Connor Hellebuyck was the unanimous Vezina pick in Daily Faceoff’s Midseason Award vote earlier this week. Looking at his resume, I began wondering if he’s building a Hall of Fame case. He may have a second Vezina after this season. Already a three-time finalist. He’ll get to 300 wins by next year.
We’ve said goodbye to Roberto Luongo, Henrik Lundqvist, Carey Price and, soon, Marc-Andre Fleury as the top puck-stoppers of their generation. But who will go down as the best goalie of the current generation? Over to you, Roundtable.
MATT LARKIN: I respect anyone who picks the uber-consistent Hellebuyck, but one bad year won’t dissuade me from Andrei Vasilevskiy. He’s a two-time first-team all-star, a Vezina winner, a two-time Stanley Cup champion and a Conn Smythe Trophy winner. In terms of actual rate stats, the likes of Hellebuyck, Igor Shesterkin and Ilya Sorokin have been superior, but who is the guy you pick to win a Game 7, the guy with the sparkling record in elimination games? Vasy is still the pick for me even if he’s lost some luster. I don’t expect his contemporaries to catch him in accolades.
STEVEN ELLIS: Oh man, this is a difficult one. But I’m also going with Andrei Vasilevskiy. I prefer large sample sizes, and no goalie is better over the past decade than Vasilveskiy in winner-takes-all scenarios. Everyone knows about the Game 7 heroics. But you could probably count the games Vasy was the reason the Bolts lost on one hand over the past decade. He’s among the best goaltenders in his era in almost every important analytical category. Sure, he’s had great teams in front of him, but ask anyone on Tampa Bay who their most important player was throughout those Cup runs and they’ll point backwards.
SCOTT MAXWELL: I definitely agree with the Vasilevskiy picks, but I’ll play contrarian here so we don’t all have the same pick. Boring, right? I’ll go with the consensus Vezina winner for this season in Connor Hellebuyck. While he definitely lacks the kind of trophy case that Vasilevskiy has, he’s the only goalie that comes close to Vasilevskiy in terms of their numbers, and there’s quite a few in which Hellebuyck surpasses him. Operating under the assumption that this “generation” started in 2015-16 (when Connor McDavid entered the league), Hellebuyck is one of three goalies along with Vasilevskiy and Frederik Andersen to play at least 400 games and have at least a .915 save percentage, so Hellebuyck has maintained quality AND quantity in an era where games are a lot more high-scoring and goalies are managed more. Since he’s taken over as the Jets’ starting goalie, they’ve only missed the playoffs once, and they probably deserved to miss it a couple more times if not for Hellebuyck. He’s also at the top of the league in 5v5 goals saved above expected since 2015-16 with 76.68, which just goes to show how important he is for this Jets team.
Vasilevskiy’s playoff resume probably gives him the edge and that’s definitely a fair case, but I think Hellebuyck would produce similar results on Lightning teams that were much better than the Jets teams he ended up with. Case in point: we talk about Vasilevskiy’s Game 7 heroics, but Hellebuyck is actually undefeated in Game 7s with a 1.-00 GAA and a .973 SV%. It’s just in one game because that’s how often the Jets have gotten him that far. You really can’t go wrong with either pick, so I just thought I’d play devils advocate and argue the case for Hellebuyck here.
COLBY COHEN: I know we live in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately type of world, but for me this one is easy and its Andrei Vasilevskiy. If I am building a team, this is who I want. If I have a playoff elimination game, this is who I want. I can’t remember many of these question that I didn’t have to think hard about, but this is one of them. The body of work is too large, and he has won and been the answer for a long while now, so Vasy is the easy answer for me.
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