How much weight, if any, is everyone giving to the fact that Hasek's reign of dominance came while both Roy and Brodeur were in the league? Especially compared to Roy, who is actually a few months younger than Hasek?
I dunno, but when two players' careers overlap that much, and one so decisively outplayed the other for a period of years, that just seems like it should be a bigger factor than it has been.
Players don’t necessarily peak at the same time. Terry Sawchuk is younger than Jacques Plante, but Sawchuk peaked in 1951-1955 while the older Plante peaked in 1956-1962.
If Dominik Hasek was better able to establish himself in October 1991 while Ed Belfour was a contract holdout instead of losing out to Jimmy Waite, he’d be another one of the 21 starting goaltenders and all but just one or two players who weren’t as good as Hart runner-up Roy in 1991-92 - and then the overlap might not look as lopsided. Instead, the clock on their overlap as NHL starters doesn’t start until 1992-93 (or maybe 1993-94, given how quickly Hasek was injured after becoming Buffalo’s starter in 1992-93) when Roy was already a guaranteed 1st ballot HOFer.
Even Belfour - the goaltender who beat out Hasek for a starting role in Fall 1990 - couldn’t establish himself in his first NHL run in 1989 when Roy was already on Final #2 and Jennings #3
despite also being older than Roy.
Essentially, this type of argument is one that demands that the player with the peak at an earlier age maintains that same high level of play for the second-half of their career or else they’re assessed to have been
surpassed. That Patrick Roy’s career didn’t completely fall apart after 1993 doesn’t mean that Byron Dafoe, Chris Osgood, Jim Carey, John Vanbiesbrouck, Olaf Kolzig, Roman Cechmanek, and Roman Turek (other 1st/2nd Team All-Stars from 1994-2001) surpassed the player Roy was in the regular season in his twenties.