HOH Top 60 Goaltenders of All Time (2024 Edition) - Round 2, Vote 3

[ContrarianGoaltender]

Or... what if we just evaluated goalies against the goalies they played against under the rules they played in?

I don't think it's that easy, and I'm not just talking about early era goalies.

Take this, for example:

Bernie Parent: .915 career, .900 league avg
Henrik Lundqvist: .918 career, .911 league avg

If I was only evaluating goalies against the goalies they played against, I'd have Parent ahead of Lundqvist because he outplayed his peers by more. I currently do not have Parent ranked ahead of Lundqvist, because my assessment of the strength of their relative talent pools more than makes up for the statistical gap between the two of them. And others might disagree on the weighting of those factors, and that is fine, but at the end of the day I think considering strength of era is a completely valid approach to an all-time ranking, if you're being consistent about it and not just drawing arbitrary lines (which I don't think anyone here is doing).

The same logic applies for early era goalies. If you think the talent pool was weaker then you'll rate them lower, and conversely if you think it was stronger then they should be placed higher. I don't think viewing the situation one way or another makes you biased against an era, any more than I'm biased against the 1970s by not having Parent over Lundqvist. Personally, I'm falling into what is probably a pretty common viewpoint on the early era guys based on how the discussion has gone, which is that Vezina should go pretty soon but that Benedict is going to have to wait a bit.

 

[MXD]

I assume this feeling was equally reflected in previous votes? Like, sure, Vasilevskiy had an easier go of it than someone like Price, but Dyden and Tretiak weren't exactly playing with scrubs.

Why are you resorting to suspicions right off the bat?

In a 30(-32) team league, not every goalie is going to have dynamite backups. But yeah, not exactly a murderer's row of backups there.

That's fair and factual, but why then even make the argument about his backups in the first place if a simple memory check could reveal that Vasilevski's average backup was hovering around replacement level (I realize you aren't making the argument yourself, at least not here)?

I'm not sure I understand

Being the best in the world when the SOC hasn't clearly been established, and is at best absolutely nothing special, shouldn't have that much weight. Basically, the reverse Belfour argument. Lundqvist was barely active, Price 2019 wasn't quite Price anymore (and even if he was, nobody would've noticed), same with Rinne to a certain extent, Markstrom and Varlamov are ... fine, I guess, but we're not exactly about to vote them to the list anytime soon.

Don't get me started on the Conn Smythe.

 

[rmartin65]

Why are you resorting to suspicions right off the bat?

It wasn't a suspicion, it was a question. If we are going to dog Vasilevskiy for the quality of his teams, I would assume that the same is done for other goalies who played behind strong (or stronger) teams. And if not, my next question would be why not.

That's fair and factual, but why then even make the argument about his backups in the first place if a simple memory check could reveal that Vasilevski's average backup was hovering around replacement level (I realize you aren't making the argument yourself, at least not here)?

Like you noted, it wasn't my argument.

That said, I do think looking at a goalie's performance relative to his backups is a good metric, but like everything else, it requires context. You brought up a good point that while Vasilevskiy's numbers in comparison to his backups look good, the shine comes off a bit when looking at the relative talent of his backups in comparison to other goalie/backup duos.

Being the best in the world when the SOC hasn't clearly been established, and is at best absolutely nothing special, shouldn't have that much weight. Basically, the reverse Belfour argument. Lundqvist was barely active, Price 2019 wasn't quite Price anymore (and even if he was, nobody would've noticed), same with Rinne to a certain extent, Markstrom and Varlamov are ... fine, I guess, but we're not exactly about to vote them to the list anytime soon.

Thanks for the explanation!

Don't get me started on the Conn Smythe.

Now I'm curious, haha.