Michael Farkas
Celebrate 68
Playoff performance + international performance. Toews and Thornton played together in 2010 Olympic Games. Who was better.
That's correct, sample sizes mean little to me where there is a chance for playoff comparison.
Hasek is my #1 goalie. He had one CS-worthy run, an Olympic gold, and handily outplayed Roy face to face, when everything was on the line... twice.
I can't do enough yoga to contort myself into buying this, with all due respect, Sentinel.
If the best-on-best spots (be it Olympics or the Stanley Cup Playoffs or whatever) are getting enough weight to push a player I would have never even thought to consider in Toews over Joe Thornton...then Hasek is well behind Patrick Roy (who he did not score on in either of those game 7s), he's behind Martin Brodeur, he's probably behind Ken Dryden as well...then you have to consider Plante and even Sawchuk I guess too...
See, here's another one of my tangents coming on...this is like NFL people who rate Tom Brady #1 all time...that's fine and all, that's defensible if you really, really weight playoffs or just plain old championship rings highly...but you can't just do that versus Peyton Manning and then come in with Dan Marino at #2 or #3...it doesn't work that way. You make your bed and you lay in it. You're dragging Terry Bradshaw and Troy Aikman into relevant spots (when they would otherwise be irrelevant)...Otto Graham is easily top 5...Bart Starr is way up there...Eli Manning gets mentioned in like the top 25 or 30 or something when he doesn't belong in the top 60...etc.
Manning, Marino, Tittle, these guys get slammed as a result. Which again, is fine...Manning and Marino have enough "Hasek stuff" - a mix a singular playoff runs, "beating" an arch-nemesis without ever actually playing him (Manning over Brady in AFC Championship games, for instance) to be in the discussion highly, of course...but it doesn't work for me personally to go "I value playoffs enough to push Jonathan Toews into this thread, much less over Joe Thornton and, also, Dominik Hasek is my #1 goalie"
This weight, and I don't mean to oversell it, and maybe I am, but this weight - to me - pushes Billy Smith into your conversation...
Also, Toews being on the list, means that both Toews and Bergeron are on over Thornton among current era guys...?