ps. I'm certainly not alone in thinking, that the best goalie ever, whoever it is, should be in big5.
I think the problem stems from this: Terry Sawchuk is the gold standard. He dominated the position like Bill Durnan, but at a younger age, so he's three championships deep before his 26th birthday, riding the best combination of individual and team success we would see from a goaltender until the 1970s. So at this point (1955), he's already the best ever, and even though each subsequent season doesn't live up to his peak, he and Plante end up with enough longevity to not really be challenged for that title for quite some time. But they (Sawchuk, Plante, Durnan, Hall) are still not quite seen as Howe, Richard, Beliveau, Hull - so even back then, a goaltender might not be #5.
Then the Hockey Gods give us
more exceptional skaters in Orr, Gretzky, and Lemieux - so unless there's some serious re-evaluation relative to these goaltenders' contemporaries, there's at least 7 names (maybe 9, depending on how you see Morenz and Shore) that go above the top goaltender, even though the position has proven less likely to have generational talents.
Which goaltender do the Hockey Gods give us (in lieu of an Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux)? Ken Dryden. Maybe not the icon that Terry Sawchuk is, but just like Sawchuk, the individual success and team success is immediate, and he's winning a disgusting amount of games. But he starts later in life because of college and the big money isn't there yet, so he's too smart to keep getting hit by pucks and the best chance for a Big Five goaltender leaves hockey, leaving the O6 goaltenders as the high watermark going into the 1990s.
Enter Roy, Hasek, and Brodeur. Roy and Brodeur have their streaks of five-consecutive All-Star selections in the regular season, but they're still not peak Sawchuk in the regular season. Hasek is more in that Durnan/Sawchuk regular season mould, but he's hit or
literally miss in the playoffs and the major injuries add up (1993, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000...). Hasek's case seems to be aging especially well on the internet as hockey card statistics don't count how many times the third-string goaltender had to dress 20 years ago.
All three end up with good cases for these kinds of discussions being
maybe the best goaltender, but for the best to default to #5 overall, I can't help but think that a line of thought like this might be aided by the fact that we had to go so long after Terry Sawchuk to learn just how rare a Terry Sawchuk was (back to Morenz/Shore, the appreciation in the moment vs. the appreciation after recognizing 50 years later what was a unicorn and what was a truly fine horse wearing a cone on his head). That is to say, I think the world is in a better situation with enough established history to appreciate a Hasek
now in comparisons versus guys like Beliveau, Richard, Hull, Harvey, and others than the world was during Sawchuk's run when people probably wouldn't have believed that it would get much better than Howe/Harvey - unaware that an Orr or Gretzky could exist.
Where Roy becomes a legitimately strong #5 candidate - separate from having maybe the best goaltending career (one more in-line with Plante's consistency than Sawchuk's concentrated excellence) - is that he is also a reasonable alternative to Wayne Gretzky around this time of the year.