You can't (ostensibly) win the MVP when you miss X number of games. That's been well-established, even if you're a lay-up MVP winner: Pronger over Jagr in 2000, Ovechkin over Crosby in 2013, Matt Ryan over Tom Brady in 2016, Tom Brady over Carson Wentz in 2017 and here we are in 1999 with the same story.
The previous three seasons, the leader in goalie GP averaged out to: 75 games. In one instance, the pace was set by Hasek himself. Hasek comes away with just 64 games in 1999 (t-7th most). So there's 15% of the goalie year gone, based on expectation.
The Hart is not a "goalie's award" anyway, traditionally. They have an award already. So it takes a superhuman effort to even get a goalie into that race. Hasek missed a chunk of games and didn't even win half of his starts. Saves are one thing and they're nice and all...but save is the expected result. Saves don't win games. They never have and they never will.
I'm not here to argue about who did or didn't have a better WAR or whatever the prompt is...that's just a yarnball of averaging stats and the like, I'm not terribly interested in that as the end-all, be-all (I'm not really interested in any one thing being the end-all, be-all, for the record)...Jagr took a team with no depth, no defense and bleh goaltending and dragged them into the playoffs while posting 25 more points than the leader the previous season. Meanwhile, the center depth on the team goes from: Lemieux-Francis-Nedved to Francis-Barnes-Straka to Straka-Lang-Hrdina and Jagr overcomes that and pillages the league for a buck and a quarter...I mean, someone check my math, but he was responsible for approximately 230% of the team's goals that year. And if anyone remembers what he did to New Jersey on one leg in the 1999 ECQF, the guy was just all over it that year.
Rightly or wrongly, Hasek barely eeked out a Vezina that year...
Maybe I'm missing the sarcasm in some of this, but saves don't win games? Why don't we just ice 5 forwards then? Hell 6 forwards and forgo the goalie. Saves make sure you don't lose games, and aren't as flashy. Except when your Fleury winning the stanley cup for one I guess.
The missed games is something that is the biggest issue with goalies, considering they play the whole game and can't play every game. So I understand what you're saying there, but if you're looking at comparing it to the leaders the previous years, he still played 85% of those games available. Mario won with as much games played in 95, and I'm sure theres more that have done around that but I don't think its the route of the issue.
Sure Jagr did all those things, but is it not equally as impressive that Hasek took a starting 5 of Satan, Peca, Zhetnik, and Smehlik into the playoffs?
And speaking of playoffs, who dragged their team to the SCF?
I think its simply down to wins in the end. Like you said, Hasek only won half the games he played. Issue lying in that its harder to point to a game a goalie lost and say he did well whereas a player scoring in a loss can still be seen as a good game, and it was probably much harder in 98/99 when we didn't have as free flowing access to stats like we do now.
Though I don't understand why in Jagrs case (and really all with ostensibly offense only players vs. goalies) there is no impact for him not scoring in 17 games in the season, giving him an impact on only 65 games out of the year and only 1 more than Hasek.
I know you don't like stats, but humor me in this basic one. 28 games of 64 he let in less than one goal, and he won only 19 games. There were another 19 games where he only let up 2 goals (GAA was 2.54 that year) and he only won 7 games out of 19. So even when he was statistically the best goalie in the league unquestionably, he could only win for his team roughly half the time through 47 out of his 64 games. Whereas if he let up 3+ goals, his team won 4 games, he won 20% of of the remaining games. If he was average, his team would have halved the amount of wins at best. They also only won 7 games without him in net out of 24.
As a weird cavet, I think its interesting that if you take out each players effective games (games jagr scored in or didn't play, games hasek didn't play) you end up with both teams winning roughly 30% of the games. While its not a great measurement cause sample size and all, but I'd like to think it indicates they are almost equally shit teams without their respective stars.