HOH Top 60 Goaltenders of All Time (2024 Edition) - Round 2, Vote 4

[ContrarianGoaltender]

Does anyone have either Luongo or Broda near top of their ballots? They got almost 0 discussion this round.

I have them kind of in the middle, and wonder if either/or might sneak in.

On my initial list, Roberto Luongo was the highest ranked goalie of this group. That said, I view this round as still very much up in the air, I have a few things I want to do still and probably won't have time to complete before the end of the weekend, but I very highly doubt that Luongo will end up getting passed for me by anyone here who didn't also play post-2005 lockout.

I'm obviously a big numbers guy, and Luongo's consistently elite save percentage record ranks up there anyone who isn't already on the list. Another way to represent that in a qualitative way would be to point to him being a top-2 goalie for Team Canada at every best-on-best tournament for a decade. I'm also big on international success, where Luongo has a .929 on 639 shots at world championships and a .934 on 213 shots at best-on-bests. If it's an argument for Price's ability to show his quality in a different environment (which I fully agree that it is), then it's an argument for Luongo too (as even if he didn't quite hit Price's highs for Canada, he still had a very successful international career).

Broda is still on the lower half of this group for me. It's pretty clear he played in one of the strongest defensive environments, probably ever (especially in the playoffs). His GAA splits by score (which I posted last round) don't look particularly clutch to me. I didn't think he was all that close to Brimsek or Durnan, and I'm suspicious of the depth of talent in his era.

 

[nergish]

“Broda always had this happy-go-lucky, jolly nature about him and used to say that "the Maple Leafs pay me for my work in practices. I throw in the games for free."

I f*cking love this.

 

[MXD]

On my initial list, Roberto Luongo was the highest ranked goalie of this group. That said, I view this round as still very much up in the air, I have a few things I want to do still and probably won't have time to complete before the end of the weekend, but I very highly doubt that Luongo will end up getting passed for me by anyone here who didn't also play post-2005 lockout.

I'm obviously a big numbers guy, and Luongo's consistently elite save percentage record ranks up there anyone who isn't already on the list. Another way to represent that in a qualitative way would be to point to him being a top-2 goalie for Team Canada at every best-on-best tournament for a decade. I'm also big on international success, where Luongo has a .929 on 639 shots at world championships and a .934 on 213 shots at best-on-bests. If it's an argument for Price's ability to show his quality in a different environment (which I fully agree that it is), then it's an argument for Luongo too (as even if he didn't quite hit Price's highs for Canada, he still had a very successful international career).

Broda is still on the lower half of this group for me. It's pretty clear he played in one of the strongest defensive environments, probably ever (especially in the playoffs). His GAA splits by score (which I posted last round) don't look particularly clutch to me. I didn't think he was all that close to Brimsek or Durnan, and I'm suspicious of the depth of talent in his era.

Past the war, he was up against two netminders that will almost certainly end up being ranked in the final list on top of the already voted in Durnan and Brimsek. Also Jim Henry and Gerry McNeil.

If you meant all-positions depth, fair enough, but I wouldn't see that as a great argument when compared to Billy Smith and (especially) Bernard Parent.

 

[overpass]

A question remains: How the heck do you explain the Czechoslovakian thrice championships over mighty Soviet squads who kicked NHL *** on tours?

... Holecek.

And coach Vladimir Kostka's left wing lock, strong two-way forwards, and the best international defencemen.

 

[Michael Farkas]

The thing with this logic is -- it would bring us to rank the likes of Kovalev amongst the 100 best skaters of all-time, or Lindros like the... 18th or something.

I can't see how it would. I also, once again, do not find that goalie production and skater production relative to their respective peers are be accrued in the same way. I mean, in part, it's my logic base...and that's not what it would happen haha

Was Plante more important to the Habs dynasty than Broda to Toronto's? And by how much?

Yes, about 35 places on this list.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Luongo's probably my #1 vote, despite the lack of a signature season. He just had so many years as an above-average full-time starter. He has basically 20000 more minutes played than any other person on the ballot, or the equivalent of 5 full seasons. Also, his defensive support during his Vezina-level seasons is replete with no-name guys. If I'm reading my rosters correctly, the highest Norris finish any defenseman who played with Luongo that year is Christian Ehrhoff's 8th place in 10-11, he never had a defenseman receive a 1st place Norris vote (he had 2 2nds, 2 3rds, 14 4ths, and 29 5ths total). His similar wipe-out in All-Star voting was ruined by a single 1st place vote for Aaron Ekblad in his rookie year of 14-15. [Fun fact, the Norris support Andrei Markov received in Price's rookie year to finish 6th is more total votes than Luongo's entire career, 50 to 47.]

I assume you don't complain that the Norris is primarily an award for "best offensive defenseman" or that it has especially heavy offensive leanings...if this is the logic that vaults Luongo to the top of this mountain.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

I ranked Broda towards the top of my rankings on a preliminary basis since I don't know if I'll be able to post on Sunday. It's probably the ranking I'm the least certain of, but he's not crashing down anytime soon.

There's something to be said for getting consistently done in the playoffs, PLUS, there's a determined amount of credit that has to be given, and I always considered Ted Kennedy to be somewhat overrated in the grand scheme of things. And there's the longevity too. And I'm also weary of giving undue weight to coaching, since too many stupid shit is sometimes attributed to this factor, like Jean Perron having somehow a POSITIVE EFFECT on a netminder.

Luongo is firmly mid pack.

I'd suggest that the voters giving undue credit to coaching are probably the ones not really factoring in coaching at all. That said, I'm absolutely happy to have a conversation or take feedback about any of my data.

With respect to Jean Perron, let's look at the with-or-without you stats of the goalie with the second-most career NHL games played for that coach, shall we?

Brian Hayward, NHL Career:

	GP	SA	SV	SV%
With Perron	76​	1989​	1782​	0.896​
Without Perron	281​	7854​	6871​	0.875​

It really doesn't strike me as far-fetched to suggest there was a save percentage advantage derived from that environment.

To be clear, nobody should take any save percentage numbers entirely at face value, including these coaching ratings. When you try to isolate pretty much any impact in hockey using team data, there are absolutely other factors that are going to get in the way. I am trying to estimate the save percentage impact of coaches by effectively looking at their career save percentages while behind the bench, but like any save percentage analysis it has the potential to be affected by any of the factors that impact save percentage generally. In addition, regular save percentage has the goalie themselves in net, while coaching impacts are more indirect.

Here are the three variables that need to be kept in mind at all times when evaluating anything from a coaching perspective, all of which I have referred to in my previous analyses using the coaching numbers:

1. Team Quality

This is I believe where your issue with Jean Perron falls. I'm assuming you think he was an idiot coach who had Chris Chelios and Larry Robinson and Guy Carbonneau and Bob Gainey and the rest of them carrying him to glory anyway. I actually don't have a problem with that perspective at all.

Here's the thing, though, if we're trying to evaluate the environment of a goalie who played for that coach on that same team, then the quality of the team is effectively "baked in" to that rating. It becomes much more of a problem when a coach plays in different environments and has team quality disproportionately impact that. So it's super rough on Mario Gosselin playing for Perron in Quebec in 1988-89, who I'm sure was doing his absolute best to just to hang on to his .868, but for Roy and Hayward it's probably not too far off the truth (as the above stats for Hayward would suggest). Let's say Perron is a bad coach who hurts save percentages in general (I'll pluck a number out of the air and say 1.04), but his team is a great defensive team that hugely boosts save percentages (maybe 0.89 or so, in line with all-time great elite defensive results). Multiply them together, and you get 0.93, which is Perron's estimated save percentage impact based on the raw numbers, and we're kind of where we're aiming to be anyway.

My best example of how team quality can actually become a real problem would be something like Tom Barrasso's 1997-98 season coached by Kevin Constantine. I think Constantine was a very good defensive coach who was definitely helping his goalie's save percentages, yet his career save percentage is a mediocre 1.03 relative to league entirely because his career stats are spiked by coaching the awful expansion San Jose Sharks and getting destroyed by the rest of the league. Obviously that adjustment factor would be incorrect and shouldn't be used for an environment like the '97-98 Penguins.

2. Team Discipline (Separate from the Coach)

Team discipline really tends to follow coaches around, and in that case that level of team discipline (and potentially even special teams effectiveness) might be already included in a coaching rating. Occasionally it happens though that a team might deviate pretty significantly from the coach's prior norms.

A relevant example here is Carey Price's 2010-11 season under Jacques Martin. Martin's teams have historically been quite disciplined (0.96 relative to league average in terms of PP opportunities against), but the Habs that year led the league in power play chances against, which would have made Price's job more difficult than the coaching numbers might suggest.

3. Goalie Quality

What's the old canard, "Show me a good coach and I'll show you a good goalie?" Some coaches definitely were luckier than others with the talent they had between the pipes, and that impacted their team save percentages. Does a high save percentage mean a defensive system carrying a goalie, or a goalie carrying a defensive system? Could be either of them, and since the relationship is so interdependent this is one of the harder ones to tease out. It's easier for coaches who had lots of different goalies, but for the pairings where one coach was closely linked with one goalie (e.g. Fred Shero and Bernie Parent, or Punch Imlach and Johnny Bower) you really won't ever have an objective answer, it's just a matter of assessing the overall evidence. In those cases, I think the backup numbers are better evidence, as again I've argued in previous discussions.

Overall, I think evaluating coaching is very important to evaluating goalie results. People can decide how to incorporate it however they want, if you have a subjective method you think is better than have at it, but I think there is a lot of value in a consistent, objective system and I think it mostly provides meaningful feedback on various team environments which is worth the few times where it doesn't quite portray things accurately.

 

[Michael Farkas]

A question remains: How the heck do you explain the Czechoslovakian thrice championships over mighty Soviet squads who kicked NHL *** on tours?

... Holecek.

Excellent team defense (as we saw also in 1998) and two of the best d-men in the world at that time.

If exhibition tours means something, then surely not being clearly better than Dzurilla during his prime must too...it's the old thing where "if you have two MVP candidates, then you have none" I guess...

Doesn't seem like anything Holecek is gonna land with you at this point, but if you watch the Czechs defensive tactics - whether you do that in the 197x or 1998 - it might.........do something. I don't know...

 

[MXD]

(...)

With respect to Jean Perron, let's look at the with-or-without you stats of the goalie with the second-most career NHL games played for that coach, shall we?
(...)

Jean Perron coached two NHL Teams : For two seasons, A very good but not dynasty Montreal Canadiens team that was close to a defensive juggernaut, and , for a little more than half a season, a pretty bad Quebec Nordiques team that wasn't quite the league dregs they'd become, but they were pretty bad.

A cursory look at the rosters of those teams would tell you exactly that. This is the player quality factor that you alluded to. Like, I look at the Canadiens roster, and that is a team with offensive depth but a rather low high end offence, and a very good collective defense. The Nordiques had a few very good offensive players on their downswing, rookie Joe Sakic, Walt Pudddubny probably slipping in post-prime. And Jeff Brown, I suppose. The defense was Jeff Brown (not a positive) and a bunch of players being overplayed.

Those two teams were in the Adams divisions, and that was the era of totally unbalanced schedules, where each team played 28 games intra-division (split between 4 teams) and 52 games out of division (split between 16 teams).

The Adams division was generally super tight division and the high end skill level wasn't the highest - only the Nordiques were a bit different, but that's not super relevant here, since they kinda sucked when Perron was coach.

But what does that have to do with Perron? Not that much.

But it does have a lot to do with Bryan Hayward, who spent the bulk of his career in Montreal (+- 40% of games) and ... Winnipeg (+-45%) of games. Winnipeg being... in the Smythe, aka the run and gun division with the Gretzky Oilers, the absolutely awful defenses, and the Calgary Flames being the only one trying to keep it somewhat tight. To absolutely no one's surprise, Hayward was statistically worse in Winnipeg than in Montreal. His other games were played on an absolute trash expansion Sharks team (where he predictably gave a lot of goals), and the Minnesota North Stars, that were decent enough to play their way to the SC Finals playing a tight style in a tight division and where Hayward backed up Casey to statistically okay numbers.

So basically, the glut of Jean Perron's index number was Hayward moving from the wide-open Smythe to the tight Adams division, on the team for whom more than half the regular forwards had received Top-10 Selke support at some point, two Hockey Hall of Famers on defense, a guy with 5ft large shinpads and Rick Green. And that said team was playing more games vs teams that less geared towards offense than the league average.

 

[MXD]

Excellent team defense (as we saw also in 1998) and two of the best d-men in the world at that time.

If exhibition tours means something, then surely not being clearly better than Dzurilla during his prime must too...it's the old thing where "if you have two MVP candidates, then you have none" I guess...

Doesn't seem like anything Holecek is gonna land with you at this point, but if you watch the Czechs defensive tactics - whether you do that in the 197x or 1998 - it might.........do something. I don't know...

But then again : those tactics meant they scored less. Which put more pressure on the netminder.

 

[seventieslord]

It's a good point and a big hangup I have on Smith.

They were tremendous offensively. Second in GF in the era behind the run and gun Gretzky Oilers. They were the best defensive team in the era.

Out of all the dynasties in play he played on the best team. Deep forward lines filled with defensively responsible players. Best defenseman on the table, though defensive depth wasn't great. Always well rested and shared starting duties.

In terms of who had the easiest time, it's hard for me to look at anyone but Smith.

Win threshold takes a goaltenders offensive support and shots against per game and calculates what their save percentage would have to be for them to have a .500 record. I wonder what Billy Smith's win threshold save percentage would be in the 1980 to 1984 playoffs. 865?

 

[seventieslord]

Jean Perron coached two NHL Teams : For two seasons, A very good but not dynasty Montreal Canadiens team that was close to a defensive juggernaut, and , for a little more than half a season, a pretty bad Quebec Nordiques team that wasn't quite the league dregs they'd become, but they were pretty bad.

A cursory look at the rosters of those teams would tell you exactly that. This is the player quality factor that you alluded to. Like, I look at the Canadiens roster, and that is a team with offensive depth but a rather low high end offence, and a very good collective defense. The Nordiques had a few very good offensive players on their downswing, rookie Joe Sakic, Walt Pudddubny probably slipping in post-prime. And Jeff Brown, I suppose. The defense was Jeff Brown (not a positive) and a bunch of players being overplayed.

Those two teams were in the Adams divisions, and that was the era of totally unbalanced schedules, where each team played 28 games intra-division (split between 4 teams) and 52 games out of division (split between 16 teams).

The Adams division was generally super tight division and the high end skill level wasn't the highest - only the Nordiques were a bit different, but that's not super relevant here, since they kinda sucked when Perron was coach.

But what does that have to do with Perron? Not that much.

But it does have a lot to do with Bryan Hayward, who spent the bulk of his career in Montreal (+- 40% of games) and ... Winnipeg (+-45%) of games. Winnipeg being... in the Smythe, aka the run and gun division with the Gretzky Oilers, the absolutely awful defenses, and the Calgary Flames being the only one trying to keep it somewhat tight. To absolutely no one's surprise, Hayward was statistically worse in Winnipeg than in Montreal. His other games were played on an absolute trash expansion Sharks team (where he predictably gave a lot of goals), and the Minnesota North Stars, that were decent enough to play their way to the SC Finals playing a tight style in a tight division and where Hayward backed up Casey to statistically okay numbers.

So basically, the glut of Jean Perron's index number was Hayward moving from the wide-open Smythe to the tight Adams division, on the team for whom more than half the regular forwards had received Top-10 Selke support at some point, two Hockey Hall of Famers on defense, a guy with 5ft large shinpads and Rick Green. And that said team was playing more games vs teams that less geared towards offense than the league average.

When Jean Perron took over mid season in quebec, there was a noticeable increase in their save percentage. Same team, same season, same players, different coach, and save percentage got better. I don't really have a horse in this race but there does seem to be evidence Beyond Montreal that he may have been good for save percentages.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

Past the war, he was up against two netminders that will almost certainly end up being ranked in the final list on top of the already voted in Durnan and Brimsek. Also Jim Henry and Gerry McNeil.

If you meant all-positions depth, fair enough, but I wouldn't see that as a great argument when compared to Billy Smith and (especially) Bernard Parent.

Compared to Smith and Parent it definitely is not, which is partly why the 21st century guys are leading the charge for me this round.

I'm still a little uneasy about the goalie talent pool in the 1940s though. Any time you see a bunch of old guys that aren't being pushed out by the younger guys, you have to at least question how much is the quality of the incumbents and how much is a lack of quality of the new entrants. Especially when contemporary sources talk about how the goalies who went to war needed a couple of seasons to get back into form, and yet they still weren't challenged all that strongly. Goalies born from 1921 to 1925 look really bad historically, other than Johnny Bower (who didn't even make the NHL until 1953-54 anyway), and I think it's a cohort that was really disrupted by WWII. I'm also pretty low relative to consensus on some of the 1926-28 birth year goalies as well, so to me it looks like a very weak decade overall for talent production until the superstars arrive in 1929.

@overpass also did an analysis of goalie depth in the various pro leagues in 1959-60 in the preliminary thread which was very interesting. I did a much more rushed job for 1949-50, and to me the goalie depth doesn't seem to stack up nearly as well, although I concede that it's very tough to compare apples to apples because goalies of the later era who hung around long enough did have more NHL opportunities because of the two-goalie system and then league expansion.

I could definitely be convinced otherwise on this one, but my preliminary assessment of eras wasn't all that kind to the late '40s.

Jean Perron coached two NHL Teams : For two seasons, A very good but not dynasty Montreal Canadiens team that was close to a defensive juggernaut, and , for a little more than half a season, a pretty bad Quebec Nordiques team that wasn't quite the league dregs they'd become, but they were pretty bad.

A cursory look at the rosters of those teams would tell you exactly that. This is the player quality factor that you alluded to. Like, I look at the Canadiens roster, and that is a team with offensive depth but a rather low high end offence, and a very good collective defense. The Nordiques had a few very good offensive players on their downswing, rookie Joe Sakic, Walt Pudddubny probably slipping in post-prime. And Jeff Brown, I suppose. The defense was Jeff Brown (not a positive) and a bunch of players being overplayed.

Those two teams were in the Adams divisions, and that was the era of totally unbalanced schedules, where each team played 28 games intra-division (split between 4 teams) and 52 games out of division (split between 16 teams).

The Adams division was generally super tight division and the high end skill level wasn't the highest - only the Nordiques were a bit different, but that's not super relevant here, since they kinda sucked when Perron was coach.

But what does that have to do with Perron? Not that much.

But it does have a lot to do with Bryan Hayward, who spent the bulk of his career in Montreal (+- 40% of games) and ... Winnipeg (+-45%) of games. Winnipeg being... in the Smythe, aka the run and gun division with the Gretzky Oilers, the absolutely awful defenses, and the Calgary Flames being the only one trying to keep it somewhat tight. To absolutely no one's surprise, Hayward was statistically worse in Winnipeg than in Montreal. His other games were played on an absolute trash expansion Sharks team (where he predictably gave a lot of goals), and the Minnesota North Stars, that were decent enough to play their way to the SC Finals playing a tight style in a tight division and where Hayward backed up Casey to statistically okay numbers.

So basically, the glut of Jean Perron's index number was Hayward moving from the wide-open Smythe to the tight Adams division, on the team for whom more than half the regular forwards had received Top-10 Selke support at some point, two Hockey Hall of Famers on defense, a guy with 5ft large shinpads and Rick Green. And that said team was playing more games vs teams that less geared towards offense than the league average.

I completely agree that Hayward played in a tougher environment outside of Montreal. The adjustment factor to equalize .896 and .875 would be 0.83 which is absolutely massive, it's like the equivalent of worst in the league defensively to best in the league defensively. We're instead talking about 0.95 (sorry, I forgot the exact number I had for Perron and just looked it up again).

To clarify, Jean Perron's index number is exclusively related to teams he coached, and has nothing to do with anything Hayward or any of his goalies did on other teams. My backup stats are the ones where I'm looking at what they did on other teams compared to when they played with a goalie as a teammate (like I showed for Hayward). For the coaches, it's simply their teams' career save percentage relative to league average (pro-rated for partial seasons).

Like this:

Coach	Year	Team	Games	Total SA	Total SV	Pro-Rated SA	Pro-Rated SV	Pro-Rated SV%	LgAvg SV%
Perron	1986​	MTL	80​	2165​	1889​	2165​	1889​	0.873​	0.874​
Perron	1987​	MTL	80​	2163​	1930​	2163​	1930​	0.892​	0.880​
Perron	1988​	MTL	80​	2302​	2065​	2302​	2065​	0.897​	0.880​
Perron	1989​	QUE	47​	2602​	2263​	1529​	1330​	0.870​	0.879​
Perron	TOT	All	287​	9232​	8147​	8159​	7214​	0.884​	0.878​

Rating = (1-.884)/(1-.878) = 0.95

If your main objection is really due to the naming of it as "coaching rating" and that the team effects are too large in this stat, especially for a coach with a short NHL career, I think that's honestly fair. All I can really say is welcome to goaltending analysis, where sample sizes are always a problem and team effects are baked into everything.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

Win threshold takes a goaltenders offensive support and shots against per game and calculates what they're safe percentage would have to be for them to have a 500 record. I wonder what Billy Smith's win threshold save percentage would be in the 1980 to 1984 playoffs. 865?

1980-1984 Islanders, Playoffs

GF/GP: 4.30
SA/GP: 28.6

Win Threshold: (28.6-4.30)/28.6 = .850

 

[The Macho King]

1980-1984 Islanders, Playoffs

GF/GP: 4.30
SA/GP: 28.6

Win Threshold: (28.6-4.30)/28.6 = .850

That feels like a very imprecise metric there. Playoffs are a small enough sample that outliers can really drive that number, and endless OT can have an impact too.

 

[seventieslord]

1980-1984 Islanders, Playoffs

GF/GP: 4.30
SA/GP: 28.6

Win Threshold: (28.6-4.30)/28.6 = .850

.... Jesus

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

That feels like a very imprecise metric there. Playoffs are a small enough sample that outliers can really drive that number, and endless OT can have an impact too.

Yeah it's probably better to look at it on a game-by-game basis, sure, as that would be less influenced by blowouts. I don't know how much of a difference that makes for the dynasty Islanders though, a team that won 45 of their 72 playoff games in that period by 3 or more goals.

Billy Smith had a dominant offence and an elite defence, which pretty much any way you measure it is going to be one of the most favourable winning environments any goalie has ever had.