I'm glad to read so many people agree with me about Hasek. Anyone too young to have seen him play needs to try to track down his performances in the 1999 playoffs. He basically took an AHL squad of players to the Stanley Cup finals all by himself.
That Buffalo team was the most god awfully boring team I ever saw in the Stanley Cup finals. Aside from Hasek's heroics, it was torture watching Buffalo in those years. Even after all these years, I still can't stand the Sabres. It's probably not fair, but it's hard to get the idea of Buffalo sucking the entertainment of hockey out of my head.
Hasek on a good team would have created a dynasty. Crazy to think how different it might have been if Chicago never traded him.
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Hasek was easily the best goalie I've ever seen. In person, he is the best hockey player I have ever seen in any position. The guy was superhuman with the saves he would make and his reflexes. Could've been an F1 driver or something.
The best ever Butterfly style goalie - Patrick Roy hands down
The best every mixed style goalie - Hasek hands down
The best On-All-4's style goalie - Ed Belfour
The best standup style goalies - Fuhr and Vernon
The best scorpion style goalie - Kipper
Brodeur for me.
The duration of being great needs to be greatly considered when talking goalies.
We often see goalies look amazing for short stints or a couple years but very rarely have a goalie be great for a long time.
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Brodeur for me.
The duration of being great needs to be greatly considered when talking goalies.
We often see goalies look amazing for short stints or a couple years but very rarely have a goalie be great for a long time.
When we are breaking down the 90's-2000's goalies, none of them had short careers or short stints at the top. It was a straight up rolling battle for supremacy .
So much so that weaker teams great goalies were just left in the dust. It truly was a special era of goaltending in hockey. Something the modern game lacks.
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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.
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).
Last edited by SuperMatt18; 08-26-2022 at 12:01 PM.
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Roy won his first Cup and playoff MVP in 86 as a 20 year-old rookie. His regular season stats were 3.36 GAA and .875 SV%. In the playoffs that year, he was 1.93 GAA and .923 SV%.
Roy won 10 straight OT games in the 93 playoffs, on the way to his second Cup and second playoff MVP. Regular season: 3.20 GAA and .894 SV%. Playoffs: 2.13 GAA and .939 SV%.
Roy famously gave the puck away and lost Game 5 of the 01 playoffs (against Brodeur and the NJD). Prior to Game 6, he told coach Bob Hartley to worry about the offence because he wasn't letting a single goal in. He won that game with a shutout and won Game 7 with only one goal against. On a team that had Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, Rob Blake and Ray Bourque, it was Patrick Roy who was named the playoff MVP - for his NHL record third time. Regular season: 2.21 GAA and .913 SV%. Playoffs: 1.70 GAA and .934 SV%.
Patrick Roy raised his game when it mattered most. He was the ultimate playoff performer who not only won on teams that were expected to win, but also on teams that had no business even being in the conversation. You guys can have your regular season trophies and records, I'll take the guy who plays his best hockey in the spring.
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He won two of them playing on stacked teams. Hasek spent most of his career playing on teams that probably wouldn’t have even made the playoffs without him.
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Sometimes we don’t realize how good older goalies who played the stand up position were. I recently watched highlights of 1989 Game 6 against Montreal and I couldn’t believe how good Vernon was. Those were saves that looked impossible.
He won two of them playing on stacked teams. Hasek spent most of his career playing on teams that probably wouldn’t have even made the playoffs without him.
True, but this was in response to someone arguing for Brodeur and his long term high level performance. I would argue Roy was better over the long term.
He won two of them playing on stacked teams. Hasek spent most of his career playing on teams that probably wouldn’t have even made the playoffs without him.
First of all, he only won one Smythe in Colorado. He won the other two in MTL on teams that most certainly were not stacked.
Second of all, the "stacked team" argument only comes into play for winning the cup. Winning the MVP on a team full of hall of famers is even more impressive than on a team full of nobodies. Do you want to be the best of the best or the best of just a bunch of dudes?
Brodeur won the Cup in 00, yet the MVP went to the goalie from the losing team. What does that say about Brodeur's performance in those playoffs?
To me, it's all about elevating your game in the playoffs. If you do a statistical analysis of Hasek and Brodeur, you'll find their regular season stats were very similar to their playoff stats. Do the same for Roy, and you'll discover he was a completely different goalie in the playoffs than he was in the regular season.
