The Best NHL Goalies of All Time

[IrishCanadian25]

ESPN.com has a poll up following the retirement of Dominek Hask yesterday, asking fans to rank 10 Goalies in order of who they feel is the best ever. It's a great discussion to have. What I am asking you to do is:

1) Choose up to three goalies from the list who you feel make up the greatest ever. Whomever you think the three best are on the list. Please do not vote for more than three.

2) Discuss why you picked them, who you think is the best ever, etc.

Here are the ten, and a few reasons why:

1. Ed Belfour. "The Eagle won 484 games in his career, and was a major mainstay in the NHL for a long time.

2. Martin Brodeur. 538 wins and counting, still active, 3 Stanley cups and several Vezina trophies.

3. Curtis Joseph. CuJo won 449 games, and was part of the reason Toronto hockey became relevant again.

4. Tony Esposito. 423 wins, won 3 Vezinas as the leading netminder in Chicago.

5. Grant Fuhr. 403 wins, a Hall of Famer, 5 Stanley Cups with the legendary Oilers of the 80's backing up Gretzky and Messier.

6. Glenn Hall. 407 wins, old-schooler played sans-mask and holds the all-time goalie consecutive starts record at 502 straight, complete games.

7. Dominick Hasek. 389 wins and a slinky for a spine, 6 Vezina trophies and 2 straight MVP's, also won a Stanley Cup w/ Detroit and led the Czech team to a gold medal in Nagano.

8. Jacques Plante. 437 wins, won 6 cups, including being the goalie who led Montreal to 5 straight - the longest consecutive cup streak in NHL history. First to wear a goalie mask.

9. Patrick Roy. 551 wins, has 2 cups and is the only player ever to win 3 Conn Smythe Trophies as playoff MVP.

10. Terry Sawchuck. 447 wins, and 103 regular season shutouts. Won a cup in Detroit, died after a fight with a teammate in New York.

 

[BooCocky]

This is a tough one IMO.

I love Patrick Roy, and he was a beast, and Brodeur still is a beast. If i were to choose, i would pick Roy.

You could not go wrong with neither, but in Roys prime he was facing better scoring like Lemieux, Gretzsky and even Jagr.

Both goalies performed well in the regular season and even better in the post season. Its basically a personal choice so i'd take Roy, with Brodeur a close second.

 

[Davi323]

There are so many all-time great goaltenders, but I wonder why its limited to just NHL goalies? No Vladislav Tretiak? Anyway, my votes went to Dominic Hasek, Patrick Roy, and Terry Sawchuk, for no other reason than two were Red Wings, and the other was the arch-nemesis of the Red Wings, who I have to begrudgingly give a teeny tiny amount of respect to...Seriously the goalies are so close, its hard to choose among them.