I feel the need to defend Gump Worsley at this juncture. "Insert Habs goalie" would have gone 29-7, .931, 1.92? I mean, maybe, I obviously don't object to taking team factors into account, but then why exactly are we giving any credit at all to any goalie on an Original Six dynasty team? Did the available Stanley Cup bonus points for goalies run out as soon as Fuhr got voted in or something?
I honestly don't understand how people can think that Johnny Bower was amazing in the playoffs while Worsley was completely replaceable in Montreal. Just how much better do you think the 1960s Habs were defensively than the 1960s Leafs?
OK, so winning in Montreal doesn't count for him, but then losing to much better teams in New York does count against him? That seems like a double standard.
Cujo had some great upsets for sure, and he deserves credit for that, but at the same time none of them are comparable to the Rangers up against the dynasty Habs or Leafs. Hockey Reference measures the team strength gaps through SRS rating between NY and Montreal in 1956 and 1957 at 1.07 and 1.17, and the gap with Toronto in 1962 at 0.76. For comparison, in 1993, 1997 and 1998, Joseph won series against Chicago, Dallas and Colorado teams that were 0.52, 0.61 and 0.40 better than his own, which is roughly half the talent gap Worsley was dealing with (other than Boston in 1958, where the Rangers were actually underdogs for reasons that I will get into shortly).
Fun fact: There were 25 goalies that recorded at least one decision for New York in the entire Original Six era (1942-43 to 1966-67).
None of them had a winning record. Twenty-four of them had a losing record, and Dan Olesivich had 1 tie in 1 GP against the non-playoff-qualifying Red Wings in 1962. That includes Hall of Famers such as Rayner, Plante, Bower and Giacomin, as well as long-time NHL starting goalies like Henry, Maniago, Rollins and Simmons. In addition, the only one of those named goalies to win even a single playoff game for the Rangers in that period was Rayner.
Since the playoffs were so rare for the Rangers, they faced an unusual situation every spring when they did qualify: The circus at Madison Square Garden. Even though every other playoff series followed the standard 2-2-1-1-1 format, New York's schedule was routinely screwed up, with the following adjustments:
1957: Games 3-5 were all played in Montreal
1958: Games 1-2 in New York, games 3-7 all scheduled in Boston
1962: Games 1-2 in Toronto, 3-4 in New York, 5-6 in Toronto (
the Rangers had to make special arrangements to make sure they could play their third home game of the series in game 7 if necessary)
As a result of this weirdness, Worsley faced 65% of his playoffs shots against as a Ranger on the road, in an era where home/road splits were generally massive. So no, I don't think Worsley "played down" to his teams, I think he was key for them getting there in the first place and then he held them in as long as possible against clearly superior opponents. Not only did they play more road games than they should have, they also suffered a number of blowout losses on the road that really killed Worsley's stats. There's a 7-1 loss in 1956 (plus another 7-0 loss with another goalie in net for the Rangers), there's an 8-3 loss in 1957 (where the Rangers were outshot 20-8 in the third period despite trailing by multiple goals), there are 5-0, 6-1 and 8-2 losses in 1958 (in that 8-2 one, the Rangers were down three after two and proceeded to get outshot 19-7 in the 3rd, with their season on the line), and there's a 7-1 loss in 1962. In those types of games, if your goalie makes a couple extra saves the final score looks better, but the result is never in doubt either way.
I also don't quite see why Worsley shouldn't get lots of credit for a Cujo-quality performance as a big underdog in 1962. In game 5, with the series tied 2-2, Worsley made 56 saves to take the game to 2OT, before the Leafs won (giving Worsley a .935 save percentage through 5 games against the eventual Cup champs). Then they stayed in Toronto instead of going back to New York, and the Rangers got blown out in an elimination game, and nearly 60 years later that makes Worsley's series look pretty average statistically, even though it seems very reminiscent of Joseph against the Leafs in 1993.
As someone who has spent a lot of time online defending Curtis Joseph, I'm getting a lot of deja vu from your arguments here against Worsley, because they are also very popular among people who don't rate Cujo. Let's cherry-pick his worst series (for Joseph it's usually the 1999 ECF) and use that to define him as unable to carry his team when given the opportunity. Let's give him no credit for playing well on a good team, and say he should have played better on big underdogs. Let's look at how he did in the playoffs well past his prime, and nitpick about whether he should have done a little more. Let's just say I didn't buy those arguments against Joseph either.
To be clear, I don't have a problem with anyone ranking Joseph or Smith above Worsley, I think I actually did that on my last list (although if you ask me right now I might be tempted to go Joseph-Worsley-Smith). But this panel seems to be a lot higher on Bower and a bit lower on post-1980 goalies than I am, so I'm not sure that's actually consistent with the rest of the top 200. Either way, I don't really see the reason why Worsley seems to be getting continually overlooked here.