Hall has the awards, but not necessarily the technical praise.

Sawchuk has the technical praise but not the awards post 1955.

I think the best approaches try to be comprehensive.

One research question I'll put out. Can anyone find an article or quote claiming Hall as the GOAT? We can find them for Plante, Roy, Hasek, Tretiak, Brodeur, Sawchuk. Hall and Dryden get lots of praise, but never that level of elevated praise.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Bubarian?