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The Excerpt
This month, Martin Brodeur will break the record for most regular season wins by a goaltender. People seem to think this makes Brodeur one of the best NHL goaltenders of all time. I think the numbers show something a little different.

The Games
Throughout his career as a starter, Brodeur has made a point of ensuring he keeps his back-ups on the bench – often requesting he play pretty much every game possible, regardless of how it may affect his team in the playoffs - as Brodeur has recently gained a reputation of being completely burned out come playoff time, allowing “non-Brodeur goals”, such as this one:



Unlike Patrick Roy, or pretty much any other goaltender in NHL history, Brodeur basically demands 70+ games a year, reaching a career-maximum of 78 games played in 2006-07. The most Roy ever played in a season was 65. So with an average of 10 more games a year on Roy, regardless of skill, it was pretty much just a matter of time before this record came about.

The Ties
Also of interest is the whole shootout issue, which has been beaten to death in other blogs and so forth, so I will basically leave that alone. We all know Marty is getting more “wins” because of the removal of ties.

The Numbers
But there is one major thing I would like to emphasize here. Martin Brodeur spent more than half his career behind Scott Stevens and Scott Neidermayer, on a team that focussed specifically on defensive hockey. Basically, any goaltender playing with the Devils during this era would inevitably rack up the same numbers as Brodeur – and as we discussed, Brodeur certainly had his fair share of games. Case in point – as of this writing (Sun, Mar. 15, 2009), Marty has a save percentage*( of .922 (NHL.com). Devil’s “back-up” Kevin Weekes is currently standing at .924, with Clemmensen not far behind the legendary Brodeur with .917. In other words, when it comes to saving the puck, Weekes is successful 92.4% of the time, and Marty is sitting at 92.2%. Brodeur – Hall of Fame a few days after retirement; Weekes – basically back-up goalie for life, since he has played for garbage teams most of his career. Brodeur’s numbers were also slaughtered by John Vanbiesbrouck in 2001-02 and 2002-03, Corey Schwab in 2002-03, and by Schwab and Clemmensen in 2003-04 . Moral: had any one of these 3 guys played the games that Brodeur played with New Jersey, they, too, would be breaking NHL records. The Hall of Famer during this era is the Devil’s fricken Defence core, not the goalie behind them.

The Conclusion
Martin Brodeur made a Hall of Fame career for himself by being in the right place at the right time.



* I use save percentage because it has no bias – it takes only the number of saves per shots into consideration, and not the team’s performance as much as GAA would.

Justin Traviss