The Hockey News Top 100 Goalies of All-Time

a nostalgic nick of time

IF GEORGES VEZINA HAD hopped onto his Penny Farthing time machine in 1918 and pedalled 100 years into the future, he might have a question or 43 about the job he helped pioneer. Today’s goaltenders are ahead by more than a century in regards to equipment, style, rules, everything. Check out the photos of Lorne Chabot and Roy Worters on pgs. 59 and 62. No blockers, no trappers – pucks weren’t caught. They have glorified twigs as sticks and toilet paper for padding. Early-era goalies couldn’t drop to the ice. Most strikingly, you can see their faces; a mask was something worn to costume parties. Naturally, nobody wants to turn back the hands of time. We’re blessed with an abundance of tremendous athletes who routinely make plays that flood YouTube with save-of-the-season…

lights, camera, action!

Dear readers, For years I’ve listened to The Hockey News Podcast and enjoyed the banter between Matt Larkin, Ryan Kennedy, Ken Campbell and Edward Fraser. I often wondered what it would look like if there was a camera on them. I now have my answer. The Hockey News Live premieres this season, treating the millions of annual visitors to TheHockeyNews.com to a weekly video dose of the best we have to offer. One of my first investment decisions as the new owner of The Hockey News was to tell the editorial team that we were going to put cameras on them and turn the podcast into a show. Nine months later, we turned it into a reality. Working with the video production team at St. Joseph Communications, we built a studio in our…

how the list came together

TAKE A STRAW POLL of six random hockey fans, ask them which NHL goaltender they think is the best of all-time, and you might get six different answers. That doesn’t happen if you ask them about the best defenseman or best forward – Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky are hands-down winners. But best NHL goalie? Come, sit down, we need to talk. This might take some time. So much of your answer depends upon your perspective. If you’re a numbers person, you’re going to pick Martin Brodeur, the runaway leader in wins and shutouts. His 691 NHL regular-season victories are an astounding 140 more than runner-up Patrick Roy. In fact, Roy’s 551 wins are closer to ninth-place Tony Esposito than leader Brodeur. If you’re about peak performance, Dominik Hasek is your man. He…

1. terry sawchuk

BORN Dec. 28, 1929, Winnipeg, Man. NHL CAREER 1950-1970 TEAMS Det, Bos, Tor, LA, NYR STATS 447-330-172, 2.51 GAA, 103 SO ALL-STAR 7 (First-3, Second-4) TROPHIES 5 (Vezina-4, Calder-1) STANLEY CUPS 4 TERRY SAWCHUK IS the best goalie who ever lived. Emile Francis, during his tenure as New York Rangers GM a half-century ago, made that assertion dozens of times, as did countless wise hockey folk. Francis, now 92 and living in Florida, maintains that claim to this day. He’s trustworthy when it comes to puckstopping, because he played goal at just about every pro level, including stints with the Rangers and Chicago Black Hawks. I can second the motion about Sawchuk being the best because of two games I’ll never forget – and which I watched in person. In both contests, he…

2. patrick roy

BORN Oct. 5, 1965, Quebec City, Que. NHL CAREER 1985-2003 TEAMS Mtl, Col STATS 551-315-131, 2.54 GAA, .910 SP, 66 SO ALL-STAR 6 (First-4, Second-2) TROPHIES 6 (Vezina-3, Smythe-3) STANLEY CUPS 4 ON DEC. 2, 1995, the Detroit Red Wings were in Montreal for a game against the Canadiens when Wings goalie Mike Vernon wandered out in the morning for a bite to eat. Imagine his surprise when he opened the door of a local diner and saw Canadiens goalie Patrick Roy enjoying breakfast. Roy motioned Vernon to come over, and the two sat and talked over their morning meal. They had faced each other in a pair of Stanley Cup finals (1986 and ’89) when Vernon was a member of the Calgary Flames. So when Roy opened up to Vernon over…

3. martin brodeur

BORN May 6, 1972, Montreal, Que. NHL CAREER 1992-2015 TEAMS NJ, StL STATS 691-397-154, 2.24 GAA, .912 SP, 125 SO ALL-STAR 7 (First-3, Second-4) TROPHIES 5 (Vezina-4, Calder-1) STANLEY CUPS 3 FOR THOSE LUCKY enough to have seen Martin Brodeur in his prime, two aspects of his game stood out. There was his combination of elasticity and quickness, almost inexplicable in a 6-foot-2, 220-pound goaltender who was occasionally called pudgy by frustrated, undiscriminating opponents. The classic example was his “scorpion” save on Marian Gaborik of the New York Rangers in Game 2 of the 2012 Eastern Conference final in which Brodeur made a blind stop by kicking his right leg in the air while on his stomach diving out from the crease. And there was Brodeur’s precision positioning, a trait he perfected with…