The team argument is still waiting for a workable definition from YOU as to what constitutes a strong or a weak team. Your point seems to be that because Hasek had an extremely high SV% and faced maybe 4-5 more shots per game than the other goalies in the league then Hasek was on a WEAK team.
Brodeur had a cast of consistent superstars in front of him almost at all times until recently, and recently, while winning Vezina trophies, he has not done a thing with them in the playoffs. you trashed Hasek's inability to get it done in the playoffs except when he went to a powerhouse team, while ignoring the fact that Brodeur was on a very strong team nearly his entire career.
It is literally PLAIN AS DAY that those Sabres teams were far weaker, and anyone who watched them agrees. A devils fan in this very thread just said that the devils in the last few years were FAR weaker than anything Brodeur had earlier in his career and that same Devils fan said that the recent teams are slightly better than those old Sabres squads.
Devilmademe said it right with this statement
I think we might have different definitions of "poor." If you are comparing Hasek's Sabres to all NHL teams in the league at the time, I think they were pretty average. If you are comparing them to just the 16 playoff teams, then yes, I agree they were quite poor other than in goal.
My interpretation, having watched the Sabres from the era play, is that they were a STRONG team because they managed to take away the oppositions offensive speed and other strengths thru superior positioning, keeping opposing players away from their preferred spots in the offensive zone, reducing angles and the speed with which offensive players go the the net. Such tactics - coaching, rely on a trade-off,
giving - up more shots while reducing the dangerous shots, the explosive attack and the odd man situations.
Absurd. The were nowhere near being a strong team. I find it difficult to believe you even watched that team play a single game based upon your description. The Sabres were a team that were constantly on their heels. In a way, you attempted to describe the manner in which they played, except that you made it sound like they were in control of the situation. They were not. The word for the Sabres was "Heels". They were constantly on their heels being pummeled, trying to play the game you were describing, but in much less control than implied.
One of the lowest scoring teams in a playoff spot, for the simple reason that they had no real offensively talented players short of Satan, who was not even top 20 in scoring. Defensively, the team had below average players as well.
It was Hasek thatmade them look good, kept them in games and well, kept them winning. Hasek, and ALL Hasek.
If you are prepared to compare the different strengths of teams and the different weaknesses of teams then I will look at the team aspect BUT this does not seem to be something that you wish to examine. You focus on save percentage and the other players stats and argue weak team. Simple, limited reasoning not willing to consider the complete team picture.
I have looked at the entire picture. There is nothing. ZERO. Absolutely nothing you can say that will convince me the Sabres were anything less than what I saw and what paper agrees with.
You are going to be in the vast minority if you try to convince anyone that those Sabres squads even remotely compared to the Devils cup squads.
Not a single bit of cup experience on that Sabres team during their 2 best years. Nobody(Literally) who had ever won a cup. No Savy veterans. No scoring, and a ragtag group of players who would have been 3rd liners on most other teams or bottom pairing defensemen. That is what constitutes a weak team.
You can revision all you want over how effectively their coaches got that ragtag group to perform, but in the end, they only ever won with Hasek in net. And when you replace those ragtag players with real talent(I.E Stevens, Niedermayer, Madden, Elias, Gomez, etc) they produce better results than the ragtag less talented group.
The save percentage stats you use are the public,global version they are NOT the broken down team stats that are internal and not released. The internal stats - depending on how obsessed the coach may be, breakdown all the aspects of the game. Save percentage is looked at for every situation, from various spot on the ice, high shots/low shots and so forth. This is also done for the opposition. This is also done by all teams in all major league sports
What does this have to do with anything? You do not have access to teams private statistics, thus, you are in no place to speak of them.
So the 1970-71 Canadines by your standards were a strong team even though during the season they finished 24 points behind Boston. Yet the Sabres during their play-off seasons with Hasek won their conference once and finished 6 - 15 points back of the winner during other seasons.But the Sabres were a weak team. Not congruent.
Yes, they won their division once, in a year when every team in that division was horribly weak.
And do you know why they won their division that year? Dominik Hasek. That's why. Which is why he pulled out a landslide victory for the Hart and Vezina Trophies. The Sabres Backup goalie lost twice as many games as he won. Anyone who watched that team that year said "Wow, look at how Hasek absolutely carries them". The voters concurred. If you replaced Hasek with, say, the 4th best goaltender in the league at the time, I would say they not only do not win their division, but do not make the playoffs. Hasek was that far ahead of the pack at the time.
Also, Let's not be comparing the 71 Habs to the Sabres. Its almost insulting. The 71 Habs were loaded with Dynasty talent and HHOF superstar players, and they finished with 97 points when the average team in the league had 78 points(And Dryden only played 6 games for them in the regular season. He was a significant upgrade over Vachon or Myre, and we all know it) It was a team good enough to finish in the upper echelons without Dryden, so obviously they were better with Dryden once he joined them in the playoffs.
The sabres were a team full of inconsistent weak players and in no way was it a good team.
When Nolan joined the Sabres it took him one season to figure out the team's strengths and weaknesses. He then set about building a team focusing on their strengths and eliminating weaknesses. He realized that facing more shots did not bother Hasek. So Nolan, followed by Ruff focused on reducing the quality of the shots as opposed to the quantity. Like Dryden for the Canadiens, Hasek was the right goaltender for the Sabres team.
Hasek would have been the right goaltender for any team.
For years everyone watched and commented on how he would win a cup if he had a real team in front of him. And guess what, he went to a real team and immediately helped them win a cup. He was such a strong goaltender in his prime that he would have helped any real talent win a cup.
This is getting annoying. All you keep doing is beating around the bush and sugar coating everything, and all you are doing is wearing me down, not because what you say makes sense, but because you try to continually bring up unrelated useless points.
Your revisionism on how strong the Sabres team was is not fooling anyone.
So the stats exist but are not available to everyone and when teams release them to talking heads they do so in general terms with some mis-direction.
