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HOH Top Goaltenders of All Time Preliminary Discussion Thread

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My opinion of Thomas as a goalie (independent of statistics/success) is very low. So we'll have to agree to disagree, in fact...

Yes, certainly one video doesn't make or break a goalie...I'm just showing, that this is what Giguere is about...he's very poor in terms of skill...except positioning, which is stellar...he's just a blocking wall, a well-programmed shooter tutor...now some people like that, some people don't...the idea is that, this type of goaltender can only work in certain situations (perfect situations) which is why Hartford couldn't make heads or tails of him, he couldn't beat any of those late 90's terrible Calgary goalies and put up the same basic numbers as his backups in Anaheim - who have been quite questionable outside of Anaheim...Gerber is gone, Bryzgalov went to Phoenix, under another very defensive team and then left for Philly where he's been less than stellar to date), Hiller has fallen below the league average since Carlyle/Pronger/Niedermayer left...

It's not at all surprising that Giguere couldn't solve Toronto's goaltending woes...

It doesn't appear as if Giguere was significantly better than his replacements...something you'd expect from a supposed top-50 goalie of all time...
 
the late-bloomer isn't an indictment, but there's a red flag there that says, "let's investigate why"
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I fully agree that there is reason to question and investigate Thomas' true talent level. Just make sure that you place some weighting on his statistical record though, rather than simply discounting everything based on your perceptions, because the problem with the argument for Thomas being a team creation is that his numbers for the past five seasons have been ridiculously good.

If you take out all of Tim Thomas' numbers and look at the rest of Claude Julien's coaching history (using backup goalies only for the Boston years), you'll find that his teams average a .916 team save percentage while league average has been .909. Let's assume that is entirely because of coaching (doubtful but let's go with it for now), and apply that to Thomas' numbers since 2007-08. Including playoffs Thomas would be at .920 over that period, which would leave him tied with Pekka Rinne and Henrik Lundqvist near the very top of the goaltending list.

In short, the point is that there is lots of room to assume a pretty major Julien effect and still leave Thomas ranked as one of the best in the league over a five season period. There are lots of goalies on everyone's top 60 list who had five good seasons and then were average or worse outside of that. Some of them are even in the Hall of Fame.

I don't think there is as much evidence of massive shot quality effects in the NHL as you do, particularly ones that persist over several seasons. You can bring up examples like Elliott from last year (who, it should be noted, drops to a less impressive .934 when the playoffs are included), but that would only really work if Thomas was a one year wonder. Even taking just Thomas' best season (2010-11 where he had a .939 on 2660 shots against in reg. season & PO), he had nearly three times Elliott's sample size in terms of shots against, which is a completely different ballgame from a probabilistic perspective.

I mean, what happens even if the Bruins don't trade Andrew Raycroft? It's very conceivable that Thomas is right back out the door, even though it sounds silly in retrospect...if the Leafs said "Pogge, not Rask, he's untouchable" in the Raycroft trade, who knows if anyone even know who Thomas is...
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That sounds silly because it is silly. Thomas was already Boston's #1 before the Raycroft trade.

Games played by month for Boston in 2005-06:

October: Raycroft 9, Thomas 0
November: Raycroft 8, Thomas 0
December: Raycroft 4, Thomas 0
January: Raycroft 4, Thomas 11
February: Raycroft 1, Thomas 6
March: Raycroft 4, Thomas 13
April: Raycroft 0, Thomas 8

June 24, 2006: Raycroft traded to Toronto

You raise some good points in questioning Thomas' long road to NHL stardom, but don't go overboard. That said, there are only 30 starting jobs available. Guys get blocked, guys get overlooked, guys take time to develop. A lot of the goalies who end up being stars do break in early, but not everybody. It's reason to be skeptical, but I don't think it is reason to write anybody off without a lot more evidence. There is a good case to let some air out of Thomas' numbers, but I still think that what's left is impressive enough to merit a pretty good ranking.
 
Hawkey Town 18 said:
He's been mentioned earlier in this thread, but what's the case for Alec Connell? His resume doesn't look very attractive to me, and I keep moving him further and further down my list, but at the same time he's a HHOFer. I'm getting to the point where it feels like something's off, because I have so many non-HHOFers ahead of him.
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Connell was one of the first 5 goalies indicted into the HHOF (see post 3), which has to mean something; I'm just not sure what

Seemed to pick up in Ottawa right where Clint Benedict left off, at least from a GAA standpoint - notice Ottawa's GAA balloon the year after Benedict left and come back to normal as Connell came into his own.

Agree that he's a really tough one to rank
 
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I added Modry to post 4, and made a note about Winkler and Paton at the bottom of post 3 (which I sort of took over; sorry Epsilon, but I really like having a list of just HHOFers in one of the first few posts).

Trying to have it so every goalie who has been discussed has his name somewhere in posts 2-4, to make it easier not to accidentally forget someone. This by no means says anything as to the worthiness of those players for a top 60 list; just that they've been discussed
 
Alec Connell recorded votes from 4 of 10 NHL managers and finished a very close third to George Hainsworth in voting for the 1927-28 unofficial All Star Team

overpass said:
Goal: Roy Worters, Pit (7-1), George Hainsworth, Mon (1-4), Alec Connell, Ott (1-3), John Ross Roach, Tor (1-1)
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This is where we wish we had the teams for all of the late 1920s
 
Theokritos said:
Not that I would put Modrý in the top 60, but they started playing Canadian style hockey in Bohemia (later Czech Republic) 40 years before his time, so infancy is not the right term, especially when his teammates Vladimír Zábrodský and Jaroslav Drobný were already sought after for NHL tryouts by the New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins.
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I remember reading from somewhere (can´t find the source now) that also Modrý got interest from NHL after his heroics in 1948 olympics. Especially in the 0-0 game against Canada. Czechs had a bad game. Lot of tactical confusions and Canada was preassuring, but Modrý keep them in the game.

Yes, that and the two Championships are too short list to make a real case to top 40 and the competition otherwise wasn´t that strong.I guess every country has their own Tom Patons but its most likely that those guys are never heards to almost all.

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Found the source http://www.publica.cz/index.php/tubepublica/hotspot/720-slavneho-brankae-bohumila-modreho-zlomily-a-jachymovske-doly.html Yet another one in czech language. So help from our friend google translator is needed.
 
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It doesn't appear as if Giguere was significantly better than his replacements...something you'd expect from a supposed top-50 goalie of all time...
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To set the record straight on Giguere, in Anaheim he did win more games than his replacements did, posting a .550 win percentage while all his backups combined for .484. If you weight their record based on Giguere's playing time (e.g. the record counts for more in seasons where Giguere had more GP), the backups' number actually drops to .472.

Giguere wasn't a high GP guy so his backups probably took more than their share of back-to-back games, but his starts were pretty evenly split between home and road. Giguere also has pretty strong road stats, for what that's worth.

I'm open to the argument that Giguere's blocking style makes him more vulnerable to certain types of opposition or fits better behind certain defensive systems, but his track record doesn't support the claim that he's been completely replaceable.
 
By the way, I wanted to throw in a couple of thoughts on Arturs Irbe, who was mentioned earlier in this thread. I think I probably will be able to find a spot for him in my top 60 as he was a very underrated goalie.

Irbe had a career losing record (.483 win %), which doesn't look that great at all but actually becomes very impressive when you add this context: All the goalies that played with Irbe combined for a winning percentage of just .344 on Irbe's teams while averaging .480 on other teams. The other goalies also saw their GAAs jump by a weighted average of 0.70 when playing with Irbe compared to when they played elsewhere. Comparing his win/loss record to his backups makes Irbe one of the biggest difference-makers of any goalie in the last two decades. His backups weren't necessarily the best group of NHLers around, but I still suspect that Irbe was better than a lot of guys who played for stronger teams but won more or less the same amount of time as their teammates.

Irbe also gets bonus points for his pretty decent international career, which includes a world championship record of 20-11-8 and a 2.13 GAA spent mostly with a non-top tier country (and the one time he was starter for the Soviet Union in 1990 before Lativa's independence he won the best goalie award).
 
ContrarianGoaltender said:
By the way, I wanted to throw in a couple of thoughts on Arturs Irbe, who was mentioned earlier in this thread. I think I probably will be able to find a spot for him in my top 60 as he was a very underrated goalie.

Irbe had a career losing record (.483 win %), which doesn't look that great at all but actually becomes very impressive when you add this context: All the goalies that played with Irbe combined for a winning percentage of just .344 on Irbe's teams while averaging .480 on other teams. The other goalies also saw their GAAs jump by a weighted average of 0.70 when playing with Irbe compared to when they played elsewhere. Comparing his win/loss record to his backups makes Irbe one of the biggest difference-makers of any goalie in the last two decades. His backups weren't necessarily the best group of NHLers around, but I still suspect that Irbe was better than a lot of guys who played for stronger teams but won more or less the same amount of time as their teammates.

Irbe also gets bonus points for his pretty decent international career, which includes a world championship record of 20-11-8 and a 2.13 GAA spent mostly with a non-top tier country (and the one time he was starter for the Soviet Union in 1990 before Lativa's independence he won the best goalie award).
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that's a great record and GAA, but... those can't all be A pool games, can they?
 
seventieslord said:
that's a great record and GAA, but... those can't all be A pool games, can they?
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Yes, all A pool. Latvia's never been relegated since they won the B pool in 1996 and got promoted to the top division. Irbe was on that 1996 team but I wasn't including that year's numbers in his totals.
 
Round 1 voting is now open

Procedure
  • All participants submit a list of 60 goaltenders ranked in order
  • All eras MUST be considered, and consideration should be given to both NHL and non-NHL players
  • To make it easier to aggregate the submitted lists, please list players using their most commonly used name; e.g. Terry Sawchuk, not Terrance Gordon Sawchuk; Gump Worsley, not Lorne Worsley.
  • Lists may be submitted via email to [email protected] or via PM to me. Excel format is preferred, but a top to bottom numbered list is good too.
  • Deadline to submit lists is Oct 1. Please PM me if you can't make the deadline and would like to participate.

Here are links to preliminary research and discussion if you haven't seem them yet:
Top 40 goalies, preliminary discussion thread
Goalie before 1950 research thread

DEADLINE TO SUBMIT YOUR LIST IS OCTOBER 1. THIS MAY BE EXTENDED, BUT DON'T COUNT ON IT
 
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reckoning said:
Al Rollins: I have no idea what to do with him. Would there be a case for him if not for those two high finishes in Hart Trophy voting? And how much weight do we give to those? It was a unique situation, a goalie winning MVP on the worst team in league. Was he that great, or was it a consolation prize in recognition of the horrible situation he was in on that team?
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Just saw this. EB made a very detailed profile of Al Rollins a little while back:
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showpost.php?p=32044827&postcount=189

The most useful part IMO is at the bottom, where he goes through Rollins' career year by year. I disagree with EB's conclusion that Rollins is the 30th-35th best goalie of all time, but I made sure to have him somewhere in the top 60 I just submitted.

A possible modern comparison - Tim Thomas without the Conn Smythe and Cup?
 
Am I the only one who wishes it was top-70? :( It's really hard deciding between the 50-70 range guys! (which, of course, may be the point of only having a top-40 final list when all is said and done!)
 
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