Martin Brodeur vs Dominik Hasek, who would you draft

[dgibb10]

A - I'll give you staying healthy. Brodeur's longevity is the most impressive thing about his career.

B - I don't trust any hyper competitive goalie to be content to put up Vezina caliber seasons on a team that can't get a halfway competitive roster together over 8 years.

C - retiring at 37 after winning a Cup isn't "out of nowhere".

d - Hasek played 58+ games 7 times over 9 years, and 41 of 48 possible in one of the two where he missed.

e - if I can get 6 Vezinas and 2 Harts in 8 years, I'll take him quitting on my team when he's in his late 30s and strains his MCL.

B) Brodeur stayed through not good teams in NJD for a decade post lockout. I guess Brodeur should have hopped ship after 2007 to join Detroit and get 2-3 more cups there as well
C) he left his team stuck, forced them to pay an expensive price for joseph, and then came back forcing them into another difficult decision

58 games lmao.

Brodeur I guess should have played 20 less games a year to make his rate stats look better at the expense of his team.

It wasn't just when he was in his late 30s. He quit on the sabres in 1997 too. He took himself out of the game, then assaulted a media member and Steve Sheilds came in and won the playoff series

 

[Romang67]

And yet he was able to play 60 games just 5 times in his NHL career.

One of which he then quit on his team in the playoffs.

Here is another way of phrasing the workload he handled aged 29-36:

d - Hasek played 58+ games 7 times over 9 years, and 41 of 48 possible in one of the two where he missed.

 

[IWantSakicAsMyGM]

And brodeur had 4 games in the 02-03 finals alone where he did not allow a goal in regulation

And his team kept the Ducks to 16 shots on net in two of those games. He also gave up 5 goals on 22 shots before getting pulled in game 6 and didn't win the Smythe.

 

[HugeInTheShire]

Roy won the Conn Smythe the year the Avs won it with a 40 year old Bourque. Put up a playoff best 0.934 SV% and a 1.70 GAA, with 4 shutouts. Gave up 1 goal in the last 2 games to win the Cup. He also won 2 Cups and 2 Smythes in Montreal on teams that weren't elite.

Hasek won 6 Vezinas in 8 years, and 2 Hart trophies. His Cup win checks a box on the form, and barely matters.

Brodeur won 3 Cups, but no Smythes, no Harts, and no Vezinas until the other two were 37+ years old. Never led the regular season in SV%, and only had the best GAA once. And despite playing the most games so many years, never once faced the most shots in a season. The year he won his first Vezina, he played 10 more games than Roy and faced 17 fewer shots on the season. Are we supposed to pretend they had the same workload in the games they played?

The 85-86 team had Chris Chelios, Larry Robinson, Guy Carbonneau and Bob Gainey as well as Mats Naslund, Claude Lemieux, Stephane Richer and Brian Skrudland.

The 92-93 team had Eric Desjardins, Matthew Schneider, Patrice Brisebois, Lyle Odelein, Vincent Damphousse, Kirk Muller, John LeClair, Gary Leeman, Guy Carbonneau and Mike Keane.
While not the flashiest roster, it's super deep.

People get hung up on the fact that they weren't expected to be there and lose focus on the fact that they had pretty loaded teams.

Not that it matters, I think Roy is better but this fact gets lost in the Roy lore.

 

[sabremike]

Unless you have another controversial call in mind, this was a game six.

Which is exactly why I phrased it to "within getting to the game 7" (and yes, I know the next annoying pedantic point will be that the Hull goal getting waived didn't guarantee a Sabres win. Whatever, you know the point I was making).

 

[dgibb10]

And his team kept the Ducks to 16 shots on net in two of those games. He also gave up 5 goals on 22 shots before getting pulled in game 6 and didn't win the Smythe.

Robbed of the Smythe yes.

4 games without allowing a goal in a playoff series is in fact all you need

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Which is exactly why I phrased it to "within getting to the game 7" (and yes, I know the next annoying pedantic point will be that the Hull goal getting waived didn't guarantee a Sabres win. Whatever, you know the point I was making).

Ah, apologies - I had a hard time parsing it.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

d - Hasek played 58+ games 7 times over 9 years, and 41 of 48 possible in one of the two where he missed.

I'd also re-frame this discussion somewhat. I disagree with the notion that a goalie's workload is primarily based on the number of games he plays. I'd argue that looking at the number of shots he faced is more representative of what he's being asked to do.

Between 1994 and 2003 (the nine seasons that consist of Hasek's prime), Hasek faced more shots than any other goalie in the league. He was "only" 4th in games started, but by this measure, nobody had a higher volume of work than Hasek.

 

[IWantSakicAsMyGM]

B) Brodeur stayed through not good teams in NJD for a decade post lockout. I guess Brodeur should have hopped ship after 2007 to join Detroit and get 2-3 more cups there as well
C) he left his team stuck, forced them to pay an expensive price for joseph, and then came back forcing them into another difficult decision

58 games lmao.

Brodeur I guess should have played 20 less games a year to make his rate stats look better at the expense of his team.

It wasn't just when he was in his late 30s. He quit on the sabres in 1997 too. He took himself out of the game, then assaulted a media member and Steve Sheilds came in and won the playoff series

B - Brodeur already had 3 Cups before the team got to be not good, and could stay in New Jersey and live like a king. What logical reason would there be for him to move after the team started to struggle?

C - Is it Hasek's fault that the Red Wings didn't have a better option in net than Cujo? Should he have played out of loyalty to a team that hired him as a mercenary, despite having no desire to play anymore? Or is it a problem that he was still one of their best available options a few years later, after he realized he still had something left in the tank?

58+ games is a starters workload, no matter what snide comments you make.

If he's struggling enough to hurt his numbers, then maybe taking time off wouldn't have been bad for the team. Assuming, of course, that they actually had a capable backup.

And the media member Hasek assaulted was pushing a narrative that Hasek was responsible for Ted Nolan getting fired, and was generally being a dick about it. Hasek didn't behave perfectly, but I understand it. I'm pretty sure he also suffered a MCL strain that game, which is why he took himself out.

 

[tarheelhockey]

It doesn't matter what Buffalo was like in the regular season in 1999, in those playoffs Buffalo had the best offence in the NHL in goals per game until the finals, and also showed great consistency by scoring at least two goals every single game, which in low scoring 1999 meant giving your goaltender a pretty decent chance. It was also a generally defensive team filled with defensive forwards - the team happened to get hot offensively in the playoffs. It's very likely that other goaltenders could have gotten to the finals behind a defensive oriented team that also happened to score goals better than any other team for a few weeks. Predictably things changed once the team faced Dallas in the finals, and even peak Brodeur would not have gotten Buffalo through that series either.

In round 1, Hasek surrendered 6 goals on 162 shots in 4 games, earning a shutout plus three 1-goal wins in a sweep of an offensively potent 2nd seeded Ottawa team.

Swapping in Brodeur’s .856 in that series would raise Buffalo’s GA from 6 to 13. So Ottawa would have outscored Buffalo, instead of being swept.

This does not give much hope to the idea that Brodeur would have had the same results.

Arguments to the contrary will be variants on “Buffalo might have supported Brodeur better”, which drives home the point that Hasek wasn’t being carried by his team, he was carrying them.

 

[Caps8112]

You may be right, I don't think so. While Hasek is obviously the better goalie, NJ wouldn't have been as successful without the system they played and that system was built around having a goalie that could handle the puck. You could put Hasek on any other legitimate contender and he wins more Cups than Brodeur easily but NJ had the perfect storm and any disruption likely would have resulted in failure.

This is in no way a slight against Hasek, it's simply his greatest weakness as a starter was the backbone of the Devils system.

You’ve posted many times about brodeurs stick handling behind the net as if it was the whole key to the devils being good for 10-15 years. I’m sure it was an added bonus but the real reason is they had above average defensive forwards with elite dman and played a system (the trap) that focused 80-90% on defense and counter attacking at the right time. They hardly ever had superstar forwards. Brodeur was great but he is vastly overrated when everything was designed for his success. Hasek played in buffalo with a team that likely finishe 20-30th every year without him. Devils would have been unbeatable if their biggest flaw is there goalie was so so at handling the puck behind the net

 

[danisonfire]

Hasek's style was pure mathematics (specifically vertical angles). The athleticism was a bonus, but if you think that he wasn't a master of the game tactically, you're wrong.

There's a cone that the puck has to travel through to enter the net. There's a second cone that a shooter's eyes see as the open net. Hasek was a master in knowing exactly what the puck "saw" and what the shooter saw, and was able to maximize his response to both.

This is one of the first times I have heard it described like this and it is really cool. I am a natural center but the few times I played in net over the years I tried to do exactly what you said and it worked well.

Hasek was the master of this and he was one of my favourite goalies to watch growing up. I probably learned it from watching him since I wasn't getting formal goalie training as a center.

To any young kids reading this, you can do the same while shooting the puck by changing the angle of the shot (cone) right before you shoot the puck. It messes with the goalie and their angles.

 

[IWantSakicAsMyGM]

The 85-86 team had Chris Chelios, Larry Robinson, Guy Carbonneau and Bob Gainey as well as Mats Naslund, Claude Lemieux, Stephane Richer and Brian Skrudland.

The 92-93 team had Eric Desjardins, Matthew Schneider, Patrice Brisebois, Lyle Odelein, Vincent Damphousse, Kirk Muller, John LeClair, Gary Leeman, Guy Carbonneau and Mike Keane.
While not the flashiest roster, it's super deep.

People get hung up on the fact that they weren't expected to be there and lose focus on the fact that they had pretty loaded teams.

Not that it matters, I think Roy is better but this fact gets lost in the Roy lore.

They were 2nd in their division in 85-86, and 5th in the conference. In 92-93, they were third in the division, and 4th in the conference. They were still a playoff team, and not totally devoid of talent, sure, but they weren't elite by any measure.

 

[ijuka]

This is one of the first times I have heard it described like this and it is really cool. I am a natural center but the few times I played in net over the years I tried to do exactly what you said and it worked well.

Hasek was the master of this and he was one of my favourite goalies to watch growing up. I probably learned it from watching him since I wasn't getting formal goalie training at center.

To any young kids reading this, you can do the same while shooting the puck by changing the angle of the shot (cone) right before you shoot it.

Dunno, I mean the whole butterfly method is built around this concept so I don't see how Hasek's style somehow was a revolutionary approach or anything, I feel like this is forcing it a little.

The butterfly is based around covering as much of the net as possible and also coming out of the net to cut off the angles, especially above the shoulders that otherwise would be available.

Hasek's my favorite goalie of all time and I really don't see how his style is particularly about this idea. I think that he was more about imagination and creativity than "pure mathematics."

 

[danisonfire]

Dunno, I mean the whole butterfly method is built around this concept so I don't see how Hasek's style somehow was a revolutionary approach or anything, I feel like this is forcing it a little.

Because it takes a lot of factors out of most peoples control to do what Hasek did. You need elite depth perception to track multiple targets, better than normal eye sight helps, reaction time helps, fast pace critical thinking, fast twitch muscle reaction, agility and more. Hasek didn't just throw his body randomly at things without calculating the optimal outcome. He made a lot of calculated risks from the butterfly approach that looked crazy to people watching and were not recommended by goalie coaches.

The butterfly is basically an easier version of cone angles for people who don't posses abnormal abilities from their own NHL piers. It is easier to teach and more successfully taught to others. The butterfly doesn't advocate pushing boundaries to the level that Hasek did. It would be sub optimal for most people (even NHL level goalies) to try what Hasek did at times. It worked for him because he was a freak in a good way. He wasn't just setting up and taking percentages, he was cheating angles and bending them even farther in his favour.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

This is one of the first times I have heard it described like this and it is really cool. I am a natural center but the few times I played in net over the years I tried to do exactly what you said and it worked well.

Hasek was the master of this and he was one of my favourite goalies to watch growing up. I probably learned it from watching him since I wasn't getting formal goalie training as a center.

To any young kids reading this, you can do the same while shooting the puck by changing the angle of the shot (cone) right before you shoot the puck. It messes with the goalie and their angles.

I was able to teach the tenets of this when I was in grad school - it worked pretty well (obviously no one I was coaching in college hockey had the athleticism of Hasek). It didn't hurt that I was able to work for Mitch Korn (Hasek's coach at the time) two consecutive summers in Banff.

I always loved going through the handshake line where multiple players on the other team would tell me how lucky I'd been. I didn't do anything to dissuade them of that opinion because I didn't want them to figure out what I was actually doing (at 5'9" and slow, I needed this advantage).

 

[IWantSakicAsMyGM]

Dunno, I mean the whole butterfly method is built around this concept so I don't see how Hasek's style somehow was a revolutionary approach or anything, I feel like this is forcing it a little.

The butterfly is based around covering as much of the net as possible and also coming out of the net to cut off the angles, especially above the shoulders that otherwise would be available.

Hasek's my favorite goalie of all time and I really don't see how his style is particularly about this idea. I think that he was more about imagination and creativity than "pure mathematics."

To me, butterfly goalies are like the guys who put all the various numbers into a spreadsheet and look at them in 27 different ways, and then learn to do the thing that gets the best results, based on the percentages.

Hasek didn't have a spreadsheet. He tasted the numbers and did all the calculations on the fly, in his head.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Hasek's my favorite goalie of all time and I really don't see how his style is particularly about this idea. I think that he was more about imagination and creativity than "pure mathematics."

It's kind of like jazz music - to really understand jazz music as a master, you need to understand the rules well enough that you know when (and how) those rules can be broken.

Alternatively:

 

[danisonfire]

To me, butterfly goalies are like the guys who put all the various numbers into a spreadsheet and look at them in 27 different ways, and then learn to do the thing that gets the best results, based on the percentages.

Hasek didn't have a spreadsheet. He tasted the numbers and did all the calculations on the fly, in his head.

This is the distinction.

He wasn't just setting up and taking percentages, he was cheating angles and bending them even farther in his favour out of seemingly nowhere. He would instantly react at a high speed and deviate from the butterfly effortlessly when he felt it was his best shot at stopping the puck. He was a rule bender and a master at knowing the best way to take away the shooters cone towards his goal.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Hasek was the master of this and he was one of my favourite goalies to watch growing up. I probably learned it from watching him since I wasn't getting formal goalie training as a center.

This may have already been said somewhere in these 13 pages, but part of the source of Hasek’s genius is that he never had a goalie coach growing up.

If he had been Canadian, he would have been swept up in the butterfly craze and probably given some formal coaching. At least in juniors, he would have been told that he needed to adjust to the butterfly in order to advance. Ironically the image of his Canadian self would probably be Brodeur and his hybrid style (minus the stickhandling, which was a weakness for Hasek).

But instead, he was born Czech and much like other goalies in the late Soviet era (Irbe, Cechmanek) he developed a personal style rather than being molded in someone else’s image. Hasek just did what worked for him, and figured out a different way to think about “cutting off angles” which operates on the same foundational principles as a butterfly but with totally different execution.

It resembles a young Bobby Orr realizing at a young age that he could do things nobody else could do, and proceeding to rewrite the rulebook of what could be achieved from his position.

This is what happens when genius-level players are cultivated rather than coached.

 

[dgibb10]

They were 2nd in their division in 85-86, and 5th in the conference. In 92-93, they were third in the division, and 4th in the conference. They were still a playoff team, and not totally devoid of talent, sure, but they weren't elite by any measure.

They were 3rd in the conference the year before.

Roy plays 47 games and gets credit for his team finishing lower in the standings because apparently its a worse team.

Brodeur plays 75 games and apparently it's an elite team.

It truly is a win win. You get more credit while doing less work by skipping the 30 games, and makes your stats look nicer because you are much better rested

 

[Bear of Bad News]

They were 3rd in the conference the year before.

Roy plays 47 games and gets credit for his team finishing lower in the standings because apparently its a worse team.

Brodeur plays 75 games and apparently it's an elite team.

It truly is a win win. You get more credit while doing less work by skipping the 30 games, and makes your stats look nicer because you are much better rested

The flexibility with which you use selective data to fit your preconceived notions is similar to prime Dominik Hasek, ironically enough.

 

[HugeInTheShire]

You’ve posted many times about brodeurs stick handling behind the net as if it was the whole key to the devils being good for 10-15 years. I’m sure it was an added bonus but the real reason is they had above average defensive forwards with elite dman and played a system (the trap) that focused 80-90% on defense and counter attacking at the right time. They hardly ever had superstar forwards. Brodeur was great but he is vastly overrated when everything was designed for his success. Hasek played in buffalo with a team that likely finishe 20-30th every year without him. Devils would have been unbeatable if their biggest flaw is there goalie was so so at handling the puck behind the net

While you're not wrong about the system being designed for his success, but it was also so successful because of him. Many other teams played the trap, not just NJ, but they didn't have a 3rd defenseman on the ice at all times.

You can't take the system and have it be as successful without Brodeur and if he wasn't in that system he likely has a good but not nearly as great career. The Devils relied on Brodeur to make the system work.

 

[Mirka the Turka]

They were 3rd in the conference the year before.

Roy plays 47 games and gets credit for his team finishing lower in the standings because apparently its a worse team.

Brodeur plays 75 games and apparently it's an elite team.

It truly is a win win. You get more credit while doing less work by skipping the 30 games, and makes your stats look nicer because you are much better rested

Exactly, here's what Roy and Hasek fans dont want to admit:

Brodeur was the more durable goalie, he helped his teams more because he could play wayyy more games.

 

[dgibb10]

While you're not wrong about the system being designed for his success, but it was also so successful because of him. Many other teams played the trap, not just NJ, but they didn't have a 3rd defenseman on the ice at all times.

You can't take the system and have it be as successful without Brodeur and if he wasn't in that system he likely has a good but not nearly as great career. The Devils relied on Brodeur to make the system work.

Don't tell them that the coach who revolutionized the trap worked for MTL during most of Patrick Roy's time in MTL, including both of his cups there.