Why is Terry Sawchuk rated so highly?

[Dennis Bonvie]

You can say "Well, Plante had those great Habs teams of the 1950s, he isn't going to get many votes or stand out". Well, Sawchuk had the Wings of the 1950s. Plante also never got traded away right in his prime. That was a bad trade for the Red Wings. Is it a coincidence that the Wings never won the Cup after they traded him? Once he came back, Lindsay was gone and the Wings were not the 1955 Wings anymore.
I think with Sawchuk the 1967 Cup win gives him a lot of deserved miles. He won a Cup in his old age, Plante didn't.Also, those first 5 years of his career are insane. You can still say he had the highest peak of any goalie, ever. Hasek in the 1990s and Bernie Parent's two big years are the only ones you can really use as a debate against it. I have always thought that at the end of the day there are 4 goalies - Roy, Sawchuk, Hasek, Plante - where you can argue they are #1. All 4 have some case for it but they all seem to have a different reason for why we pick them #1. I was very surprised that THN in a modern day list had Sawchuk #1. It isn't as if I disagree, I just thought he would be discarded below Roy and Hasek. One thing you notice is just how quick Sawchuk was when you watch old videos. There are times when I still think he is #1, it isn't wrong, and in a way it isn't wrong if he isn't either.

I'd add Glenn Hall to that group.

And I'm sure many others would include Brodeur.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I'd add Glenn Hall to that group.

And I'm sure many others would include Brodeur.

I think it's a bit curious how Hall usually seems to get left out of the conversation.

 

[DeysArena]

Sawchuk was super intense competitor, like Maurice Richard. It added some mystique to his reputation and complemented his peak and career numbers.

 

[DeysArena]

I think it's a bit curious how Hall usually seems to get left out of the conversation.

Plante, Sawchuk, Roy and Brodeur all have multiple rings. Hall gets penalized for playing on an underachieving Blackhawks team.

 

[Doctor No]

Plante, Sawchuk, Roy and Brodeur all have multiple rings. Hall gets penalized for playing on an underachieving Blackhawks team.

Agreed - I don't recall the exact numbers, but Chicago (and Hall's) performance as a playoff favorite is usually the main thing.

 

[JackSlater]

I think it's a bit curious how Hall usually seems to get left out of the conversation.

It is a bit odd. I think that he's really hurt by the criteria for the Vezina being what it was in his day. If you consider the old first team all star goaltenders to be the Vezina winners as we currently understand things, Hall has the most Vezinas ever. At the very least people who want to count trophies would be boosting Hall a lot more.

By the same token though, if the Conn Smythe had existed Sawchuk is looking at what... at least the 1952 Conn Smythe and maybe the 1954 Conn Smythe too.

 

[tarheelhockey]

If you consider the old first team all star goaltenders to be the Vezina winners as we currently understand things, Hall has the most Vezinas ever. At the very least people who want to count trophies would be boosting Hall a lot more.

That would make a huge difference for Hall's legacy. Nothing changes about the facts of his career, but "most Vezinas" is a trivia question at every bar and a graphic you'd see all the time on broadcasts. Much like Sawchuk's wins record, it's a door-opener for mainstream fans to end up hearing other little anecdotes about Hall's career. All of that turns on an awards quirk.

Good point about Sawchuk's Smythe-worthy runs. 2 Norrises is the difference-maker for a lot of people when it comes to ranking Roy. If Sawchuk had been carrying that mantle all along, it would definitely shrink the gap and perhaps even reverse it.

 

[JackSlater]

That would make a huge difference for Hall's legacy. Nothing changes about the facts of his career, but "most Vezinas" is a trivia question at every bar and a graphic you'd see all the time on broadcasts. Much like Sawchuk's wins record, it's a door-opener for mainstream fans to end up hearing other little anecdotes about Hall's career. All of that turns on an awards quirk.

Good point about Sawchuk's Smythe-worthy runs. 2 Norrises is the difference-maker for a lot of people when it comes to ranking Roy. If Sawchuk had been carrying that mantle all along, it would definitely shrink the gap and perhaps even reverse it.

Yes the Vezina thing sticks out in my mind. This is very tangential to this topic, but I think that the absence of certain awards, or the different criteria in some cases, does impact how people perceive some players. Elite goaltenders picking up Vezinas in some cases, guys like Richard picking up Conn Smythes, a ton of Norris trophies for Shore and others etc. makes things easier to understand when looking back.

Glenn Hall, seven time Vezina winner, sounds more impressive than the actual Glenn Hall, three time Vezina winner, even if the only difference is the criteria for the trophy. I think that the same thing applies to Red Kelly. Red Kelly, one time Norris winner, sounds less impressive than Red Kelly, four time Norris winner, even though Kelly pretty much does have the equivalent of four Norris trophies. Add in that Kelly very likely wins the 1954 Hart if the bizarre split season voting system didn't exist in 1954 and that's another layer. Even if it's very superficial, Red Kelly the four time Norris winner and Hart winner is probably a more accurate reflection of what he was than what his trophy case indicates. Sawchuk actually loses a Vezina if we consider first team all star to be the equivalent of a modern Vezina.

 

[Section 104]

Wasn’t the Vezina back then automatically given to the goalie(s) with the best goal against average? Nowadays they have a vote; realizing GAA often depends on team defense.

 

[Sentinel]

Sometimes you just have to forget the stats and trust the eyewitnesses.

Plus, Sawchuk had arguably the greatest playoff run of any goalie in history.

 

[Dingo]

Plante, Sawchuk, Roy and Brodeur all have multiple rings. Hall gets penalized for playing on an underachieving Blackhawks team.

did they ever! i mean, as someone looking back at the consensus greatest goalscorer ever at the time, the best or second best centre, a multiple time Norris winner and a seven time first allstar in Hall.

 

[Big Phil]

I'd add Glenn Hall to that group.

And I'm sure many others would include Brodeur.

I've always thought Hall and Brodeur are the ones fighting for the #5 spot. I put Brodeur at #5. Hall at #6. I don't think you see lists where Hall is #1. I think he loses some of what happened in the postseason. Could Hall have been better in the postseason? Yes, I think so. Not that he was a choker, for sure not, but we are talking about comparing the playoff resumes of Sawchuk, Plante and Roy. That's a high bar. Hasek is just so utter dominant in the regular season that it makes up for the fact that he doesn't have quite the same postseason resume. Hasek had weak teams though, while Hall didn't.

 

[The Panther]

I don't want to position this as a me-against-you all kind of thing -- as I said, I'm very open to Sawchuk's elevated status in history -- but few of you are addressing my real concern with his ranking.

I have no issue with Sawchuk's 1950 to 1955 superhuman status. There is no doubt that he was uber-elite in this period.

But does no one else find his 1955-56 to 1969-70 (the vast majority of his career) kind of lacking?

Yes, there's the out-of-nowhere 1967 Cup with Toronto, but that's clearly an unexpected outlier in his post-1955 career.

I'm not in any way disputing Sawchuk's entirely deserved status as a top goalie and Hall of Famer, etc. I'm just asking, in good faith -- can you be average for 15-16 consecutive seasons and legitimately still be ranked the #1 guy of all time?

 

[Hockey Outsider]

I don't want to position this as a me-against-you all kind of thing -- as I said, I'm very open to Sawchuk's elevated status in history -- but few of you are addressing my real concern with his ranking.

I have no issue with Sawchuk's 1950 to 1955 superhuman status. There is no doubt that he was uber-elite in this period.

But does no one else find his 1955-56 to 1969-70 (the vast majority of his career) kind of lacking?

Yes, there's the out-of-nowhere 1967 Cup with Toronto, but that's clearly an unexpected outlier in his post-1955 career.

I'm not in any way disputing Sawchuk's entirely deserved status as a top goalie and Hall of Famer, etc. I'm just asking, in good faith -- can you be average for 15-16 consecutive seasons and legitimately still be ranked the #1 guy of all time?

For what it's worth, this is one of the first major "contrarian" takes I had when I started getting serious about hockey history. I'm certain I wrote an article about this for a long-defunct blog, but I can't find it.

The answers I got (in trying to reconcile his reputation with the last 15 years of his career) are basically: 1) he was so good at his peak that it doesn't matter what he did after and 2) everyone who saw him rates him highly.

I'm not sure what to make of the first point. The closest parallel I can find to Sawchuk is Guy Lafleur (who might have the best six-year peak after the Big Four, but was otherwise surprisingly mediocre). I'm not convinced that Sawchuk's peak was any better than Lafleur's; it was a year shorter; and although Lafleur struggled with injuries, in his first three years after his peak, he was still 13th in points per game - Sawchuk's decline was much sharper. Even if we pretend that Lafleur and Sawchuk are identical cases, Lafleur always gets penalized for his lack of longevity (HOH rated him 23rd - 6th among wingers; the recent Hockey News list has him 18th - 5th among wingers). I'm not saying we knock Sawchuk out of the top 50, but if Lafleur gets downgraded under similar circumstances, so should Sawchuk.

The second point is also tough, because it's not consistent with what seems to have happened. During Sawchuk's five-year peak, he was named the best goalie in the league (ie, year-end first-team all-star) three times. Okay, great - that's a good start. But he never got that distinction the rest of his career (spanning 626 games). He got two second-team all-star selections in his last fifteen years (but he was ranked 5th and 6th out of six starting goalies in save percentage those years). Not that the NHL awards are perfect, but the people who watched his career unfold had him ranked 2nd at his position twice from age 26 to 40. That doesn't vindicate the "trust those who watched him play" crowd.

I think Sawchuk gets overrated for the same reason Martin Brodeur did. It's hard to evaluate goalies with statistics. The best one (although still flawed) is save percentage, and that wasn't compiled until more than two decades after he retired. Before that, we were left with metrics like wins and shutouts - Sawchuk was the all-time leader in both categories for many decades, even though it's pretty obvious why neither tells you very much about how a goalie does. (Another factor that perhaps led to Sawchuk being overrated is he was excellent in the 1967 playoffs which helped the Leafs win their last Stanley Cup. Sometimes people think that the player's late-career surge was indicative of how they played their whole career - Scott Niedermayer is an example). The fact that Sawchuk's play deteriorated right after he left the Red Wings (one of the greatest teams of all-time) raises further questions.

I'm not disputing that Sawchuk is one of the greatest goalies of all-time. His five year peak (carried into the playoffs) is extraordinary, and there's value in being an average (or even slightly below average) goalie for a long period of time after that. But I don't think there's any credible argument for ranking him first.

 

[The Macho King]

Agreed - I don't recall the exact numbers, but Chicago (and Hall's) performance as a playoff favorite is usually the main thing.

I would love a deep dive into this at some point, because just like it's hard to figure out how to accurately credit the 50s Habs, it's hard to figure out how to accurately give demerits for the 60s Hawks. Hull seems to avoid the majority of the criticism around here, and to an extent Mikita, but it's hard to see how Hall and Pilote are rated and not say they are the ones that receive the lion's share of the blame vis a vis the strength of their regular season resumes.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

Overall I'm on the same page as @Hockey Outsider that Sawchuk as #1 is no longer a defensible ranking, but I will say in Sawchuk's defence that his post-1955 career does tend to get underrated because people aren't properly adjusting for the huge team effects of the Original Six.

First of all, it's a mistake to claim that his peak ended the exact second he left Detroit. He was actually mostly the same goalie in Boston before he got mono:

1955-56 Season:
First 15 GP: 6-4-5, .943, 4 SO
Next 26 GP: 2-20-4, .884, 1 SO
Next 27 GP: 14-9-4, .933, 4 SO

1956-57 Season:
First 26 GP: 15-6-5, .927, 2 SO
Gets mono, misses 2 weeks, returns too early
Next 8 GP: 3-4-1, .897, 0 SO
Announces retirement, leaves team

Sawchuk got a bunch of first-half Hart votes in 1956-57, and they were likely very deserved. If he didn't get sick, he was clearly on pace to add another All-Star level season that year. I also don't know if there was a personal or injury-related reason to explain his dip in the middle of the 1955-56 season, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the case. Overall, if you were watching him play in Boston you probably had like a 75% chance of seeing vintage Sawchuk. There seems to be no question whatsoever that rushing him back into the lineup rather than taking a couple of months to recuperate as most doctors advised would have serious repercussions on the course of his career.

Judging his second Detroit stint is a bit tricky because very few teams in history have ever gone from dynasty to worst team in the league to darkhorse contender over a span of just 7-8 seasons. That 1959 Second Team All-Star selection looks undeserved statistically, but it is perhaps quite understandable given that the narrative of the entire first half of that season was Sawchuk holding his team in despite very limited support. On New Year's Eve 1958, the Red Wings were sitting in 2nd place in the league (link to the standings), despite being just 5th in team offence with 84 goals in 35 games. After that the wheels came off and the Wings ended up in last, with Sawchuk going 7-21-5, .880 down the stretch, but I certainly wouldn't put all of the blame for that on the goalie.

I think 1960-61 and 1961-62 were most likely Sawchuk at rock bottom, he had personal issues throughout his career but according to reports he really did not deal well with the move to the tandem goalie system, and wasn't even outplaying some relatively mediocre partners. On the other hand, he clearly surpassed his Detroit teammates in the surrounding seasons:

1959-60:
Sawchuk: 24-20-14, .909
Other goalies: 2-9-1, .880

1962-63:
Sawchuk: 21-16-7, .912
Other goalies: 11-9-6, .897

1963-64:
Sawchuk: 25-20-7, .916
Other goalies: 5-9-4, .894

Sawchuk's 1963 2AST doesn't look that undeserved to me, Hall was probably the best goalie and the second best pretty much has to be Worsley or Sawchuk. I also don't think Sawchuk improved in Toronto, he just moved to a better defensive team.

Of course, the flip side of making proper team adjustments for Sawchuk's later career is that you then have to make the corresponding corrections on those dazzling stats from his peak. For example, if we take the average yearly stats from Sawchuk's peak, and compare it to the average of Lumley's two years prior and Hall's two years after, it's not hard to observe the clear positive team effects of the dynasty Wings:

Lumley, 1950 & 51: 34-18-11, 2.38, 7 SO
Sawchuk, 1951-55: 39-16-13, 1.93, 11 SO
Hall, 1956 & 57: 34-22-14, 2.16, 8 SO

(Also keep in mind that the rest of the team was at its best with Sawchuk in net, and also that league average scoring dropped to 2.53 from 1951-55, compared to 2.72 from 1950-51 and 2.61 from 1956-57).

 

[BM67]

Sawchuk was pretty much playing for the #4 team from 55 to 67. Add up the teams that finished 4th in all 12 seasons (Sawchuk was on 6 of them) and they have 10 fewer points than Sawchuk's teams.

Lets look at the stats for wins only for 55-67 among the 9 goalies with 200+ GP:

Player - Wins - SV% - GAA - SA/60
Hall - 344 - .946 - 1.57 - 29.29
Plante - 304 - .944 - 1.59 - 28.26
Sawchuk - 229 - .946 - 1.55 - 28.72
Worsley - 223 - .943 - 1.86 - 32.65
Bower - 200 - .944 - 1.71 - 30.38
Hodge - 113 - .938 - 1.66 - 26.98
Simmons - 97 - .942 - 1.64 - 28.32
Crozier - 94 - .942 - 1.58 - 27.53
Johnston - 56 - .942 - 1.84 - 31.72

Sawchuk sure looks pretty good here.

 

[Voight]

THN hasn't been a reputable publication in a very long time.

 

[wetcoast]

One concern with this is that you're leaving out two years of Sawchuk's consensus prime (and insert standard caveats regarding save percentage, of course).

I haven't done a list since early 2018 (for the THN issue) but I had Hasek, Roy, Plante, Hall, Brodeur, Sawchuk, Dryden.

I think goalies are the hardest position to rank, even more so over different eras and I always appreciate your efforts and use them in ranking goalies.

I also think goalies are a bit crazy but that's another topic of discussion.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

Sawchuk was pretty much playing for the #4 team from 55 to 67. Add up the teams that finished 4th in all 12 seasons (Sawchuk was on 6 of them) and they have 10 fewer points than Sawchuk's teams.

Lets look at the stats for wins only for 55-67 among the 9 goalies with 200+ GP:

Player - Wins - SV% - GAA - SA/60
Hall - 344 - .946 - 1.57 - 29.29
Plante - 304 - .944 - 1.59 - 28.26
Sawchuk - 229 - .946 - 1.55 - 28.72
Worsley - 223 - .943 - 1.86 - 32.65
Bower - 200 - .944 - 1.71 - 30.38
Hodge - 113 - .938 - 1.66 - 26.98
Simmons - 97 - .942 - 1.64 - 28.32
Crozier - 94 - .942 - 1.58 - 27.53
Johnston - 56 - .942 - 1.84 - 31.72

Sawchuk sure looks pretty good here.

It's a bit of an overstatement to say Sawchuk looks pretty good here when his save percentage is within .004 of every other goalie on the list, other than Hodge who played on the powerhouse Habs for that entire period and therefore was by far the most likely to rack up wins in games where he played poorly.

Stats in wins are somewhat biased in favour of goalies on weaker teams, because you have to hit a higher threshold more consistently to get the win when you have less team support. A goalie on a strong team is more likely to have a mediocre game and still win 4-3 or 5-4, dragging down his average, while a goalie on a bad team will often only have a chance to win if he can keep the other team to 2 goals or less.

As an example, take a look at Roberto Luongo on the terrible 2002-03 Florida Panthers compared to what many consider his career season in 2006-07 when he had a near-record 47 wins in Vancouver:

Luongo in wins only:
2002-03: .965 Sv%, 1.17 GAA
2006-07: .942 Sv%, 1.68 GAA

I don't think Luongo was a better goalie in 2002-03, he just played for a worse team. Similarly, Eddie Johnston was nowhere near as good as Gump Worsley pre-1968, but wins were hard to come by in Boston in the Original 6 era and rarely happened without some strong play in the crease, and as a result Johnston and Worsley have almost identical numbers in your table. In short, I agree that Sawchuk's team strength impacted his stats, I'm just not sure this is the best evidence to make that case.

 

[nergish]

Meh, he's clearly not THE greatest goaltender of all-time, but he was a revolutionary.
We don't get Brodeur, Roy, Hasek without Terry.

He best encapsulated what it means today to be a goaltender - literally sacrificing life and limb to keep a puck out of your net.
His ghost lived on in Marty, Hasek, Quick, Timothy Jr. Thomas, etc. guys that don't all play the same way, but all hate giving up goals.

Some guys are taught to brush off a bad play and regroup mentally for the next puckdrop. Others just cannot fathom letting in a goal in any capacity.

 

[MeHateHe]

As a member - though my dues have long since lapsed - of the goaltenders' union, I find the argument about best goaltender across eras to be impossible to have. I've argued in the past that elite skaters would fit in regardless of the era they were in. Gretzky would still far and away from his peers in any era because what made him great was his ability to read and react. You have to expect that his skill level, conditioning, nutrition, etc. would come along relative to his peers, but his greatness was a result of his ability to read, react and adapt.

I think goalies are different. Across eras, the styles of play were so different, they might as well be playing entirely different positions. Standup goalies were taught to react and never make the first move. Floppers like Hasek were a different breed entirely. Goalies today rely on positioning and anticipation as their first step. (Don't @ me: I'm not denying the athleticism of current goalies, because today's goaltenders are certainly more agile, flexible and mobile than their forebears of even 20 years ago. But they use an entirely different set of tools than goalies even from the 1990s.)

Does anyone think you could drop Terry Sawchuk, with one good arm, into today's game and have him be successful? Would George Hainsworth, even with today's equipment, get anywhere close to racking up 22 shutouts, even in an 82 game season? I suspect the answer is no but the truth is there's no good way of knowing. Sawchuk and Hall and Plante and the rest relied more on angles and puck control and reflexes than goalies of today. Again, it's not about quality, it's about specific skills and you really can't say they did or didn't have them.

There is, in my mind, a pantheon of goaltenders who belong in an echelon. Sawchuk is there. Hall is there, Plante is there. Bernie Parent, Ken Dryden, Hasek, Tretiak, Brodeur (all in no particular order, of course). Is there a best of that bunch? You might as well be asking for the best berry.**

**I kid about that. It's Saskatoon berry and Gordie Howe agrees with me, so if you don't agree you're wrong.

 

[MVP of West Hollywd]

He is 6th highest goalie on the HOH top 100 which I think is pretty reasonable. I think it's fair to point out his play other than the first 5 years and 67 playoffs may be overrated, but that's enough on its own to rank him pretty highly, and there is some value in being a credible starter for many other years. If people rate him over players like Roy and Hasek then yes it probably would be overrating him.