This is why Roy is the GOAT. He was simply at another level at stopping pucks in the playoffs. His regular season prime tends to be highly underrated, but it's top-5 all-time as well, and I don't know if anyone was so consistently good for 16 straight seasons, but if playoffs never existed, sure, there would be a case for Hasek and his 6 vezinas, 2 harts and cartoonish regular season save percentages.
But for whatever reason - and there has to be reasons, because over this many games in this many situations, it cannot be just noise - Roy repeatedly succeeded in the playoffs, while Hasek's record was a mixed bag.
Take a look at all of the 30 playoff GP leaders of all-time, minus the ones who played before sv% (Sawchuk, Broda). This is their total GSAA in their best 7 playoff runs, as well as total GP in those runs.
Goalie | GP | GSAA | GSAA/GP |
Plante | 66 | 52 | 0.79 |
Roy | 132 | 85.8 | 0.65 |
Joseph | 65 | 36.2 | 0.56 |
Smith | 108 | 59.4 | 0.55 |
Esposito | 55 | 28.3 | 0.51 |
Brodeur | 106 | 51.8 | 0.48 |
Belfour | 104 | 49.7 | 0.48 |
Dryden | 106 | 45.5 | 0.43 |
Hasek | 100 | 41.5 | 0.41 |
Barrasso | 85 | 28.8 | 0.34 |
Rask | 93 | 31.7 | 0.34 |
Holtby | 84 | 27.8 | 0.33 |
Cheevers | 52 | 16.3 | 0.31 |
Lundqvist | 101 | 29.5 | 0.29 |
Fuhr | 94 | 27.3 | 0.29 |
MAF | 96 | 22.9 | 0.24 |
Luongo | 81 | 18.8 | 0.23 |
Moog | 82 | 19.1 | 0.23 |
Hall | 75 | 15 | 0.2 |
Price | 73 | 14.6 | 0.2 |
Osgood | 92 | 15.7 | 0.17 |
Quick | 85 | 13.6 | 0.16 |
Vernon | 98 | 11.7 | 0.12 |
Hextall | 89 | 7.6 | 0.09 |
Hrudey | 73 | 5.8 | 0.08 |
Crawford | 89 | 2.9 | 0.03 |
Rinne | 75 | -2.2 | -0.03 |
Nabokov | 78 | -6.3 | -0.08 |
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First of all, Roy has over twice as many playoff GSAA as nearly anyone on the list. Did he play more games? Sure he did. Because he played so well that he continually advanced further in the playoffs. And his per-game number is still higher than everyone else, except Plante, who's also a top-3 goalie of all-time, and who played exactly half as many games in this sample.
Hasek, on the other hand, looks pretty ordinary by this measure. He doesn't stand out compared to Brodeur, Belfour, Dryden, fair enough, all-time greats themselves - but also Esposito, Barrasso, Rask and Holtby find themselves around him.
Luongo looks pretty decent there too. Good to see. Actually, just kidding. Luongo didn't have enough playoff games or playoff runs to qualify for this list. That is actually Roy's 2nd-best career: his 8th-14th best playoff runs. Yes, that's right, outside of his best 7 playoffs, Roy had a playoff career pretty similar to MAF, Andy Moog, Glenn Hall and Carey Price.
side note - Rask and Holtby are frequently celebrated by the likes of THN for their high "career playoff save percentages" but it shouldn't surprise anyone that taken in context and compared to historical goalies, they look merely good, not all-time great.