*glug glug glug*
Drink the kool-aid down, fellas, but try to save some room for mine, too!
A lot of this is quite unfair for Hainsworth. He did exactly what you would ask about any goalie, make the save and make it look easy. He got the same criticism back then, hence the quote. There is nothing wrong with being unspectacular, if anything, I prefer it. A lot of the most spectacular saves of all-time happened because, initially, the goaltender either made a mistake, was simply beat, or both. To fault Hainsworth for simply making everything look easy, which is what you should look for in a goaltender, is simply madness.
Couldn’t agree more. Which is why I said I don’t fault him for this.
As for Worters, again you're praising him for being on a bad team and faulting Hainsworth for being on a good one. You say Worters was a great goalie who gave his poor teams a chance to win, but how can Hainsworth have done that if his teams were all quite good?
I’m not faulting Hainsworth and praising Worters solely by the teams they were on. I’m considering how they performed, with that taken into consideration. Hainsworth had a real easy time and Worters didn’t. If Hainsworth’s results were vastly better than Worters’ then there would be reason for a good argument. But I’m not sure they were better at all.
You want to keep playing the "bad team goalie" card for Worters, fine. Can't convince you. Why is Hainsworth better than Thompson, though? His legacy is based on those three precious Vezinas. Thompson played at the same time and has four of them, and unlike Hainsworth, in all four of those seasons he actually had the best GAA in the league. This is also backed up with four all-star team selections that show he was
considered one of the top-2 goalies in the league four times - and two of those times it was in non-vezina seasons, meaning he had six great seasons. (assuming you consider seasons where you have the best GAA without being voted one of the two best a great season, which you must) With Hainsworth it's guesswork, at best two All-Star Teams if you want to speculate.
Rather, Hainsworth was a great goalie on a great team, and is it wrong to suggest he was a reason those teams were great.
Don’t be so hard on him. I think he
might have been a reason.
You dodged the comment about Hainsworth being referred to as one of the foundations of those great teams, along with Howie Morenz. So, what's it again, lost in the hype? You've said the top 100 list was just that as well, and again I sincerely doubt it. For "The Montreal Canadiens: 100 Years of Glory", this is maybe debatable, but for a guy who wrote one of the biggest books for the Habs' 100 year anniversary, it's pretty likely the guy did his homework.
No disrespect to D’Arcy Jenish, because he is a good author, but I buy almost every hockey book I can (at least the ones I feel can teach me anything) and I didn’t buy this one. I flipped through it and didn’t find a thing I wouldn’t have learned from “Fire Wagon Hockeyâ€, “Lions In Winterâ€, “Honoured Canadiensâ€, Frank Selke’s “Behind the Cheeringâ€, and Beliveau’s two books, one biography and one autobiography. As for the really vague quote indicating he was one of the two foundations of that team, I don’t know just how much research Jenish did into those seasons and I doubt you do either. In any case, it would be easy for anyone with elementary hockey knowledge to conclude this by seeing 1.45, 1.05, 0.92, and three Vezinas.
For the THN top 100 list, these guys are all either respected hockey players and coaches or respected hockey journalists. Of that panel, only Milt Dunnell would've seen him play, but a large majority of the list was one generation away, meaning their parents and grandparents could have seen quite a bit of them. I'm not saying these sources are something to base everything on, that would be quite foolish, but it's just as foolish to say they got lost in the hype and are completely wrong about the guy, when you say different based on what you see on hockey-reference.com.
The thing about that list is, they all made lists individually, without any input from eachother, mailed them in, and they were added up with a 100, 99, 98 points system. It’s almost the worst possible way the list can be put together. And it can be highly skewed by one or two voters who are adamant that someone is a 30th overall player even if no one else voted for them. He’d get 71 points for each 31st place vote for a total of 142. If 20 voters all had one guy at 95th, he’d get 6 points for each of those for a total of 120. The guy who was named on just two ballots would come out higher than the guy named on twenty. This is an extreme example but shows the inadequacy of the system. Even more important is the lack of discussion. No one was there to say “hey, hold on, Broda won five cups in 8 finals and was on three all-star teams. His GAA went down over half a goal in the playoffs. Explain to me, why are we putting Hainsworth ahead of Broda?â€
Also, your basis of judging goaltenders of that era is quite unfair. The stats are flawed somewhat(we'll get to that later), but they're probably the best of your criteria, along with readings from The Trail(which can be very flawed as well), but the other two are incredibly flawed and should have little weight. Hart trophy voting is very flawed, not only because of the lack of it, but of the apparent criteria for voting a goaltender. In that era it seemed that your best bet is to play for a bad team and do well, as Roy Worters did. Hell, even Benedict's best Hart year was on a pathetic team, and when that team got better, so did he, but he didn't get the recognition. Again this is faulting Hainsworth for playing on a good team. Most valuable does not mean best. On a great team, it would be understandably hard for Hainsworth to get Hart recognition. How can he be most valuable on a great offensive team(and probably defensive as well)? This again faults him for playing on a great team. So does taking into account the defense in front of him. Seriously? I can understand it a little, but come on, you're better than that. A lot of goaltenders throughout history have played in front of great defenses(probably a majority of the top 10 did), yet are they any worse for it? No. Like I said, Hainsworth was regarded as more of a building block than any of those guys on his team, save for Morenz.
Wow, you're trying to get more mileage out of that line, than Hainsworth got out of two excellent regular seasons.
As for looking at the defense corps, it's elementary, really. If four goalies appear numerically to be equal, whoever had the least help was likely performing the best.
Anyway, the rest of this is addressed throughout this post.
One of my bigger problems with your arguments is your glaring inconsistancy. When Hainsworth's great GAAs get brought up, GAA is a flawed stat and doesn't nearly explain how good a goalie was/is. Yet, when Hainsworth's GAA wasn't great, you use it against him. Which is it?
When did I use a bad GAA against him? I said he had some mediocre seasons after 1929, which is true. Yes, he was never top-2 in GAA in any season during the 1930s, but what is really telling is that he was never voted a league all-star. That is why I said he had mediocre seasons, not his GAA.
I don’t like GAA as a stat. I will always, always, always use whatever else is available if there is more available. This helps to explain why I found those old shot stats from two separate snapshots of two seasons so useful. It’s why I defer to All-Star teams and, in their absence, Hart voting as they are better reflections of what was really going on.
Even if you consider GAA to be important, there is not a heck of a lot to be that impressed with. In 1927, his GAA was 3rd best and he had the best defense corps of the pack of four goalies who had nearly identical GAAs. Then in 1928 and 1929 he led the league in GAA, not by a crazy margin, but enough that I wouldn’t call the next figures “equalâ€. For those seasons, Hart voting records of other goalies (and more telling, his own teammates) tell me he didn’t have as much to do with his team’s success as looks apparent from his GAA and Vezinas.
I, for one, believe it is a flawed stat, but there are certain things you just can't ignore, no matter how flawed those stats are. The best single-season GAA, the second-best all-time GAA, the 22 shutouts, the all-time professional shutouts mark(for now), third-most NHL shutouts despite starting his NHL career at 31 and playing only 465 games(Sawchuk played 971, more than twice as many, and Brodeur played 999). Even when you take the era into account, that's still damn impressive, no matter which way you manipulate stats.
Is it?
Those are all good accomplishments. But all of those things are heavily impacted by era. After taking the era into consideration those things don’t separate him from other 3rd-tier goalies like Parent, Broda, Brimsek, Durnan and Bower. Then when you consider the playoff success of these goalies, the All-star team spots they earned, and the recognition of their importance in Hart voting, (three things that are much easier to compare seamlessly across eras) their resumes quickly create a considerable gap between them and him.
Obviously, though, I feel there's more than just that, and all of it points to Hainsworth being much better than you give him credit for. The fact that he's constantly ranked well above his contemporaries, him being a major part of one of the better NHL teams
of the late 20s and early 30s, the playoff shutout streak, etc. Like I said, you can manipulate stats all you want and make up all the all-star teams you want, that's fine, but it doesn't change the fact that Hainsworth was one of the all-time greats and deserves every bit of the recognition he gets.
If you look at the 1927 season you will see that four HHOF goalies finished with nearly identical GAAs. Hainsworth was among them. Determining the best goalie that season should be as easy as looking at the defense corps each goalie had. Hands down, I'd give the all-star teams to ****** and Benedict, in that order. In 1928 and 1929 I think Worters was better. If you disagree that is fine but that's not far off from what I said considering I concede Hainsworth was probably the 2nd-best goalie those years. The seasons after that have known all-star teams and he is not on them. So, even if I did agree to bump him up to first in those two unknown years, then he's got two First Team All-Star selections and a bunch of mediocre (from an NHL standpoint) seasons. Still don't see how that allows him to be mentioned with the other goalies you're attempting to place him with.
By the way, who’s manipulating stats?
No one ever said he wasn’t one of the all-time greats. But getting lost in the shuffle of all this back-and-forth is, I count at least 21 goalies with better resumes than him. You can talk about how great he is and I can talk about how great he isn’t but start really comparing him to others and his ranking drops like a stone.
A lot of people wrongly default to Vezinas as a measure of greatness. If you want to do that for post-82 seasons, that is fine, and even before that if the all-star teams match the Vezina winner (like it always did with Dryden and Durnan, for example) However, aside from Dryden, Durnan, and post-1982, there have been many, many cases of the Vezina-winning goalie not being considered the best goalie in the league, that honour actually being bestowed on the first all-star team goalie. You look at Hainsworth's career, you see three Vezinas, you say "hmm, that's just as many as Roy, more than Brimsek Parent and Brodaâ€, it's easy to make the mistake of saying he's in the top-15... even top-10.
My kool-aid has more flavour than yours.
