Let’s ask ourselves who can be considered as the best goalie in the history of NHL. Well, we can pick the one with most wins in career – this is Martin Brodeur who recorded 691 wins. We can pick someone with the lowest GAA (Goals Against Average). This is Alec Connell who had in his whole career the lowest average, only 1.91 goals per one game. We can pick the best goalie by the highest save percentage. This is Tuukka Rask who has 92.6%. We can consider as the best goalie the one with most shutouts. Once more, this is Martin Brodeur who recorded 125 shutouts.

We can see the first problem in our decision making because we obtained several names. However, the more serious problem is that not all statistics are available, e.g., we do not know save percentage for Alec Connell. Simply, this is caused by the fact that no one recorded number of saves back in 1920s. Next, we have to deal with the fact that nowadays the number of games per one team in a season is set on 82. However, in 1930s it was only 48 games and in the first NHL season (1917-18) teams played only 22 games. Therefore, we are not able to say that 691 wins by Martin Brodeur is enough to say that he is the best in the history.

We are going to say who is the best goalie in the history of NHL (and yes, we give you one single name in the end) only by comparison of statistics. First of all, we consider only those goalies who played at least 200 games in the NHL. This will exclude “one-year-stars”. We also consider only results in the regular season games.

Winning Percentage

As we have stated before, 691 wins do not ensure that goalie is the best. It depends if he was able to win in 691 matches out of 1000 or out of 2000. Modern statistics include:

• Wins (in 60 minutes or overtime or shootouts),
• Losses (in 60 minutes) and
• Overtime losses (in overtime or shootouts).

Overtime and shootouts were not part of the game in older NHL seasons where we have statistics that include:

• Wins (in 60 minutes),
• Losses (in 60 minutes) and
• Ties (in 60 minutes).

So, we compute winning percentage as Wins / (Wins + Losses + Overtime Losses) using modern statistics and as Wins / (Wins + Losses) for the old ones. These numbers are more or less comparable (both exclude ties or some form of them to achieve this comparability). Ten best goalies in the history are given in the next table.

Goalie	%W	Points
Kenneth Dryden	66.32%	100.00
Bob Froese	58.18%	18.34
Antti Niemi	57.58%	12.26
Jaroslav Halak	57.41%	10.63
Manny Legace	57.19%	8.35
Marc-Andre Fleury	56.89%	5.38
Sergei Bobrovsky	56.82%	4.66
Gerry Cheevers	56.65%	2.98
Corey Crawford	56.54%	1.85
Pekka Rinne	56.35%	0.00

We awarded each goalie with points. The first goalie is awarded with 100 points and the tenth goalie is awarded with 0 points. For the others we compute points as:

(value of the player – value for the last player) / (value for the first player – value for the last player) * 100

In the probability, this is called cumulative distribution function of the uniform distribution. For instance, Marc-Andre Fleury obtained (56.89 – 56.35) / (66.32-56.35) * 100, i.e., 5.38 points.

Shutouts per one game

This is quite easy while shutout is still defined in the same manner – 60 minutes without a goal in the net. In the next table we can see shutouts per one game and reciprocal number which tells us how many games needs a goalie for one shutout (in average). As stated before, we computed points for all goalies in this table.

Goalie	Shutouts per game	Games needed	Points
George Hainsworth	0.202	4.95	100.00
Alec Connell	0.194	5.15	90.62
Lorne Chabot	0.175	5.71	68.00
Clint Benedict	0.160	6.24	50.24
Tiny Thompson	0.146	6.83	33.93
Roy Worters	0.138	7.22	24.38
Charlie Gardiner	0.133	7.52	17.83
Dave Kerr	0.119	8.37	1.84
Roman Čechmánek	0.118	8.48	0.05
John Ross Roach	0.118	8.48	0.00

Goals Against Average – GAA

GAA is computed as a number of goals that a goalie allowed in his career divided by the time on ice (TOI) and multiplied by 60 (minutes). This is comparable for all goalies in the history and we state best ten goalies of the whole history in the table. Again, we computed points for all goalies in this table.

Goalie	GAA	Points
Alec Connell	1.91	100.00
George Hainsworth	1.93	93.10
Charlie Gardiner	2.02	62.07
Lorne Chabot	2.04	55.17
Tiny Thompson	2.08	41.38
Roman Čechmánek	2.08	41.38
Dave Kerr	2.15	17.24
Tuukka Rask	2.16	13.79
Cory Schneider	2.17	10.34
Dominik Hašek	2.2	0.00

Save percentage

The information about save percentage is available only for goalies that started their career in 1980s or later. This means that we are not going to see any goalie before 1980s. Best ten goalies are in the following table. Once more, we computed points for all goalies in this table.

Name	Sv%	Points
Tuukka Rask	0.926	100
Cory Schneider	0.925	87.5
Dominik Hasek	0.922	50
Henrik Lundqvist	0.921	37.5
Tim Thomas	0.92	25
Roman Cechmanek	0.919	12.5
Pekka Rinne	0.919	12.5
Carey Price	0.919	12.5
Roberto Luongo	0.919	12.5
Sergei Bobrovsky	0.918	0

Best Goalie – Total Results

The next table shows 11 best goalies out of the all goalies that occurred in the previous tables. For each goalie we have computed total number of points. As mentioned before save percentage is not available for all goalies so points awarded in the last table are not counted.

Name	Points
George Hainsworth	193
Alec Connell	191
Lorne Chabot	123
Tuukka Rask	114
Kenneth Dryden	100
Cory Schneider	98
Charlie Gardiner	80
Tiny Thompson	75
Roman Čechmánek	54
Clint Benedict	50
Dominik Hašek	50

Best Goalie – Final Statement

It is obvious that according to our method the best goalie in the whole history is George Hainsworth. It is surprising that in eleven best goalies we do not see Martin Brodeur who is considered by many as the best goalie ever. Next, the best goalie of the modern era is Tuukka Rask, i.e., not Dominik Hašek, not Patrick Roy and not Martin Brodeur.

From active young goalies we would like to mention some that can be in our tables in few more years and we compare them with George Hainsworth, Roman Čechmánek and Dominik Hašek.