Your Wildly Outrageous (History of) Hockey Opinions...

[overpass]

Uh... hell yes?

Lets take a thought experiment, we take peak Hasek (lets say 1998) or Lemieux from 1993 and put them on the worst modern team in the 1993 Senators. Just the raw difference in GSAA between Sidorkiewicz and Hasek is 105 goals, enough to take one of the worst teams of all time to about the level of Hartford/Tampa (bad but somewhat competitive for a playoff spot).

Welcome to the big 4, Mike Liut?

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

Welcome to the big 4, Mike Liut?

Hasek has 6 straight seasons better than Liuts peak flash in the pan season in St Louis, and they start at age 29. Lemieux obviously has more value to team goal differential than +35, but the sheer number of goals Hasek prevents behind basically any defence is going to be hard to match with special teams play.

Whats your point?

 

[overpass]

Hasek has 6 straight seasons better than Liuts peak flash in the pan season in St Louis, and they start at age 29. Lemieux obviously has more value to team goal differential than +35, but the sheer number of goals Hasek prevents behind basically any defence is going to be hard to match with special teams play.

Whats your point?

I take your point that if you want to make a terrible team respectable, adding a strong goalie can improve the team by many goals. And that a bad goalie can really sink your team. But you can get Mike Liut for that. You don't need Hasek or Roy.

When I'm considering who is in my Big Four of hockey players all time, I would think more about the ability to take a team from good to championship level, than the ability to fix a terrible team. I think most hockey fans would agree.

Buffalo had some team success with Hasek there, but if you look at how they did before he was there and after he was there, it doesn't look like he was adding 100 goals a season.

 

[blogofmike]

That not an example of PP points being replaceable, Penguins PP% not going down when Lemieux miss game would be more representative of that or maybe I misunderstand.

If you mean that PP points are dependant of having power play to start with, yes obviously which him dropping his points total when PPO go down would show but too obvious to be what you meant I imagine.

PP points are dependent on getting PP chances, and we've long since debunked the myth that Lemieux was drawing all those extra calls.

PP% over small samples is going to be all over the place. We already looked this up in a previous thread. You could argue that the huge dropoff when Lemieux missed time in 1990 cost his team 8 goals. But if you did, you'd be stuck arguing that the huge dropoff in PP% when Lemieux played in 1987 cost his team 11 goals, because their PP% increased when Lemieux was gone, and that seems wrong.

 

[Michael Farkas]

The point is, if you take a peak Hasek and put him on any team in the league in almost any era he makes your team significantly better. He doesnt consume any powerplay time, you can play any system or style you want in front of him

I don't think this is true - well, the "consume any powerplay time" part is, but I'm not sure I understand the concept of that anyhow. Hasek wasn't some impenetrable force field that was unlucky to play for Buffalo and not win anything. I know its blasphemy and all, but Buffalo played to his strengths too.

He had his weaknesses too. He didn't fit just anywhere and automatically carry his save pct. with him (somehow?) - that's why he didn't have those save pct. results in Chicago or Detroit, but went to the Final with both of them, winning with Detroit. He went 6-6 in playoff series with Buffalo, right? He didn't win won until like 1998 I think.

You get some real wonky stuff in big spots...bad goals lose games and lose series.


This lost the Czechs the gold at the 1985 WJC.

And there's a good example of what coaches needed to figure out with Hasek - you can force guys low, but you can't allow anything across the ice. He was really good with vertical angles - before his time perhaps, though maybe credit to Sawchuk way back too in this regard particularly - so he could dominate players that were pushed wide and then tried to cut back towards the net...so that's what Buffalo tried to do. Even Detroit, think of Lidstrom - what did he do? He pushed you wide, he didn't get beat inside a lot. He didn't let you pass it across the seam a lot.

And more typically, to his style...he could just get beaten by long shots, especially if there's some angle change before the shot...he didn't track them well, he wasn't overly disciplined in his stance positionally...


Bruce Driver from 60 feet to cost Buffalo a game 7 lead and ultimately the series.


Karl Dyhuis just slinky's one on net from way out to win it in overtime, putting the Sabres down in the series to Lindros-less Philadelphia and they wouldn't recover.

The Czechs in 1998...not exactly a wide open free for all...everyone was packing it in tight that whole tournament. As Bob McKenzie noted at the time...

Hasek was good. At times he was great, especially in the 4-1 quarterfinal win that eliminated the U.S. and during the late stages and shootout of the semifinal win over Canada. The Czechs likely wouldn’t have won gold without him. But as good as the Buffalo Sabre goalie was, he was not the focal point for this story.

That honor goes to the entire Czech team, notably a much-maligned defensive crew that emerged as the tourney’s most valiant defenders.

It was a group far greater than the sum of its parts. Jiri Slegr and Richard Smehlik, regarded as two fair-to-middling NHLers, were towers of defensive strength. So, too, were Frantisek Kucera, a failed NHLer, and Jaroslav Spacek, a virtual unknown. The third pair was Roman Hamrlik and Petr Svoboda, who scored the only goal of the gold medal game when he rifled a point shot past Russian goalie Mikhail Shtalenkov at 8:08 of the third period.

“I read in a lot of places that we had the worst defense,” Svoboda said. “I read that we wouldn’t be good enough. I don’t mean to sound cocky, but we were out to prove people wrong. That was our approach.”

One of those places Svoboda read that was in The Hockey News. In the THN Olympic preview, analyst Dave King wrote:

“The (Czech) defense is marginally improved (from the World Cup)…but it’s still not good enough…Defense is the weak link because the Czech’s non-NHL blueliners just aren’t good enough and the forwards aren’t much help defensively.”

To King’s credit, though, he raised the possibility of the Czechs making noise at the Olympics. He wrote: “For all their shortcomings, the Czechs must be feared,” because they can be a force “when they are inclined to play the left wing lock, a system they pioneered and, at times, have perfected.”

That is precisely what happened. The Czechs’-offensive stars sacrificed their offensive instincts to play the team game. Jaromir Jagr, arguably the most dangerous offensive player in the world, scored one goal in six games.

“We built up in this tournament a great team around Hasek,” said Czech assistant coach Slava Lener.

Overall, it was a magnificent team effort and an exercise in uncharacteristic defense-first hockey.

If you don't play it right, you end up with not so great stuff...





And, invariably, this is where people go, "well, everybody gives up blah blah blah" and "leave my god alone, pick on your own god..." and all that kind of stuff...and that's fine. I'm not saying that Hasek is bad or anything. I had Hasek posters all over my wall when I was younger. And as an olive branch, one of the best goalies in the league today actually has a somewhat similar issue...

We saw a fair amount of shots like this go in on Vasilevskiy earlier on, sometimes in big spots...





(Not the most amazing examples, but directionally accurate) Tampa's coaching staff recognized this weakness in Vasy's game and made the adjustments as Buffalo did to their in-zone coverage back in the day.

A lot of goalies want that long, unscreened shot...but not this one. So Tampa worked to funnel things down the dot line instead.

So, if you put Hasek on the 1993 Senators, they still finish dead last...and they'd have bad goaltending statistics too. They might have more fun...there might be some crazy acrobatic fun times - like the Penguins in 2003 (practically an expansion environment itself) with young Fleury. Hasek is better than whatever slop they had from the expansion draft (though, they didn't pick Hasek over the slop, right?) - so there'd be something a little better by the averaging stats or whatever save pct. re-purposed goo that's going around these days...but goalies aren't these magical beings that are totally independent of their environment...

Didn't someone say in this thread, "I think it's weird when people say, 'they were better everywhere than that team, except the goalie', as if the goalie isn't part of the team somehow...?!?!" - well, yeah...like a big pan of scrambled eggs, goalie averaging stats don't always travel well...

 

[MadLuke]

Buffalo had some team success with Hasek there, but if you look at how they did before he was there and after he was there, it doesn't look like he was adding 100 goals a season.

Player cannot add 100 goals a season during the DPE, say 98 or 99 a good team.

The best offensive team was the 1999 Leafs with 268 goals, the worst offensive team the, 1999 Kings with 189.

A player so good that would take a team from last to first place, literal peak Gretzky/Orr if even them can do that, would have added 80 goals.

If Hasek was saving 50-60 goals a season to his team he was maybe having the biggest net effect on the league (i.e. no one added that many goals or close to it + played great defense) and considering how precious goals were at the time probably stack up really well all time, specially per game played (which one in the playoff and playing all the games.... )

 

[MadLuke]

that's why he didn't have those save pct. results in Chicago or Detroit, but went to the Final with both of them, winning with Detroit.

Everything post 2000 injury.... could be in part due to that, considering the Senators rebound while being over 40 years old, which would match the nagging injury getting better having played only 15 hockey games from the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2005 or some really low amount.

 

[MadLuke]

PP points are dependent on getting PP chances, and we've long since debunked the myth that Lemieux was drawing all those extra calls.

Well obviously, like I said it cannot be what you meant by PP being replaceable, or was it ?

I think what you could mean is that power play goal are more likely to have happened anyway than other type of goals, the forward that would played those minute would have made that pass or a goal would have occurred more often in the next minute anyway.

Lemieux and the penguins for example:
Penguins in 91-92 and 92-93 combined together (a rare example of a superstar missing (40) but also playing (124) a lot of games).

• With Lemieux they scored 4.64 goals a games, without Lemieux they scored 3.38 goal a game
• Lemieux scored 2.36 points a game to add a giant 1.26 goals a game to a team, more than half a goal by points.
• The Penguins added .23 power play goal a game and 1.03 non power play goals a game.
• Lemieux had .82 powerplay point a game versus 1.52 non power play point game.

It seem grossly that a Lemieux PP point added .28 goals to is team, a non power play point added .677 goals to is team, more than twice.

 

[MadLuke]

So, if you put Hasek on the 1993 Senators, they still finish dead last...and they'd have bad goaltending statistics too.

2001-2004 panthers were one of the worst team in the league....

When Luongo was not in the net the Panthers of that era
.335 pts %
.896 save percentage
GAA: 3.19

When he was playing
.385 pts%
.922 save percentage
GAA: 2.58

Saving 0.6 goal a game seem to be incredible goaltender stats, how many goal a goal scorer need to do to have that kind of effect in the game they play in that era, close to 0.8 goal per game ?

Peak Luongo is maybe a bit of an extreme example in terms of being a game changer, but maybe Hasek does have really good stats at some points with the Senators, think a bit better than 1994 Irbes of the Sharks, getting Vezina votes and a nice +7.6 GSAA on a recent expension team.

 

[Gorskyontario]

Yeah, it's a real mystery.

Actually, here's an idea I could throw out there: Maybe they lost to those inferior teams because, compared to the NHL, they weren't a very good team and the reason they "lost" is because those other teams were better?

Well the jets were better than the whalers and nordiques, and those teams were 9-3 and 6-1-1 against the nhl(I might be off a game or two).

 

[Michael Farkas]

Everything post 2000 injury.... could be in part due to that, considering the Senators rebound while being over 40 years old, which would match the nagging injury getting better having played only 15 hockey games from the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2005 or some really low amount.

Meh, maybe...or maybe it was just that Detroit didn't give shots. And since he was giving up 2 goals no matter what, the only thing that changed was his save pct. And since goalies don't just give up 1 (or else there's nothing to discuss), his save pct went down and his success went up...

Season	Shots	GA	Minutes	Shots/60	GA/60	Save pct.
1995​	1221​	85​	2416​	30.32​	2.11​	93​
1996​	2011​	161​	3417​	35.31​	2.83​	92​
1997​	2177​	153​	4037​	32.36​	2.27​	93​
1998​	2149​	147​	4220​	30.55​	2.09​	93.2​
1999​	1877​	119​	3817​	29.50​	1.87​	93.7​
2000​	937​	76​	2066​	27.21​	2.21​	91.9​
2001​	1726​	137​	3904​	26.53​	2.11​	92.1​
2002​	1654​	140​	3872​	25.63​	2.17​	91.5​
2004​	324​	30​	817​	23.79​	2.20​	90.7​

Not his fault...he can't make'em shoot...

 

[Michael Farkas]

2001-2004 panthers were one of the worst team in the league....

When Luongo was no in the net the Panthers of that era
.335 pts %
.896 save percentage
GAA: 3.19

When he was playing
.385 pts%
.922 save percentage
GAA: 2.58

Saving 0.8 goal a game seem to be incredible goaltender stats, how many goal a goal scorer need to do to have that kind of effect in the game they play in that era, close to 1 goal per game ?

Peak Luongo is maybe a bit of an extreme example in terms of being a game changer, but maybe Hasek does have really good stats at some points with the Senators, think a bit better than 1994 Irbes of the Sharks, getting Vezina votes and a nice +7.6 GSAA on a recent expension team.

Well, unless I'm misreading it, that's a difference of 0.61 not 0.8. So basically, you'd need a 50 goal scorer for that difference.

But yeah, Luongo was a difference maker and Trevor Kidd was very bad with ugly equipment...but yeah, sure, Hasek could have done some damage perhaps...probably not because of the caliber of players though.

Florida had Keenan behind the bench for a chunk of this time...Svehla and Laus (though split up at this point if I recall), etc.

The Sharks in '94 brought in a bunch of new defensive players and a very defensive coach in Kevin Constantine...and we see the difference. Same goalie...world's different when the players, coach, and structure change.

And that doesn't mean - as I'm trying to point out here to some passive degree - that every goalie benefits the same. A system that benefits Hasek wouldn't benefit a goalie who is lazy in his post integrations, for instance, like Brian Elliott.

Maybe Claude Julien wouldn't benefit Andrei Vasilevskiy in the same way that it benefited some of his goalies.

There's just no silver bullet to this stuff...no easy answers. Which is great because otherwise there'd be nothing to talk about...

 

[JackSlater]

Everything post 2000 injury.... could be in part due to that, considering the Senators rebound while being over 40 years old, which would match the nagging injury getting better having played only 15 hockey games from the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2005 or some really low amount.

This is part of a bigger discussion regarding Hasek, save percentage, and other things, but people are too quick to handwave away Hasek with Detroit and his save percentage. From 2001 to 2002 his save percentage decreases from .921 to .915 over a large sample size, from 4th to 9th in save percentage, and that's despite going to what was a team with much better defensive personnel and the best coach the league has ever seen. Are these huge drops? Absolutely not, but the narrative is often that Buffalo with its crappy rosters left Hasek out to dry and he carried on and stopped all kinds of shots regardless. More realistically, Buffalo played a style built around Hasek while Detroit just kept playing how it usually played for the most part.

I'll add that Hasek didn't carry Buffalo to the 1999 finals despite Buffalo's roster being mediocre at best and Hasek being the best goaltender ever at or near his peak.

 

[jigglysquishy]

I don't think you need to force a goalie into the top 4. I'm closer to not having a goalie in the top 10 than having one in the top 5

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

I'll add that Hasek didn't carry Buffalo to the 1999 finals despite Buffalo's roster being mediocre at best and Hasek being the best goaltender ever at or near his peak.

They probably would've lost to Ottawa in R1 if not for him. Yes, they swept the Sens, but won 3 1 goal games and got outshot 162-102 in the series.

game 1: out shot 41-15, win 2-1
game 2: out shot 47-39, win in 2 OT
game 3: out shot 31-26, win 3-0
game 4: out shot 43-26, win 4-3

 

[MadLuke]

Well, unless I'm misreading it, that's a difference of 0.61 not 0.8. So basically, you'd need a 50 goal scorer for that difference.

you think a 50 goal scorer add 50 goal to a team total? (yes I think you are reading it right), the reasonable to find forward that would have played on the first line and the first units of the PP during all those best minutes to score goal on a team would have scored some, good chance it is at least 20.

No forward in that era scored above 0.6 goal per game (Bure did .59), but I really doubt you get 1 goal per goal scored (you do above a certain replacement threshold) or goal value would be a lot more than assists.

Meh, maybe...or maybe it was just that Detroit didn't give shots. And since he was giving up 2 goals no matter what, the only thing that changed was his save pct. And since goalies don't just give up 1 (or else there's nothing to discuss), his save pct went down and his success went up...

His decline post injury was right away, years before Detroit.

 

[JackSlater]

They probably would've lost to Ottawa in R1 if not for him. Yes, they swept the Sens, but won 3 1 goal games and got outshot 162-102 in the series.

game 1: out shot 41-15, win 2-1
game 2: out shot 47-39, win in 2 OT
game 3: out shot 31-26, win 3-0
game 4: out shot 43-26, win 4-3

Yes that is the standout series and I don't doubt that Hasek made it a sweep. Other than game 2 you had Buffalo getting a lead early each game and hanging on. Buffalo was a standard Cinderella team that makes the finals and loses, mainly because its offence, best on a per game basis through three rounds, met Dallas and suddenly wasn't scoring 2 or 3 goals every game.

 

[MadLuke]

One way to simply put the Sabres run, the first 3 round they had a 23.2% powerplay, that would have been the best powerplay that season by a good amount, versus their season terrible 13.5%.

16 PP goal in 15 games

Not sure lucky on the PP is the good way to put it, but a come back to the average was to be expected, like said just above, standard cinderella team, a hot powerpay with a hot goaltender can get you far in the nhl.

During the final they were closer to their regular season average with a 11.5% power play.

 

[overpass]

They probably would've lost to Ottawa in R1 if not for him. Yes, they swept the Sens, but won 3 1 goal games and got outshot 162-102 in the series.

game 1: out shot 41-15, win 2-1
game 2: out shot 47-39, win in 2 OT
game 3: out shot 31-26, win 3-0
game 4: out shot 43-26, win 4-3

Hasek outplayed Tugnutt and Rhodes, but the difference in shots was entirely because Buffalo scored the first goal of each game early in the first period, and Ottawa spent most of the series playing from behind.

Shots were 43-39 for Ottawa when tied, and goals were 6-1 for Buffalo. When Buffalo had the lead, shots were 112-55 for Ottawa, and goals were 5-5. In the latter situation, the chances were better reflected by the goal totals than the shot totals. Ottawa was shooting at every opportunity, and Buffalo largely kept them to the outside. The series was decided by Buffalo scoring early and often in tie games.

Maybe a lesser goalie allows a couple more goals while the game is tied and allows Ottawa to win a game. But the series really wasn't that close and the shots don't tell the story.

 

[DitchMarner]

I don't know if this is all that controversial or wild, but I think a lot of people may not recognize how rare complete objectivity is in comparisons and evaluations.

People tend to have favorites - not just in hockey but in all forms of entertainment and in many areas of life. Some people are smarter and more articulate than others. Some are more diligent in the pursuit of knowledge. Thus there are those who can make convincing arguments for certain players over others, in contrast to the blatant homers that constitute a sizeable portion (if not majority) of the sport's fans.

Again, this isn't really hockey-specific, but it is something to be cognizant of if you in fact are neutral on something and looking to develop an informed opinion. Descartes declared, "I think; therefore, I am," but Nietzsche believed that even the thinker (the "subject") is not necessarily a given; it's more that "there are thoughts." Often we use our reasoning and mental faculties to organize these thoughts in a coherent way in order to support a position that we wish to be true to begin with.

While you can't reasonably argue that Darnell Nurse > Bobby Orr in terms of ability, when two players are close, it may be the one who has proponents who are more adept at arguing that winds up ranked higher on a given list of rankings.

 

[K Fleur]

There are fans that have watched probabll thousands of hockey games and still don’t have a f***ing clue what they are seeing.

Not me though, my eye test is perfect.