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

[MXD]

Playing with a dynasty club of multiple HHOFers, heck, top-30 ever skaters versus... not for Hasek.

Here Hasek stonewalls Brett Hull, Pat Lafontaine and co in international play in a game i have NEVER seen before, is only broadcast in Czech, from about the 12 & a half minute mark:

None of this has anything to do with NHL regular season games played/length of NHL career, which was the content of your original "note".

 

[BadgerBruce]

The kiss of death for an O6 goalie was to have his toughness and endurance questioned. Resting was a sign of physical and psychological weakness, even when the reasons were completely legitimate. I honestly don’t think you could name a single O6 goalie who didn’t take a puck to the face, leave to get stitched or taped up, and then return to the crease to finish out the game. Never show weakness was the code they lived by.

Perhaps more importantly, being out of the lineup for home games was considered insulting to fans, a major no-no when the league was almost entirely gated-driven. Guys like Jack Adams and Dick Irvin weren’t shy about calling players out to the press even when the injuries were genuinely serious. They’d publicly question your courage as though you were a soldier gone AWOL.

Different world from today. 20+ years ago Colorado didn’t necessarily need to sellout the building during Patrick Roy’s time. He could sit out 20 games in 2000-01 because of injury or load management with little impact on the club’s financial bottom line, and the club’s leadership would care first and foremost about getting him back healthy. Put him on one of Conn Smythe’s old Leafs’ clubs and his world would have been flipped upside down. Smythe, by the way, publicly said “We aren’t running a fat man’s club!” to shame Turk Broda, and then he brought in both Al Rollins and Gilles Mayer so he could say “now I’ve got the long (Rollins, 6’2”), the short (Mayer, 5’6”) and the fat (Broda).”

I understand that not a word I just posted helps the project participants rank the eight goalies currently under consideration. Personally, I value the old school warriors, the guys who played hurt, the ones who didn’t have the Mitch Korns and Francois Allaires and Warren Strelows to team up with “psychological performance coaches” to get them ready for their next start. Sure, they seldom used techniques even remotely similar to today’s top goaltenders, but getting them to abandon the crease and willingly give up the job for even one game was nearly impossible.

 

[VanIslander]

@MXD If you nix all Hasek's years before the NHL: 1991, 1987, 1984 Canada Cups, 1988 Olympics, considered top goalie in Europe behind the Iron Curtain.... be consistent in dissing Holecek. (or split hairs)

 

[MXD]

If you nix all Hasek's years before the NHL: 1991, 1987, 1984 Canada Cups, 1988 Olympics, considered top goalie in Europe behind the Iron Curtain.... be consistent in dissing Holecek.

Why not extend this to Tretiak too?

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

I have also been thinking that the findings of modern load management should update our analysis.

But I'm not sure what to make of the actual data. Have you looked at the days by rest report on nhl.com? Most goaltenders' save percentages with 0 days rest are similar to their overall numbers.

For example Martin Brodeur has played in 180 games with 0 days of rest. Of all goalies in the last 50 years*, that's over 50% more than #2. His save percentage in those games is 0.912, identical to his career save percentage of 0.912.

Others with similar numbers. Maybe Roy and Hasek were worse with 0 days of rest, but the statistical difference is only about one standard deviation.

Ed Belfour - 0.906 overall, 0.911 on 0 days rest (106 GP)
Dominik Hasek - 0.922 overall, 0.918 on 0 days rest (103 GP)
Curtis Joseph - 0.906 overall, 0.904 on 0 days rest (93 GP)
Patrick Roy - 0.910 overall, 0.905 on 0 days rest (91 GP)
Henrik Lundqvist - 0.918 overall, 0.926 on 0 days rest (90 GP)
Roberto Luongo - 0.919 overall, 0.919 on 0 days rest (84 G)

It's possible these numbers are skewed by selection effects, where goaltenders have only been played in the easier back to backs. Although Brodeur played 70% of 0 days of rest games on the road, so I'm not sure that's the case for him, at least.

And the 0 days of rest data doesn't speak to the fatigue or wear and tear that a workhorse goalie might accumulate by the end of a season.

With regards to Brodeur, I wondered if his style played a role, and if the modern pro-fly style needs more recovery than some styles of the past. I see @Michael Farkas is thinking along the same lines.

*I wouldn't draw any conclusions from 0 days of rest data from the Original Six. Each team had it's own specific travel schedule where some teams played their back to backs at home and others played their back to backs on the road. Days of rest data from that era can't be compared across teams.

As far as I can tell, the idea that you should never play your goalies in a back-to-back seems to be an incorrect extrapolation of a few seasons of data in the early 2010s, where for whatever reason there appeared to be a pretty extreme effect. At least that's within the analytics community, I don't know what the teams are thinking.

My assessment of the evidence is that goalies can handle selective back-to-backs without too much difficulty, and the greater issue is cumulative workload. If we're looking for fatigue effects, I'd say they would probably be more likely to show up in situations like playing 4 games in 6 nights, or a few games with high shots against in succession, or games late in a road trip, or late in the season.

Patrick Roy, for example, had pretty rough March/Aprils in his 65+ game seasons:

1991-92: .918 through Feb, .898 Mar/Apr
1993-94: .921 through Feb, .907 Mar/Apr
1997-98: .923 through Feb, .896 Mar/Apr

(There's also 1990-91, where he played in 28 of the first 33, on pace for 68, and then got injured twice.)

I also think that the actual level of the workload is also relevant, as per Jim Corsi, whose original metric was invented to measure goalie workload. So maybe the number of shot attempts faced in game 1 of a back-to-back is an important factor, not just the rest period, because a goalie that faced 20 shots in game 1 is likely going to be less impaired 24 hours later than a guy that faced 50.

 

[VanIslander]

Why not extend this to Tretiak too?

Ah, because he was in the Summit Series, the recognized epic contest of best NHL vs. best Iron Curtained Soviets, and the 20 year old shined. He showed Canada and the world of hockey that he can stop pucks.

The game of Hasek's against Lafontaine and Hull i had to link in the Czech language because it was not a highlight matchup like the stage of the Summit Series was.

Tretiak might be one of the three best goalies ever; he certainly is among the half dozen greatest.

 

[BenchBrawl]

Great to see Terry Sawchuk getting some love.

What's the case for Dominik Hasek over Terry Sawchuk? The Harts? I always saw it as Sawchuk at his peak = Hasek at his peak + winning several cups at the same time.

 

[Professor What]

Great to see Terry Sawchuk getting some love.

What's the case for Dominik Hasek over Terry Sawchuk? The Harts? I always saw it as Sawchuk at his peak = Hasek at his peak + winning several cups at the same time.

I'm not sure that I can see the Cups as a separation for them. Sawchuk had a heck of a lot more to work with in Detroit than Hasek did in Buffalo. It's not really fair to credit or blame a guy for the cast he has surrounding him.

Edit: Sawchuk has been going up in my estimation throughout this discussion, so that's no slap on him.

 

[MXD]

Great to see Terry Sawchuk getting some love.

What's the case for Dominik Hasek over Terry Sawchuk? The Harts? I always saw it as Sawchuk at his peak = Hasek at his peak + winning several cups at the same time.

The cups won by Sawchuck, and not won by Hasek, are mostly a function of one having Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay and Red Kelly as teammates, with the other having something like Alexei Zhitnik, Mike Peca and Miro Satan.

Hasek is generally considered better, and with absolute cause I might add, because :

- Hasek is undoubtedly an above-average NHL starting netminder outside of his peak, while there are serious doubts regarding Sawchuck in that regards

- Hasek's peak is quite a bit longer, and has happened in somewhat tougher circumstances

- Even in his peak, Sawchuk did drop the ball, to the point where the Wings arguably won despite him.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Six-team league doesn't hurt, either, especially in the Norris House League years.

 

[Michael Farkas]

But I'm not sure what to make of the actual data. Have you looked at the days by rest report on nhl.com? Most goaltenders' save percentages with 0 days rest are similar to their overall numbers.

Almost everyone plays a much more conservative, defensive style of game in their back to back scenarios. Naturally, that will impact goaltender performance in a positive way.

O6 goalies were much better load managers than the predominantly unkempt goalies of DPE 2.0. I don't think that era gets enough discredit for how weak the goaltending was, as the position - fragile as it is - struggled to adjust to the new rules and keep up with shooting advents.

 

[MXD]

What exactly is DPE 2.0?

 

[Michael Farkas]

Brodeur was one of the last hybrid style goalies. And always played more games than contemporaries.

Not to bring up a guy that isn't available yet...but to add a smidge of fuel...Nabokov was more of a hybrid goalie...the majority of his longest playoff runs (however short they may be) match up his biggest RS workloads.

Re: @MXD honest, non-loaded question here - can you point to where Sawchuk dropped the ball and the Wings won in spite of him?

What exactly is DPE 2.0?

The time just after the lockout (around '08 or '09 it started) where the game actually became too fast for its own good. The emphasis on speed created a race of players that were very fast but couldn't play at speed. And instead of being able to create with speed, they just destroyed. Playing 27 seconds at a time, running into the few real gamebreakers the league had available. This lasted for a good 7 years or so until more players were able to learn to slow the game down with the puck and/or play at speed with the puck. It brought on a rare instance of goal scoring going up WITH league quality, as opposed to the typical inverse relationship that has existed for most of the league's history.

 

[overpass]

Re: @MXD honest, non-loaded question here - can you point to where Sawchuk dropped the ball and the Wings won in spite of him?

Not MXD but I would have to say the 1955 finals, when Sawchuk allowed 15 goals in 3 losses at the Forum, including 6 by Geoffrion. And that was a Canadiens team playing without Maurice Richard. Fortunately for Detroit, they had home ice advantage, having beaten Montreal by 2 points in the regular season for first. And Sawchuk allowed only 5 goals in the 4 home games.

In Game 6, Sawchuk allowed 6 goals, and received a misconduct penalty after attacking referee Red Storey while insisting that Geoffrion had kicked the puck in on the 4-1 goal. The Montreal Gazette noted in their game report that Sawchuk had been the victim of an attack of influenza. Maybe he wasn't at his best.

 

[MXD]

Not MXD but I would have to say the 1955 finals, when Sawchuk allowed 15 goals in 3 losses at the Forum, including 6 by Geoffrion. And that was a Canadiens team playing without Maurice Richard. Fortunately for Detroit, they had home ice advantage, having beaten Montreal by 2 points in the regular season for first. And Sawchuk allowed only 5 goals in the 4 home games.

In Game 6, Sawchuk allowed 6 goals, and received a misconduct penalty after attacking referee Red Storey while insisting that Geoffrion had kicked the puck in on the 4-1 goal. The Montreal Gazette noted in their game report that Sawchuk had been the victim of an attack of influenza. Maybe he wasn't at his best.

That was what I was implicity referring to, but thanks for fleshing it out