Ok. Last to reply in this thread mostly to Esposito after this I'm done. To asnwer the question : "Does Tretiak belong to HHoF ?" you have to answer on another questions "What does separate great goalie from very good and good goalies ? What makes him special ?" I have answer for my self - consistent high perfomance at every level and ability to recover after big losses. When I say "constitent" I don't think about 40 or 50 games a season, I mean years and years and years of high performance at every situation at every level. Did Tretiak apply for this definition ? Yes, he was a standard of conistent high performance. Big or small rinks, NHL or European style of play, group stage or playoffs, Italy or Canada... every situation and every level he was consistent and allowed his team to win.
Did he has ability to recover ? Yes. Like Roy recover after his Montreal days, like Brodeur recovers every time from missing playoffs or short run for the cup. He did the same after 1980. He recovered after Viena and Katovice.
You can say he was good because team in front of him was good. It's true but He
was part of the team. One poster said here, Soviets wanted to be best at every tournament and this is true and now think. How good was 19 years old goalie if he was selected to represent his country at games against ideologic enemy? There is a joke in Russia : "Tretyak by his play destroyed a generation of young soviet goalies who weren't able to play in CSKA and national team because of him" or something like this. Every joke has part of true.
You can say he wasn't tested by NHL-calibre competition. I don't get it. Just remember World Championsips or Olympics aren't 82 games tournaments including minimum 16 games of playoffs. It's a short tournament with 6-10 games. You loose one - you are in trouble, you loose second (or first in playoffs) - good bye. Playoffs weren't popular that days and there weren't meaningless games.
In NHL playoffs you can comeback after bad performance in one game, or in 2 games and still win the series. At WC or Olympics you can not. One loss and you are going home. And just realize years and years of play without any chance to play a bad game. Yes, he played bad games but price of his bad games was absolutely another. Do you honestly think USSR couldn't beat college kids in 4 games series ? Who cares, they didn't have a chance and it's a part of history already.
Yes, overall level of players isn't comparable at WC and NHL but at WC you shouldn't play 82 games or 70 like that days. 1,2,6 games. Every goalie can pull a Gerber like show, every Streit can be Scott Niedermayer in few games, every Peltonen can play a lot better than Joe Sakic in few games at Olympics and they do it. Heck, Jan Bulis scored 4 in one game
And every NHL star can play like Bertuzzi or McCabe in few games. Every player can play his best game in his career and steal the victory for his team like the same Gerber. Tretiak did the same every tournament, tried to play his best game against NHL stars against sweden players against players from Czechoslovakia against players from Spartak and from Dynamo and did it but when he retired he said : "I can't play this anymore. It's not because I'm old or not good enough. It's because of my mentality - I played 15 years without a single opportunity to make a mistake. I'm tired".
