HOH Top 40 Goaltenders of All Time

[quoipourquoi]

so sure, he had a very nice '09 and '11-level january to take the number one job from an abysmal raycroft.

but those aren't exactly vezina stats for the rest of the season though, are they? that's a .9085 SV% after january, good for 15th in the league. to go with his lovely 6-12-8 record.

Considering the Vezina runner-up had a .911 (.909 on the road), I think you're over-stating how bad his .9085 was after that whole .940 thing you talked about.

 

[edinson]

Which was shown to be overstated during the project in regard to Thomas, as his ranks in GP when leading the league were comparable to leaders of the statistic in other seasons, particularly Hart nominees Vanbiesbrouck and Hasek in 1994, not as a result of being consistently injured (which is the case with Malkin).

And as stated in the project, if Thomas couldn't handle a consistently higher workload than he was given, then his 2011 playoffs should not have been as statistically impressive as they were. But I'll grant you that Malkin's career has better filler, because that's the only thing that Thomas' resume doesn't have, as evidenced by the goaltenders ranked above him that never had seasons or playoffs as good as his.

Credit that to the uniqueness of the goaltending position: it can be hard just to get a job. But you also don't put up seasons that get compared to other dominant save percentage margins by accident twice. He's not off the list.

Sure, if everything beyond their two best seasons is considered filler, then the difference between Malkin and Thomas is probably that Malkin has better filler.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Evgeni Malkin
1, 1, 2 - Scoring Finishes

Tim Thomas
1, 1, 4, 7 - Save Percentage Finishes

Excellent. So you agree, no link between the two. Malkin has been one of the best players of the last decade, Thomas a journeyman minor leaguer who was relevant for about 120 games or so...book-ended by being the worst goalie in the NHL on either side when not under Julien/Chara.

Either way, I wouldn't put Malkin on the goalie list either, for the record...

 

[quoipourquoi]

Excellent. So you agree, no link between the two. Malkin has been one of the best players of the last decade, Thomas a journeyman minor leaguer who was relevant for about 120 games or so...book-ended by being the worst goalie in the NHL on either side when not under Julien/Chara.

Either way, I wouldn't put Malkin on the goalie list either, for the record...

If you ever write a Tim Thomas biography, you know I'll be first in line at Barnes & Noble.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Considering the Vezina runner-up had a .911 (.909 on the road), I think you're over-stating how bad his .9085 was after that whole .940 thing you talked about.

i did say "average at best," not "bad." and i based that on .9085 being 15th among qualifying goalies, and the fact that his GAA was sub-average and his record was abysmal but giving him a benefit of the doubt because his team was weak.

that whole .940 thing, however, was 1/4 of the 1/2 of the season he did play. aren't we always talking about "sample sizes" here?

and sure, brodeur only finished .016 above him, but haven't we all agreed long ago that brodeur is a SV% outlier?

but anyway, as i noted in my update to that post, we're actually not talking about thomas putting up exactly league average SV% (for a starter) in 3/4 of the 1/2 a season he played. if we look at the hot streak more closely, we're talking about him putting up well a below league average starter's SV% for 2/3 of the 1/2 a season he played.


but anyway, this i think put it best:

You are comparing two players who consistently played less games per season than other players at their positions. Only for one of them are you using an averaging metric. That is not a fair comparison.

PPG finishes for Malkin:

1,2,2,3,7,8.

and i don't think that the particularities of the goaltending position is enough to discount that point. we are talking about a league in which there are 30 starters' jobs, not 6. for the top 40 guys of all time, i don't think "it's hard to get one out of 30 jobs" is really a valid excuse.

 

[MXD]

i did say "average at best," not "bad." and i based that on .9085 being 15th among qualifying goalies, and the fact that his GAA was sub-average and his record was abysmal but giving him a benefit of the doubt because his team was weak.

that whole .940 thing, however, was 1/4 of the 1/2 of the season he did play. aren't we always talking about "sample sizes" here?

and sure, brodeur only finished .016 above him, but haven't we all agreed long ago that brodeur is a SV% outlier?

but anyway, as i noted in my update to that post, we're actually not talking about thomas putting up exactly league average SV% (for a starter) in 3/4 of the 1/2 a season he played. if we look at the hot streak more closely, we're talking about him putting up well a below league average starter's SV% for 2/3 of the 1/2 a season he played.


but anyway, this i think put it best:



and i don't think that the particularities of the goaltending position is enough to discount that point. we are talking about a league in which there are 30 starters' jobs, not 6. for the top 40 guys of all time, i don't think "it's hard to get one out of 30 jobs" is really a valid excuse.

2005-06 was a bit wacky in that the gap between goaltenders was just... very big, sometimes even on the same team (case in point : Montreal...), and bigger than it would be later on. Adaptation to new rules? Possible.

Also the two leaders in SV% had something of a light load. But some starters ended up having numbers that would look decent-no-more in the late 80ies/early 90ies.

Thomas's numbers were okay and most of the words to describe that Bruins team wouldn't pass the filter.

 

[quoipourquoi]

and i don't think that the particularities of the goaltending position is enough to discount that point. we are talking about a league in which there are 30 starters' jobs, not 6. for the top 40 guys of all time, i don't think "it's hard to get one out of 30 jobs" is really a valid excuse.

But there's a difference between missing time from injury and being a goaltender who doesn't receive 70+ starts. Thomas came in on Game #42 and played in 38 GP on the season. It's not a sheltered schedule.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

Malkin was an elite player before Thomas became one, and remained one long after Thomas faded from the scene. The comparison falls apart if you expand it beyond each player's two best seasons.

If Thomas is being compared to a forward, Reggie Leach probably wouldn't be a bad place to start.

 

[Doctor No]

But there's a difference between missing time from injury and being a goaltender who doesn't receive 70+ starts. Thomas came in on Game #42 and played in 38 GP on the season. It's not a sheltered schedule.

Here's more on that season for Thomas:
http://hockeygoalies.org/bio/nhl/logs/BOS2005.html

Raycroft wasn't getting it done. To be fair, Toivonen was pretty hot at the time of his season-ending ankle injury.

Thomas looks to have cooled off at the end (perhaps fatigue) but had very few isolated stinkers in the run.

 

[Michael Farkas]

Of no note, Jamie McLennan just said during the Buffalo/Ottawa broadcast, "Hasek is the best goalie of all-time...hands down..." but also mentioned that he didn't see guys like Sawchuk play. McLennan played against Roy, Hasek, Brodeur, etc. though.

He noted that he thought his style would be unsustainable, but he knew exactly when to use it and how it all worked. Most goalies couldn't pull that off...

And I agree with that...I would normally hate the goalie that is unpredictable, but Hasek was so far better than anyone else who ever tried anything like that that he rules for me. People say losers like Thomas or Cechmanek are like Hasek...yeah, not at all...those guys are brutal, it's not a surprise that they got exposed after just a couple of seasons of relevance...there was no other Hasek, and I can't imagine seeing another...same with Brodeur at this point, but God willing when they shrink this equipment down...

Anyway...

 

[Doctor No]

People say losers like Thomas or Cechmanek are like Hasek...yeah, not at all...those guys are brutal, it's not a surprise that they got exposed after just a couple of seasons of relevance...

Disagree on Thomas. Once he got to NHL prominence, he stayed there. First signs of cracks were when he was 39 years old (and a year out of the league).

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Of no note, Jamie McLennan just said during the Buffalo/Ottawa broadcast, "Hasek is the best goalie of all-time...hands down..." but also mentioned that he didn't see guys like Sawchuk play. McLennan played against Roy, Hasek, Brodeur, etc. though.

He noted that he thought his style would be unsustainable, but he knew exactly when to use it and how it all worked. Most goalies couldn't pull that off...

And I agree with that...I would normally hate the goalie that is unpredictable, but Hasek was so far better than anyone else who ever tried anything like that that he rules for me. People say losers like Thomas or Cechmanek are like Hasek...yeah, not at all...those guys are brutal, it's not a surprise that they got exposed after just a couple of seasons of relevance...there was no other Hasek, and I can't imagine seeing another...same with Brodeur at this point, but God willing when they shrink this equipment down...

Anyway...

Roy's best years were before McLennan was even in the league.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

But there's a difference between missing time from injury and being a goaltender who doesn't receive 70+ starts. Thomas came in on Game #42 and played in 38 GP on the season. It's not a sheltered schedule.

i feel like you are responding to a previous debate about tim thomas here that i'm not a part of.

all i'm saying is that 38 game season, which is actually 36 games started and only 35 decisions, in which a stretch of 13 consecutive games were awesome and the other 22 were below average, is too small of a sample to count as a "top ten" finish in any case about thomas' peak vs. malkin's peak.

 

[GuineaPig]

Roy's best years were before McLennan was even in the league.

His dominance relative to the league may have gone down, but I don't think Roy's Colorado days were that much worse than his time in Montreal. His competition just went from maybe the worst in NHL history to perhaps the best.

 

[Doctor No]

in which a stretch of 13 consecutive games were awesome and the other 22 were below average,

Looking at this:
http://hockeygoalies.org/bio/nhl/logs/BOS2005.html

Where are you getting "below average" from?

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

His dominance relative to the league may have gone down, but I don't think Roy's Colorado days were that much worse than his time in Montreal. His competition just went from maybe the worst in NHL history to perhaps the best.

on the other hand, the other difference between his montreal and colorado years is he went from facing maybe the best offensive generation the league had ever seen to perhaps the worst.

maybe that's why it looks like roy didn't drop off that much after '94? to me, '86-'94 roy was a whole other level of domination, relative to HHOF-level, still-excellent-but-no-longer-hasekian colorado-era roy.

 

[MXD]

on the other hand, the other difference between his montreal and colorado years is he went from facing maybe the best offensive generation the league had ever seen to perhaps the worst.

maybe that's why it looks like roy didn't drop off that much after '94? to me, '86-'94 roy was a whole other level of domination, relative to HHOF-level, still-excellent-but-no-longer-hasekian colorado-era roy.

One can argue that Roy had its best regular season as a Av.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Looking at this:
http://hockeygoalies.org/bio/nhl/logs/BOS2005.html

Where are you getting "below average" from?

from feb 9 to the end of the season, his SV% was .904, which is outside of the top 20 SV% finishes of that season (brent johnson and martin biron tied for 19th at .905). he averaged 3.30 goals against a game, which is well below 20th in the league (ray emery at 2.82). and his record was 4-11-7.

i acknowledge that thomas' 13 games before feb 9 were outstanding. but that's less than 1/6 of a total season.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

One can argue that Roy had its best regular season as a Av.

you mean '02? during those vezina winning seasons of '89, '90, and '92, he led the league in SV% by silly margins (whereas he was .06% behind theodore in '02).

during roy's regular season peak, he usually played as many games as anyone (he was 15th in games played in '02), and look at his finishes and margins of victory:

1989 (to be fair he's a distant 12th in GP this season, 2nd in wins)

Save Percentage
1. Patrick Roy*-MTL .908
2. Jon Casey-MNS .900

Goals Against Average
1. Patrick Roy*-MTL 2.47
2. Mike Vernon-CGY 2.65


1990 (5th in GP, 1st in wins)

Save Percentage
1. Patrick Roy*-MTL .912
2. Mike Liut-2TM .905

Goals Against Average
1. Mike Liut-2TM 2.53
2. Patrick Roy*-MTL 2.53
3. Reggie Lemelin-BOS 2.81


1992 (2nd in GP, 3rd in wins)

Save Percentage
1. Patrick Roy*-MTL .914
2. Bob Essensa-WIN .910

Goals Against Average
1. Patrick Roy*-MTL 2.36
2. Ed Belfour*-CHI 2.70


2002 (15th in GP, 8th in wins)

Save Percentage
1. Jose Theodore-MTL .931
2. Patrick Roy*-COL .925
3. Roman Cechmanek-PHI .921

Goals Against Average
1. Patrick Roy*-COL 1.94
2. Roman Cechmanek-PHI 2.05


i think '92 is unmistakably his best regular season, and up there as one of the handful of absolute greatest regular season goaltending seasons of all time.

you could arguably talk about '02 alongside '88, '89, '90, and '94, but i would probably put it third on that list. and not to take anything away from that great late career blip, because it was awesome.

 

[double5son10]

His dominance relative to the league may have gone down, but I don't think Roy's Colorado days were that much worse than his time in Montreal. His competition just went from maybe the worst in NHL history to perhaps the best.

Where do people get that Roy's contemporaries while he was in Montreal were "the worst?" While I think you can make an argument that the early 80s were a weaker time for goalies, the last half of the 80s and early 90s wasn't wanting for quality goaltenders. Roy's direct contemporaries included: Grant Fuhr, Tom Barrasso, John Vanbiesbrouck, Mike Vernon, Ron Hextall, Kirk McLean, Mike Richter, Bill Ranford, Andy Moog, Curtis Joseph, Ed Belfour and, for a couple of seasons, Dominik Hasek. Hardly a class of goalies that could be described as "the worst." That's just a ridiculous notion.

 

[quoipourquoi]

His dominance relative to the league may have gone down, but I don't think Roy's Colorado days were that much worse than his time in Montreal. His competition just went from maybe the worst in NHL history to perhaps the best.

I don't think he was at the same level in Colorado, because he had visible stretches of play in the playoffs, 2001-02, and in the beginning of 1997-98 and the end of 2002-03 where he looked like the same dominant goaltender that he was in Montreal over this new competition. Flashes of his 1988-1992 self, but usually not a full season of it.

 

[Hardyvan123]

Malkin was an elite player before Thomas became one, and remained one long after Thomas faded from the scene. The comparison falls apart if you expand it beyond each player's two best seasons.

If Thomas is being compared to a forward, Reggie Leach probably wouldn't be a bad place to start.

Agree with this or put another way a combination of regular season Charlie Simmer and playoff Leach.

Malkin is clearly superior to Thomas.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

Agree with this or put another way a combination of regular season Charlie Simmer and playoff Leach.

Malkin is clearly superior to Thomas.

I almost typed Simmer instead of Leach, but figured that was harsh. Thomas does have the all-important Smythe+Cup which Simmer of course lacks.

 

[quoipourquoi]

from feb 9 to the end of the season, his SV% was .904, which is outside of the top 20 SV% finishes of that season (brent johnson and martin biron tied for 19th at .905). he averaged 3.30 goals against a game, which is well below 20th in the league (ray emery at 2.82). and his record was 4-11-7.

i acknowledge that thomas' 13 games before feb 9 were outstanding. but that's less than 1/6 of a total season.

But you do realize that this doesn't mean he had 22 below average games, right? Relative to the league-average save percentage, he had 23 above average games and 14 below average games (62.2%). That's a higher percentage of quality games than Henrik Lundqvist had in 2012, Dominik Hasek had in 2001, or Martin Brodeur had in 2003/2004/2007.

You're taking what were basically just four awful isolated bad games and acting like the surrounding games must have been below average too just because they dragged his overall number down (but not so much that he wasn't still 7th in the league on a really bad team). That's not exactly how it works.


Also Charlie Simmer and Reggie Leach have a combined total of two 7th place scoring finishes, while Tim Thomas is one of just four starting goaltenders to lead the league in save percentage multiple times since the league started officially recording the statistic in 1984, and he did it with .007 and .008 margins over 2nd place.

 

[seventieslord]

All this talk about Thomas' stats in this way assumes that a prime Zdeno Chara and Claude Julien had absolutely no effect on dragging Boston goaltenders' save percentages upwards. And it seems like it's obvious that they did. Julien, in particular, has had this effect everywhere in the NHL.

To say that Thomas was 20 points above the league average or whatever, is one thing, but if the team factors were such that an average goalie should be expected to be 10 points above average, then that should curb one's enthusiasm about Thomas' numbers.