Official Hockey discussion thread

It was a stellar game. Too bad the wrong team won in the end :( Also: GOALIE FIGHT!!!!

That, folks, is what they call Old Time Hockey!
 
Considering I am wearing my Bruins jersey right now, I have no issues with the result :D, Old Time Hockey indeed. The Bruins are beating their way into the top of the East lol. Big Bad Bruins all the way.
 
he never retired before. He just dropped out.

I saw some of the games, he looked pretty good. I think he's just upset that he didn't score 5,000 points already.
 
In the article he says he is sure of his decision THIS TIME, as though he had made it before. I guess when he said, "I'm not playing because of my foot," the other 5 times, that wasn't retiring. He did look good, but I notice all the late 30-somethings (Hull in PHX, C. Lemieux, Forsberg and some other guy I'm forgetting) have the same excuse... They can't keep up with the young-ens
 
Interesting stats I just pulled on Tim Thomas' season so far. He is currently on pace to establish a record for a single-season save percentage record (0.938), besting Dominik Hasek's current record (0.937) set in 1998-99. Some differences, however: in 1998-99, there was a league-wide save percentage of 0.908, and there were six other goalies with save percentages equal or greater than 0.920. Hasek bested his closest rival (Byron Dafoe) by 0.011.

Today, there are fourteen (14!) goalies other than Thomas with save percentages equal to or larger than 0.920, with closest rival (Pekka Rinne) coming up 0.010 behind. I don't have league-wide save percentage stats for this season, and I can't be bothered to do the calculations, but I imagine it would be higher by ~0.005 (last year's was 0.911). Shows how truly dominant Hasek was, as well as how significantly larger the crop of "elite" goalies is today than in decades past.

Should be noted that Hasek also holds the record (and likely will continue) for save percentage in a calendar year (including Olympics and playoffs) with 0.946 in 1998.
 
I agree, when he finally hit his stride in Buffalo, there was none better. He literally carried that club to the finals...
 
I'll take that one step further. Hasek was the dominant player — not goaltender, player — of his era.
He ranks in the Gretzky, Lemieux, Orr, Howe, Richard category. He dominated the league and revolutionized the way his position was played.
Only his quirky personality and a general bias against Euros prevents him from universal anointing to that status.
If his name was Bobby, he was born in Medicine Hat and he played most of his career for the Leafs there wouldn't even be a debate.
 
mckindog said:
I'll take that one step further. Hasek was the dominant player — not goaltender, player — of his era.
He ranks in the Gretzky, Lemieux, Orr, Howe, Richard category. He dominated the league and revolutionized the way his position was played.
Only his quirky personality and a general bias against Euros prevents him from universal anointing to that status.
If his name was Bobby, he was born in Medicine Hat and he played most of his career for the Leafs there wouldn't even be a debate.
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I'd agree.

If he had played on the Devils, he would've won the Cup every year.
 
We've been over this before. Hasek is missing the cups to be considered the dominant player. Yes, he carried Buffalo to the finals…once. He didn't get them to the cup.

He only won the cup when he played for the 2002 All Star Team…I mean Detroit Red Wings.

In my view, if you are to be dominant, you have to have won Cups. Plural. That's why I go with Patrick Roy and Brodeur over Hasek.
 
LooseCannon said:
We've been over this before. Hasek is missing the cups to be considered the dominant player. Yes, he carried Buffalo to the finals…once. He didn't get them to the cup.

He only won the cup when he played for the 2002 All Star Team…I mean Detroit Red Wings.

In my view, if you are to be dominant, you have to have won Cups. Plural. That's why I go with Patrick Roy and Brodeur over Hasek.
Click to expand...

Teams win cups.  Goalies don't win cups.  Otherwise, Grant Fuhr is the best goalie of the modern age with five Stanley Cups, despite being mediocre his entire career.

Hasek has the best career playoff performance of any goalie.  You put him with a great team, he wins lots of games.  But wins aren't the metric of a good goalie.  The two best goalies in the league in the this decade, before and after the lockout, are Roberto Luongo and Thomas Vokoun respectively.  Neither have a playoff series win between them during that time.  It's not because they didn't play well, or that they weren't "winners", it was because they happened to play for mediocre teams.

If you're talking about being "dominant", you talk about individual play.  Think of all the greats who never won Stanley Cups.  Was it because they weren't good players?  Why didn't Gretzky win again after he left the Oilers, but Messier won twice more?  

Was Marc-André Fleury a better goalie in 2007-08, where he put up a stellar post-season sv % of .933 and lost in the Finals, or was he better the next year when he posted a sub-average 0.908 en-route to a Cup?  Was J.S. Giguere a better keeper when he won the Cup in 2007 (0.922), or when he lost in 2003 (0.945)?

The notion that goalies "win" or "lose" games based on how "clutch" they are is patently false.  It's based off of skewed perceptions and gross generalizations.  Roy is pretty much universally considered to be the most "clutch" goalie.  People would pick him for game 7 because he'd "find a way to win."  This, despite the fact that he had a losing record in game 7s.

Fact of the matter is:

Brodeur has played for thirteen 100-point teams
Has won three cups

Roy has played for seven 100-point teams (plus five more divisional leaders that finished with 95-99 points)
Has won four cups

Hasek has played for three 100-point teams (plus one divisional leader that finished with 92 points)
Has won two cups (only one as a starter)


I think Roy is the clear second choice in terms of modern-era goalies.  But I'd still take any one of Belfour, Joseph, Turco (pre-Lockout, admittedly; he's now pretty awful), Giguere, Kipprusoff, or Luongo before Brodeur.
 
When Brodeur one the first cup the devils were FAR from a favorite. He was one of those players that emerge as an elite player during his career and was part of making the devils. When Roy won his first cup as a ROOKIE and won his second on a team that wasn't the favorite (everyone thought the pens would three-peat). ONly the Colorado cups was he the final piece of the puzzle.

Hasek was a cup chaser like Hossa, when he won them with detroit. He hardly even worked for it.
 
Patrick Roy is the only player to have won the Conn Smythe 3 times. He also was the key player for 4 Stanley Cup teams. He also played and won the Cup in the run n gun era of the 80's, in his rookie year, in Montreal of all places. Plus he revolutionized the position. Player stats really are'nt everything. I really belive that he was the greatest goaltender of all time. Hasek was fun to watch and a great goaltender, but answer this question, who would you have in your net when everything is on the line?
 
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