I was very happy to see Alex Connell and Sergei Bobrovsky come up this round. They'll likely be in my top-3 here along with Quick.
Alex Connell was a very phenomenal goalie of his day that still doesn't get the praise he likely deserves for being so clutch throughout his career in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Connell is a Hockey Hall of Famer that won two Stanley Cups. One with Ottawa in 1927 and the other in 1935 as a member of the Montreal Maroons.
Connell first joined the Ottawa Senators for the 1924–25 season after the Senators dealt star goaltender Clint Benedict to the expansion Maroons as Benedict was having some off-ice issues with the team. Connell steadied the ship in Ottawa during a rough time and led them to the Stanley Cup a few years later in 1927.
In the 1927–28 season he set the NHL record—unbroken as of now—for the longest shutout streak at 461:29, by recording seven consecutive shutouts and another 41 minutes in the eighth game, from January 31 to February 22, 1928.
What's craziest though is how Connell returned out of semi-retirement to play for the Montreal Maroons in 1934-35, at the behest of new Maroons' coach Tommy Gorman, who had won the Cup with Chicago the previous season. Then 33 years old, Alec rebounded to his old form, leading the NHL in shutouts for the fourth time and finishing second behind Chicago's Lorne Chabot for the Vezina Trophy as leading goaltender.
Connell went undefeated in the 1935 playoffs for the Maroons to lead them to the Stanley Cup, allowing only four goals in the Cup finals. It was simply incredible. Gorman called his play the "greatest goalkeeping performance in the history of hockey," which I'll admit is a bit hyperbolic considering what Gorman's own Charlie Gardiner did the previous year for the Chicago Black Hawks in the 1934 playoffs.
Some other facts about Alex's legacy:
At the time of his retirement, Connell was second in NHL career shutouts, and nearly ninety years later, is still in sixth place, with 81. He is the only goaltender in league history to record 15 or more shutouts in two separate seasons. Connell's 1.91 career goals against average (GAA) is the lowest for any goaltender in the history of the National Hockey League, a record he has held for over ninety years. He is also the career leader for playoff goals-against average for goalies playing over twenty games.
Connell was also one of the first goaltenders to transition in 1927 from the cricket-style pads of the early days of hockey to the wider modern-style leather-and-kapok pads, pioneered by Hamilton harnessmaker Pop Kenesky. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958, but died before his formal induction after a lengthy illness on May 10, 1958.
Upon his death, former teammate King Clancy said, "To me, Alec was a grand competitor, a great fellow and a great friend -- one of the outstanding goalies of his time." The Society for International Hockey Research, in compiling a "retroactive" Conn Smythe Trophy (most valuable player in the playoffs) list, deemed that Connell would have won in 1927 had the trophy been awarded back then. Charles Coleman, in Trail of the Stanley Cup, believed that Connell would have won the Vezina Trophy in 1926 too, in like fashion.
