In the current group, I see a clear line of top 4 goalkeepers, tier above the rest. Four goalies with a legitimate case for greatest goalie title. Four goalies who combine a high peak level performance, above average performance accross multiple eras, great longevity and a long list awards and achievements. Roy, Plante, Hall and Hašek. I’ll argue on their behalf as if I were their advocate highlighting their advantages, some of which perhaps haven’t been mentioned yet.
Patrick Roy
What’s not to like about Roy? His baseline goaltending (his average performance in an average game) was consistently so good for such a long time. Entered the league in offense-crazed 1986, immediately wins the Cup and becomes the youngest Conn Smythe winner. Ends his career after one of the lowest goal scoring playoffs ever while still considered just as good a difference-maker as in the whichever 1990s season.
Was there a point where Roy was not considered one of the ten best NHL goalies in between 1986-2003? Except for 1995, GMs always had Roy in their Vezina ballots – for 17 seasons. Roy is not a goalie whose strong award results were based on lazy voters looking at high number of GP or wins. Roy did not have a single NHL season with below average SV%. He remained healthy troughout his career and retired with one of the best playoff records out of any player. Hard to find anything substantial to critize him for. What more out of goaltender would you want if you’re GM or coach picking for your team a goalie for life?
The goaltending craft is so affected by the individual mental state and is more volatile than other positions. Hence voting Roy #1 as a vote for the most consistent, reliable goaltending makes perfect sense.
Jacques Plante
Pioneer with perhaps deepest intelectual understanding of the position. Like Roy, Plante too started NHL career with a Stanley Cup. Did Plante have a single down season in the 1950s? Did Plante had a playoffs where the Habs dynasty won in spite of him? Doesn’t seem to be the case. SIHR in their 2001 study „gave“ Plante even a retro Conn Smythe for 1960 playoffs when he registered 3 shutouts and 0.950 over 8 games.
Plante slowly regressed in the 1960s. Outside ’62 Hart winning season, there isn‘t much to hang on until his 1st retirement, is there? Partial 1961 season due to knee injury. Worsened asthma condition in 1963. Trade and two below average NY seasons. Seasons in his 40s are amazing though (given his age). They make Plante relevant in this conversation, revealing he was able to succeed outside Montreal.
I admire how 36 y/o Plante was able to step in against Soviets behind the Montreal Jr. Canadiens in 1965. Montreal won 2-1 largely thanks to Plante. Apart from Tarasov, players were also impressed. Vyacheslav Starshinov in 1966 spoke on the topic of USSR playing against NHL team and mentioned Plante:
„Soviet team would like to try it out in this year‘s trip to Canada too, but the managers of Canadian profi-teams have been making excuses and they‘ve lined up just a 2 or 3 real professional players against the Soviet players for a test. But we‘ve played against the best goalie, professional Plante. He is perhaps the best in the world and we could not score a goal on him no matter what. So we lost 1:2. Our squad would need such a goalie!“
There is a greatness to Plante that’s hard to convey directly, but you get a sense of it by reading how the hockey world tried to lure him. Various NHL and WHA teams, Swedish hockey association, all of media seeking his commentary... Greatness in terms of style, how he influenced so many later goalies to do a lot more than just stand in front of the net and passively stop shots. Greatness in terms of being the goalie who backed arguably greatest hockey team ever. Voting Plante #1 would be voting for the most influential, most ‚historic‘, legacy-leaving netminder.
Glenn Hall
Seems like some of Hall’s accomplishments get glossed over. He was put into very difficult situation in 1955. After all that Sawchuk did in 1951-1955, Adams surprisingly replaced him with Hall. Yet Detroit reached finals in 1956 with Hall, who went 0.925 with 12 shutouts in the regular season. Most goalies would crumble under such pressure, I think.
I also think that for all the suspicion about his Chicago playoff performance, people tend to neglect it was Hall’s team which played first 3 SC finals after expansion… Yes, I realize Hall factored mostly in 1968 playoffs and less in 1969 and 1970, but still…
The argument for Hall is kind of boring and hardly convincing for HF members, yet should be at least proclaimed – the awards. Since the 1981–82, Vezina Trophy voted by GMs, was given to the best goaltender according to regular season performance. From 1982 to 2024, Hašek won Vezina 6x, Brodeur 4x, Roy 3x. No other post-82 goalie won the trophy three times or more.
Before 1982, All-Star teams, voted by the media (for a brief time also by coaches), were the closest thing we had to current-day Vezina. ASTs were introduced in 1930-31. But ASTs are to be taken with grain of salt since they were almost always handed to a goalie with the lowest GAA… until Glenn Hall stopped the trend. No goalie won more 1st AST nods than Hall (i.e. 7x). Durnan 6x, Dryden 5x, Gardiner 3x, Sawchuk 3x, Plante 3x, Esposito 3x. No other pre-82 goalie won 1st all-star three or more times.
NHL awards in general have been thoroughly criticized, and justifiably so in many cases. But is there any doubt with Hall in particular and his 1st ASTs? It was definitely easier for Hall to gather the all-stars in a league with 6-12 teams compared to league with 30+ franchises, fair enough. On the other hand, Hall was winning them against Plante and Sawchuk, he was winning them in spite of not recording the lowest GAA and he was winning them when you could count the writers actually watched all of 6 teams… How low can a goalie with greatest on-paper list of ‚best goalie of the (regular) season‘ titles fall?
Most of us like to come up with our rankings and own set of criteria (including me), but there is something to be said about taking a modest approach and simply accept votings of hundreds of people watching & reporting about games over the span of decades. Voting Hall #1 means not to overthink this exercise and not to retroactively impose our own subjective angle in order to arrive at „true“ best goalie in whatever period. It means accepting the simplest evaluating standards right in front of us.
Dominik Hašek
Most entertaining netminder with greatest longevity. No goalie had to overcome more challenges to reach acknowledgement. Born and raised behind the Iron Curtain. „Hidden“ from North American audience for 7-8 years till global politics changed and 25 y/o Hašek, who had been widely considered the best non-NHL goalie since at least 1987, finally went to Chicago… only to get stuck behind the Vezina winning Belfour.
Hašek had every reason to return to Europe to remain a local star with comfortable life and with fans / writers not laughing at his style. Yet he chose to stay, led the IHL in all goaltending stats, earning the IHL 1st All-Star team nod. Blackhawks allowed Hašek to start more in the next season. Hašek stays statistically on par with Belfour (and everybody else).
Finally breaks out in 1994. In what was still a high scoring environment, Hašek became the 1st goalie since 1974 to finish regular season with GAA below 2.00. Wins the ’97 Hart Trophy as the first goalie since 1962 in a quite distressing team environment. Hašek’s own team fans boo him at the start of next season, yet he drags the Sabres to EC final and becomes the only goalie who won the Hart in 2 consecutive seasons.
For a long time, Hašek had to deal with charges of „not being the winner“ uniquely unlike any other goalie available this round. But he eventually wills the underdog Czech team on first best-on-best Olympics to a gold medal in 1998 as 33 y/o (defeating his rival in the process). He leads the Sabres close to the SC next year but ultimately falls short by 2 games.
Quits the Sabres after 2001, joins the Wings team full of stars when he’s 36, just to prove again that he’s actually a „winner“. If Hašek didn’t win with Detroit then, we’d probably never stop hearing the „not a winner“ argument again. Just like Plante’s post-1969 career brings him to the discussion, Hašek finally playing for an excellent team and imediatelly winning the Cup, while symbolically defeating his biggest rival again along the way, adds a lot of trustyworthiness to his ability to play under pressure. Hašek became the 1st European starting goaltender to win the Stanley Cup. In the process, he set the record for the most shutouts (6) in playoffs at the time and finished 2nd in Conn Smythe trophy voting.
For all the (maybe rightful) flack he receives for ’06 Ottawa season, I don’t think that it gets enough attention that a 40 y/o guy after several years of barely playing competitive hockey, turned into hottest Vezina candidate until his injury. I also think not enough attention is directed to the way how Hašek confronted this season’s disappointing ending: going back to Detroit, losing in WC final to the eventual winner, finishing 5th in Vezina voting in a pretty good competition (Brodeur, Luongo, Kiprusoff, Lundqvist).
Hašek was likely the NHL level goalie in 1984 when he first led his league in SV% and made his name by the season’s end, beating the Soviets 7:2. An 18 y/o goalie was voted the 3rd best European player. To put this into context, this was the ’84 top 5 in Europe:
1) Vyacheslav Fetisov 316 (96-10-8)
2) Vladislav Tretyak 182 (45-21-5)
3) Dominik Hašek 163 (28-36-7)
4) Sergey Makarov 124 (32-12-4)
5) Vladimir Krutov 86 (23-2-13)
Hašek probably grew into one of the best goaltenders in the world by 1986-87. During this season, he could hardly achieve more: best SV% in the league as well as in the WHC, voted as the best CSSR player, won the league title, voted as the best WHC goalie by the Directoriate as well as by the media, voted as the 3rd best player in Europe.
The obstacles Hašek overcame, and vastly different eras and playing styles from high-flying 1980s through the dead puck era up to post-lockout powerplay enhanced NHL, in all of which he succeeded, give him the upper hand. On the other side, the list of injuries also negates the advantage he has in longevity compared to others. Missing few critical playoff series may be a legitimite reason to move Hašek down. Voting Hašek #1 would mean looking beyond the team accomplishments and, in my view, voting for individually greatest goaltending ‚story‘.
