Greatest European Hockey Player Of All Time

[JackStraw]

damn, your old....

 

Oh I was very young then... practically a baby.  

[yave1964]

Also watched the '72 Summit Series. Olympics, etc. Watched a lot of hockey in the '70s.

I was 8 during the Summit series, so I have no real memories of it. My first memory of Tretiak was watching him pulled in the Olympics against the USA.

 

When I say we didn't watch him, frankly we didn't watch him against real competition more often than not. Most teams they faced in international competition gave as much of a challenge as the Washington Generals did to the Globetrotters. If we had seen him play with a good team, say, the Blackhawks or a great team like the Canadiens or Flyers but against real competition, we could have truly judged him on his merit. 

 

  From what I have read about him, no athlete worked harder to be the player he became, he was the first truly great Russian goalie out of dedication and hard work as well as elite skill. But I don't think we can compare him to Hasek or other great Euro goalies, because we never saw him in that way.

[JackStraw]

But I don't think we can compare him to Hasek or other great Euro goalies, because we never saw him in that way.

 

Well, we saw him several times against Canada's best ('72 and '76) and he was tremendous. As good or better than anyone in the NHL at that time (and that's not easy to say coming from a Flyers fan who watched Parent during those years). But it's hard to compare any goalies of that era with goalies of today because the position has changed so much. Goalies today are much bigger and play a more athletic style, but they don't show the same "skill" that goalies in the '70s had, playing with such small equipment. Today Dryden would be nothing out of the ordinary (size-wise) but back then he was considered huge.

[yave1964]

@JackStraw

 

Okay, the games that people (as a rule) remember Tretiak playing:

 

1972 summit series against NHL players: lost

1976 Summit Series against WHA players: Mostly forgotten but won

The greatest game ever played, against Canadiens, 1976: tie

The game against the Bullies: Lost

Miracle on ice game: lost

 

  At best, his most famous games, as remembered by North Americans are mostly losses. Yes, outside of the games against the Habs and Flyers, the Ruskies pretty much ran the table but that is largely forgotten by everyone save for the most diehard fans.

 

  I agree, Tretiak is an all time great but to me the evidence to put him atop the pantheon of all time great goalies is limited, too limited to get my vote (if I have one) I still go with Hasek as the Euro netminder. I feel that Dom simply was so far and away one of the most dominating performers of al time at his position that the evidence of the eye/the statistical evidence is so great that the small sample of evidence that we have for Tretiak against North American competition is not enough to give him the nod over Hasek. Tretiak is still great, I just feel that there is no statistical evidence to rate him higher than Hasek.

[JackStraw]

@yave1964 - I'm not claiming that Tretiak was the best ever, or that he was better than Hasek. Just that he is one of the best ever. For me, it's very difficult to compare goaltenders from different eras.

[ScottM]

Honestly, I am quite surprised after reading the first 3 pages of this thread that no one has mentioned Tretiak! 

 

You just didn't go quite far enough. Lol. I mentioned him just a few posts earlier.

[JagerMeister]

Hasek> Tretiak

[JR Ewing]

yave1964, on 20 Jan 2015 - 04:35 AM, said:

@SpikeDDS

Tretiak is a tough case, quite frankly none of us ever saw him play, we can only go by what we have read and what we have read shows him as a brilliant netminder. But it is kind of like comparing Rocket Richard to a mordern power forward, or even Gordie to some extent (though I do have vague memories of him playing) it is just near impossible.

To me, the Euro debate has to come down to who played in the NHL, to give us a template to base things off of. Lidstrom with his hardware, Hasek with two Harts, we can relate to that. Tretiak winnning at the Worlds year after year playing against vastly inferior teams is a difficult measuring stick. In the same way, it counts against Mikhailov and Karlamov.

So to me, the Ruskies who never played in the NHL deserve an 'honorable mention' and more than a passing nod, but we cannot really compare them. And lets not forget, Tretiak's two biggest claims to fame that we as North Americans remember are his losing the summit series in 1972 and losing to the college kids in 1980 at Lake Placid. In between and after, sure he beat up on a bunch of Czech and Fins in tourneys that we as North Americans really have no memory of, we only remember him losing.

If you ever get the oppurtunity read a wonderful book called 'the greatest game' about the game between the elite Russian team and the Montreal Canadiens led by Dryden and Lafleur and Mahovlich. A wonderful story of Tretiak and his begginings as Russias greatest goalie. A worthy read, one of the top ten Hockey books of all time.

Agreed.

I've always equated this situation to that of trying to rank ***** Leaguers in with Major Leaguers; there just isn't an objective comparison to be made. Josh Gibson may be the very best right-handed power hitter ever (and could well be the best catcher in baseball history) but we just can't say for sure. Satchel Paige might be the pitcher ever, but so many of his games were barely documented, against widely varying quality of competition, and he didn't play major league ball until he was old. It would be ridiculous not to include Oscar Charlston, Rube Foster or Judy Johnson on a list of great ballplayer. They were clearly great, excelled in their own league and were dominant against major league ballplayers in exhibition games. But we just can't say for sure where they rank. They could be the greatest players at their positions (or overall) but we just can't say with real credibility.

Likewise, I think it's only fair to look at non-NHL players in the same way. The problem lies in that, other than those head-to-head games, we don't have the clearest idea of these players. At least Paige played in the United States, often in front of very large crowds, with extensive media coverage. Indeed, during the Depression black baseball was healthier than MLB in many respects. I'm getting sidetracked...

With Europeans who played before the "integration" of the NHL, we have less of an idea. I've no doubt that some of the greatest players are lost to time and distance from North America. Nobody around here was able to see great players in Russia or Sweden in 1950, and when first-hand accounts fade from memory we're left with nothing but statistics. And the stats of faceless players mean little to most people.

People will ask who the fastest player is in history or who had the hardest shot? Maybe they were some Czhech guys who have been dead for 40 or 50 years. I don't know. Nobody does. So, we're really left with appearances in international best-on-best tournaments. It's better than nothing, but it has it's own problems, because if a guy gets hot for a few games, he can leave an impression not necessarily equal to his usual level of output or talent.

Even then, there's tremendous risk in trying to answer these question purely from memory, because it usually says as much about the human need for narrative as it does about any facts.