Roman Cechmanek vs John Vanbiesbrouck

[Michael Farkas]

Two prominent Philadelphia Flyers goaltenders during the DPE, but who was better overall? Consider everything from prime, peak to overall career.

Roman Cechmanek

Award placements

Vezina: 2, 7
AS: 2, 5, 6
Hart: 4
Jennings: 1

Stat placements

Sv%: 3, 3, 4
GSAA: 3, 4, 7
GAA: 2, 2, 2

Is the career leader in GAA going back to 1945 (min. 200 games)
1. Cechmanek 2.08
2. Hasek 2.20
3. Brodeur 2.24
4. Dryden 2.24
5. Rask 2.28

Career stats

GP 212 (NHL)
SV% .919


John Vanbiesbrouck

Award placements

Vezina: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7
Hart: 3, 5

Stat placements

Sv%: 2, 4, 5, 5, 6. 9, 10
GSAA: 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7

Career stats

GP 882
SV% .899

Click to read more...

 

[MadLuke]

During the 01-04 Cechmanek nhl career he was

8th in wins,
2nd in GAA
8th in save percentage

(for the 100 games played or more)

In the playoff (20+ games)
20th in save percentage, 19th in GAA

94-97 Vanbiesbrouck
12th in wins with the Panthers
12th in save percentage
5th in GAA

During the playoffs
6th in gaa
1st in save percentage

I feel Vanbiesbrouck peak > Cechmanek peak, even just number wise and he has a whole really good career outside those 4 years, while Cechmanek played 0 games. And he was so fun to watch....

Seem easy all around Vanbiesbrouck

 

[Albatros]

Čechmánek was better in Philadelphia, that's for sure. Fun fact, at age 29 he was drafted ahead of 18-year-old Henrik Lundqvist.

 

[Felidae]

This should be a wash.

Prime and peak all go to Vanbiesbrouck pretty comfortably

Btw since you said so yourself the Thomas vs Rask poll sparked this idea, do you think that the 2 comparisons are roughly equivalent to each other?

 

[VanIslander]

Note: the Beezer is drafted in every 24- or more All-Time Draft (the ATD yearly exercise everyone can join). Chechmaneck never. Not even in subsequent MLDs.

The question for decades has been Richter vs. the Beezer.

To be clear:

He is the Beezer.

Please don't drop the 'the'.

 

[buffalowing88]

I think in some ways, Cechmanek has been forgotten in terms of his absolute peak. He was the feature story of ESPN's magazine in 2000. I know that's not much of a metric in terms of actual production, but he was considered that good that they put national attention on the guy.

The Beezer is probably the right answer but for a short bit there, Cechmanek was peaking higher than even the 96 Vanbiesbrouck season.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

is brian boucher vs sean burke next?

 

[Michael Farkas]

Btw since you said so yourself the Thomas vs Rask poll sparked this idea, do you think that the 2 comparisons are roughly equivalent to each other?

Well, statistically, you have three impact seasons. Siphoning Vezina and AS team votes away during the Hasek/Roy/Brodeur/Belfour/CuJo era. That's not nothing. Then you have a fourth season as a split time guy on a very bad LA team, but he kept pace with a good and at times very good goalie in Cristobal Huet there.

So, when you squint, you get four consecutive seasons of at least good play. Three hard hitting impact seasons, right?

But wait, there's more...

In 2000, he was named best goaltender of the World Championships. For the previous FIVE seasons before that he was the top goalie in the Czech League. A league with Martin Havlat, David Vyborny, Jiri Dopita, Robert Reichel, Milan Hejduk, Robert Lang, etc.

It's maybe not the illustrious SM-Liiga, starring Antti Miettinen and Eric Perrin, but it's not nothin'...

In 1994, the year before the above, he got his team promoted from Czech2 up to the big time. Which for those that know European hockey, that's hard to do and it's harder to stay there once you do it.

It's not Vermont, but it's not nothin'...

When he was dispatched chose to leave the NHL, citing that he was too good for it, he came back to the Czech Republic in his late 30's and had the best save pct. in the playoffs in '07.

So, what appears to be just a couple of seasons...is actually quite a robust career. Consecutively and consistently so.

As for the playoffs, you look at the '02 ECQF vs. Ottawa. The Flyers scored all of 2 goals - not 81 - just two goals in a five series vs. Ottawa. He can't score'em.

##

Now, John Vanbiesbrouck...ya know...he couldn't get it done like Cechmanek could. They tried to turn to him in '92 to salvage the series after Richter let up that goal from center to Francis...lost them all.

In '96, didn't win a game in the Final...

'99, another golden opportunity...whoop...right out the door...

I mean, look fellows, at the end of the day the job of the goalie is to stop the puck, right? Since the advent of the forward pass, no one has done it better than Roman Cechmanek...razor-thin 2 goals per game and his NHL career was plenty long enough. I mean, four years...that's more than I played, I'll tell ya what...

 

[MadLuke]

no one has done it better than Roman Cechmanek...razor-thin 2 goals per game and his NHL career was plenty long enough.

Not sure how the level of sarscam goes, but he did not had the best GAA during his own career, that was Marty Turco.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Roman Cechmanek, like Marty Turco, adores Ken Hitchcock.

 

[The Pale King]

Farkas did you leave your phone behind at the bar? Have you been hacked?? Blink twice if we need to phone the police.

I'm not the biggest Vanbiesbrouk supporter, and to some extent I think Cechmanek got scapegoated in Philly (think Roenick's comments after they got knocked out), but this is clearly JVB here. Cechmanek's Vezina record is inflated, but was he one of the top 28 goalies in the world for a brief stretch? Probably.

I remember being somewhat excited when the Kings acquired Cechmanek. Hey, I was young(ish) and I didn't know better. That experience must have taught me something, because when they brought in Dan Cloutier a year or two later, I knew it was a terrible move from the start.

His Kings numbers don't look that bad on the surface, but he closed out the season with 9 consecutive losses... I remember a lot of soccer (or futbol if you prefer) goalie dives, like leading with the glove and blocker.

While they might have posted worst records, as far as I'm concerned that 03-04 Kings team was the nadir for the franchise. Trent Klatt as the number 3 scorer? Yeah, let's go ahead and take a year off boys.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

I remember being somewhat excited when the Kings acquired Cechmanek. Hey, I was young(ish) and I didn't know better. That experience must have taught me something, because when they brought in Dan Cloutier a year or two later, I knew it was a terrible move from the start.

hey now, cechmanek is no all-timer obviously but he and cloutier are two very different things

if the canucks had had cechmanek between 2001 and 2004 they might have won a goddamn round

 

[Dingo]

I'm not sure how many of you really don't see exactly what Mike is doing here.

haha.

Thomas is better than Cechmanek, sorry. Its not as much the same as you want it to be to show us all how stupid that other poll being close is.

I do think Rask and Beezer are comparable.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I don't see it. I got a non-stop banger here. Promotion, best goalie in a top 3 (?) 4 (?) league in the world year after year, comes over to set the forward-pass era career mark for GAA...for all intents and purposes, loses Vezinas in consecutive years to Hasek, Roy, and Brodeur in that order.

I mean, 10 years in a row of being a straight up G.

The other other guy...I got a top goalie in a not-top-5 league, then seven years go by, and I get another of the same. Then I get Cechmanek's third or fourth best season equivalent in '08. And then he gets the fortune of beating out Steve Mason and Pekka Rinne to get Vezinas. Plus, 79 more goals in a playoff run.

Charitably, I got five...six scattered years...? Against 10 straight up bangers in a row. The difference is chiefly that one guy got 2 goals (probably the least in a five-game series) in a playoff run and the other got 81 - the highest non-80s* total ever at the time.

This is what the numbers say...this is what actually happened*


* - on paper

 

[Dingo]

I love ya, Mike. You're a good dude, and you know a lot, too.

I get reverse Daver vibes from this stuff, though.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Look, I don't ask for much...I try to be a strong contributor as best as I can. I'm taking this off the ice here...I legitimately need some help here.

When I say that Thomas wasn't good enough for the NHL, I get told that, "It's not his fault the league failed to notice"

When I say, he was cut from every training camp, he wasn't good enough to stick in the AHL generally...I get told that he got Vermont (not so much HOFer Martin St. Louis) to the Frozen Four...

...and that he was won the equivalent to the Vezina in the Finnish League. Furthered by the notion that in 2005, this meant even more because it was "full of NHL talent" because of the lockout.

Nothing about being beaten out by substandard players internationally for years and then being a net-negative when he did play. Nothing about the gaps in his resume. When he wasn't good enough after leaving Julien, it was just because he was old...even though his supposed prime season is at age 37, which no one finds the least bit odd...

So, I'm asking for help here...

We have, charitably...
1995 2nd Team (East) (there are no NHLers on this second-team with him, first team guy was a career ECHLer)
1996 1st Team (East) /Goalie of the Year in college (1st Team does have majority NHLers on it, two of which from his own team; the next four 1st Teamers combine for 0 NHL games).

For him, and only him, these amateur seasons against competition worse than any major junior league count. No one knows why, but they do. Even against Carey Price, they apparently count. Fine.

1997 - [Scene missing]

1998 - Best goalie in Finland. Now, he only played 18 of 48 games. Of the league's 10 best scorers, only one had a regular NHL shift at any point - Lasse Pirjeta with the expansion Blue Jackets. To be fair, the goalie competition in the league is noteworthy: Jussi Markkanen, a young Mika Noronen, Vesa Toskala - fair. Now, those guys had to play more than one-third of a season, but games played is not a huge deal...anymore.

1999 - Booted from the AHL, goes back to Finland.
2000 - Worst goalie on his IHL team by as much as 1 whole goal per game (!)
2001 - Back to Europe, now he's in Sweden. No awards, but does have the best save pct. over there and he played a whole season's worth of games. He beats out Mikael Tellqvist, which isn't bad. This is a big step up. The Swedish League is led by Kristian Huselius, Jorgen Jonsson, Mikael Renberg, young Zetterberg. Good season. Is this the, what, 3rd best league in the world at this point? 4th?

2002 - Bumped back down to Finland, splits time with a nobody.

2003 - Comes to the AHL, splits time with Raycroft. Raycroft is considerably better statistically, we don't need to talk about it.

2004 - Still AHL, splits time with Hannu Toivonen. He statistically bests him. Gets slaughtered in a short playoffs. Still, a very nice season statistically.

2005 - Back to Finland. Best goalie and MVP. Liiga has more, I don't know, downhill, grindy style of play than the Swedish or Russian or Swiss Leagues...so when folks try to sell me that the league was full of talent spillover from the lockout, I get interested...

There were two NHL regulars that were top 10 in scoring that year...Jussi Jokinen and Glen Metropolit. The league leader was Steve Kariya. Guys like Jason Williams and Patrik Stefan were point per game guys. Once again, I'll say the goaltending competition was there. He did beat out some good goalies for the level. But he wasn't going against Thornton and Lecavalier. It was still a low-talent league. I don't think Liiga is a top 5 league in the world even in the lockout year, but he made the best of it and his familiarity with Finland makes sense for him to go back. Fine.

Then the NHL stuff starts and ends just as quickly...

So, we got 2 amateur seasons that somehow sort of count. We have one-third of a Finnish season that counts as a whole. Let's go with the '01 Swedish season, let's go with the '04 AHL season, the '05 lockout season. And then, what, 3 NHL seasons? 4?

So, we have 4+3.3 pro seasons. So, let's call it 8, charitably. And then two amateur seasons, which again, it would be extremely unique to count these in the last 50 years.

##

Roman Cechmanek
1989 - He started in Czech U20 league as an 18 year old, no clue how that went. Let's assume bad even though he played most of the games. Got a silver at the Euro U18 tournament. I'd say this is probably on the same level as Thomas' 1995. But **** it...throw it out.

1991 - Already a pro in Czechoslovakia at 20. His team wins a championship that year. I doubt he started, but I don't know. He puts up the best numbers at the World Juniors in a tournament with Lindros, Bure, Weight, Nylander, etc. His goalie competition is Potvin, Dunham, Salo...those are names. I don't know, I feel like for an amateur season, this is pretty good. Maybe not...

Effectively, we don't have records until 1994. He has the best GAA in the Czech2 league by a whole goal per game over the next guy in the league and gets his team promoted to the top Czech League. That's a huge season.

1995 - League's best goalie, stat leader, wins a championship. This is a better league than Finland's in terms of scoring talent. Worse in terms of goaltending, I'd think.
1996 - League's best goalie, wins another championship. Gold medal at the Worlds.
1997 - League's best goalie, stat leader, wins a championship as the playoff MVP. I mentioned it upthread who the top talents were in this league already, so I won't do that again here. The goalie talent seems weaker, the only NHL name I recognize is Milan Hnlicka. Still...these are, comparatively, dynamite seasons.

1998 - Would you believe it? Best goalie, stat leader, champion. European League's best goalie.
1999 - I'm sorry, this isn't a c&p error because it's too good not to type. Same thing. Best goalie, best stats, champion. World Championships Gold. And he actually plays in these international competitions that I'm mentioning. He doesn't sit behind Patrick Duffus and the like.

2000 - Finally takes a break. Gets to the Final and doesn't win. But is named Best Goaltender at the Worlds while winning another gold there. So, not nothin'...playing 8 games at the Worlds is like playing 18 regular season games in Finland basically.

Then the NHL stuff...where we also have 3, if not 4 terrific seasons based on the previous logic.

2007 - Best playoff save pct. in Czech, top 3 player on World Champs team.

Didn't get the run support in the playoffs like Thomas did. He wins a Vezina if Hasek isn't in the way. If he were blocked by Steve Mason, well, he wouldn't be blocked at all...

So, the NHL regular seasons are a wash. Right? It's either 3 to 3 or 4 to 4. Cechmanek had much tougher competition for goalie votes (Brodeur/Hasek/Roy/Belfour/CuJo, Theodore's MVP season).

Let's give just 1 amateur season to Cechmanek because we don't have more records available than that.

Then we have six absolute dynamite seasons in a row, I think every one of them is better than any of Thomas' minor pro seasons legitimately.

RC's 2000 season is probably a wash with Thomas' 2004 or close to it.

So...basically. And again, we don't care how...we just care about "what actually happened"...

We have
2 amateur, 4 minor pro, and 4 NHL seasons for Thomas
1+ amateur, 6 or 7 minor pro, and 4 NHL seasons for Cechmanek

We see in the minor pro years and international competition that playoff play is actually a strength of Cechmanek's, where it's a weakness for Thomas. Even in the NHL, we saw that it was a weakness for Thomas. But we do have the one playoff run in 2011.

Now, is that run - where 9 of 25 games saw him surrender 3+ goals and get 81 goals scored on his behalf...is that run enough to wipe out at least 3 of Cechmanek's seasons? Maybe. Maybe it is. That really puts a damper on being the best goalie twice in Finland, but no matter...maybe it does.

So, let's be painfully "fair" to Thomas...let's make those 25 games be the ultimate cancel. Because clearly, Cechmanek has a huge advantage on him in impact seasons by any stretch of the imagination. So whatever Cechmanek has, it's washed by the 2011 playoffs.

Thomas made the top 40 goalie list last time. Cechmanek, according to VI, doesn't even get considered in the double secret basement league some-time draft...so, I guess that's not top 100? 150? Whatever...

One question: Logically, how is the gap that big?

 

[MadArcand]

It's almost as if one's overrated and the other underrated...

 

[JackSlater]

Rask
Vanbiesbrouck
Cechmanek
Thomas

I don't really like Vanbiesbrouck all that much but he was better than Cechmanek. I do like Rask.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

Wonder why this thread is called Cechmanek vs Vanbiesbrouck?

Credit by letter?

 

[MadLuke]

One thing I do not exactly get here

Why from 00-02 does

Cechmanek win 53% of his start and block .923 of the shots while the other Flyers goaltenders win only 43% of their starts blocking only .897 of the shots if he was not really good at blocking shots ?

It seem we do not have to make much of a thought experiments about shots quality and what not, we have the actual thought experiment of what would the average replacement quaterback would do in Brock Burdy situation that actually happened in real life.

Replacement level goaltending with the Flyers of those years has been like it would have everywhere else pretty much and they allowed a goal 33% more often than Cechmanek, is it not almost by itself a proof of being good (as good as we will ever have a chance to see in a team sport), even if we do not understand why ?

The gap seem too big to be luck or 2 games in 2 night deployment or at home vs on the road preference from the coach.

 

[Doctor No]

Eyeballing it, I don't think in 2000-01 Brian Boucher played more back ends of back-to-backs than Cechmanek (at least as a percentage of appearances):

2000-2001 Philadelphia Flyers Goaltender Game-by-Game Performance

Home/road may be something because there's a big difference - 58% of Cechmanek's minutes were at home (only 32% for Boucher).

Cechmanek played more minutes against top-quartile teams than Boucher (28% to 17%) but also more minutes against bottom-quartile teams (35% versus 23%).

Similar pattern but tighter in 2001-02 (for instance, home starts were 54% Cechmanek, 47% Boucher).

 

[Michael Farkas]

Shot quality? No one cares about that witchcraft. The facts are, Cechmanek made saves. That's what actually happened. We're not evaluating the talent here.

We have a big gap between two players and the player with the longer list of accomplishments is not only hugely behind the one with less, but the former is dismissed out of hand as a laughing matter.

I'm genuine when I say: I want my one call to action, my one question answered. Please.

 

[Michael Farkas]

2000-01 Brian Boucher

Averages are subject to extreme values, as you may well know.

Boucher gets pulled after getting shelled in like a quarter of his starts in '01. Not so much in '00 or '02.

I don't mean to do the ol' "if you take out the bad games, he looks great" routine. He doesn't look good no matter what. But getting John Grahame'd every week for most of the season would require quite a run of great games to overcome it...you'd need, like, five shutouts in a row or something impossible...

Also - not that we're talking about this because it probably doesn't matter - pretty large gap in goaltending styles between Cechmanek and Boucher. Defenses have to do markedly different things for one than the other. Outside of Desjardins, that's not a defense - to a man - that looks terribly adaptable to sweeping changes.

 

[Doctor No]

There's something to that - save percentages are averages, but one tremendously shitty game can take quite a few good games to recover from. And yet, it's just one loss.

 

[MadLuke]

There's something to that - save percentages are averages, but one tremendously shitty game can take quite a few good games to recover from. And yet, it's just one loss.

Here we are talking about 3 seasons and 2319 shots for the non Cechmanek shots against faced, not something easy to move a lot in either direction by a couple of bad games.

83 vs 74 games start for Cechmanek at home vs on the road do help, but he was .925 vs .920 in both case, a 50/50 split would maybe only move the 4th decimal...

We have 3 different coach those 3 seasons.

in 2001 the Ds are (by ice time)
Desjardins
McGillis
Richardson
Therien
Delmore
Sykore

by 2003 they became
Johnson
Desjardins
Weinrich
Therien
Seidenberg
Ragrnarsson

i.e. complete different coach every season, almost a 100% rotation at defense aside for Desjardins-Therien, yet Cechmanek numbers stay exactly the same, to the error margin level exactly the same despite all those changes:

01 NHL .921 (4th)

02 NHL .921 (3rd)

03 NHL .925 (3rd)

And his replacement numbers look always the same years after years, Ramsay or Barber or Hitchock behind the bench....