New Jersey Devils: Comparing Martin Brodeur To Other Best Goalies Of All Time
One of the biggest thing to come out of quarantine is weirdly renewing the debate of best goalie of all time. Usually, we hear about the top three of Martin Brodeur, Patrick Roy and Dominik Hasek, but there are three others that make the debate interesting.
Obviously, we are going to be extremely biased when it comes to who is the best goalie of all time. Martin Brodeur was a man we watched closely for more than two decades as he dominated the league in his own way. He became the leader in wins, shutouts, games played, 40-win seasons, playoff shutouts, and most wins in a season. He also leads goalies in goals in a career and assists in a season.
Those records would obviously put someone in the conversation for greatest of all time. Wayne Gretzky‘s records is one of the main reasons why there’s not a huge discussion for who’s the best hockey player of all time. For someone to hold all the records, they are automatically in the conversation for best of all time.
Most of the time when people try to knock Brodeur’s argument for best of all time, those against it will bring up that he played behind a defense of Scott Niedermayer, Scott Stevens and Ken Daneyko. Well, they tend to forget that Brodeur literally played 10 seasons after Stevens retired and Niedermayer left for the Anaheim Ducks. He won two Vezina Trophies and was in the top three two other seasons. He wasn’t a product of his defense, in fact he made that defense better with how well he played the puck.
Think about this, he spent his entire career playing two completely different styles. He was very, very good winning Stanley Cups in the 90s and early 2000s. Brodeur became great when everyone left and he was still the best goalie in the league.
So, as people continue their arguments of “best of all time”, we put Brodeur one on one with each and every goalie who has an argument. How does he square up against the players that usually try to take his crown as best of all time? We start with possibly his biggest rival, or at least his most recent.
Henrik Lundqvist
The New York Rangers best goaltender spent his first nine seasons going head to head with Brodeur to be the biggest star in net in the Atlantic/Metropolitan Division. Full disclosure, this whole article started when Sean Hartnett with WFAN wrote that Lundqvist was straight up better than Brodeur. He used that tired argument about defense, which is easily dispelled, but beyond that there are the points about the advanced stats.
Lundqvist has a better save percentage overall, even when ignoring the last five years of Brodeur’s career. He even has an overall playoff save percentage. The easy argument is “he has no cups”, which is fun but doesn’t prove much. Looking at the actual stats makes Brodeur the clear better choice, especially the playoff stats.
The last time Lundqvist was in the playoffs was his age 34 season, so we’ll take that as a parameter to cut off when we’ll judge Brodeur, since Lundqvist is technically still a goalie who could play in the playoffs. Brodeur has eight seasons where he had a save percentage over .920 in the playoffs. Obviously, every so often he was less than stellar (he was prone to the extremely blow up), but he more often than not was the reason the Devils were winning.
Lundqvist, meanwhile, has six such playoff performances. In the regular season, Lundqvist led the league in shutouts two times, while Brodeur led the league in shutouts five times. Brodeur did everything Lundqvist did, just more often. Lundqvist was still great, we should admit that. However, he’s not in the conversation for best of all time and Brodeur absolutely is.
Jacques Plante
It is always near impossible to compare athletes across eras, but we will always try. Is Bill Russell better than LeBron James or Michael Jordan? So hard to tell when Russell was playing against people with the athletic composition of me (which is, comfortably soft), but his dominance can’t be ignored.
Plante might have played during a time when hockey wasn’t at its peak athletically, but he innovated the game in a way not even the trapezoid could compare with. He was the first goalie to really push for masks, which also brought us the mask eventually worn by Jason Voorhees. So, Plante gave us two great things in one!
Getting serious now, Plante won more Vezina Trophies than anyone in history with an astounding seven. He lasted longer than Brodeur, playing until he was 46 years old (although he did retire a Brett Favre level three times from hockey). He had a .944 save percentage as a 42 years old. He started in 1952 and ended his career in 1975. This is an insane level of longevity, even if injuries really put a damper on the end of his career.
However, it’s hard to argue that Brodeur had to go through a tougher road to win Cups. Plante needed to win eight games to lift Lord Stanley. Brodeur had to win 16. Plante had to play in 70 games just once, because the schedule was just plain shorter. Brodeur played at least 70 games for ten seasons in a row.
Plante is amazing, but Brodeur took on the likes of Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Sidney Crosby and Mark Messier. He’s faced some of the best of all time. Plante did play against Gordie Howe, so that’s definitely a must-see matchup, but the amount of talent in the NHL was not where it was in the 90s and 2000s. Brodeur also had to play across two eras, which plays right up with Plante who gets points for playing pre-mask and post mask. It’s an interesting debate, but Brodeur’s ability to take a team on his back for years on end gives him the slight edge. It’s not a fair debate, like we said it’s hard to compare eras.
Terry Sawchuk
Once again, we have to jump dozens of years to compare two of the greatest of all time. Terry Sawchuk is one of the best, but sometimes gets overlooked in this argument. It’s not fair, as Sawchuk was absolutely crushing other teams hopes, especially in the playoffs. On route to the 1952 Stanley Cup Championship, he allowed five goals. Not in the Finals, in the entire eight-game playoffs.
Terry Sawchuk’s death is a tragic story. He was in a scuffle with teammate Ron Stewart. The reports say they were fighting over rent money, but Sawchuk described it as “horseplay”. During the scuffle, he fell on Stewart’s knee, and suffered a bleeding liver. Multiple surgeries couldn’t save the Red Wings and Rangers great, taking his life before his hockey legacy played his final chapter.
He was 40 years old, but as we saw with Plante, back then the greats could go longer than usual because there weren’t greats to replace them. Still, we got most of the picture of Sawchuk’s career, and his greatness was clear.
The stats speak for themself. He was the last goalie to win a championship for the Toronto Maple Leafs, which puts him in legendary status itself. He won four other championships with the Detroit Red Wings. Then, there are the counting stats. He was the former holder of most shutouts in league history. Only one other goalie has more than 100 in his career, and that’s obviously Brodeur.
Where Brodeur takes a step ahead of Sawchuk was his play in the playoff. Yes, Brodeur had his stinkers in the playoffs, but Sawchuk was a literal liability in some years. His career playoff save percentage sits at .894. That’s not remotely any good. Brodeur’s career playoff save percentage is .919, even with a few bad playoff matchups the overall record is stellar.
Dominik Hašek
Dominik Hasek is the player that’s often placed atop this list because of just how great he was during a stretch of his career. During a time when he was playing against Brodeur and Patrick Roy, he was no doubt the best in the league. It was an insane time. Roy was between the ages of 28 and 35, Brodeur was between the ages of 21 and 28 and Hasek was greatness personified, winning six of eight Vezina Trophies during that time. The other winners weren’t even Roy or Brodeur, they were Olaf Kolzig and Jim Carey.
However, Hasek’s dominance is preceded by a long layoff between his draft year and his NHL debut. He was drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks in 1983 and didn’t make his NHL debut until 1990. He spent a lot of time in his native Czechoslovakia. Then, when he finally made the jump, he had a very rough start to his career. His first three seasons had moments of promise, but much more failures than successes.
Hasek was then traded after a Stanley Cup Finals appearance by the Blackhawks where they were led by Ed Belfour. When he started his career with the Buffalo Sabres, he started with a season save percentage under .900, but in his second season he was off to the races. Hasek won his first Vezina Trophy in 1994.
So, the argument of Hasek versus Brodeur is simply longevity versus peak. Hasek had the greatest seasons in history while Brodeur’s career numbers are unmatched, and will probably never be broken.
After his peak, Hasek was still really good all the way until he was in his early 40s, but missing those years from 20 to 26 hurt his case overall. While Brodeur and Roy were getting the kinks out as 19 and 20 year olds, Hasek was doing it in what should have been his prime.
Patrick Roy
Patrick Roy is a player that’s most often placed atop these lists. Roy was everything that Brodeur was, just in a slightly different era. While Brodeur was able to cross over in the era of shootouts and a trapezoid, Roy had to play in the insane 80s, where his .900 save percentage led the league. Look at the 1988 Vezina Trophy voting, these numbers would force all these greats to lose their job today.
It’s the most interesting argument of Brodeur versus Roy, because a lot of the arguments are the same. Save percentage not up there with the greats of the league? Brodeur’s career number is .912 while Roy’s is .910. Roy never had a goals saved above average in the negatives, so that’s definitely a mark in Roy’s direction.
Roy fought through injuries towards the end of his career, but still put together great seasons. His last season in 2002-03, he had a .920 save percentage en route to another division title. Roy was just about as great in the playoffs, similar to Brodeur. Their save percentage is literally percentage points away from each other. It’s so close, we had to add another digit to compare: (Brodeur: .9186, Roy .9182).
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The biggest positive for Brodeur was his workload. He played 70+ games in 12 times. Roy never did that. That clearly hurt Brodeur in certain years when it came to the playoffs, but that’s just an excuse. Roy’s mark over Brodeur is winning in the playoffs. Did Roy have better teams around him? Maybe, but we don’t allow that excuse when it’s talking about Lundqvist. Roy went deep into the playoffs nine times (at least a Conference Finals appearance) against Brodeur’s six deep playoff runs.
This one is the most interesting argument, and there are discussions for both sides. They both have really good arguments, but making a decision is based on opinion, and that’s it. We saw how great Brodeur was as a puck handler, and that’s why we’d personally put Brodeur ahead of Roy, but we’re willing to hear arguments.