Current goalies- who are the Hall of Famers?

[yave1964]

Bobby Lu just hung up his skates, he is an absolute lock  to be a HOFer I have listened to some pundits state that without a ring to his name that it will ignite a debate, blah blah blah but IMHO he walks in easily on the first ballot especially with nobody else retiring this year to push for votes. It got me thinking how goalies are held to a strange standard, kind of like relief pitchers in baseball, and I decided to look at who is and is not hall of famers AT THIS POINT among current goalies. Here it is.

 

STILL BUILDING THEIR RESUME Vasilevskiy, Hellboy, Murray, Gibson all are considered prime time goalies, none have done enough at this point to merit consideration. Check back in five years, one will be nearing lock status, one will be in the conversation, two will be dismissed.

 

STARTING TO NEAR THE CONVERSATION Ben Bishop shrugged off the whispers that he was only good because of playing for the Lightning with a hell of a year, Bobrovsky won a playoff series in the biggest playoff upset of all time and has two Vezina trophies. Andersen continues to put up monster regular season numbers, Martin Jones is the hockey version of Saberhagen following good seasons with bad but building up numbers. At this point none are hall of famers, of that bunch I would probably put Bob with the best chance to take the next step.  Holtby is a step ahead of all of these guys I list him here because I am not certain quite where to list him.

 

TWO VERY TOUGH CASES Cory Crawford has IMHO been the new Osgood who will play up or down depending on his team. He doesn't elevate but he doesn't hurt you, his concussion issues and the signing of Lehner may really hurt his chances but right now his numbers are essentially those of Quick who I have in the next grouping. 

  The other tough case is Carey Price, he entered the league anointed by everyone as the next great goalie and has been very, very good but IMHO he has been a mild disappointment so far. He does have a Vezina but has only been a finalist one other time and everything you say about Bob in the postseason applies to Price as well. At this point I see him as the new Cujo, a near great who will have solid career numbers but as of now hasn't done enough and is entering the decline phase.

 

 NEAR LOCKS MAYBE EVEN ALREADY GETTING FITTED FOR THEIR SUIT

Rask did more to pad his resume than anyone this year with a brilliant postseason run  Probably a few seasons away but I grudgingly would give him my vote.

Quick did everything early and has been kind of floating in recent years but his two cups still loom large. If he does nothing else the rest of his career except win 100-150 games and nothing in the postseason he still has probably done enough.

Rinne is right there with Quick/Rask IMHO, an almost certain HOFer. missing a cup on his resume but like Luongo came damn close a few years ago. Nashville is retooling and preparing to stay in the mix. Even without a cup he probably gets in.

 

ALREADY THERE

Lundqvist is a certainty, what I wrote about Price does apply to the King, he hasn't won a cup but he has done enough  6th all time in wins, a Vezina, he will walk in with zero issues.

Fleury is the cream of the crop now, his leading Vegas to a cup final in his first year there he has taken on the bigger than life persona that Luongo once had. He not only will walk into the hall, he will break the door down.

 

  IMHO this is truly the golden age of goaltending 

 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Roberto Luongo should DEFINITELY be considered for the HOF....even without the SC ring.
---489 career wins (and let's not understate that many of those wins came on mediocre Florida teams at the beginning and end of his career)

---Career .919 Sv Pct
---Career GAA of just 2.52
--- 77 career shut outs and almost 60,000 minutes played!

--- 360 of his 614 starts were gauged as "quality starts" (since the stat was tracked...he was playing before then as well)

 

Yea, most definitely worthy.

Marc Andre Fleury is another who should be a lock, and while his career overall numbers are slightly worse than Bobby Lu's, he does sport the 3 championships....and he still may come up with one more if he stays on a competitive Vegas team.

 

I also like Frederik Anderson's chances if he continues to play as well as he is. His career number projection look almost like a carbon copy of Luongo's (granted for not nearly as long)….and he has done his work on Ducks and Leafs teams that weren't exactly lock down defense type teams.

 

No championships for him either at this juncture, but it is very possible one or two could come for him playing on stacked offensive Toronto teams.
 

[mojo1917]

Pretty interesting to think about @yave1964 

 

I don't disagree about Bobby Lu, the Flower or the King...these guys have great nicknames in addition to HOF numbers.

I'm sure the hall of fame metric can be applied to goalies as well as skaters. Cue @JR Ewing and the Keltner test !

 

I don't like Rask a whole lot, he was phenomenal this past post season though. I don't like him yet because he has had long periods where he really struggles to stop the puck. I wouldn't discount him, but I would move him to the top of the "building his case" division. I don't think he's a near lock in spite of his team's success. 

 

 

[yave1964]

1 hour ago, mojo1917 said:

 

 

I don't like Rask a whole lot, he was phenomenal this past post season though. I don't like him yet because he has had long periods where he really struggles to stop the puck. I wouldn't discount him, but I would move him to the top of the "building his case" division. I don't think he's a near lock in spite of his team's success. 

 

 

My problem with Rask is not Rask so much as Boston Sports in general. Smug arrogant fans who since Brady/Belicheck fell into their lap seem to win a couple of championships in the city every single year for a couple of decades now. Rask is a hell of  a goalie, he deserves his props I just cannot stand the city that he plays in.

 

  @TropicalFruitGirl26

 

Agreed with Andersen, he is kind of like Bobrovsky right now, great regular seasons followed by losing in the first round every year. He needs to win a series or two to overcome that stigma but he is amazing during the regular season. I mean, Mister October was a great nickname for Reggie Jackson in baseball back in the day, but not so much for a Hockey player, lol

[Alexandron]

I would add also to a STILL BUILDING THEIR RESUME category a St. Louis goalie - a Stanley Cup winner Jordan Binnington, who had an impressive regular season as well as playoffs  of the 2018-2019 season and who finally helped to make a history for the 52 y.o. team. His stats were pretty good for his 1st year as a main goalie for the team ( GAA- 1.89 (for the regular season) and 2.46(for the playoffs season)). Interesting that St.Louis team had 42 playoffs appearances in their history.   

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

22 minutes ago, Alexandron said:

I would add also to a STILL BUILDING THEIR RESUME category a St. Louis goalie - a Stanley Cup winner Jordan Binnington, who had an impressive regular season as well as playoffs  of the 2018-2019 season and who finally helped to make a history for the 52 y.o. team. His stats were pretty good for his 1st year as a main goalie for the team ( GAA- 1.89 (for the regular season) and 2.46(for the playoffs season)). Interesting that St.Louis team had 42 playoffs appearances in their history.   

 

Oh no...I don't think Binnington can even be put into this group. Not based on one season....though it WAS a fantastic one culminating in a championship.

Now, if he Patrick Roy's his way through the rest of his career then sure.

But look at the goalies @yave1964 mentioned in "still building their resumes".... Vasilevskiy, Gibson, Murray, Hellebuyck…. only ONE of those goalies has a championship, but even he has seen his share of rocky seasons starts since and has seen some big, big struggles.
Binnington has his title, but was he at the right place, at the right time? Or is he the real deal?
That is what we will see starting with this upcoming season.
Despite his Cup ring, I wouldn't put his career in with those 4 just yet. Just not enough sample size.

I'd put him in, "Nice SC Win...now, what else you got?" category.

[JR Ewing]

30 minutes ago, Alexandron said:

I would add also to a STILL BUILDING THEIR RESUME category a St. Louis goalie - a Stanley Cup winner Jordan Binnington, who had an impressive regular season as well as playoffs  of the 2018-2019 season and who finally helped to make a history for the 52 y.o. team. His stats were pretty good for his 1st year as a main goalie for the team ( GAA- 1.89 (for the regular season) and 2.46(for the playoffs season)). Interesting that St.Louis team had 42 playoffs appearances in their history.   

 

Well, maybe some day he'll be voted into the Hall of Pretty Good. I mean, jeez... He's played 33 games. Maybe we could wait until he's been in the league for 5 minutes before start talking building his resume.

 

Edited August 8, 2019 by JR Ewing

[Alexandron]

16 hours ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

 

Oh no...I don't think Binnington can even be put into this group. Not based on one season....though it WAS a fantastic one culminating in a championship.

Now, if he Patrick Roy's his way through the rest of his career then sure.

But look at the goalies @yave1964 mentioned in "still building their resumes".... Vasilevskiy, Gibson, Murray, Hellebuyck…. only ONE of those goalies has a championship, but even he has seen his share of rocky seasons starts since and has seen some big, big struggles.
Binnington has his title, but was he at the right place, at the right time? Or is he the real deal?
That is what we will see starting with this upcoming season.
Despite his Cup ring, I wouldn't put his career in with those 4 just yet. Just not enough sample size.

I'd put him in, "Nice SC Win...now, what else you got?" category.

Completely agree with your post. I just was thinking to give him at least a chance and put Binnington in that lowest proposed category. Certainly, we will see how he will play next few seasons. Definitely he has a talent. Probably he will fit better into a category – the best ever rookie NHL goalie, because he pulled out of the bottom the same St.Louis team, which was at the last place of our Central Division at the mid of the December(16th) last season. Then built a consistent winning team’s mentality, which was able to win a Stanley Cup in 2019 for the first time in their history. According to Wikipedia, St.Louis team missed only 9 times playoffs appearances in 52 years of existence, having one of the best stats in that category. That team also reached 4 times a Stanley Cup finals , but only this year, exclusively by the help of Binnington was able to win it. Unfortunately, he does not fit as a rookie according to a NHL rookie definition at this moment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Blues

 

 

[Alexandron]

16 hours ago, JR Ewing said:

 

Well, maybe some day he'll be voted into the Hall of Pretty Good. I mean, jeez... He's played 33 games. Maybe we could wait until he's been in the league for 5 minutes before start talking building his resume.

 

Completely agree with you too and I know that. He did not played a lot of games in NHL, but he played almost twice more games than you mentioned. Actually he played 33 games during the regular season (1 game in 2015-2016 and 32 games in 2018-2019), then he played for other all 26 Stanley Cup playoffs games this year which are,personally for me, 100 times more important than the most games during the regular season. In my opinion, he is going to be in a future as good as he was last season during his career.  His talent is evident. But time will show.

https://www.nhl.com/player/jordan-binnington-8476412?stats=career-r-nhl&season=null

 

[yave1964]

  I doubt that Binnington ever gets near the Hall without a ticket to be quite honest. My reason is as follows:

 

 No history of being anywhere near the player that he was last year. He refused an ECHL assignment a year ago and was lent to the Bruins organization to be the backup AHL goalie in 2017-18 instead.

 

 His age. He is 26 years old, much to old to have the type of sustained career that gets you hall of fame numbers. He simply got off to a late start, NHL wise and wont be around long enough to win enough games to be in consideration. Now it is possible that he has a Dryden-esque type of career where he wins a bunch of cups over a seven-eight year period in a relatively short career that can indeed often get you in as a goalie but there were 17 teams during Dryden's career and the Habs were the elite of the elite for most of that time, it was a surprise when they DIDNT win whereas last year felt a bit fluky that the Blues finally won their cup. They will probably hang around in contention for several years but whereas in Drydens day there were 17 teams, many of which were really bad, now there are 16 teams alone that make the playoffs all of whom have a legit shot at winning it all, it is ten times harder to win a cup now for the field than it was during the Canadien glory days.

 

  So Binnington, nice story, he may carve out a nice career but half a season as an NHL starter followed by a brilliant postseason is not enough to put him anywhere near the conversation. At this point he is more akin to the two headed calf at the county fair. Time will tell but truthfully time is not on his side.

[JR Ewing]

39 minutes ago, yave1964 said:

  I doubt that Binnington ever gets near the Hall without a ticket to be quite honest. My reason is as follows:

 

 No history of being anywhere near the player that he was last year. He refused an ECHL assignment a year ago and was lent to the Bruins organization to be the backup AHL goalie in 2017-18 instead.

 

 His age. He is 26 years old, much to old to have the type of sustained career that gets you hall of fame numbers. He simply got off to a late start, NHL wise and wont be around long enough to win enough games to be in consideration. Now it is possible that he has a Dryden-esque type of career where he wins a bunch of cups over a seven-eight year period in a relatively short career that can indeed often get you in as a goalie but there were 17 teams during Dryden's career and the Habs were the elite of the elite for most of that time, it was a surprise when they DIDNT win whereas last year felt a bit fluky that the Blues finally won their cup. They will probably hang around in contention for several years but whereas in Drydens day there were 17 teams, many of which were really bad, now there are 16 teams alone that make the playoffs all of whom have a legit shot at winning it all, it is ten times harder to win a cup now for the field than it was during the Canadien glory days.

 

  So Binnington, nice story, he may carve out a nice career but half a season as an NHL starter followed by a brilliant postseason is not enough to put him anywhere near the conversation. At this point he is more akin to the two headed calf at the county fair. Time will tell but truthfully time is not on his side.

 

Yup.

 

The only time it's reasonable to begin talking the HoF with players very early into their careers, is when they come in and are just dominant. Hell, Bill Ranford could have made a better HoF pitch, two years younger AND with a shiny Conn Smythe Trophy is his corner. So what, though? The rest of his career didn't go the way it began, and a lot of things can change.

[mojo1917]

11 minutes ago, JR Ewing said:

The only time it's reasonable to begin talking the HoF with players very early into their careers, is when they come in and are just dominant.

So you're saying the Hamburgler has not shot...sad!

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

7 minutes ago, mojo1917 said:

So you're saying the Hamburgler has not shot...sad!

 

Easy there...ONE HOF at a time...
Hamburglar is already in the McDonald's HOF along with Grimace, Mayor McCheese, Officer Big Mac, Ernie and Bert (oh wait, scratch those...wrong HOF), and The Fry Guys. 

[FD19372]

On 8/7/2019 at 10:37 AM, mojo1917 said:

Pretty interesting to think about @yave1964 

 

I don't disagree about Bobby Lu, the Flower or the King...these guys have great nicknames in addition to HOF numbers.

I'm sure the hall of fame metric can be applied to goalies as well as skaters. Cue @JR Ewing and the Keltner test !

 

I don't like Rask a whole lot, he was phenomenal this past post season though. I don't like him yet because he has had long periods where he really struggles to stop the puck. I wouldn't discount him, but I would move him to the top of the "building his case" division. I don't think he's a near lock in spite of his team's success. 

 

 

If you're going to put Rask into the HOF, then you have to put Tim Thomas there as well, and in either case that's a no..though Rask is still in the prove it phase.

[yave1964]

1 hour ago, FD19372 said:

If you're going to put Rask into the HOF, then you have to put Tim Thomas there as well, and in either case that's a no..though Rask is still in the prove it phase.

Yeah I cannot stand Rask, not one damn bit, hate Boston sports in general, smug arrogant fans, ect….. but he did a ton to build his case this offseason, I really see the Bruins slipping this year but if they make another run I feel it puts him as a near lock. And Toronto gave up on him for Andrew Raycroft, lol. 

[FD19372]

2 minutes ago, yave1964 said:

Yeah I cannot stand Rask, not one damn bit, hate Boston sports in general, smug arrogant fans, ect….. but he did a ton to build his case this offseason, I really see the Bruins slipping this year but if they make another run I feel it puts him as a near lock. And Toronto gave up on him for Andrew Raycroft, lol. 

Rask is REALLY good, don't get me wrong... but he isn't Hall of Fame worthy yet. Talk to me in 5-7 years.

Edited August 8, 2019 by FD19372

[FD19372]

3 hours ago, FD19372 said:

Rask is REALLY good, don't get me wrong... but he isn't Hall of Fame worthy yet. Talk to me in 5-7 years.

I'll revise that. If Rask gives another 3 or 4 years of quality goaltending, he's in he HOF.

[yave1964]

7 hours ago, FD19372 said:

I'll revise that. If Rask gives another 3 or 4 years of quality goaltending, he's in he HOF.

I think he is closing in on the Hall, I probably should have placed him one category down but he is a hard case. A few more seasons of excellence and it will be a certainty but agreed, not quite there yet.