Calling Goalie Historians - Where Does This Vezina Playoff Performance Rank All Time?

ImporterExporter

"You're a boring old man"
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Where would this rank on greatest goalie playoff performance in Montreal/league History, ballpark?

Definitely miss C1958 especially during these types of discoveries as it pertains to Les Canadiens.


10 Mar 1923, 22 - The Gazette at Newspapers.com

  • Gutted Montreal team beats dynasty (1923) Senators 2-1 in game 2 of their 2 game NHL playoff round. This is an Ottawa team with Nighbor, Denneny, Clancy, Gerard, Darragh, Broadbent, Boucher,
  • Ottawa had won game 1, 2-0 so they advanced on goal differential (3-2). Whoever decided that was a good way to advance a winner should have been jailed :laugh:
  • Vezina gives greatest display seen in net all year.
  • Stopped 64 of 65 shots in a 2-1 win. Non stop barrage of shots from everywhere.
  • Against an utterly dominant Senators team, given this was at twilight of Vezina's career, it's a mighty impressive feat. Plus it's just cool to see there was clearly stats being recorded beyond just goals/assists/penalties in the early 20's.

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Where does 64 of 65 saves rank all time?

  • That would be 7th, all time, in some very rare company:

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BM67

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For a non-OT game 64 saves is probably a record.

Here are the saves by period of the of the two longest OT games in NHL history:

04/03/33 BOS 0 at TOR 1 6OT 104:46 Thompson 112? Chabot 93 12-9 20-5 11-15 8-8 19-12 12-12 15-15 14-13 ?-4

03/24/36 DET 1 at MTM 0 6OT 116:30 Smith 89 Chabot 67 8-9 12-12 15-8 5-5 10-6 13-7 13-5 5-7 8-7
 
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Doctor No

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It's also important to note that we don't precisely know how the definition of a "shot" has changed since that time, or what was considered to be a shot on goal.

I will say that there do seem to be a large number of anecdotally reported eye-popping shot totals back then, which may suggest that people were more liberal in their definition.
 

ImporterExporter

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It's also important to note that we don't precisely know how the definition of a "shot" has changed since that time, or what was considered to be a shot on goal.

I will say that there do seem to be a large number of anecdotally reported eye-popping shot totals back then, which may suggest that people were more liberal in their definition.

@TheDevilMadeMe

One of the things I love about this subscription is you can cross reference (unless it's Toronto as access to those papers is weak) between Montreal/Ottawa papers.

Question about shot totals does vary in this time period, but in this instance, the legendary performance of Vezina, given who he was playing and the fact he was ancient (especially for that time period) at 36 years old, the questions are lessened because of the thorough reporting done by multiple cities/papers.

Consider:

From the Ottawa Citizen: (same date/game from the Montreal Gazette above)

10 Mar 1923, 11 - The Ottawa Citizen at Newspapers.com

81 of 82 turned aside according to Ottawa.

Notice the "Vezina stopped 3 times as many shots as Benedict (another reason why Benedict really is a full notch below Vezina but that's another argument all together) and then the total number for Benedict being tailed at 31 shots. So 3 x that amount, roughly would be 90. 81 of 82 would solidify the reality of statistics being recorded.

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ImporterExporter

"You're a boring old man"
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But was it the custom to call anything directed on net a "shot"? That's how many other sports do it.

Absolutely. I'm not sure. There is nothing to indicate they're crediting goalies with a save on a shot that goes 10 feet wide. I don't know any sport that credits saves in such a manner.

It does seem from those game reports that Vezina did indeed turn aside a TON of rubber on shots that actually made it to him. Nothing would seem to indicate a shot that got blocked in front was being termed a "save".

But of course, some pause is needed, as with all statistics from these time periods.

It's really awesome though to see such detailed record keeping from hockey that is a century old in any manner.
 

Oheao

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For a non-OT game 64 saves is probably a record.

Here are the saves by period of the of the two longest OT games in NHL history:

04/03/33 BOS 0 at TOR 1 6OT 104:46 Thompson 112? Chabot 93 12-9 20-5 11-15 8-8 19-12 12-12 15-15 14-13 ?-4

03/24/36 DET 1 at MTM 0 6OT 116:30 Smith 89 Chabot 67 8-9 12-12 15-8 5-5 10-6 13-7 13-5 5-7 8-7
I don't even understand how these numbers were tracked, because for what I can see it doesn't appear that saves were even an official statistic until the 1970s.
 

TheDevilMadeMe

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I don't even understand how these numbers were tracked, because for what I can see it doesn't appear that saves were even an official statistic until the 1970s.

If you look at box scores from the original newspaper recaps, a few of them do list shot totals. But i don't think its consistent.
 
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ImporterExporter

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1952-53.

Prior to that, it's a combination of folklore and journalism.

It's one thing that stinks about papers in the O6 era. How early were TV's prevalent across homes in the US/Canada in the 50's and 60's? How much access was there to televised games?

The game reports from much of the 06 era are more of the typical game summaries you see today. There really aren't that many folks around these parts that witnessed 06 players in person. Detail of play is not nearly as detailed as the papers from pre consolidation. Product of needing to describe the game as if a person was there because there was obviously no TV and I can't imagine radio was broadcasting games at that point. Certainly not anything beyond very local. But I could be remembering my timelines on radio creation/expansion, incorrectly haha.

At least in this case we have a very detailed look at the game, and while the two papers differ in shot total, they are both relatively consistent in description and the Ottawa paper even confirms the "Vezina stopped 3 times as many as Benedict" with their own shot total (which was higher than Montreal recorded).

Obviously I think goalies were probably getting credit for stopping something that might have been going a foot wide. What if they charged out and poked the puck off the stick of a F before they even shoot? Might get pegged as a save.

On the other hand play was more open then. There definitely seemed to be far more rebounds off shots and subsequent follow ups that you don't see as much of today for many reasons, namely better understanding of how to goal tend and defenses/teams being instructed so closely on the points of clearing pucks from danger.
 

BM67

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I don't even understand how these numbers were tracked, because for what I can see it doesn't appear that saves were even an official statistic until the 1970s.

The NHL kept some stats well before they became "official", like +/- was official since 1967-68, but when the NHL game logs were added to their site the +/- stats went back to 1959-60. The teams tracked them well before then. You can find coaches/GMs talking about player/lines GF and GA back at least to the 40's.

The NY Times printed league shooting and save percentages back in the late 20's.
 

Michael Farkas

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It's a needle in a haystack parlay...but do we have any pre-1952 game with shot totals AND a big enough chunk of video that might give us some confidence in how they were tracked?

60+ shots on goal in a regulation game would really be something at this level...I'm not very inclined to believe they were all on net, attempts seems more likely...
 
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BM67

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From my old research I have partial shot totals for some years in the 30's and some complete years later on.

1931-32: 132/384 games: 31.51 SOG/60 (OT) In the 11 games I have for Toronto, they averaged 38.61 against and 34.96 for
1932-33: 246/432 games: 31.77 SOG/60 (OT)
1933-34: 364/432 games: 30.44 SOG/60 (OT)
1934-35: 374/432 games: 30.97 SOG/60 (OT)
1953-54: 420 games: 29.55 SOG/GP
Hockey-reference has SOG/GP ranging from 27.3 (1997-98) to 32.8 (1963-64) for 1955-56 to 2019-20

A quick scan through my records I only saw one 60+ saves game that wasn't an OT game, but I did see a 29 save period.
 
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tarheelhockey

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The NHL kept some stats well before they became "official", like +/- was official since 1967-68, but when the NHL game logs were added to their site the +/- stats went back to 1959-60. The teams tracked them well before then. You can find coaches/GMs talking about player/lines GF and GA back at least to the 40's.

The NY Times printed league shooting and save percentages back in the late 20's.

Indeed, shot/save data was tracked by the NHL and released from the President's office. It came out under Frank Calder's name, but Elmer Ferguson was the league's official statistician in addition to his duties as a journalist. The book "Deceptions and Doublecross" goes a little overboard at times with the conspiracy theories, but one of its valid points is that Calder managed to keep key journalists on the NHL payroll in this manner. I'm not sure when Ferguson's tenure came to an end, or who ended up replacing him.

Unfortunately we are at the mercy of the sports editors for regularity and completeness. NYT only released save% data for two seasons, 1928 and 1929. I've posted it below, un-formatted so we don't lose it forever in an HFBoards software "improvement".

IMO the amount of research done on HOH around historic goalie data warrants its own consolidated thread in the Resources sticky. I'm going to start a new thread for that.

1928-29 season at the 3/4ths mark (released 3/8/29)
Goalie|Team|Games|Shots|Saves|Percentage
Walsh|MTM-NYA|10|363|355|.978
Worters|Americans|28|1156|1126|.974
Roach|Rangers|33|1313|1271|.968
Hainsworth|Canadiens|33|1132|1093|.967
Dolson|Detroit|33|1302|1257|.965
Thompson|Boston|33|1075|1036|.963
Benedict|Maroons|28|1064|1025|.963
Miller|Pittsburgh|32|1223|1173|.959
Gardiner|Chicago|33|1360|1301|.959
Chabot|Toronto|34|1357|1299|.957
Connell|Ottawa|32|1163|1112|.956
Himes|Americans|1|60|57|.950
Grant|Toronto|1|35|33|.942
Forbes|Americans|1|24|21|.875

1927-28 season (released 4/1/28)
Goalie|Team|Games|Shots|Saves|Percentage
Ironstone|Toronto|1|44|44|1.000
Himes|Americans|1|9|9|1.000
Bailey|Toronto|1|1|1|1.000
Hainsworth|Canadiens|44|1419|1371|.966
Connell|Ottawa|44|1458|1401|.961
Worters|Pittsburgh|44|1711|1635|.956
Winkler|Boston|44|1469|1399|.952
Chabot|Rangers|44|1621|1542|.951
Holmes|Detroit|44|1460|1381|.946
Roach|Toronto|43|1610|1522|.945
Benedict|Maroons|44|1349|1273|.944
Walsh|Maroons|1|18|17|.944
Miller|Americans|28|1162|1085|.934
Forbes|Americans|16|765|714|.933
Gardiner|Chicago|40|1486|1372|.923
Lehman|Chicago|4|145|125|.862
 
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tarheelhockey

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See, those per-game shot figures seem reasonable...

In those seasons, it was also relatively common to see shot totals mentioned in the game summary and occasionally even in the box score. The frequency varies from paper to paper -- the NYT mentioned them frequently in game summaries and bothered to report the league totals above, which suggests that the NYT's reporter was doing a thorough job of checking stats with league officials. In any case, when the stats are being kept officially and then made available to the press, they become a natural thing for a reporter to mention.

In 1923 papers, you only see shot totals mentioned on rare occasions. That suggests that they came from some sort of unofficial tally... either the reporter himself, or perhaps by a sideline figure like a scorekeeper or team official. So I'm a little skeptical about the reliability of those numbers, or at least the consistency that we would find between different sources.
 
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Nerowoy nora tolad

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FWIW the 2-game total goals series is not that strange of a concept. I believe Euro soccer uses it to this day as their playoff format, and a lot of hockeys sporting roots come from similar sports like Rugby. Its also a throwback to a time when a controversial call or ruling might seriously prompt the offended team to leave the field in protest, so having home ice split exactly even right down the middle was a nice clear-cut compromise.
 

tarheelhockey

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FWIW the 2-game total goals series is not that strange of a concept. I believe Euro soccer uses it to this day as their playoff format, and a lot of hockeys sporting roots come from similar sports like Rugby. Its also a throwback to a time when a controversial call or ruling might seriously prompt the offended team to leave the field in protest, so having home ice split exactly even right down the middle was a nice clear-cut compromise.

It also made more sense in an era when even the indoor hockey arenas could be put out of business by an early spring. They couldn't afford the time consumption of a long 3, 5, 7 game series... needed to wrap those early playoff rounds up quickly, nip-and-tuck. Each team got a home game so they* could collect the financial payoff of a successful season. The total-goals format promoted fairness in the results, so an undeserving team couldn't easily advance on a fluke.

The game in question here was played on March 9th at Dey's Rink** in Ottawa. Dey's was a natural-ice arena... playing too deep into March was risky. The Stanley Cup Finals were scheduled to start in Vancouver's artificial-ice arena on March 16th. A best-of format would have been better for business, but the NHL needed the series finished now.

They didn't move to a best-of format for the Finals until 1928, when all the rinks were using artificial ice, and the total-goals format stayed all the way till 1937, when economic conditions favored holding as many playoff games as possible.

* "They" meaning the owners and rink managers, not necessarily the players. See: Hamilton Tigers

** incidentally, the last game played in that rink before the artificial-ice Ottawa Auditorium opened.
 
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