Not to belabor things, but I was hoping Barrasso would come up this round. Vezina finalists:
Tom Barrasso 1-2-2-2-3
Belfour-1-1-2-3
Lundqvist 1-2-3-3-3
Vasy 1-2-3-3
Luongo 2-3-3
Price 1-3
B.Smith 1
Fuhr 1-2-3-3
Hellebuyck 1-1-2-3
My Best-Carey
To expand on this:
This is perhaps the most favourable possible way to look at Barrasso's voting record. For whatever reason, his all-star results are a little off from his vezina results. If we used all-star team voting instead of vezina voting, which would allow us to extend these results back to 1927 (and perhaps expand them using what we know of western league all-star teams, too), he wouldn't look so dominant in this field. Additionally, he doesn't have a heck of a lot of recognition beyond those five seasons. His sixth best season of recognition for the Vezina was 1988-89, in which he finished 7th, with a single vote. A goalie like Fuhr has a 5, 6, 6, 6 that gets cut off by this method - a method I suspect was deliberately chosen to boost Barrasso's perception in this project.
Are all-star votes better than vezina votes? Who knows. I think it's wise to consider all of them. One thing I can say is that they are certainly based on a wider cross section of opinions. For example, in 1988, I think it's more statistically likely that Patrick Roy was considered to have the 2nd best season, as he finished 2nd in all-star voting (in which 63 ballots were cast), as opposed to Barrasso's 2nd in Vezina voting (21 ballots). Similarly, in 1998, Barrasso was all alone in 3rd in Vezina voting (26 ballots), but a distant 4th in all-star voting (53 ballots). Simply on the basis of sample sizes, I'd trust the latter more.
Anyway, the above includes a number of goalies no longer eligible for discussion and leaves out a whole bunch with extensive all-star voting records to consider. I submit to you a more complete, and current list: (needs to have at least 3 votes to count as a top-5)
Thompson: 1-1-1-2-2-3-3-3-3-4-4-5
Esposito: 1-1-1-2-2-3-3-5
Worters: 1-1-2-2-2-3-3-3-3
Hainsworth: 1-2-2-2-3-4-4-5-5
Hellebuyck: 1-1-2-3-4
Worsley: 1-2-3-3-4-4-4
Lumley: 1-1-3-4-4
Barrasso: 1-2-2-2-3
Fuhr: 1-2-3-3-5
Smith: 1-4-5
This is based strictly on vezina votes after it became a voting award, all-star votes back till 1931, and unofficial gm-voted teams till 1927. It also includes Hainsworth's first tea min the 1926 WCHL as an "overall" 2nd team.
These are a little incomplete for a few reasons:
- on the early GM-voted teams, I had to use every vote we had and still there are not 5 goalies who get credit for a top-5 each season. Goalies are credited with 1-2 votes a few times. Still, it's possible with expanded voting we'd see Hainsworth show up another time.
- in the O6 era, voting results are sparse. We often only know the top-3, sometimes even only top-2. This may affect Lumley and Worsley to some degree.
- If someone would like to remind me of the all-star teams earned by Lehman and Holmes I can work out an estimate for what that looks like in a "consolidated" sample.
I still prefer Worters to Hainsworth and Thompson, but I have to say, his voting record looks really good. He earned top-5 recognition in every season he ever played in the NHL, and top-3 three quarters of the time.
The further back you go, the more you have to take a string of award voting results with a grain of salt (and the Lehman string of 1s and 2s will emphasize that), but there's one guy who was voted the top guy in the world's top league three times and it wasn't even that long ago: Tony Esposito. The statistical record really supports his dominance as well. I think it's a shame we never had the chance to compare him and Parent, because I'd say the same thing I said in the last project: There was never a time, outside of 1973-74 and 1974-75 that Bernie Parent was considered better than Tony Esposito. If those two years are enough to do it for you, then fair enough, because they were pretty spectacular years, but Esposito was outperforming him otherwise.
It would take a lot to knock Esposito out of a top-2 spot for me here. He's got the best record of award recognition, when mental adjustments are made for era and talent pool size and whether people in his era drove cars and stuff (they did, and the cars were pretty dope, too), and it's backed up by very strong statistical dominance over a very long period of time, in a number of environments - dominant team, good team, blah team, and three different coaching regimes. Some statistical models have him as being one of the two greatest regular season stat accumulators of all-time (goals saved vs. average, or vs. replacement, etc), the others in contention generally being Roy and Brodeur. Of course, he benefitted from a weaker NHL so his dominance in that regard has to be viewed through that lens, just like Dryden's was. His save percentages relative to the league average were, like Dryden's, a little cartoonish at times and one should scale those margins back mentally. But still, eight times top-4 in the NHL? You won't find anything close to that at this point in the project (was there even anything close to it last round?) He also wasn't some nonsense Brian Elliott guy who did it here and there in a light workload - he was a worhorse year after year. This is why he was top-3 in GSAA nine times: statistically dominant,
and available every night
. And if you still want to punish him for his lack of any playoff success in the mid-late 1970s... take a look around at who he's being compared to here. In light of everything he has going for him, the fact that he's only coming up in
this round is proof that we've already punished him
very heavily for that.
