I believe the adjustment argument is overblown too.
I think all Hasek needed was the opportunity to play, because as I've already demonstrated I think quite sufficiently, he had a pattern of slow starts throughout his career and his numbers got better as the season went on, even in the early years. Mid- to late-season Hasek in '91, '92 and '93 was among the best goalies in the league. All he needed was an extended chance to prove it.
I'm not sure why you're trying to have it both ways here: You seem to be very quick to criticize Hasek for starting slow (which is not necessarily the same thing as being underprepared, although it is possible), and then at the same time you point at his entire season stats or lack of starts as evidence that he wasn't good enough even though when he was in his stride his numbers were up with anybody else's.
There's also the factor of goalie competition, which is easily the single most important factor that determines how quickly a goalie progresses in any organization. Obviously you're claiming that Roman Cechmanek was better than Brian Boucher in 2000-01. How come Cechmanek didn't beat him out in camp then? How come Boucher got 10 of the first 12 starts? The fact is that it was more a case of Boucher losing the starting job (.885 by that point in the season) than Cechmanek winning it. Incumbent bias means you have to massively outplay the guy who is already there to win his job.
You can't say both that Cechmanek came in and dominated all comers, and at the same time criticize Hasek for his early season performance and not winning starting jobs in training camp, because Cechmanek didn't do that either.
In the fall of 1990, Chicago had five goalies at camp, Ed Belfour, Jimmy Waite, Jacques Cloutier and Greg Millen, a veteran starter. Cloutier had been the regular season starter in '89-90, and all three of Millen, Cloutier and Belfour played for the Hawks in the 1990 postseason. Waite was a highly-rated first round pick, the highest drafted goalie in ten years of entry drafts. Hasek was pretty much up against two incumbent starters, a top prospect, and a guy with playoff experience who would go on to be voted the best goalie in the league that season. It was quite simply easily the most crowded crease situation in the league.
Pretending that it was some sort of normal situation is just denying reality. And yet, with only 5 games played in the NHL that year, Hasek still managed to beat out three of them over the course of that season because he was the guy backing up Belfour in the playoffs in 1991.
To illustrate the difference, let's talk about what would have been the most likely scenario
if Hasek had come over for the 1987-88 season, when according to Legends of Hockey the Hawks were trying to get him and reportedly offered a contract that would have made Hasek the third-highest player in Chicago, a deal that would have made no sense at all unless they were counting on him to be their starting NHL goalie.
Hasek wouldn't have had to deal with Mike Keenan, who was coaching Philadelphia at the time, and Hasek himself would have been the top prospect that the team was giving all the opportunities too, because Jimmy Waite was still in the QMJHL. Hasek's crease competition would have been 23-year old Darren Pang, who had all of one game of NHL experience at the time, and 22-year old Ed Belfour, who was coming out of college hockey and in his first year as a pro spent that whole season in the IHL. Maybe Bob Mason as well, who the Hawks picked up as a free agent over the summer but may not have been signed if Hasek was in the picture.
What would most likely have happened then is that Hasek would have come in and started slowly, probably because he would have needed at least a few games to adjust to the NHL talent level and also because that's just what he did, and yet the team would have kept giving him starts anyway because they had a large investment in him, there was no incumbent starter who had a claim to the job, and the only other option would have been Darren Pang. It is likely Hasek would have spent no time in the minor leagues, and if he followed his actual pattern of performance in the early '90s by the end of the year he would have been playing as well as anybody else in the league.
Now that's a what-if scenario. Maybe it wouldn't have gone as smoothly, nobody knows for sure.
What is sure is that teams don't always pick their best goalie in training camp, and that Hasek would have faced a far easier road to the starting job in the fall of 1987 than he did in 1991, 1992 or even 1993.
I'm not giving Hasek any credit for NHL what-ifs in the early 1990s. I don't think anyone else is either. What's really at stake is whether Hasek should get credit for his international play prior to coming over, which I still contend is part of an international resume that should rank him on a tier with Jiri Holecek. I see no reason to devalue that based on his early NHL season results. And fully crediting Hasek for international achievement pretty much seals the deal for him as #1 all-time, in my opinion, because I think you can already make the case for Hasek as #1 just based on his NHL performance alone.
