HOH Top 60 Goaltenders of All Time (2024 Edition) - Round 2, Vote 7

[seventieslord]

We can't say anything with precision (i.e. this 57 from Joseph is better than that 56 from Vanbiesbrouck).

We can generally infer that they're on the upper-tier of upper tier seasons. The 50-ish GSAA seasons would be better than anything Gump Worsley did, right?

Probably, but we don't really know. An average performance in the original six era is much much different than an average performance in the '70s, '80s, or '90s. Because When Worsley played, "average" was typically in between the worst and second worst performance by a Hall of Fame goaltender that season

 

[jigglysquishy]

The O6 era in general was just brutal for goalies. Fierce competition, no masks, and the expectation to play full seasons through injuries.

Guys are getting tossed despite great play. Lumley is one of the best Red Wings in the 1950 Cup win. Gets pushed aside for Sawchuk. Sawchuk wins three Cups and has arguably the highest goalie peak. Gets pushed aside for Hall. Plante wins 5 Cups, 6 Vezinas, and a Hart but his health (and Toe Blake's personality) gets him dumped for Worsley.

HHOFers like Bower, Durnan, and Worsley spend significant time in the minors. Charlie Hodge would have been a full time starter any time after expansion, but is always stuck behind HHOFers.

Especially in the mid 60s when you have two dynasties competing. Two firm coaches with sky high expectations. And that's ignoring Glenn Hall.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Not that I'm making requests, but Joseph played Beezer and Barrasso in 99, and against Kiprusoff in 04 before he played behind the same team as him in 2008.

Oh, I know haha - it's really hard to read what CuJo does. So, I'll identify something and go, "ok, I see that that's happening a lot here in '93...let's see if it prevails." ...and then it doesn't always. Things in his game come and go so much, that it's hard for me to form a strong cause and effect.

Contrary to unpopular belief, it's not like I watch these guys for 4 seconds and go, "look, he played without a mask...that's why he was bad."

The point is to explain successes and failures or explain whether he was part of the system or he WAS the system. Ya know, all the questions that we consistently ask of all players in every single thread here.

CuJo is probably the toughest one to nail down that's come up yet...I'm trying though, but it has to be clear and consistent...

 

[Michael Farkas]

Excuse me, I must recuse myself because of my partiality towards *checks list* Tom Barrasso...

Anyway...

Can I get a vibe check on where we're at with the older guys? Namely, Connell, Holmes, and LeSueur.

I know more about Connell than the other two, he doesn't get a ton of praise relative to having the best numbers of all time. Holmes, similar boat, despite all the Cups. LeSueur feels like he gets more praise, but I'm not sure what to do with how many leagues there are at that time, etc.

What's the SWOT on these three as it stands right now, boys?

 

[seventieslord]

Holmes and Lesueur are easily ranked for this round IMO. Connell, I want to see separation before he goes on. Hainsworth was just added. Connell is probably the logical next guy from that era, but cases exist for Roach, and I guess, Chabot too. Not ready for him.

I don't think it's fair to say he has the "best numbers of all-time". Superficially, his GAA is the lowest ever, which also makes it the lowest of his own era, but on an adjusted basis, it's only 10th all-time. GAA is also a brutal stat, so there's not much that can really be taken from that anyway.

The main reason his career GAA is so low, is that he played in the three lowest-scoring seasons of all-time: 1926-27 through 1928-29. And yes, Hainsworth played all three of those seasons (and had a 17% lower GAA), as did Benedict, Chabot, Worters, and Roach.

But 32% of Connell's career games were played in that extremely low-scoring environment. For Hainsworth, it's just 28%. For Benedict, it's 34% right at the end of his career. For Roach, it's 27%. For Worters, it's 26% and for Chabot, it's 30%.

Connell was a good goalie, but he's very fortunate to have been 24-26 years old and backstopping Ottawa (advantages he rode to "just" 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishes in GAA) during the three most lucrative seasons for goaltenders.

 

[Michael Farkas]

If I don't think Hainsworth should have been added (so soon?) where does that leave my logical consistency for Connell placement? Or is that, on its own, not enough information to render an answer...?

 

[overpass]

Excuse me, I must recuse myself because of my partiality towards *checks list* Tom Barrasso...

Anyway...

Can I get a vibe check on where we're at with the older guys? Namely, Connell, Holmes, and LeSueur.

I know more about Connell than the other two, he doesn't get a ton of praise relative to having the best numbers of all time. Holmes, similar boat, despite all the Cups. LeSueur feels like he gets more praise, but I'm not sure what to do with how many leagues there are at that time, etc.

What's the SWOT on these three as it stands right now, boys?

I like Holmes at this point. I know they liked Lehman more in the west, but honestly I think Holmes' results were just as good. We know about his Cup record. He had success in the east in 1914 and 1918. And out west, his regular season goals against in Seattle and Victoria were basically equal to Lehman's in Vancouver, if you set aside the one war year where Lehman lost his starting d-men Cook and Duncan. And Holmes had less heralded defencemen than Lehman.

That's why I have Holmes well ahead of LeSueur and Connell. Unless I'm really underrating Frank Foyston and Jack Walker.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I like Holmes at this point. I know they liked Lehman more in the west, but honestly I think Holmes' results were just as good.

Do we have any sense of how close those all star teams and what not are?

Like, there's this situation...
1st goalie: 245 pts
2nd goalie: 198 pts
3rd goalie: 21 pts
4th goalie: 18 pts

Where 3rd is irrelevant.

And there's these...
1st goalie: 91
2nd goalie: 87
3rd goalie: 77
4th goalie: 71
5th goalie: 44

Where really nothing separates 1 thru 4.

Do you (or anyone) have a sense of whether Holmes is a tight 3 out West or a distant 3?

##

How sure are we that Hainsworth was better than Connell? Scale of 1 to 10 (most confident) if you want...?

 

[jigglysquishy]

The west just didn't have a lot going goaltending wise after Lehman and Holmes.

Tom Murray and Norman Fowler are not good competition. Bert Lindsay was good. Hainsworth came later and was good. Hal Winkler was serviceable.

It depends on the year, but for a lot of the 1910s the gap between 2 and 3 for goalie is pretty significant. When Holmes was in Toronto the goaltending depth out west was very weak.

We're ultimately only going to be talking about 4 goalies who were in their primes 1915-1925. We have some more early guys to come up (Moran, Paton, Hutton, Hern), but for the 1915-1925 period Holmes is the last guy up.

 

[seventieslord]

The other reason Connell's GAA is so low compared to other, better contemporaries is because he retired early. He has just 92 career games beyond his age 29 season, which is just 22% of his career. Here's how many those other guys have:

Hainsworth: 465 (his entire NHL career)
Worters: 286 (over half his NHL career)
Thompson: 330 (over half his NHL career)
Roach: 181 (40% of his NHL career)
Benedict: 250 (2/3 of his NHL career)
Chabot: 246 (over half of his NHL career)

In a lot of cases it has just as much to do with changing scoring environments (which I have already covered), but every goalie born in 1902 & 1903 had a higher GAA in their 30s than in their 20s:

Worters: from 2.12 to 2.38
Thompson: from 1.87 to 2.21
Chabot: From 1.83 to 2.16
Connell: From 1.87 to 2.11

Roach, a 1900 birthday, saw a decline in his GAA in his 30s, for reasons that I believe are more team-related. Not all of these goalies experienced the same changes from their 20s to their 30s, but they all allowed more goals for different reasons. Connell didn't have that same effect to such a degree.

 

[The Pale King]

Johnjm22 over on the King's board very kindly dug up the clip of Quick I mentioned upthread. Check out his mentality/mindset after giving up seven goals in the game 2 loss in 2014. How critical do you think this was in the infamous reverse sweep? Starts around the :46 second mark.

 

[MXD]

I had John Ross Roach a good 10 ranks above Alec Connel in my initial list. That is probably too much, and I'm not sure JRR is the one that should be ahead in the first place, but off that generation (or wave), they're both 5th and 6th (behind Gardiner, Worters, Hainsworth and Thompson, in that order, I don't make the rules but I accept to play by them). I'm not sure BOTH should be making it, I'm not sure EITHER have to be on the final list (but could end up being there, if that makes any sense), but I'm 100% positive no other netminder of their generation should be making it. Of course, Holmes (and Dave Kerr, who isn't up for voting yet) aren't really of that generation or wave. I gave points to Connell, by virtue of ranking him 10th, but that has more to do with my disrespect of a few other candidates than with actually wanting to give him points.

EDIT : I did bring up Dave Kerr because one may see him as a Thompson contemporary due to their careers spanning similar years, but he's really closer in age to Turk Broda than to Gardiner, who is the youngest of the Gardiner/Worters/Hainsworth/Thompson/Connell/JRR bunch, all born between 1900 and 1904, and closer to Bill Durnan and Frank Brimsek than all of these netminders BUT Gardiner (if I got my maths right). You may think having 10% of the list born between 1900 and 1904 is a bit of a head-scratcher, and you'd probably be right -- just don't bring Kerr, who is really a logical candidate, into this.

Edit 2 : I started to write something only to realize that most of it had nothing to do with anyone up for voting in this thread, so the edited down version : Chuck Rayner is significantly younger than anyone I named in this thread so far, and somewhat on a island between Durnan (the youngest) and (urgh) Harry Lumley, who himself is closer in age to Lorne Worsley (!) than to Rayner.

EDIT 3 : .... What was the point of writing this one hour before the deadline?

 

[blogofmike]

Connell was a good goalie, but he's very fortunate to have been 24-26 years old and backstopping Ottawa (advantages he rode to "just" 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishes in GAA) during the three most lucrative seasons for goaltenders.

Fortunate time period yes, fortunate to play for Ottawa, no.

There is some good fortune to be on the 1927 Sens, but that's not a big deal by 1929. (Strictly speaking he led the NHL in GAA in 1926. He was 2nd, 3rd, and 6th from 27-29).

1926 was a low GAA year too, but so were 1931, 1933, and 1936, and Connell only gets 52 GP out if them. This helps him out ironically, as the 31 and 33 Sens were two of the worst defensive teams in NHL history to that point.

In between Connell helps the 32 Detroit team go from 7th in GA in 31 (Dolson), to 2nd. (Roach maintains 2nd place after Connell leaves.) So at least we can infer that Connell doesn't suck, and it's the Sens teetering in and out of bankruptcy that's more to blame.

In the mid 1930s he is in and out of the NHL because of his fire department job (article from 1947). He didn't play a ton in his 30s.

In 1935 he again follows in Benedict's footsteps. While Benedict's great 1926 helped him beat Worters, Connell, and Holmes on the way to a Maroons Cup, Connell wins a series where his team scores 1 goal, and then defeats the two best offensive teams in the NHL.

Connell's 1935 doesn't get the same credit as Gardiner's 1934. It probably should. The guy he beat 1-0 over 2 games was Lorne Chabot. And while it's not a perfect comparison, Chabot was good goaltender who had an easier time replacing Gardiner than he did replacing Connell.