Jim Carey
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VanIslander
A 19-year ATDer on HfBoards
He was incredible for about four years and was incredibly weird, a real strange cat. There were games when he simply was unbeatable and there were interviews where he made your skin crawl.
It didn't take the other teams long to figure out that he would get out of position if you forced him post-to-post with some good passing. The Penguins in particular capitalized on it and Lemieux, Jagr, Francis, Nedved & co. tore him apart in the '96 playoffs.
He lost his confidence. He'd stay too far in the net, and wouldn't come out and challenge after that.
By '99-'00 he just didn't care anymore. He'd had enough and called it a career.
He lost his confidence. He'd stay too far in the net, and wouldn't come out and challenge after that.
By '99-'00 he just didn't care anymore. He'd had enough and called it a career.
Big Phil
Registered User
- Nov 2, 2003
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I think you are being too generous towards him. I think there was two years where he was great. His rookie season and his Vezina winning season the following year in 1996. He posted 9 shutouts that year, led the NHL. Then he toiled around for three years mostly as a back up and then was gone. I can't think of a player in NHL history who has had as great of a year as he did and then never be heard from again for the most part. You have your Bernie Nicholls and Denis Maruks who put up a larger than life season only to fall back to earth but these guys were still good players afterwards. Carey wasn't. He was out of the NHL shortly after his Vezina win
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
He had a tendency to let up bad goals in the playoffs at the worst times.
Eventually, Washington ended up sticking with Olaf Kolzig, because he was their only goalie who didn't crack under pressure.
Eventually, Washington ended up sticking with Olaf Kolzig, because he was their only goalie who didn't crack under pressure.
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
Wow, that is extremely generous.
Along with Blaine Lacher, he took the league by storm in 1994-95. He was 7th with a .913 sv%. In 1995-96, he was definitely a very good goalie but his sv% of .906 was 15th in the NHL, nothing too special. It was the 9 shutouts that seduced the voters.
Surely you mean "he was above average for two years".
Carey's Vezina is highly suspect. Hasek had an off-year but was clearly the best goalie in the NHL. As usual, he led the NHL in sv% but had only two shutouts. Think about this: If one goalie is .906 with 9 shutouts, and one is .920 with 2 shutouts, what are their sv% in non-shutout games? Scary.
Carey also had a highly effective Washington defense of Johansson, Tinordi, Cote, Gonchar, Reekie, and Johnson, with 20-year old Brendan Witt as a #7. Hasek's defense corps was Zhitnik, Galley, Astley, Wilson, Huddy (at 36), Houda, and Boughner.
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
It wasn't just his shutouts. He was second in wins to Chris Osgood.
1996 was a real off-year for goaltending. Hasek and Brodeur both missed the playoffs, and the GMs aren't going to give the Vezina to a guy who misses the playoffs. Roy was traded in the middle of the year after a bad start in Montreal. Belfour was having an off year.
It sounds strange, but Darren Puppa might have been the best choice for Vezina that year. Close second to Hasek in save % (.918) and he led a bad Tampa Bay team to the playoffs.
Edit:
Look at the Vezina voting that year. 9 different goalies received first place votes! Talk about splitting the vote:
VEZINA: Jim Carey 52 (5-7-6); Chris Osgood 46 (5-6-3); Daren Puppa 34 (4-3-5); Martin Brodeur 31 (4-3-2); Ron Hextall 23 (2-3-4); Grant Fuhr 21 (2-3-2); John Vanbiesbrouck 11 (2-0-1); Dominik Hasek 9 (1-1-1); Patrick Roy 5 (1-0-0)
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
You're right, that's how they voted him the winner. Simply counting wins and shutouts... I think I'm going to be sick.
(don't forget Cujo missing a prime opportunity by holding out at the start of the season, maybe he doesn't have a hard time getting on track and wins the vezina in this weak year, and he's a guaranteed HHOFer)
Brodeur missed the playoffs but NJ would have been 4th in the West. And he posted arguably the 5th most dominant sv% of his career. Hasek led the NHL with the rag tag defense I posted. Both would have been infinitely better choices. I understand why they were shunned but that doesn't mean I can't call it BS!
Hasek, Puppa, Richter, in that order. All had very strong sv% and had to face a ton of PPs.
I'd have Roy, Brodeur, and Fuhr in the 2nd tier, Carey, Osgood, Beezer and Hextall in the 3rd.
Counting shutouts.... yuck.
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Blades of Glory
Troll Captain
He was a rather eccentric guy, and he really didn't seem to have the desire or motivation to play hockey for a long period of time.
Canadiens1958
Registered User
Lateral Movement
Lacked the lateral movement that good goalies need. Once exposed in 1996 it was game over.
Lacked the lateral movement that good goalies need. Once exposed in 1996 it was game over.
Rizer
Registered User
People keep saying he was 'weird' and was really creepy, weird and had odd interviews and such, but how about providing some examples? You tube, text, whatever. I'm curious to see what you are talking about.
Michael Farkas
Celebrate 68
This copy of a ten year old article could maybe shed some light. Also note that the subhead mentions a "comedy of errors" even though I believe the correct idiom is "comity of errors"
Anyhow, here's this: http://mscapsfan.tripod.com/carey0700.html
The Capitals were awful at the start of the 1995 season with Kolzig and Tabarracci in the goal, it's when Carey appeared that they started to win. They were so bad at the start that they weren't much above the Ottawa Senators. They ended up making the playoffs. By 1996-97 Carey faltered, Kolzig took over and Carey was traded to Boston for Bill Ranford in that Oates-Allison-Carter-Ranford-Carey trade.
Rizer
Registered User
Cool article.
It basically just tells me what I already know, though: He got into hockey early, became a star, never got proper 'mental conditioning' from coaches to prepare for the pressure, got ripped apart because of his positioning/lateral movement and then got used up and tossed away once people realized his talent was compromised and psyche damaged.
He doesn't want to do interviews, seems a bit resentful at the 'business' of hockey and says it is 'no fun' anymore, but people were saying he was 'weird' and that stuff about him made their skin crawl or he was creepy etc.
I don't get that at all from this article or anything I've ever read about him. He just seems like a guy who burn't out early and got tossed away, became resentful and walked away from the sport for good.
Thanks for the article, though
Been summed up already pretty nicely, but the career of Carey is easy to break down into a few key points :
1) he wasn't as good as his Vezina indicates, and was largely the product of being behind one of the best defensive teams in the league at the time. Won the Vezina with a pedestrian .906 save % that was barely top-15 in the league. Really, he was an awful choice for the award.
2) he was a good first-save goalie who had issues moving laterally. Facing the best passing team of the past two decades (the mid-1990s Penguins) in back-to-back playoffs destroyed him. They exploited that weakness terribly, destroyed his confidence, and he started cheating toward the pass on 2-on-1s and cross-crease situations and once that happened he was sunk.
3) he lacked heart. If he would have stuck with it and worked on his game, he could have probably re-emerged a few years down the road, as guys like Bob Essensa and Brent Johnson were able to do when their careers went into the toilet. He did have some natural ability, and actually looked to be getting back on the right track a bit in 1998-99 in the AHL when he put up quite good numbers there. But he lacked the drive to try and re-build his career and packed it in at the age of 25.
1) he wasn't as good as his Vezina indicates, and was largely the product of being behind one of the best defensive teams in the league at the time. Won the Vezina with a pedestrian .906 save % that was barely top-15 in the league. Really, he was an awful choice for the award.
2) he was a good first-save goalie who had issues moving laterally. Facing the best passing team of the past two decades (the mid-1990s Penguins) in back-to-back playoffs destroyed him. They exploited that weakness terribly, destroyed his confidence, and he started cheating toward the pass on 2-on-1s and cross-crease situations and once that happened he was sunk.
3) he lacked heart. If he would have stuck with it and worked on his game, he could have probably re-emerged a few years down the road, as guys like Bob Essensa and Brent Johnson were able to do when their careers went into the toilet. He did have some natural ability, and actually looked to be getting back on the right track a bit in 1998-99 in the AHL when he put up quite good numbers there. But he lacked the drive to try and re-build his career and packed it in at the age of 25.
Blades of Glory
Troll Captain
This afternoon, the NHL Network was showing the Classic Series of Washington-Pittsburgh in 1996. Carey was absolutely murdered by the Penguins, but Jim Schoenfeld kept going back to him despite Olaf Kolzig playing very, very well in the series. No idea why, but it probably cost Washington a series during which they actually managed to keep up with the Penguins offensively.
mrhockey193195
Registered User
Maybe not to the same extent, but Roman Turek and Roman Cechmanek come to mind as two recent examples.
He was also 4th in starts with 71, which adds to his value, and 3rd in GAA. While I realize GAA is, in many ways, a "team" stat, I think completely ignoring it, while focusing solely on SV% is a little misguided.
While Sv% is still probably the best individual indicator of goalie performance, it is clearly affected by the team as well, as the type of shots are not recorded. Some teams like to allow outside shots, and swallow up rebounds, while others may play an offensive style that hangs that doesn't give up a lot of shots, but hangs the goaltender out to dry too often. As well, some goaltenders tend to thrive on more shots, and, to some extent, more shots allow for a higher Sv%.
Carey had a 2.26 GAA, while Hasek was at 14th with a 2.83 GAA. As you said, Hasek played behind a weak team and defense. But it wasn't much worse than the team he played behind in 94-95, where he led the league in GAA, or 96-97 when he was 4th. And while he led the league in Sv% still, it was much lower than the numbers he posted in the surrounding seasons, where he also led the league. Yes, scoring was down after 95-96, but it seems like a guy who posts a season with a much higher GAA and much lower SV% in a single season while the team around him wasn't considerably worse, part of that is on him. Hasek also played less games than usual for him at 59, the Sabres missed the playoffs, and he led the league in losses. In all, his season sounds a bit like that of Vokoun's in Florida this season, and there wasn't too much Vezina talk for him (though, obviously no one that season was as good as Miller)
I was fairly young at the time, but I did hear a lot of talk throughout 94-95 and 95-96 about how good Carey was. He came in during the lockout and basically turned around Washington's season, and I think that hype carried over into 95-96 (where Kolzig was much worse in limited relief), and a lot of people saw him as a great up-an-coming goaltender (though I also did hear that people would figure out his unconventional style, which obviously was the case). He may not have been the best choice, but, while All-Star and Vezina voting is usually the same, the fact that GMs and writers thought he was the best goalie that year makes me question that he was a terrible choice when they were the ones watching the games, while we're just going on numbers and hearsay. At the very least I don't think it's a Hasek walk (though, I'm not sure who I would probably put as the number 1)
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
And for the exact same reason - they followed up statistically great regular seasons by being exposed in the playoffs.
Seems like the dead puck era had a lot of guys like that.
If you go strictly by save percentage, Roman Cechmanek is one of the best goalies ever.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
These paragraphs are enlightening:
Some people are just not born to be pro athletes. It sounds like he's doing fine for himself.
Some people are just not born to be pro athletes. It sounds like he's doing fine for himself.
TheMoreYouKnow
Registered User
I think those are different stories from Carey. Both Euro goalies in their late 20s who had done excellent in Europe but then just had a year or two of high quality work in the NHL before going back to Europe which is more their level. Carey is a guy who was very good at a very young age and then burned out very quickly and didn't even try very hard to fight his way back into hockey. Turek is still playing in Europe and Cechmanek did until a couple years back too.
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
No, it's not. Using sv% and GAA simply "double counts" sv% while introducing many more team effects than are found in sv%. GAA is just 1 minus sv%, times shots against per game.
This is true, but introducing GAA into the discussion is flat-out wrong, and you know what two wrongs don't do.
The difference between goalies' shot prevention skills and those who appear to "create" more shots isn't more than 3-4 shots a game, in total. It's been quantified.
In the long run a goalie who keeps giving up rebounds is not "padding" his sv%, he will get burned; he's not going to save 92+% of them and boost his stats.
There is no doubt that this was an off-year for Hasek. There should also be no doubt that despite that fact, he was still the best goalie in the league. You are outlining how mediocre his season was compared to the last, and I can't disagree with that. It really illustrates how much the voters likely shunned him only because he wasn't as dominant as he had been in the prior two seasons. You're telling me the way it was, just not the way it should have been.
Carey was good, no doubt, but posted a relatively pedestrian sv% behind a very strong defense. He was the worst Vezina choice I've ever seen.
The voting for the Vezina voting is really suspect in my opinion. There are basically two relevant stats to look at which is save percentage and games played. The other stats like GAA, wins and shutouts basically measure the same thing but in a much less efficient way. That being said, stats aren't everything and you can possibly make good cases for goalies with worse stats but that has for some reason played very well anyway. My impression is though that the GMs look way too much on the "bad stats": wins, GAA and shutouts (given the emphasis they put on shutouts the trophy could be renamed the "inconsistency award"). Brian Burke said in an interview recently that he found it odd that the GMs choose the Vezina winner since the goalie position is the position they know absolutely least about.
I know you're someone who has done a lot of research into this, so I'm wondering if you could go a little more in depth into it. (I guess I'm kind of derailing the thread)
While I realize that SV% and GAA are both based on GA, I don't see how it's "double counting" so much as giving context to each other. I think this could be amiss in something like Cy Young voting, where if you looked at two ways of calculating runs against, if would unfairly stack it against other things such as WHIP, SO/9, BB:SO, etc. However, with goaltending, we don't really have any other stats.
As you said, GAA is just 1-SV% times shots against per game. But, this way of determining it basically serves for the shots to cancel each other out of the equation. GAA doesn't take into account shots. Obviously, this is why Sv% is a better statistic. However, it also doesn't directly tell you how many goals they're giving up per game, and I don't see how that isn't important in giving some context to the performance.
For example, if a goaltender gives up 2 goals on 20 shots, where his team was frequently controlling play in the other team's zone, which limited the total shots, but some bad pinches, or bad bounces led to a high number of 2 on 1s and breakaways, it would be a good goaltending performance despite a pedestrian .900Sv%. Would having 3 or 4 more weak shots from outside the circles really have made him have a better performance?
I know this is only one game, but it seems to me that guys with a GAA near 2 that have lower save percentages are somewhat criticized, when it seems that they may be hindered in a way by their team being good defensively. Even the best teams usually give up a couple good scoring chances a game, and it's fairly unreasonable to expect them to give up much less than 2 goals per game (since Kipper's 1.69 is the modern record), which should generally be enough for your team to win. I remember a poster a couple months ago had an argument that lower shots naturally led to a lower SV%. I know there was some problems pointed out with it, but was it completely dismissed? Because the basic premise seems reasonable.
