I referenced in the prelim discussion my utter distrust of Tony Esposito...
Connell didn't hold up very well in the pre-1950 research process before the last list. I dug in hard for him especially, it read like his stats overrated him more than anything. But I'm open to other interpretations of that, as I don't think I'm gonna get a chance to watch him haha
forums.hfboards.com
Patrick Roy - The aforementioned butterfly, but combined with skating and a competitive fire that took it to another level from Glenn Hall. Innovator, or at least, mastered the innovation and brought it to the forefront (Warhol wasn't the first kitschy pop art guy...he was just the first to really know how to market it and live the lifestyle...Roy may be Warhol).
Jacq.........................wait a minute. Glenn Hall ---> Patrick Roy. Someone very prominent is missing in the butterfly timeline.
Tony Esposito
Why is he missing?
Because he wasn't that good at it. He didn't advent or advance the butterfly...he stole it as part of a patchwork of guessing and poor technique. Maybe I'll lose the art references here in case someone knows who Elaine Sturtevant is...you ever tell a joke from a comedian whose timing and rhythm you can't match? That's Tony Esposito for me. He just took what the last Blackhawks goalie did and tried to mimic it.
He's not the best skater. He's so unbelievably impatient and unpoised. He makes the first move every single time and cannot account for it with his skill. Rebounds are a mess. Second save process is a mess. I don't know if we have the data, but I bet if you did an ELO ranking of shooters, I'd wager that Tony O gets beat by the upper tier more often than any other. The bad players might not have had the skill to figure out how to deal with him kneeling and sliding out at them, but the skilled players had no trouble at all.
Enter: His playoff record. Where you're normally playing better players on the whole. I mean, who loses 18 out of 19 playoff games? He won 12 of his last 46.
Let's just get to the film here...
We want to be fair to the era, and it's pretty tough to find guys here, so I'm glad the "represent all eras!" rhetoric has died down now that the scores are higher. At the end of the day, I guess - personally - I'd rather take guys that I don't know how good they are from 1910 than guys that I know are bad from 1980 haha
Anyway, to be fair to Esposito, let's use Bernie Parent as the guide. I didn't expect to like Parent - I went against him in the last project - but that was superficial. It was the ol' "he only has X seasons" and "he was behind a great defensive team" and "Bobby Clarke was..." and all the ancillary stuff. But when you go back and watch, it's a high end goalie. Inconsistent early in his career, teams didn't necessarily "make a mistake" at the time because - like Sergei Bobrovsky - there was some stuff that needed fixing and then once he got the help he needed, he took off and became elite.
Reminder of Parent's game here:
We'll also have some help - I suspect (I haven't watched a single second of this game before, so I have no idea what's gonna happen) that we'll get some help from either Billy Smith or Chico Resch in this game as well...both are clearly superior goalies to Esposito for my tastes. I can only hope Resch made some lists besides mine.
First shot attempt the game (when you aren't good, it doesn't take long to present itself haha).
Freeze it at around 0:53 when NYI2 takes the shot (without taking 30 feet of ice in front of him, as was the style at the time). It's a left shot from the left boards. So, exterior stick. Let's pretend that you can't read pucks off the stick (he can't...ever) because it's a slapshot. Where is this puck likely to go?
Now, I get a bad rap because people feel I'm too particular about what I want out of a goalie. And one of those things that people feel I'm picky about is: I want the goalie in the ******* net when a shot is coming...
This is an example of a goalie, not really being in the net...per se.
A lot of technical signals we can get here. If you watched the few seconds here with this puck winding back to the point, we see the skating is a bit clunky. That's ok, you don't have to be a figure skater - especially at this point in the position's evolution - to make it. I appreciate the willingness to get depth on the shot. You skate it at it like a flat-footed defenseman, so I have concerns there. But whatever, I don't need perfection, I just need something I can hang my hat on.
One of the reasons that crease depth is so important to me is because that's the old phrase "cut down the angle" and "give them less net to shoot at"...and while an attempt was made, ummm...I don't know how to say it. He skated out and gave NYI2
more net to shoot at. He's taking away far post, but all the action of this shooting mechanism is short side-middle. Which is exactly what anyone who has ever seen a hockey game before would expect here. It's gonna be tough for a LHS from the left boards to pull this thing all the way to the far right top corner and score.
Also, the idea of almost every point shot where you don't take ice is for someone else to score. Just in the screenshot alone, look at the Islanders in the circle. Who is the threat? Well, both of them, in their own way. But the immediate threat is the Islander facing us. That's a loose stick and a deflection chance...a damn good one too.
So...do you suspect that this puck can get tipped to the far side from this? Nah. Certainly not in such a way that butterflying into the save wouldn't protect.
If the shot is on net, and a rebound occurs, and NYI22 - who has a famously quick shot release - gets it...where it's going? Yes, also short side.
So, the shot is going in the middle of the net or short side. The biggest threat is the tip, same place. The next threat is the rebound off the initial shot, also likely going short side.
Where is Tony O (that could be the theme of this post actually, it's a good title)?
He is on the far side of the net. He's not square. And his blocker has almost 100% overlap with his left pad. This ensures that he takes up even less of the net than he's even attempting to...not take up...or something.
The shot goes...as you know...short side. And out of play.
There's a whole host of hilarious stick stuff that Esposito does because his complete lack of patience. He's quite literally a defenseman playing goalie at times. I almost wonder if this is the last of the "he was too awful at being a skater, so we stuffed him in net" stories - even though they should have died out after the War haha
Weak shot from outside the dots, should be no trouble...but it hits a speed bump along the way, so it's a little knuckler. That sucks, but it should be no trouble for someone that has done this before. It should be no trouble for anyone that played floor hockey in the hotel hallway on a road trip haha
Oopsy doopsy. But why?
Absorb a puck. Not stick blade ramped up, ya goose. Why would you do that. Stick blade flat, allow some give, backed by the pad. Easy save. Absorb. And given the time, this is either a controlled rebound to a player. Or because it's a bouncy house, it's a stop, control, paddle to a player situation. He ramps it over his own head while he's almost in the circle.
No one stores a rake on the ground lying face up...except this dude.
All right, these get long in a hurry...I don't want to show a bunch of goals against and go, "see, he stinks" because that's the reason why we don't have any goalies from this era in the first place. And the ones we do have aren't the right ones. But let's just look at this real quick and then we can come back for more if there's interest...
It's the playoffs in this clip, so you know you'd rather have a folding chair in net, but...
First of all, at 0:50 of this clip, you see how good Chico Resch is. Not the greatest athlete or skater, but very good reads and positioning. He stops a breakaway or penalty shot here in the iso cam footage. He gets depth, he matches speed back, he doesn't fall on his ass as soon as a feint is made, and then telescopes out the pad on the forehand shot. And ya know, doesn't have his glove down his pants and he remained in the net the whole time...stuff you take for granted.
After that it's two slapshot goals that go through Tony O from midrange. This is going to be tough to describe via text...but he doesn't know what's gonna happen on these plays. If you slow it down and read his body mechanics, nothing is really going in the same direction.
The knees push up, so hips go up. But skates go out, so body goes down. Glove goes this way. Blocker goes that way. Head pulls back. It's like a flinch. It's like when you shoot on a goalie in street hockey or men's league that hasn't played before...it's
those mechanics. There's no method to it. Like, some guys - like Holtby - they go "head, hands, feet" in that order, every time. That's the order of movement.
What he's offering is basically: skate out as far as I can and yell really loud with my body...hopefully that scares the puck away.
I know he played a ton so the GSAA noise is through the roof - I think we all see how misleading that is in this environment. The splits are big for me here. Bad players shoot with their head down. Good players don't. Great players pass. So it's no surprise that anyone looking up scored on him. The players that were looking up played in the playoffs more often than the '75 Caps roster.
He's probably better than Hainsworth and he "accomplished" more I guess...but the gap is negligible, and if this list only goes to 60, we don't neither of them on the final list. That's not a battle I intend to win, but he sure as hell doesn't belong in this round.
Jacques Plante - the goalie whisperer of the era -
agrees, in so many words:
“Esposito, because of
his style, leaves a lot of rebounds,” said Plante. “Because of his style he
makes the first move, rather than letting the shooter make his. He comes out and then moves backwards and because of that he’s off balance. Because of his crouch, he can’t cover the top of the net.
“There’s no way he can cover when somebody changes his mind or on a deflection. He’s a reflex goalie—how many times have you seen him make that long reach to make a save? If he has to do that,
he’s standing in the wrong place.
