If Dominik Hasek's career would have been 10 years earlier in Buffalo

[threetimer*]

And yet Ed Belfour, who we know was not NHL-ready in 1988-89, still beats him for a job. Looking at someone's age in a tournament doesn't necessarily indicate a performance on par with NHL goaltenders. I have no issue looking at his World Championship and Olympic performances which largely put him on par with Mylnikov, Irbe, and Canadian goaltender Sean Burke statistically.

I suppose if Sean Burke didn't have a starting job in the NHL until he hit his prime in his 30s, similar concessions could be made for how good he would have been if someone would just give him a shot. And like Hasek in the 1987 Canada Cup, Burke had a few flashes of brilliance in 13 games in 1987-88 that would make you think he was better than he probably showed for the next 10 years in the league.

Hasek played more than 13 games in 87/88. You seem to over-focus on his supposed (statistical) short tourney failures.

Why is that?

After reaching a certain level, anyone can run hot or cold for a couple of games here and there. But the NHL is a league.

I read Alex Ferguson's biography in which he mentioned that the short tournaments are possibly the worst way to evaluate a player's ability properly. And that those few occasions he made/failed to make a bid for a guy based solely on their hot/cold Euro/World Cup performance were mostly the ones he ended up regretting.

Duh, huh?

So whenever you justify Keenan's decision NOT TO give him a chance by mentioning Hasek's CCs, you pretty much underline the fact that Hasek's Chicago period was more of a managerial failure than Hasek's failure.

Which, in retrospect, is pretty much commonsense as well.

Not sure if you realize that yourself, but you've been running the goose-or-egg-depending-which-side-we're-on logic circle of "Hasek lost his job to Belfour because he wasn't ready" and "Hasek wasn't ready because he lost his job to Belfour" for years.

It's become a compulsive tautology by now.

Where's any room for discussion there? I mean, your mind is made up.

If anything, whenever we stop to purposely ignore Hasek's achievements from the 80s, with the way the 90s did unfold, those supposed failures and his Chicago stint were in fact the flashes. The brilliance still prevailed.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Post Hoc

Hasek played more than 13 games in 87/88. You seem to over-focus on his supposed (statistical) short tourney failures.

Why is that?

After reaching a certain level, anyone can run hot or cold for a couple of games here and there. But the NHL is a league.

I read Alex Ferguson's biography in which he mentioned that the short tournaments are possibly the worst way to evaluate a player's ability properly. And that those few occasions he made/failed to make a bid for a guy based solely on their hot/cold Euro/World Cup performance were mostly the ones he ended up regretting.

Duh, huh?

So whenever you justify Keenan's decision NOT TO give him a chance by mentioning Hasek's CCs, you pretty much underline the fact that Hasek's Chicago period was more of a managerial failure than Hasek's failure.

Which, in retrospect, is pretty much commonsense as well.

Not sure if you realize that yourself, but you've been running the goose-or-egg-depending-which-side-we're-on logic circle of "Hasek lost his job to Belfour because he wasn't ready" and "Hasek wasn't ready because he lost his job to Belfour" for years.

It's become a compulsive tautology by now.

Where's any room for discussion there? I mean, your mind is made up.

If anything, whenever we stop to purposely ignore Hasek's achievements from the 80s, with the way the 90s did unfold, those supposed failures and his Chicago stint were in fact the flashes. The brilliance still prevailed.

Classic post hoc position. We know that Hasek eventually succeeded so everything that happened before the success and was not contributing or an example of his future success is somehow a mistake that others made.

No. Just examples of the bumps in the road of life. After all, for your scenario to be valid the operative assumption is that other actors were willing to accept failure. That they played the game at a high level with the intent of losing. Not so.

You carry on about short tournaments, etc, not enough time or opportunity. Yet I have yet to see anyone or even a consensus definition of this elusive concept of "enough time" to properly evaluate a hockey player.

Doubt that you can provide the answer.

 

[threetimer*]

Classic post hoc position. We know that Hasek eventually succeeded so everything that happened before the success and was not contributing or an example of his future success is somehow a mistake that others made.

No. Just examples of the bumps in the road of life. After all, for your scenario to be valid the operative assumption is that othere actors were willing to accept failure. That they played the game at a high level with the intent of losing. Not so.

You carry on about short tournaments, etc, not enough time or opportunity. Yet I have yet to see anyone or even a consensus definition of this elusive concept of "enough time" to properly evaluate a hockey player.

Doubt that you can provide the answer.

I bothered with a long post, but checking some facts on Hasek, I came across this:

His two-way contract with the Blackhawks set him up with $200K a year. That would have been the sixth highest salary among NHL goaltenders by then.

With Indianapolis, he was making merely $60K a year. So you probably don't wanna pay your No2 the sixth highest salary in the league. From this perspective, giving him a bus ticket after choosing Belfour for No1 makes some sense.

If you wanna play the best hockey in the world 8 months a year, you should probably give your prospect at least one whole year, preferably two.

Anyway, the Blackhawks didn't want him as a starter and he probably was too expensive for a back-up. Many people here guess way too much and read too little, me among them.