I might be in the minority in saying this, but I don't think the top goalie spot is clearcut. I believe Benedict was better than Vezina, and I think its worth spending some time to discuss.
Here's a story I did on Benedict for The Hockey News a few years back:
To quote myself:
"There’s long been a debate on who was the better netminder of the early NHL: Benedict or Georges Vezina. Comparing the two is difficult, since they were polar opposites as goaltenders. Vezina didn’t like to go down to block shots. Instead he stopped pucks with his pads in the stand-up position or slapped them aside with his stick. Benedict was a flopper, doing everything in his power to stop the puck."
"Hall of Famer Punch Broadbent once noted, “Georges Vezina of the Canadiens was a great goalie back then. He’s honored with a trophy practically legend in hockey. But we all thought there was no goalie ever better than Clint Benedict. Clint went on for many years with a distinctive style that included going to the ice for pucks, which has become so much a part of a goalie’s play through the years.”
"Prior to a game between Vezina’s Canadiens and Benedict’s Montreal Maroons, Vezina told Leo Dandurand, the Canadiens owner who donated the trophy in Vezina’s name, “It will be a close battle. I can hold them out at my end, Leo, but it will be tough to score against them. The best man is in the other goal, you know.”
"Dandurand also once claimed to a reporter that he was always very much tempted to trade for Benedict to play goal for the Canadiens instead of Vezina.
It goes along with the legend that if Vezina hadn’t tragically died from tuberculosis in 1926, the Vezina Trophy might instead be called the Benedict Trophy."
It should be noted and taken into account that Benedict had some drinking problems and other stuff during his career that had him fall out of favour with some of the high-ranking NHL officials. Even after his career, he wasn't inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame until he was a very old man.
The legend and death of Georges Vezina is a more aesthetically pleasing tale than the one of Benedict's career, and so it's always been Vezina to get the attention and praise from the media. So sadly, Benedict's stellar career gets forgotten about.
I don't find a quote from a player's own teammate (in this case Benedict's teammate Broadbent) to be of particular note.
Frankly, I think it's noteworthy that Benedict tied Hugh Lehman (well behind Vezina) on that 1925 MacLean's magazine all-time all-star survey of hockey insiders, most of whom were eastern based (so they would have seen a lot more of Vezina and Benedict than they would have of Lehman). That survey was taken before Vezina ever showed signs of illness.
Of course the timing of the MacLean's article couldn't have been worse for Benedict, who had just been driven out of Ottawa for allegedly showing up drunk to games, and hadn't yet had his Hart finalist year for the Montreal Maroons.
Anyway, I'm going to cut and paste from my Georges Vezina profile, because he really was considered the best goalie in the NHL (over than Benedict) well before he even got sick:
Georges Vezina
I. CONTEMPORARY OPINIONS
Attempting to create a chronology, based mostly on newspaper accounts. This post focuses on accounts from Vezina's career. I'll make another post on what people where saying about him in the decades after they retired
1910s: Vezina was considered the best goalie in the NHA/NHL and likely the world
The Calgary Daily Herald - Oct 30 1914 said:
There ???(I assume "is a") strong possibility that the National Hockey assiciation will this year be without the services of its most brilliant goalkeeper, Vezina of the Canadiens.
This paper was poorly scanned, but it was about a proposed deal that when Lalonde was playing out West, Vezina would be traded straight up for him to bring Lalonde back to Montreal.
The Montreal Daily Mail - Dec 13 1915 said:
During the intermission he hustled George Vezina, recognized as the best goal-keeper in the NHA, into one of the Guards uniforms.
This was from an a game where NHA all-stars played an army team. For the third period, the coach of the army team (Vezina's coach on the Habs.) snuck Vezina into the army teams goal. Here is the scoring per period:
1st: 4-1 NHA
2nd: 5-1 NHA
3rd: 3-1 Army
The Montreal Daily Mail - Mar 17 1916 said:
George Vezina, the brilliant goal-keeper of the Canadiens, often said to be as good as two men, jumped into prominence when he joined the Habitants in 1911. Born in Chicoutimi twenty-eight years ago, Vezina started playing goals when a youngster. Manager George Kennedy witnessed a game in which he was playing in 1910, and immediately signed him up. Ever since he has played in front of the nets for the Flying Frenchmen, and today is one of the highest payed goal-tenders in the business.
The Toronto World - Apr 5 1916 said:
Vezina, George: Goalkeeper, 28 years old, and from Chicoutimi. Joined the Canadiens in 1910 and made good on the jump. The most consistent goalkeeper in the N.H.A. and as clean a player as the game knows. His success is largely consequent upon the fact that he attends stricktly to business all the time, and never tries to pull any funny stuff.
The Morning Leader - Feb 26 1919 said:
...the goaltenders, who have demonstrated that they can stop the hard shots a la George Vezina and Hugh Lehman.
From a Regina paper, infers that Lehman is the class of the West and Vezina of the East.
The Morning Leader - Mar 8 1919 said:
Georges Vezina, goalkeeper of the Montreal Canadiens, who is conceded to be the best net guardian in the game.
early 1920s: Opinion seems to be split between Benedict and Vezina:
The Border Cities Star - Nov 25 1921 said:
Another development at Ottawa was the signing of Clint Benedict to occupy the nets for the Ottawa team during the forthcoming season Clint is generally regarded as the second best to George Vezina of the Flying Frenchmen.
The Senators and Benedict continued their roll into the 1920-1921 season. For the second consecutive year, Benedict was lauded as the best netminder in the NHL, even though Ottawa had dropped to second in the standings.
He certainly impressed a young rookie who joined the Senators before the 1921-1922 season – Francis “King” Clancy.
“He was superb. A lot of people say that Georges Vezina was the greatest goaltender in those early days of hockey, but if you look at the records you’ll see that Clint Benedict…had a better average.”
-Great Goaltenders: Stars of Hockey’s Golden Age by Jim Barber (note that Clancy appears to be referred to GAA).
Months before Vezina became ill, a panel of hockey experts voted him the best goaltender of all-time:
In 1925, MacLean's magazine asked Charlie H. Good, the Sporting Editor for the Toronto Daily News until that paper folded in 1919, to compile All-Time All-Star teams for their March 15, 1925 edition of the magazine. Good called upon his friends in the hockey world to help him with the list. The list of participants reads like a who's-who of the early hockey world:
Charles H. Good, W. A. Hewitt, Lester Patrick, J.F. Ahern, Tommy Gorman, W. J. Morrison, Lou Marsh, Bruce Boreham, K.G. H. McConnell, Roy Halpin, Ross Mackay, Harry Scott, O. F. Young, Art Ross, Frank Shaughnessey, James T. Sutherland, Bill Tackabery, Basil O'Meara, Ed. Baker, "Dusty" Rhodes, Walter McMullin, E. W.Ferguson, Joe Kincaid, and W. A. Boys, M.P.
The selected Vezina 1st Team All-Time-All-Star goalie. Percy LeSueur (of the previous generation) was 2nd team. Vezina's contemporaries Clint Benedict and Hugh Lehman were tied for 3rd Team
The March 17, 1925 Morning Leader report on MacLean's 1st Team makes one suspect that extra credit was given to deceased players. Noteably, Vezina, Cleghorn, and Nighbor were the only still-living players on the 1st Team:
Number One Team- Goal, Georges Vezina; defence, Sprague Cleghorn and Hod Stuart (deceased); center, Frank Nighbor; right wing, Allan, Scotty Davidson; left wing, Tommy Phillips (deceased)"
This timing is important because Vezina would not start to show signs of illness until the following October, was not diagnosed with tuberculosis until Nov 28, 1925, and did not die until March 26, 1926 (source = wikipedia).
So the MacLean's All-Time All-Star list is entirely untainted by Vezina's early death.
II. LEGACY
I'm focusing on opinions of people through the early 1950s - what people who saw them play thought about them after their careers.
The belief that Vezina was the best of his era seems fairly widespread
Jack Adam said:
When you talk about goaltenders, you have to start with Georges Vezina. By an almost unanimous vote of hockey people, he was the greatest the game has ever had. I remember him fairly well.
In 1918 when I broke into the National League with Toronto, Vezina was with Les Canadians. He was near the end of his career, but was still a marvel in the nets, as I found out the first time I skated in on him.
I thought I had him beat, I thought I had a cinch goal, but he had figured exactly what I was going to do, and brushed aside the shot, as easily as you'd strike a match.
Jack Adams said:
Vezina was a big fellow... I'd say he was about five feet 11 inches tall, without his skates on and he looked even taller in uniform because he always wore a red and blue toque. He had big hands and he used an exceptionally long stick.
...
He played a stand-up game, sliding from post to post, making save that seemed impossible by outguessing the puck carriers.
That was his strong point. Like all great goalers, he studied the styles of every forward in the league. He could sense what one of them would do under a given set of circumstances and was usually prepared. He guess wrong sometimes, of course, but not often.
...
I played against Vezina for three or four years. Many times he broke my heart by turning back what looked like a certain score. He was a real master. He had perfect co-ordination and an uncanny instinct.
Jack Adams then went on to say that due to changes in the nature of the position, Vezina might not actually be any more effective than the best recent goalies (Charlie Gardiner, John Ross Roach, and Tiny Thompson were named). Marty Barry was present for the interview and this is his reaction:
Adams was now striking at one of the legends of hockey. Marty Barry, sitting on a rubber table next to the Honey Walker, was startled. Never before had he heard anyone question Vezina's superiority. He was too surprised to interrupt and Adams went on (about the changes in the game making a goalie's job harder since Vezina's time)
...
"I see what you mean," said Barry, only half convinced.
The Sunday Sun, Feb 1, 1936
I think it's clear that rightly or wrongly by 1936 - 10 years after Vezina's death - "conventional wisdom" considered him the best goalie of the era - better than Clint Benedict, Hugh Lehman, or Hap Holmes.
Later, in 1953:
Jack Adams said he thought that the only old-timer who might measure up to the to the modern goalers was the immortal Georges Vezina himself.
...
But Vezina played in the days of parallel passing and kitty-bar-the-door when a lot of shots were fired from far out. We doubt if he would be as successful today unless he changed his style. But we think that Vezina, Clint Benedict, George Haimsworth, Roy Worters, and other great goalers of the past would be about to adapt to the changing conditions. They were only as good as they had to be.
Montreal Gazette, Mar 9, 1953
There are some who would picked Benedict, however
The boys were talking about goaltending greats in the aftergame discussion at Cornell last night and Jim McCafffrey was firm in his stand that Benedict was tops.... JP is willing to settle for Frank Brimsek among the present-day puck stoppers and calls Jack Crawford the best defenseman of all...
Ottawa Cititzen, March 10, 1943
In 1948, Kenny McKenize, hockey journalist and co-founder of The Hockey News called Benedict the greatest goaltender of all-time. He recalled a save Benedict made on Duke Keats that made Keats "so mad that he couldn't speak for 2 hours after the game."
Vancouver Sun, Oct 13, 1948
