HOH Top 60 Goaltenders of All Time (2024 Edition) - Round 2, Vote 6

[Dennis Bonvie]

From a quick glance, it looks like Tony Esposito has fallen a decent amount from the Top 40 Goalies project (granted that was 12 years ago) and from the Top 200 players project (3 years ago). Does anyone have a high level summary of the reasons?

See Farkas, Mike.

 

[Michael Farkas]

*Miss America wave*

 

[jigglysquishy]

Percy LeSueur in Stanley Cup Games

1906 (Smith Falls)
Ottawa HC beats Smith Falls Seniors 6-5 in a best of three series

The Montreal Gazette · ‎Mar 7, 1906

Lesueur is one of the cleverest goal keepers ever seen before a net here. He shared honors with Frank McGee as the most brilliant of players [McGee scored 5 of 6 goals]

Ottawa HC beats Smith Falls Seniors 8-2

The Montreal Gazette · ‎Mar 9, 1906

Their defence put up a sensational game at times and the truly marvelous work of Lesueur before the net earned him unstinted applause from the great crowd and stamped the Smith Falls' goal defender as undoubtedly the cleverest man in the position who has appeared in Ottawa in the memory of the present generation of hockey goers.

[LeSueur's] performance was beyond doubt the feature of the match.

1906 (Ottawa)
LeSueur played in the second of two games for Ottawa against the Montreal Wanderers. Montreal won the first game 9-1 in a total goal series, with Billy Hague in net for Ottawa. The team won 9-3, but lost the series on total goals 12-10.

The Montreal Gazette · ‎Mar 19, 1906

The imported goal tend did his duty acceptably, although he was not overburdened with work. However, he nipped a couple of likely ones from Patrick, while twice he carried horseshoes when Patrick missed the goal, the net being vacated on each occasion by Lesuer, who had jumped out.

1910
Ottawa beats Galt 12-3 in a two game total goal series

Ottawa Citizen · ‎Jan 6, 1910

Percy LeSueur in goal was as reliable as of yore although he had few opportunities to scintillate while Fred Lake at point played a magnificent game.

Napoleon's route at Waterloo wasn't more complete than was that of the Galt Hockey team last evening.

Ottawa wins 3-1 to win series 15-4

The Morning Leader · ‎Jan 8, 1910

Their shooting was wild, and Lesueur had a comparatively easy time of it. Lehman in goal for the Galt team was busy, and performed exceedingly well, breaking up strong rushes in great style.

Ottawa beats Edmonton 8-4 in a two game total goal series

Ottawa Citizen · ‎Jan 19, 1910

Edmonton's defeat may be attributed to the great checking of the entire Ottawa team, the magnificent work of Lesueur, Lake and Shore on the defence, and the consistent, heavy play of Stuart, Walsh, Ridpath, and Roberts.

Ottawa wins 13-7 to win series 21-11

I can't find any comments about him outside the roster list


1911
Ottawa defeats Galt 7-4

The Toronto World · ‎Mar 14, 1911

It was the poorest exhibition of the season. The ice was covered with water in spots, and the conditions, in fact, were absolutely adverse to the Ottawa style of play.

Ottawa defeats the Port Arthur Bearcats 14-4

No comments



Overall, not much to pull from. Newspaper coverage for some of the Challenge games is weak, especially against smaller centres.


But there you have it. Every Stanley Cup game of every eligible player pre-2005 lockout.

 

[rmartin65]

I had assumed that LeSueur was up at this point because he dominated his competition in roughly the same way as Vezina.

Nah, that's what made Vezina so special- he was the first one to really clean up in accolades like that, at least, that's my understanding.

So, I thought there'd be less randomness in the all-star teams overall. 3 out of 7 is more than 2 of 19, but this isn't a math equation.

Randomness isn't the word I would use- guys weren't just pulling names out of a hat or throwing at a dartboard blindfolded. Variety is more accurate, in my opinion.

Lumley's competition is logically far, far greater, along with league quality. Like you said, it's not an AS counting competition.

Sure; that's why we are talking about LeSueur, arguably the greatest goalie of that decade (not my argument, but hey, it's out there), vs not the best of the 40s/50s/80s/whatever, but guys who are second or third (or fourth?) tier. I mean, Lumley is like the 5th guy from the 1921-1934 birth year bracket that we are discussing for this list. Barrasso is the 4th guy in that 1960-1970 bracket, and remarkably, the 4th guy born in 1965.

I think we are making the league quality and competition adjustments already.

But at this point in the history of sport, the first decade of the 1900s...how many leagues are we talking about that can overlap?

Oooh, I can talk about this all day. But since I get the feeling that this is largely rhetorical, I'll just say that it varied from probably 3-7 leagues that had top tier names. Most of the leagues weren't particularly strong top to bottom, though; until professionalism took off, players were usually geographically bound to where their jobs were located. So you'd get leagues that had a couple big names but the overall quality of the league was fairly poor. The CAHL/ECAHA wasn't like that- while there were blowouts, I think the league was generally fairly strong outside of a couple exceptions. And you can see it when random players would pop over to other leagues or would come to the CAHL/ECAHA from those leagues, or in SC challenges.

This is partly why I made sure to note what league LeSueur was playing in for each season, and to provide some idea of where I think that league fit in talent-wise in the big picture of hockey at the time. Of course, I learn more every day; I find out that previous assumptions or understandings I've had were incorrect, but the more I delve into it, the more comfortable I feel making those calls, and, hopefully, the more correct I become.

It feels like we're talking about a relatively highly segmented hockey population in a very low-light setting, so to speak...I'd expect the - whatever number we're at - 28th? best goalie of all time to be unquestioned in that pocket of competition.

Ehhh, as I said above, we are already talking about players who were the 5th or 6th best goalies of their time. Or the 4th best of a single birth year. I don't think it is a stretch to be talking about LeSueur here. Maybe it isn't time for him to actually get voted onto the list, but he's definitely worthy of discussion.

I'd much rather wait for Moran than use a ton of time of LeSueur here from the sounds of it...that's the tone of this as far as I'm hearing.

If you don't want to put the time into talking about LeSueur, then don't. But so far you are the only one I've heard who seems to think that we should be putting off discussion on him.
____________________________________________________________________________

I mentioned this in the pre-project discussion/research thread, but forgot to post it here-

From The Province (I believe British Columbia... Vancouver?), 20 November 1908 Page 13, though the story is in several papers across Canada-

The Ottawa club, by the way, is hurting to get together a team. Negotiations have practically been completed for the signing of Jack Winchester of Toronto to play goal. Winchester played last year with Winnipeg Maple Leafs and is considered quite up to the standard of Paddy Moran. Winchester was reported signed by Wanderers, but Ottawa got there first.

Jack Winchester was a heck of a goalie, and I feel pretty comfortable in saying that he would be a much more well-remembered name had he night died from diabetes in the middle of his career. I had him on my list. But I don't think it is a great look for LeSueur that Ottawa was looking to replace him with Winchester. It also isn't a great look for Riley Hern, the Wanderers goalie, if we ever get to talk about him. You know who this does look good for (besides Winchester)? Paddy Moran.

 

[rmartin65]

To create a new post, or to edit the previous? I'll let the system decide, I guess.

I've also been turning around the idea that LeSueur maybe gets some "bonus points" from some observers when looking back at his career due to non-play reasons. We all know that he was pretty involved in things like stats for goalies, equipment improvements, nets, etc. Did his active involvement in that sphere keep him a little more in the front of peoples' minds than his play warranted? I don't think we'll ever really know, but I wanted to throw it out there in case anybody had any thoughts on the matter.