He
is talked about a lot. Not that talking about hockey history and attempting to rank old players with modern ones on an even playing field is a "mainstream" endeavor, but most mainstream attempts rate him highly (THN top-100, Without Fear, the book you are referring to, anything that looks at Vezinas without realizing context and how they used to be "won") - much too highly, IMO.
For example, go look for two contemporaries who I am sure are better - Roy Worters and Tiny Thompson. You'll find just as little on them. It's just the way it is with older players. Hainsworth, in comparison, doesn't get too little fanfare - he gets too much.
He is what he is. you can't take away the cups, the one potential smythe performance, and the three good regular seasons, two of which were great, as well as the longevity beyond those years (not as a top-2 goalie but usually top-5 up till age 41)
And I knew about his "relaxed" style; I have a great long writeup about it in a book from the 1940s (thanks, Spitfire11 for the recommendation, I bought all three of those old titles that your library has). Based on everything else I knew, I see it as a symptom of the teams he was playing for. Your quotes tell me what I've suspected for a year - There is really no evidence that Hainsworth did anything that a different, average, goalie couldn't have done given the same opportunity.
I would not fault him for not making an easy save look hard - why do that and risk allowing a goal which at the time constituted 65% of the average team's offense? It is not his fault that he had few difficult saves to make, and fewer saves overall in comparison to the other goalies. But that is almost certainly the case, based on the information available to us. And that should not be overlooked.
At at the same time, it's doubtful that guys like Thompson and Worters were diving around and making easy saves look hard. Worters' reputation as a great goalie who always gave his poor teams a chance to win, is well-earned. If his teams only allowed mainly easy shots that he made look hard, then they wouldn't be bad teams, now, would they? But we know they were.
There are other goalies who the same claims could be made about, that all they had to do was show up - Jacques Plante, Ken Dryden, Martin Brodeur, Clint Benedict, to name a few - but they all did enough to stand out individually, to build their longterm legacies.
Did you notice that dreakmur guy who poked his head in here a couple of times? At the Leafs boards he's trying to construct pre-1931 all-star teams. I've been helping him out where I can. Based on stats, hart voting, anecdotes from the Trail, and the defense corps of the different teams, we've agreed that his play was worth a 2nd team berth in 1928 and 1929. That's it. (in 1927 it went to ****** and Benedict, 1928 and 1929 it was Worters/Hainsworth) Take it for what you will. And I am sure you won't take it for much. But I assure you we are attempting to be as objective as we can. Hansworth's legacy gets a lot of mileage out of those three good regular seasons (two of which were great) - too much.
Believe me, I really do feel guilty in a strange way - I have no interest in trashing players at this stage of the game, but my main interest at these boards is to truly get down to the truth about how good all these players were, and when I feel I'm onto something I want to hammer it home. Your turn to pour the kool-aid
