Dropping the Gloves w/ Andrew Bogusch

WHO'S THE BEST GOALIE OF ALL-TIME?
Brodeur, Roy, Sawchuk, Plante or...

The all-time wins record now belongs to Martin Brodeur. He will soon add the shutout and games played marks to his résumé as well. On top of those accomplishments, there are three Stanley Cups, four Vezina Trophies (including the last two), one Calder Trophy, nine All-Star Game appearances, and four first-team All-NHL selections.

That’s enough to make a lifelong Ranger fan say Brodeur is an OK goaltender. But should the most objective of us be calling Brodeur the greatest netminder ever because of his exploits?

Let’s begin with his competition for the title. Patrick Roy, the man whose record Brodeur broke Tuesday night in Newark against the Blackhawks, owns four Stanley Cups and three Vezinas.

Terry Sawchuk held the wins record until Roy came along and is about to lose the shutout title to Brodeur. He won the Cup and the Vezina four times apiece, and has a career 2.52 GAA. Five times Sawchuk led the League in victories. And during the 1952 playoffs, he went 8-0 with four shutouts (five goals against total) to lead the Red Wings to the championship.

Jacques Plante’s 437 regular season decisions have him 6^th all-time, 10 behind Sawchuk. His trophy case includes six Vezinas, a Hart Memorial Trophy, and six Cups, including five straight. And we cannot overlook what he did for goalie safety by being the first to don a mask.

Glenn Hall is called “Mr.Goalie” because of 407 wins and a 2.49 GAA. He originated the butterfly that Roy and Brodeur made commonplace. Hall won the Cup in Chicago in 1961 and the Conn Smythe as a Blue in ’68 despite a Canadien sweep because his play gave the severely overwhelmed Blues a chance in each game. But Hall’s greatest accomplishment is the 502 consecutive (full!) games he played from ’55-’62.

There might not be a more difficult comparison to make in sports than goalies of the current era versus their Original Six counterparts. The grainy images of Sawchuk, Plante and Hall show un-imposing, unmasked figures facing shots that rarely came in above the knees. They flailed and they flopped. There was no “playing the angle”. There were no John Leclair’s or Tomas Holmstrom’s screening them from and redirecting 95-mile-per-hour slapshots.

Which is why this debate comes down to Brodeur and Roy – with all due respect to the men that came before them. There is no doubt that these two would be just as successful 40-50 years ago. So let’s try to pick our winner…

Roy wins the Stanley Cup comparison, four rings to three, although the Devils are certainly capable of pulling Brodeur even this spring. Brodeur did blank the Ducks three times during the 2003 Finals, but Roy won an unbelievable 10 consecutive overtime games during the Canadiens’ 1993 championship run and owns a record three Conn Smythe trophies.

Brodeur has clinched the Vezina category with one more win and more time to add one or two more. That extra time and the more opportunities for a W the shootout provides means Brodeur will finish his career well clear of Roy in the win column. And Brodeur is running away with the goals-against competition, 2.20 to 2.54.

The NHL implemented rules to negate the unique puckhandling skills of Brodeur (and others). Roy popularized the now-ubiquitous butterfly style, inspiring a legion of Canadian goalies along the way.

We could continue with more paragraphs on each, but that would only prolong this back-and-forth. There is little to separate one from the other. Roy, though, deserves the nod as of today. A goalie earns his check in the postseason, and one more Cup and those three Conn Smythes make Roy the best goaltender of all-time.

Sorry, Marty…for now.

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One last Brodeur thought…I’ve tried to see the positives of ESPN’s hockey coverage, especially since the League needs to be back on the Worldwide Leader. But Tuesday night’s SportsCenter was a joke. As excited as Team USA’s last at-bat defeat of Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic was, it was not the lead story of the night. An ultimately meaningless, glorified exhibition game is not more significant than a major record in a major sport being broken.

As always, please direct all comments, thoughts and critiques to boguschhockey@gmail.com