*glug glug glug*
Drink the kool-aid down, fellas, but try to save some room for mine, too!
Couldn’t agree more. Which is why I said I don’t fault him for this.
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.
Don’t be so hard on him. I think he
might have been a reason.
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.
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€
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.
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.
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.
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.
