HOH Top 60 Goaltenders of All Time (2024 Edition) - Round 2, Vote 9

[rmartin65]

No, we need to account for everything. We can't just ignore that he gave a ton of goals.

We absolutely should be taking into account that he was scored on a lot... but I'd argue the context behind those numbers is more important.

If we aren't applying that context, I'm sure Tom Paton ranked really highly on your preliminary list, right?

Like MAF? Not really. But can you imagine him making the list if he NEVER beat his backup? We compare people to backups all the time.

Ah, sorry, I must have mixed you up with someone else.

But, it would help if you were factually accurate; using the Wiki stats you provided earlier, Moran had a 3.7 GAA while Harry Rochon had a GAA of 8.0. Small sample size, of course, but Moran blew his backup out of the water there.

We compare people to their backups all the time, but again, there is a context required. In 10-22 game seasons, sample sizes are so incredibly small. A bad game has a much more dramatic impact on averaging stats over 10 games than it does over 60 games.

@seventieslord used an even smaller sample in a Mike Liut playoff post earlier - where were the complaints then?

I must have missed that.

This is an irrational argument of a point you (possibly) don't support. The argument seems to be going to an unnecessary extreme (goals allowed don't matter at all!) to prop up Moran.

I'd like to see where I said goals allowed don't matter. I'm merely arguing that starting goalies are statistically outperformed by their backups at times. That doesn't make them any less great, it doesn't make the backups particularly special, it just means that, statistically, wacky things happen over small sample sizes.

No one is saying GAA is precise. A backup having a small advantage over a starter doesn't usually win you the Vezina. All those clever writers and GMs seem to know this based on voting.

Right... so Moran having a backup outperform him over a massive 1-4 game sample size shouldn't mean that Moran was not a historically great goalie, since just about all the hockey observers of the time considered Moran to be either the best or one of the best goalies of his era. It's literally the argument I am making.

Again, showing that someone was marginally ahead of someone else proves nothing. The goalies we like tend to be good at preventing goals. We can and have looked at team situations and accounted for players who had a higher degree of difficulty.

Yep- that's my point.

We're not arguing that he didn't belong in the league, just that he isn't more impactful all-time than a lot of great goaltenders.

But in the opinions of those who saw him and his contemporaries play, he was. It just goes back to what you trust here- an averaging stat over a small sample size that you even admit has it's flaws, or countless newspaper reports and eyewitness observations?

Surely we have to account for it. Why is Paddy Moran the one goalie in history for whom we throw out the metrics we use for everyone else?

Where has someone used GAA as the sole reason to denigrate a player's career during this project? It's definitely possible I skimmed over it.

It's a garbage stat. We should look at it, because it is a data point, but it is something I don't think we should be putting a lot of stock in... for any goalie, not just for Moran.

What's your opinion of say, Mike Richter? And if it's low, are you holding him accountable for things Paddy Moran gets a free pass for?

I'm not sold on Richter, at all. Contemporary opinion does not seem to hold him in near the same regard as Moran was held. Moran makes all star teams, gets called the best goalkeeper in the league over about a decade, later great goalies are compared to Moran, Moran was one of the first 3 living goalies (we'll say Connell counts) inducted into the HoF (Connell, Lehman, and Moran all made it in 1958), etc. Richter has next-to-no Vezina support, no post-season all star teams, and I think he's on the outside looking in when it comes to the HoF.

I'm definitely not down on Richter because of his GAA or save percentage or whatever. As I have stated numerous times, I personally don't care for goalie stats.

Or take it all into account. The man gave up a TON of goals relative to his peers. If we didn't have stats and were going by newspaper accounts alone, we might think Pavel Bure was more impactful than Wayne Gretzky.

I highly doubt a comprehensive review of post-game summaries, all star/awards voting, and the opinions of those that played with/against them would give us the impression that Bure was a more impactful player than Gretzky.

Anyway, again, no one is saying throw the stat out. All I'm doing is saying it is garbage and shouldn't be valued much.

It was something they had to get away with. Not an approved tool of the trade.

Wasn't that the case with Benedict for a long while as well? Isn't that part of the myth surrounding Benedict, that he was this pioneering rule-breaker?

Jan. 9: Boucher earns NHL-record fifth straight shutout | NHL.com (EDIT: It's a Today in NHL History thing, it makes sense, I swear!)

I'm definitely tracking that it was illegal and was eventually made legal. I'm arguing that Benedict wasn't special in this regard, that plenty of goalies dropped to their knees to stop the puck, risking a penalty to do so.

It's a good thing we have a non-garbage stat like Wins to show us what's what. And we're going the (technically correct) way of only counting the Cup games Moran played against the overmatched Maritimes teams and ignoring the games where he played for the "World Championship" and they beat the pants off of him, scoring at a level they couldn't achieve against the New Westminster Royals. That's not ALL on Moran, but we seem to be holding these newspaper accounts up as a significant accomplishment for reasons that escape me.

Wins is a garbage stat! Just like GAA. Just like save percentage. But hey, if people are posting GAA, why shouldn't we post Cup-deciding games as well? You argued that Moran "wasn't as impactful as he looked when it came to helping a team win"; that table shows that Moran helped his team win the Cup just as much than any other goalie eligible this round, and more than quite a few of them. We have his teams winning. We have quotes of Moran helping his teams win/lose less badly. If we put our hands together...

But hey, "While he was letting ten go through, there were ten hundred he didn’t let slip in." So long as you use that standard for everyone else too.

I sure do- I take game reports and contemporary opinions into account for each and every goalie eligible.

Unless you think that everyone else here is gullible enough to believe that Moran faced 1010 shots in the game and stopped 10 of them, I think we can all be trusted enough to recognize hyperbole like this. Have fun throwing this quote around, I don't think it's changing hearts and minds the way you think it is, though.

 

[rmartin65]

I'd feel better about the KHL years if I knew how it compares in strength to the old AHL. Bower and Lumley played in an era where AHL goaltending could be stronger because there were so few spots up for grabs in the NHL. I know that politics are a problem for Russian players in recent years and that it's not so easy for young players to get to North America, but I'm not sure that I see the KHL as being that much stronger than the AHL now. And there are 64 active goalie spots in the NHL today. I don't want to punish players for what politicians do, but I'm just not convinced that short of total dominance, a player in the KHL is proving much.

I think it's definitely worse than the AHL (on a relative basis). I didn't mean to give off the impression that the two were equal, just that we have been giving consideration to leagues outside of the NHL.

I don't think Shestyorkin was in the KHL because he couldn't handle the NHL; if we look at his play once he got to North America, he pretty much hit the ground running. To me, his KHL time shows that he was a quality goaltender for a good 3-4 years before he made the NHL, not that his KHL time shows that he was one of the best in the world for those years.

In other words, the KHL time doesn't bring his peak from 4 years to 9 years, it just extends his relevant career from 4 years to 9.

He's definitely still on the short end of the career length ruler (again, relative to his peers), but it's not prohibitively short, in my opinion. I don't think he's particularly high on my list this time around, but he's definitely above more than just 1-2 guys.

Unless future discussion changes my opinion, of course- @Michael Farkas , I know you said earlier in the thread that you didn't feel compelled to make a big public case for him this round, but I'd be really interested to read such an argument if you had the time over the next couple of days.

 

[seventieslord]

I highly doubt a comprehensive review of post-game summaries, all star/awards voting, and the opinions of those that played with/against them would give us the impression that Bure was a more impactful player than Gretzky.

Anyway, again, no one is saying throw the stat out. All I'm doing is saying it is garbage and shouldn't be valued much.

Also, it's not an equivalent situation at all. For two reasons. First of all, for forwards, The amount of offense that they generate that shows up on the score sheet is considered to be a huge part of their value as players, significantly more than goals against average has mattered historically for goaltenders. Secondly, we're being asked to imagine what we would think if we didn't have the stats for Gretzky and Bure. But the people who watched Moran play did have his stats, And still rated him that highly regardless. They had the opportunity to look at those numbers and ask themselves, are we wrong about how good he is? And largely did not do that.

 

[overpass]

Here's a fun story I found about Paddy Moran. In 1926, Canadiens and Maroons held an exhibition game at the Forum for their substitute players. The purpose was to gauge support for a possible minor pro league, and to give their substitutes more playing time.

Canadiens had Frenchy Lacroix in goal, who played several regular season games for them. But the Maroons had no backup goaltender, as Clint Benedict played every minute of that season for them. The 48 year old Paddy Moran donned the pads nearly a decade after his retirement and played in goal.

The Montreal Gazette commented on Moran's playing style and how the game had changed since his day.

Holway and Kitchen were sturdy on the Maroon defence, Holway in particular playing an aggressive game. But it was Paddy Moran, the former Quebec Bulldogs' goalkeeper, who provided the tense moments for the fans through his work in the Maroon net. Paddy gave a perfect demonstration of how the net guardians of old used to tend their citadels. In Moran's day the defence played further back and the goalkeeper was forced to rush from his net frequently to check onrushing opponents. Moran found it hard to stay in his goal last night. Frequently he brought the crowd to its feet cheering as he rushed out ten or fifteen feet and batted the puck out of harms way. But with the present style of attacks whirling in, goalkeepers are better off in the nets, which was demonstrated last night when Canadiens scored their last two and deciding goals into an open Maroon mesh.

Here are a few other articles about Moran.

D.A.L. MacDonald, who pored through the newspaper archives of early hockey in the 1930s, wrote a piece on Moran for the Gazette in 1934. MacDonald said of Moran: "At his peak, he was perhaps the best goaler of his time for when Paddy was "on" his game, he was well nigh unbeatable." But he also noted that Moran had a terrible temper. Opposing players like Newsy Lalonde and Russell Bowie could "get his goat", and "the wild Irishman chased forwards up the ice when they tantalized him with biting remarks, for Paddy wouldn't be ragged by anyone."

MacDonald remembers old-time hockey players in a 1948 column: "Moran was a really great goaler, one of the best that ever drew on the pads, but they tell that he had one great weakness and that was that his temper was short."

I think this one was posted already. In 1912, Moran, Lesueur, Morrison, and Merritt were named as the four greatest hockey goalkeepers. "Paddy Moran is perhaps the one best bet of the four...Paddy at times was backed by a team of indifferent merit, but his work did not suffer as a consequence." This was just before he won back-to-back Stanley Cups with Quebec.

In 1912, Paddy Moran was voted most popular player by Quebec fans. Moran and Joe Malone received the vast majority of votes.

Lester Patrick was believed to be the man responsible for presenting Moran's case to the Hall of Fame governors. Link.