HOH Top 60 Goaltenders of All Time (2024 Edition) - Preliminary Discussion Thread

[rmartin65]

I know there have been some comments about shortening the project, but I'm actually really excited to go to 60. I feel like I have (mostly) the right names in my top 30, but it really starts to get shaky for me past that point. Reading everybody else's thoughts and research into those next couple tiers of players is going to be fun. And hopefully I'll be able to contribute some of my own thoughts along the way.

Provided I have the time over the next couple weeks (school, work, and family are kicking my butt right now), I'm going to start positing the quotes I have compiled for several of players who played (significant time) pre-1910. At this point I honestly don't know how many of them will (or should) make the final cut, but I figure I'll throw some names out.

Are we allowed to start making appeals for players at this point? Or is this more of a research dumping ground?

 

[jigglysquishy]

I know there have been some comments about shortening the project, but I'm actually really excited to go to 60. I feel like I have (mostly) the right names in my top 30, but it really starts to get shaky for me past that point. Reading everybody else's thoughts and research into those next couple tiers of players is going to be fun. And hopefully I'll be able to contribute some of my own thoughts along the way.

Provided I have the time over the next couple weeks (school, work, and family are kicking my butt right now), I'm going to start positing the quotes I have compiled for several of players who played (significant time) pre-1910. At this point I honestly don't know how many of them will (or should) make the final cut, but I figure I'll throw some names out.

Are we allowed to start making appeals for players at this point? Or is this more of a research dumping ground?

30 is about as far as I get confidently.

I think we can make appeals for players.

I'm open to anyone convincing me that the top 8 should be broken up.

I look at Hasek and Roy as the only ones with strong chance at 1. But I'm open to arguments for Plante or others(?!).

I think Lundqvist stands out to me for post Brodeur goalies. The ~12 year consistency looks great and he always kept the Rangers in contention.

Goalies are prone to consistency issues. So being elite year in year out is worth a lot.

 

[Dr John Carlson]

I know there have been some comments about shortening the project, but I'm actually really excited to go to 60.

We definitely won't be going shorter than 60.

Are we allowed to start making appeals for players at this point? Or is this more of a research dumping ground?

Any discussion is good discussion!

We could use some appeals for players further down the board. Particularly, IMO, players who aren't recently retired who didn't make the first iteration of this list. Who slipped through the cracks in 2012?

 

[carjackmalone]

Hasek...
5-time Hart trophy finalist
6-time Vezina winner (against Roy, Brodeur, Belfour)

Vs.

Parent...
1-time Hart finalist
2-time Vezina winner

Now if you want to include playoff/tourney all-the-marbles moments: Parent had one and a half; Hasek wowed in the Canada Cup, trump cards any goalie in Olympic hockey, and Stanley Cup drags a ragtag non-HOF lineup to Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, only to "lose" in OT due to a missed noncall. He went on to win the cup in Detroit.

To suggest Parent and Hasek belong in the same zip code is absurd to the nth degree.

Parent did shine for a bit, as goalies with all-time great players and coaches around them do. But to "vs" him against Hasek? There is no universe where Parent is top 10 all time and Hasek ain't.

Sorry if I didn’t clarify it better but I’m talking about best TWO year run for a goalie

Sure Hasek who I believe is the greatest all time falls short to parent during his two cup winning years in Philly

Two cups and Two Smythe trophy’s clinched it for me.

 

[Professor What]

We could use some appeals for players further down the board. Particularly, IMO, players who aren't recently retired who didn't make the first iteration of this list. Who slipped through the cracks in 2012?

So, one guy that it seems some felt got the shaft in the last go around was Seth Martin. He only made 12 of 27 ballots in the last project, though he did decently well on the ballots he made. I have to admit that I have no idea what to do with him.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I'm a big fan of Seth Martin but you have to give a lot of credit to "what about".

 

[Vilica]

I did a quick and dirty post-lockout tally of appearances, and there ended up being just over 100 goalies on the list, but only 22 made it into double digits. On a per-season basis, the highest ranked goalies ended up being [in alphabetical order] Brodeur, Hellebuyck, Kiprusoff, Lundqvist, and Vasilevskiy. Aside from Brodeur arguably being a valid entry for just his post-lockout play, the item that sticks out most is that Brodeur had 9 years, Hellebuyck 9, Kiprusoff 8, Vasilevskiy 10, while Lundqvist maintained his pace over 15 full seasons.

In terms of trying to figure out how much playing time is enough to qualify for the list (as a modern goaltender), I feel like Juuse Saros is a pretty good test case. He has 8 full seasons in the NHL, 3 as a full-time starter, 2 as part of a 1a/1b, and 3 as a backup. That's led to just over 20000 total minutes played in the regular season, plus an extra 1200 in the playoffs. That seems a big enough sample for a modern goaltender, but only just. An active goalie that's played less has probably not played enough. Both Shesterkin and Sorokin on a per-season basis are up with the 5 goalies mentioned above, but with less than 15000 minutes played and only 4-5 seasons, their samples just aren't large enough yet.

 

[VanIslander]

Sorry if I didn’t clarify it better but I’m talking about best TWO year run for a goalie

Sure Hasek who I believe is the greatest all time falls short to parent during his two cup winning years in Philly

Two cups and Two Smythe trophy’s clinched it for me.

Uh... best two year run?

Vs. Hasek looks more absurd!!!!

Back-to-back Hart trophies on a team where he did it all himself - no HHOF Bobby Clarke, no HHOF coach Shero and a ton of Broadstreet Bullies.

Parent was never the best hockey player on the planet. Hasek CLEARLY was!

You can't just look at the shiny silver trophies but at the performances that resulted in them.

 

[carjackmalone]

2hart trophy’s is a huge accomplishment

But two cups and two Smythes cmon

It’s all about winning the Cup

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Best two year run

Haseks two Hart Vexina seasons vs

Bernie Parents 2 year cup run 30 shutouts


Or Tony Esposito first two years in Chicago

Or Jacques planted 2 year run for for Sr Louis/Toronto

consider that the two seasons immediately after parent (almost) running the table produced this run:

• 107-19-16 record (combined rs and playoffs)
• 1st in GAA and SV% among anyone who played a single rs minute
• ^ ditto playoffs, anyone who played a single minute
• 2.02 combined GAA, .925 combined SV%, 285 GA over 145 games (8,474 mins) / 3,781 shots
• two cups, two 1ASTs, two vezinas (old)

both guys had stunning runs, but i think there also must also have been something about the league in the 1970s that created this level of total domination.

but for comparison, here’s how parent would stack up:

• 113-37-21 record (combined rs and playoffs)
• 1st in GAA and SV% among anyone who played a single rs minute
• 2nd in GAA and SV% among anyone who played meaningful games in the playoffs
• 1.96 combined GAA, .926 combined SV%, 337 GA over 173 games (10,301 mins) / 4,585 shots
• two cups, two 1ASTs, two vezinas (old), two smythes

 

[MXD]

I may come out of retirement for this one.

 

[blogofmike]

Nah, I know he is awful. One of the 70s/80s guys is not good too, I never remember which. But he has no second save ability at all. Just goes all jellyfish after the first shooter's flinch...

Hmm...

Now I'm curious to see where you'd rank Ken Dryden.

 

[carjackmalone]

Ken Dryden is kinda like the Bill Russel of Hockey

 

[rmartin65]

What are people's thoughts on talent distribution? I'm looking at the original top-40, and (if I counted right) 7 of those goalies listed played in 1949, 7 in 1950, 6 in 1951, and 7 in 1952. In a six team league.

Now, I get that they weren't all at the same point in their careers. But in the 49-50 season, 5 of the 6 starting goalies appear on the top 40 list. That strikes me as very unusual, but maybe I'm not understanding the situation fully or not being critical enough of similar situations at different times periods.

 

[Professor What]

What are people's thoughts on talent distribution? I'm looking at the original top-40, and (if I counted right) 7 of those goalies listed played in 1949, 7 in 1950, 6 in 1951, and 7 in 1952. In a six team league.

Now, I get that they weren't all at the same point in their careers. But in the 49-50 season, 5 of the 6 starting goalies appear on the top 40 list. That strikes me as very unusual, but maybe I'm not understanding the situation fully or not being critical enough of similar situations at different times periods.

I get what you're saying, but when I look at the list of names from 1949-50, it kind of makes sense. I'm not sure it's anything more extreme than 1, 2, and 6 being contemporaries or numbers 3-5 being contemporaries too. I'd imagine those are situations that are likely to repeat themselves. It just seems to me that goaltending tends to come and go in waves. Perhaps that's appropriate for a skill that seems to be so fickle anyway. One minute a guy is riding on top of the world, the next, he's a has been.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

1963 or so is similar.

Had to be a pretty good goalie to stick in a six-team league where they'll send you to Cleveland for asking for more money.

 

[rmartin65]

I get what you're saying, but when I look at the list of names from 1949-50, it kind of makes sense. I'm not sure it's anything more extreme than 1, 2, and 6 being contemporaries or numbers 3-5 being contemporaries too. I'd imagine those are situations that are likely to repeat themselves. It just seems to me that goaltending tends to come and go in waves. Perhaps that's appropriate for a skill that seems to be so fickle anyway. One minute a guy is riding on top of the world, the next, he's a has been.

I can't help but wonder if we are being impacted by names and not by their actual play. It's just a thought at this point.

1963 or so is similar.

Had to be a pretty good goalie to stick in a six-team league where they'll send you to Cleveland for asking for more money.

Are we saying that the top 6 goalies in today's NHL aren't as good?

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Are we saying that the top 6 goalies in today's NHL aren't as good?

Fair point.

One interesting test (speaking as a mathematician) would be to randomly distribute top goaltenders across years and see what a completely random clustering pattern would look like. You'd need to assume (rightly) that top goaltenders would have longer-than-average careers, which would gravitate towards an increased likelihood of top goaltenders being clustered.

Would be a pretty easy exercise in Excel with VBA, which I'll store away for when I don't have three kids running around the house unfettered.

 

[Professor What]

I can't help but wonder if we are being impacted by names and not by their actual play. It's just a thought at this point.

I'm not entirely sure I get where you're going there. Something had to happen for those names to have the reputation attached to them. In the case of the guys from 1949-50, all of them proved to be able to stick around for longs periods of time when spots were at a premium. I mean, that's got to count for something, right?

Please note this isn't a criticism of what you're saying. I'm just not sure that we're on the same page here.

 

[rmartin65]

One interesting test (speaking as a mathematician) would be to randomly distribute top goaltenders across years and see what a completely random clustering pattern would look like. You'd need to assume (rightly) that top goaltenders would have longer-than-average careers, which would gravitate towards an increased likelihood of top goaltenders being clustered.

I'm not a numbers/stats guy (yet! I'm working on it in my spare time), but wouldn't we also need to account for talent pool size?

For example, say we are looking at 1887-2024. I think we can all agree that our list will have more goalies who played in 2000 than in 1900.

Would be a pretty easy exercise in Excel with VBA, which I'll store away for when I don't have three kids running around the house unfettered.

If you have the time, I am very interested to see what the results are.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

You could honestly wiggle the size of the talent pool and see how big the effect is - I'm a big fan of sensitivity testing like that because it shows what matters to focus on in a model and what you can ignore.

I'll poke around on it after I see how many strikeouts Paul Skenes gets against my Mariners.

 

[rmartin65]

I'm not entirely sure I get where you're going there. Something had to happen for those names to have the reputation attached to them. In the case of the guys from 1949-50, all of them proved to be able to stick around for longs periods of time when spots were at a premium. I mean, that's got to count for something, right?

You make a good point about career length- most of them did play for a long time. But doesn't that mean star goalies of that era played for a long time? Making up numbers here, if 5 of the 6 starters had 15 year careers, shouldn't we assume that the average starting goalies of that era played for about 15 years?

Please note this isn't a criticism of what you're saying. I'm just not sure that we're on the same page here.

Ha, if you feel like criticizing, go for it. I've got a thick skin, I'm probably not going to stress about someone criticizing my thoughts/ideas on the internet.

I am very open to the idea of being wrong and/or that I've been following illogical arguments. I want people to bring those to my attention so I can try to fix it moving forward.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

I can't help but wonder if we are being impacted by names and not by their actual play. It's just a thought at this point.


Are we saying that the top 6 goalies in today's NHL aren't as good?

Mid 50s to 60s I'd say no.

5 out of the 6 starters in that span are in the Hall with 3 being in the argument for best ever. Plante, Sawchuk, Hall, Worsley, Bower.

Granted that's a big outlier. Overall I'd agree with your point

 

[VanIslander]

My first childhood hero won 6 Stanley Cups and decided at the height of his career - after only 8 seasons - to shockingly retire to pursue a writing and political career, and suddenly the hockey media kicked him out of the 'possibly best ever' discussion, to the curb, away from O6 staples: Plante, Hall, Sawchuk. Overnight.

 

[buffalowing88]

Uh... best two year run?

Vs. Hasek looks more absurd!!!!

Back-to-back Hart trophies on a team where he did it all himself - no HHOF Bobby Clarke, no HHOF coach Shero and a ton of Broadstreet Bullies.

Parent was never the best hockey player on the planet. Hasek CLEARLY was!

You can't just look at the shiny silver trophies but at the performances that resulted in them.

I grew up with Hasek as a Buffalo fan. We loved that guy and I agree he had the highest peak.

I'd vote Roy above him, though.

Roy had his own temperamental issues but we seem to just sweep Hasek's under the rug.

He strangled a Buffalo News reporter, he held the franchise hostage with made-up injuries DURING THE PLAYOFFS, and he demanded a trade to the best team in hockey, leaving his own team with no options.

Hasek should be top-three, but he was too much of a wildcard to be at the top.