greatest NHL goalies

You may have a point ...

 

You're saying that my Eddie wasn't a elite goalie. You're sleeping on the couch.

 

Eddie was the best billionaire power-puker - how's that?? ;D

 

and to think I used to like you. You owe me for lunch.

 

Well, if you're coming to Shelburne on Saturday with JR and Huggy, I might spring for you too!

 

First of all Sawchuk gets my vote. and it's not even all that close really. Someone already mentioned the equipment, but he was also playing against and with the 100 best players in the world for his entire career. No Columbuses and Floridas filled out with should be minorleaguers. Also no days off for most of his career. The seasons were 70 games long and there were no backup goalies. His numbers speak for themselves. He too was revolutionary that in along with Glenn Hall helped the deep crouch become an accepted stance. There wasn't anything in the NHL he didn't do and in most cases he did it multiple times.

After than it's Dryden.

Brodeur

Hall

Roy

That's my top 5 strictly NHL goalies (otherwise Tretiak would be No. 2), I've posted my top 10 before. Hasek and Belfour are also on that list, and it shouldn't even be a question when you look at their bodies of work. And in a big game, although they wouldn't be my first choices, I would take both of them over Roy, both having got the better of Roy on lesser teams numerous times, and almost always when it counted the most. But Roy's stats and longevity force him to No. 5 on my list.

 

I am just inches from saying Bunny Laroque, but I won't.
As a Habs guy, I naturally light candles to St. Patrick but, for one game, give me Dryden, Oh, and this wee feller gets some love, too.

 

Fens:

Is that the Gumper?

 

Gump played for my two favorite NHL teams.

 

I want to second the equipment thing Double J brought up. Look at pictures or clips and see how little protection they had on their upper body and arms. Pucks hurt, trust me.

Chico Resch was the first one that stood out to me as really bulking up the chest and arm protection. I'm sure there were others, but he's the one I remember. At the time I wondered how he could move with so much stuff on.

 

Sorry, I disagree about the goaltending back then versus now.

Lots of things have changed about the game but we dont' dismiss it out of hand because it wasn't the good old days.

Players were smaller back then. Average size guys --5'10, 175 lbs compared to 6'1", 225 pounds now. Linebackers on ice.

Today's guys skate faster, short harder, hit harder, are in better shape, use composite sticks and don't play the old slot hockey game that was the standard back then--until the Soviets showed us alternatives.

There are a lot of NHL players, particularly in the post expansion world of 1967, who wouldn't have had a chance in hell up against today's players.

Goaltending is goaltending. You still have to stop the puck and all the puffed up armour in the world isn't going to help if you're a shitty goalie to begin with--ask Garth Snow

 

Gump appeared in the best hockey-related commercials ever.