Bill Ranford's legacy

RECsGuy*

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1990 Stanley Cup Champion
1990 Conn Smythe Trophy MVP
1991 Canada Cup Champion
1991 Canada Cup MVP
1994 IIHF World Championship Gold (Canada's first in 33 years)
1994 IIHF World Championship MVP

What do we make of this guy? How will he be remembered? He may not have the numbers, but goodness, does he have some significant hardware.

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blogofmike

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Dec 16, 2010
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Mainly for the top two lines the OP.

Getting Ranford was the second best trade Edmonton ever made.
 

TheDevilMadeMe

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Aug 28, 2006
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Great, clutch goalie for 2 seasons. Then fell apart and kept getting chance after chance because of the magic he once briefly had.
 

McGuillicuddy

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Sep 6, 2005
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I could swear we had this exact thread a month or so ago but I can't find it to save my life.

Anyways, I'll say now what I said then. He was arguably the best goalie in the world for a very short time period (1-2 years). He sure was fun to watch though.
 

Big Phil

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Nov 2, 2003
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Edmonton did fall apart as a whole after a while but Ranford never got back to that "elite" status either. Even with decent teams (Boston) he was just never the same. He has a great run in 1990 and 1991 Canada Cup but overall his Vezina voting was awful compared to his peers and his staying power wasn't very good. Remember when he went to Detroit in 1999 as a back-up? He was in his early 30s at that time and it almost seemed more of a ceremonial trade than anything. He hadn't been relevant in the NHL for quite some time. It makes you wonder just how bad the picks for the 1996 World Cup were considered he was the third string goalie.
 

Stephen

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Feb 28, 2002
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I wasn't old enough to witness a young Bill Ranford in his prime. I mostly remember him as an embattled goalie on a bad Oilers team full of garbage, occasional Team Canada representative and I think of him as a bit of a dinosaur whose style of play was quickly becoming obsolete.

When I think of 90s goaltending, I think of exciting young kids coming up like Cujo, Belfour, Potvin, Brodeur with their butterfly and hybrid styles contrasted with the utterly inefficient stand up, pad stacking goalies of the past. Ranford was the epitome of this stand up goaltending, and it didn't look like much fun being a Bruins, Caps or Wings fan and having him in net for you getting lit up on a regular basis.

I was never really a fan of his at all, but looking back now he also stands for a nostalgic early 90s era of run and gun hockey, terrible/unpredictable/unreliable/spectacular reflex goaltending.
 

McRpro

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Aug 18, 2006
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My favorite Goalie ever. Damn he was fun to watch.

I still remember as a kid turning on the TV in early '96 and seeing that the Oilers had traded Ranford to the Bruins and signed Curtis Joseph(who everyone expected would be the goalie they'd trade). I was shocked.
 

tony d

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Jun 23, 2007
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Ranford was a solid goalie who looked like the next great goalie early in his career but then things fell apart for him. I still remember Boston getting him in 1996 and everyone saying he would solve Boston's goalie problems.
 

bruins309

Krejci Fight Club
Sep 17, 2007
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Ranford was a solid goalie who looked like the next great goalie early in his career but then things fell apart for him. I still remember Boston getting him in 1996 and everyone saying he would solve Boston's goalie problems.

He did solve the Bruins goalie problem...at least for the remainder of that 95-96 season. You might look at a 2.83 GAA and save % below .900 and think otherwise...but he was really good and got the Bruins to the playoffs.

That team was using Scott Bailey, Craig Billington and Blaine Lacher are they goaltenders for three months before he got there.

He had some injury issues the next year and was playing behind a team that was absolute garbage.

My theory is that Bruins coach Steve Kasper rode the guy into the ground in '96 and he was never the same. They traded for him in the middle of January and he played 40 games just for the Bruins by the end of the year...77 games total that year.

I love the guy...and I still wear my Bruins Ranford jersey to games from time to time. But he's not remembered as well because the highest points of his career all came before age 25 and he played his last game at 33.
 

MS

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Mar 18, 2002
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He was very good for a brief period of time around 1990-1991.

After that, he fell off very quickly and spent most of the 1990s as a total sieve riding off the rep he garnered from his earlier successes.

For several years, the accepted wisdom was that (despite the fact that simply watching him play you could see that he was a flailing mess with more holes than a block of Swiss cheese) he was a good goalie who only had ghastly numbers because he played for a bad team. When he was traded away and had stints with good teams in Boston/Washington it became quickly obvious that he was awful. Similarly, when he was replaced by a legitimate quality #1 netminder in Curtis Joseph, Edmonton actually started winning.

To his credit, he did perform exceptionally well at the 1994 World Championships. I still don't know where that came from as it was completely at odds with everything else he did in the final 8 years or so of his career.
 

CBJ goalie

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May 19, 2005
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So much fun to watch, so acrobatic - he was one of the first goalies I recall making saves of the "WTF?" kind.
I somewhat modeled my game after him, but reflexes and 'flashiness' only get you so far....
 

ColdSteel2

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Aug 27, 2010
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Bill Ranford came into the league at a time when the butterfly/hybrid style was really catching on with goalies like Roy, Belfour and Potvin leading the way. Bill Ranford, however, had actually perfected the old time 80's, stand up, pad stacking style. I think he was the best goalie to ever play that style. He peaked with a Cup and Conn Smythe win very early in his career. Goaltending changed and his style didn't hold up anymore, so he became bottom tier journeyman pretty quickly.
 

Fish on The Sand

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Feb 28, 2002
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Bill Ranford came into the league at a time when the butterfly/hybrid style was really catching on with goalies like Roy, Belfour and Potvin leading the way. Bill Ranford, however, had actually perfected the old time 80's, stand up, pad stacking style. I think he was the best goalie to ever play that style. He peaked with a Cup and Conn Smythe win very early in his career. Goaltending changed and his style didn't hold up anymore, so he became bottom tier journeyman pretty quickly.
That's what I think too. Basically he started peaking right as his style of play became woefully obsolete.
 

Mayor Bee

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Dec 29, 2008
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In the grand scheme of things, I don't think there's much to differentiate between the three old divisional rivals (Ranford, Vernon, and McLean). Vernon had the most staying power but played on the best teams, McLean had teams that largely tended to underachieve in front of him, and Ranford was the most highly regarded. Each one only had one run of true dominance (Ranford in 1990, Vernon in 1989, and McLean in 1994). The real difference is that McLean had the fewest post-run chances; Ranford and Vernon kept cycling around until it was obvious they could no longer hold down a starting position.
 

TheMoreYouKnow

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May 3, 2007
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Don't forget Vernon got a Conn Smythe with Detroit in 97 and though it could be argued that Smythe shouldn't have been his, he was pretty damn good on that Cup run.
 

JT Dutch*

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What do we make of this guy? How will he be remembered? He may not have the numbers, but goodness, does he have some significant hardware.

... He was a very average goalie outside of those three periods of time. I would say that the success he had in those tournaments and the '90 playoffs were the most improbable hot streaks I've ever seen from a goalie.
 

Mayor Bee

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Dec 29, 2008
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Don't forget Vernon got a Conn Smythe with Detroit in 97 and though it could be argued that Smythe shouldn't have been his, he was pretty damn good on that Cup run.

Very true, but during the Flames' chronic postseason underachieving (1989-90 through 1993-94), a big part of that was due to Vernon's largely horrible play.

Personally, I think it would be interesting to take the combined seasons and playoffs of the three goalies I mentioned and see who would fall where. Vernon would have two of the four best (maybe the top two), but he'd also fill the bottom.
 

crobro

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Aug 8, 2008
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ill remember ranford as the ex goalie who bought up all the mr mikes franchises in bc
 

Big Phil

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Nov 2, 2003
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So much fun to watch, so acrobatic - he was one of the first goalies I recall making saves of the "WTF?" kind.
I somewhat modeled my game after him, but reflexes and 'flashiness' only get you so far....

You'd think so, but Tim Thomas seems to be able to play that scrambling style pretty well. It'll earn him his 2nd Vezina and probably a Hart nomination this year. That style of goaltending is incredibly fun to watch (think Mike Richter) and when a goalie who plays that way is on, he is ON! I mean Brodeur has made a career out of NOT being a butterfly goalie and not being a stand up one either. Kind of a mixture but he also relies on his reflexes a lot. You can't say a goalie can't be successful with that style, even today. Ranford just didn't age very well.
 

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