Quote:
Originally Posted by FanIn80
Roy holds the NHL record for playoff MVPs. No other player in history has won as many as Roy has.
Another way to look at it... Brodeur has won 3 Stanley Cups, but not a single Conn Smythe. In fact, for one of his cup wins, the opposing goalie (JS Gigure) won the MVP - so Brodeur wasn't even the best goalie in those playoffs, nevermind the most valuable player.
Compare that to Roy... 4 Stanley Cups (2 each on 2 different teams). 3 Conn Smythes (both of his cup wins in MTL, and one of his cup wins - the last one, the "Ray Bourque" one - in COL).
If you're like me, and you value playoff performance much higher than regular season performance, then the greatest goalie of all-time is St. Patrick.
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And yet when looking at Save Percentage and GAA Hasek has the better career playoff numbers too (even if you normalize out Roy's years in the 80s)
Once again if you compare career playoff numbers from 91-02 to 02-03 then it looks like this:
Hasek: .927; 2.02; 94 GP
Roy: .922; 2.21; 170 GP
Brodeur: .921; 1.84; 139 GP
Roy / Brodeur were just lucky to play on much better teams than Hasek. Switch Hasek and Roy on those 90s Avs teams and they might win 5 straight, that's how dominant Hasek was on bad Buffalo teams. A .930 save percentage is ridiculous over a 6 year span.
Hasek and Roy only went head to head in the playoffs once in 2002. Hasek's Red Wings beat Roy's Avalanche in 7 games. Hasek had shutouts in game 6 and 7 and outplayed Roy in the series.
Hasek also has that Olympic gold medal from single handedly beating Canada. In the end the two times they went head to head in big moments (02 Western Conference Finals, 98 Winter Olympics) Hasek came out on top.
The crazy part that I didn't fully realize is that Hasek and Roy were the same age but Hasek didn't get the opportunity to even play in the NHL until he was 26 years old. Roy had already played 289 games at that point (and to be fair to Roy was clearly the best in the NHL at that time).