Khabibulin

[Asheville]

What's his legacy to you?

-first significant and successful Russian NHL starter
-probably best Jets goalie since a brief stint by Essensa?
-Somewhat iconic '90s mask (weak, I know)
-Good playoff performer for some non-powerhouses
-Could have won '04 Smythe with little argument
-DUI with Edmonton
-Catastrophe in Chicago
-Holdout led to being final piece to Lightning's puzzle (most underrated move in Dudley's career)
-1st Russian Stanley Cup champion starter
-Best Goaltender at 2002 Olympics

Click to read more...

 

[Michael Farkas]

I remember him fondly. Never someone I would consider a top-5 goalie in the league for any stretch of time, but someone that I think was a top-10 goalie for a good stretch of his prime...very intense, athletic, great reflexes...paved the way for goalies like Semyon Varlamov and Andrei Vasilevskiy...and maybe one day Igor Shestyorkin and Ilya Sorokin...

 

[Jets4Life]

I remember Game 5, Jets vs Red Wings (1996 playoffs). The Red Wings pelted Khabi with something like 55 shots, and the he stood on his head, and led the underdog Jets to a 3-1 victory, and allowed the fans to give the Jets a proper send off in their final game on April 28, 1996.

 

[Asheville]

I remember him fondly. Never someone I would consider a top-5 goalie in the league for any stretch of time, but someone that I think was a top-10 goalie for a good stretch of his prime...very intense, athletic, great reflexes...paved the way for goalies like Semyon Varlamov and Andrei Vasilevskiy...and maybe one day Igor Shestyorkin and Ilya Sorokin...

Agreed. I think he's a trailblazer that doesn't get recognized accordingly.

 

[FerrisRox]

-Catastrophe in Chicago

What are you referring to?

He played five seasons in Chicago. His first year there wasn't good, but the next three seasons he played well. His final season in Chicago was his last year in the league.

What's the catastrophe?

 

[sabresfan129103]

I always thought he was in the top half of starters when he was in his prime and most likely a top 10 goalie for a good chunk of his career . Looking at his stats I'm actually shocked to learn his career save percentage is only .907.

 

[Doctor No]

I always thought he was in the top half of starters when he was in his prime and most likely a top 10 goalie for a good chunk of his career . Looking at his stats I'm actually shocked to learn his career save percentage is only .907.

Weighted by shots faced each season, that's actually above league average for his career.

If he'd retired instead of going to Edmonton to age 36, he'd look even better now.

 

[Doctor No]

I remember Game 5, Jets vs Red Wings (1996 playoffs). The Red Wings pelted Khabi with something like 55 shots, and the he stood on his head, and led the underdog Jets to a 3-1 victory, and allowed the fans to give the Jets a proper send off in their final game on April 28, 1996.

This is the game that I remember the most as well.

Jets 3, Red Wings 1

 

[Big Phil]

The first thing I think of him is stopping Jordan Leopold's sure goal near the end of Game 7 in 2004. I'll give all the credit to Richards, he was a well deserving winner of the Conn Smythe and St. Louis was right behind him but after that it was Khabby for sure. I am trying to remember any big save he made in overtime in Game 6 but I can't, all I can remember is the save he made in the dying minutes of Game 6 (some still think it was a goal, but it wasn't).

I guess another thing about him is that he had a bad knack for leaving a team when they were on the cusp of something special, I thought. He left Tampa right after 2004. Heck, Carolina won the Cup in 2006, there is no saying Tampa can't repeat if they had a proper goalie again. Then he leaves Chicago in 2009 for (gasp) Edmonton and we know what happened to the Hawks immediately after. Who knows, his legacy could be a lot different today.

As it stands, I'll say a good goalie, and recognized as such throughout the NHL during his time as being good. Amazing reflexes, made the sort of old school saves you miss, wasn't the classic "blocker goalie" who just stood there, he relied on his reflexes.

 

[Asheville]

What are you referring to?

He played five seasons in Chicago. His first year there wasn't good, but the next three seasons he played well. His final season in Chicago was his last year in the league.

What's the catastrophe?

His stats in Chicago were shit save for one regular season where he didn't carry a No. 1' s workload. I consider him a very good goalie thus my standard for him is high. His Chicago tenure was a failure IMO. At least he had solid playoff numbers with Winnipeg/Phoenix. Your exasperation is amusing.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

-Catastrophe in Chicago

he helped turned them around from the third worst team in the league to western conference finalists

i thought he was great in the vancouver series. the numbers don’t necessarily bear it out but he was just the fuhr-like veteran calming presence that very green team needed.

 

[Fantomas]

Should have won the Conn Smythe.

 

[Prsut18]

Hasek in 2002 was the first European starter to win a cup

 

[FerrisRox]

His stats in Chicago were **** save for one regular season where he didn't carry a No. 1' s workload. I consider him a very good goalie thus my standard for him is high. His Chicago tenure was a failure IMO. At least he had solid playoff numbers with Winnipeg/Phoenix. Your exasperation is amusing.

His stats were shit?

How did you arrive at the conclusion?

The season prior to Khabibulin's arrival the Hawks went 20-40-11-8. He was signing with an absolute bottom feeder.

His first season he posts a 3.35 GAA and an .886 save percentage.

The following year, he puts up a 2.86 GAA and a .902 save percentage. This is shit to you?

The year after that, he improves even more with a 2.63 goals against average and a .909 save percentage and the Hawks have their first winning season in six years. This is shit to you?

The fourth and final year of that contract he improves yet again, with a 2.33 goals against average, a .919 save percentage.

Strangely you claim he didn't carry a number one's work load in this season despite that fact that he played the most games of any goaltender on the roster, so that seems like an odd thing to say. Then, as the starter in the playoffs, he leads the club to Western Conference Final.

 

[Asheville]

Hasek in 2002 was the first European starter to win a cup

Good catch. 1st Russian

 

[streitz]

Aside from Zhamanov he was the only Russian I liked on the Jets in the 90's before our team left to the desert.



Apparently he drank a pot of coffee between periods.

 

[ShelbyZ]

His stats were ****?

How did you arrive at the conclusion?

The season prior to Khabibulin's arrival the Hawks went 20-40-11-8. He was signing with an absolute bottom feeder.

His first season he posts a 3.35 GAA and an .886 save percentage.

The following year, he puts up a 2.86 GAA and a .902 save percentage. This is **** to you?

The year after that, he improves even more with a 2.63 goals against average and a .909 save percentage and the Hawks have their first winning season in six years. This is **** to you?

The fourth and final year of that contract he improves yet again, with a 2.33 goals against average, a .919 save percentage.

Strangely you claim he didn't carry a number one's work load in this season despite that fact that he played the most games of any goaltender on the roster, so that seems like an odd thing to say. Then, as the starter in the playoffs, he leads the club to Western Conference Final.

I don't think using the Hawks prior season is fair in measuring Khabibulins tenure...

Goaltending was arguably one of the main reasons that 03-04 season made them such an "absolute bottom feeder" prior to Khabibulins arrival... They had made the playoffs in 02. Then for 03, they were the best team to not make the playoffs.

They had a good start to 03-04, then lost Jocelyn Thibault (who had better stats in 03 than Khabibulin did in his first 3 seasons in Chicago) a month into the season. They then went with a revolving door consisting of a 21-22YO trio of Michael Leighton, Craig Anderson and Adam Munro, and fringe veteran Steve Passmore for the almost 5 months that Thibault was out. After Thibault went down, they won 1 of their next 20 games, before finishing the season with 20 wins overall.

IMO, part of what shades Khabibulins 1st trip in Chicago was expectations. IIRC, they signed him to the biggest contract in their history at the time, and he was supposed to stabilize the goaltending position after it was the previously mentioned revolving door the season before and inconsistent with Thibault after they traded away Jeff Hackett.

If his record stank and/or his GAA was high, you could blame it on being on a bottom feeder. However, we've seen goalies at Khabibulin's advertised (at the time) caliber post pretty solid SV% numbers on bottom feeding teams. Ryan Millers last year in Buffalo comes to mind, Price, Nabokov, Dubnyk and even Khabibulin himself in Edmonton, etc. etc.

Even after Khabibulin improved enough to give them that first winning season in 6 years, the Hawks must've agreed that there was something "fecal" about his play or numbers as they decided to hand big money to Cristobal Huet and then leave Khabibulin's last year free to every other team via waivers.

 

[FerrisRox]

I don't think using the Hawks prior season is fair in measuring Khabibulins tenure...

Goaltending was arguably one of the main reasons that 03-04 season made them such an "absolute bottom feeder" prior to Khabibulins arrival... They had made the playoffs in 02. Then for 03, they were the best team to not make the playoffs.

They had a good start to 03-04, then lost Jocelyn Thibault (who had better stats in 03 than Khabibulin did in his first 3 seasons in Chicago) a month into the season. They then went with a revolving door consisting of a 21-22YO trio of Michael Leighton, Craig Anderson and Adam Munro, and fringe veteran Steve Passmore for the almost 5 months that Thibault was out. After Thibault went down, they won 1 of their next 20 games, before finishing the season with 20 wins overall.

I think you are grossly underestimating how bad Chicago was that first year that Khabibulin was there.

Their three leading scorers were Kyle Calder, Mark Bell and Tyler Arnason, and Arnason finished third on the team in scoring despite being traded to Ottawa in early March.

Their top scoring blueliner was rookie Brent Seabrook. The rest of the D was Jim Vandermeer, a rookie Duncan Keith, Jassen Cullimore and several guys traded mid-season like Todd Simpson, Jaro Spacek and Anton Babchuk. The rest of the time was eaten up by a patch work for guys played 25 to 30 games like Adrian Aucoin, Michael Barinka (a rookie) Dustin Byfuglien (a rookie) and James Wiesnewski (wait for it, a rookie)

Sure goaltenders can put up decent numbers on not so great teams, but this team was terrible and very much in transition. Rookies were logging big ice time and veterans were being shipped out the door and replaced by patch work journeyman. To criticize Khabibulin for his efforts this season seems to completely ignore what was happening with the team at the time.

 

[Brodeur]

Not particularly pertinent, but when we would play ball hockey growing up, I would use my trash can as the de facto goalie and we dubbed it Khabibulin. Not that we thought he was trash by any means, but the 'Bulin Wall was a catchy nickname.

 

[mrhockey193195]

Can anyone shed light on how he was perceived as a prospect, and early on his in career in Winnipeg? Was he highly touted before coming to North America? In all honestly, I really only remember having formed an opinion of Khabibulin by the time of his hold-out and the potential competition with Burke.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Can anyone shed light on how he was perceived as a prospect, and early on his in career in Winnipeg? Was he highly touted before coming to North America? In all honestly, I really only remember having formed an opinion of Khabibulin by the time of his hold-out and the potential competition with Burke.

i'm not an expert on pre-NHL khabibulin but he was on the post-soviet WJC team that won gold, so he didn't come out of nowhere. on the other hand, he didn't win top goaltender. mike dunham did.

i certainly knew who he was, because for whatever reason i had a million of his upper deck WJC card. i just kept getting khabibulins and krivokrasovs (at a time when the ones you wanted were kasparaitis and kovalev). but i was also quite surprised when later on he became a starter; as far as i could tell he wasn't especially hyped as a goalie prospect, relative to kidd, dunham, thibault, and later storr, giggy, biron, and eric fichaud. iirc, the european goalie prospect i heard the most about in that era (not counting hasek) was tommy soderstrom.

i was later even more surprised that he had that holdout and it was such a big deal. i guess i didn't follow phoenix very closely but i always thought of him as an average starter. then i started hearing about what teams were offering and how he was this franchise-altering goalie. i was like, what? nikolai khabibulin?

 

[tony d]

Always liked him, was quite good for a few seasons. One of the best Russian goalies ever.

 

[Michael Farkas]

From Doc's site, if I may, some early quotes:

"While [Michal] Grosek and [Ravil] Gusmanov go through the slings and arrows of gaining experience in the AHL, Khabibulin is the guy behind them dealing with their mistakes, trying to keep nightly scores respectable. The 21-year-old Russian-born goalie had plenty of work with a very ordinary Central Army team last year, so at least he's used to work. The one thing you can say about Nikolai," [Winnipeg director of player personnal Randy] Carlyle said, "is that he's a worker."" (Tim Campbell, The Hockey News Future Watch 1995)

"The best Russian goalie since Tretiak. Improved defense will make him better." (ESPN Hockey 96, p. 97)

"In case you didn't believe the numbers goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin put up in Winnipeg last seasn and in the playoffs (when he singlehandedly kept the Jets in their series against the Red Wings), be prepared for more of the same from Khabibulin in Phoenix this season. (The Sporting News Hockey Yearbook 1996-97, p. 13)

Nikolai Khabibulin

 

[Terry Yake]

i remember his season with the long beach ice dogs when he held out an entire year

 

[Asheville]

i remember his season with the long beach ice dogs when he held out an entire year

Was he dominant? He did win league MVP right?