Well, the statsheet certainly screams "better than Dafoe". I'd also be inclined to rank him above Price (until the end of the current season at the very least).
Okay, I'm convinced he deserves to be ranked higher than Price or Dafoe (seriously, it never crossed my mind that, as a whole, Dafoe was a well-below average goalie, in spite having one very good season). Maybe I just overrated a bit the late 70ies Leafs...?
It's probably more likely that I underrated the late '70s Leafs.
I was the guy that listed Palmateer, and I did so for several reasons. My initial list was peak-heavy, quite likely too peak-heavy. If you look at best 3 and 5-year stretches, Palmateer shows up very well relative to most guys in that range in terms of stats like save percentage, GAR and GVT, and that's just if you take his numbers at face value:
1976-77 to 1978-79:
1. Ken Dryden, .917
2. Chico Resch, .913
3. Mike Palmateer, .908
4. Billy Smith, .908
5. Tony Esposito, .905
He also completely dismantled his backups in his first Toronto stint ('76-77 to '79-80):
Palmateer: 99-72-30, 3.07, 15 SO
Backups: 44-62-13, 3.87, 3 SO
Most of them weren't great goalies of course (although Wayne Thomas wasn't too bad), but that's the sort of outperformance that makes you take notice.
If the Leafs weren't that good defensively, then Palmateer starts to look quite frankly outstanding in terms of peak performance relative to the other guys in that range (again if you aren't looking at things like award voting, trophies and team success, which I generally am not). His playoff numbers were also very good, albeit in a small sample. Yes, he apparently fell off a cliff later in his career, but to me those kinds of numbers over that sample size in that kind of team context would seem to indicate some true talent, and I'd rather rate a guy with probable talent above a guy who never proved he was any better than his teammates.
Another huge part of it is that I don't trust goalie rankings and awards from the '70s all that much because the team effects are so obviously huge (I think I made that case a few times in the Giacomin debates). I probably went a bit too far (maybe going a bit too contrarian, I'm quite prone to that obviously) in terms of pulling out some of the less known '70s goalies and giving them the benefit of the doubt over the guys who played on good teams, which is why Palmateer, Dan Bouchard and Gilles Meloche all made my list while guys like Roger Crozier and Don Edwards did not.
I'm not sure if Palmateer would make my list if I went though it again, I probably would put a guy with more longevity on there ahead of him to be honest, but he's an interesting case of a guy who very likely had a peak that was much better than he's usually given credit for.
