Chris Osgood won more than 400 games in the National Hockey League.
Well, Chris Chelios and Brendan Shanahan upped the ante. That’s nine members of the Red Wings organization since 2008 to earn induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
That made me think of Chris Osgood, whose solid numbers and long stretches of inconsistency create a tug-of-war debate for his Hall of Fame prospects.
In any sport, the Hall is for the elite, the cream of the crop. Kurt Warner won a Super Bowl MVP, two regular-season MVP awards and passed for 32,344 yards – but critics said a five-year stretch in which he went 8-23 should have kept him out of Canton. Detroit Tigers’ greats Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, and Jack Morris had fabulous careers, too, but they never saw Cooperstown until the Modern Era Committee came along.
That brings us to Ozzie, who I believe hung on the coattails of great Red Wings teams and isn’t worthy of Toronto’s illustrious hockey walls.
In 2011, Osgood said, “I feel like I do deserve to be there.”
I feel like he’s fooling himself, just like his 401 wins are fooling Wings fans, because regular-season wins are overrated.
Consider Sean Burke, who recorded 324 wins over his 18-year NHL career. Hockey enthusiasts born post-1995 likely haven’t heard of Burke, an average goalie who never won an individual award. He posted 30-plus wins once in 18 seasons. His career postseason stats of save percentage (.888), goals against average (3.32) and record (12-23) suggest this: His 324 regular-season wins, which rank 22nd on the all-time list, simply say he was a mediocre goaltender who hung around a long, long time.
Osgood is a modern-day Burke: Misleadingly high on the all-time wins list. No individual awards of high esteem. A liability in most postseasons.
The difference is, Ozzie had Yzerman, Shanahan, Fedorov, Lidstrom, and Bowman (among others) to cover his glaring weaknesses and boost his win total. Burke wasn’t so fortunate.
NOT CLUTCH
Hall of Fame selection criteria is fuzzy, but know this: the element of playoff goaltending carries significant weight. And it should. Elite goaltenders make clutch saves amid high tensions and pressure-packed situations.
Look at Ken Dryden’s miraculous theatrics in 1971. Or Bernie Parent’s Conn Smythe performances in 1974 and ’75. Or Patrick Roy in 1993, when he was 10-1 in playoff overtime. Those were performances of epic proportions.
Ozzie, on the other hand, failed when needed most.
Witness 2001, when the Yzerman-and-Shanahan deprived Wings crumbled in six games to Los Angeles. Take a close look at 2009, when Osgood had two chances to eliminate Pittsburgh, but played just good enough to lose, all while vaulting Maxime Talbot into Pittsburgh’s postseason lore.
Osgood was 2-4 in Game 7s. He was 6-9 in playoff overtime contests. Perhaps the most telling of all his statistics is this: When facing elimination, he was 6-9 – and three of those wins came during the 1996 postseason.
SOMETIMES GREAT, BUT NOT ELITE
To be fair, Osgood’s performances in 2008 and 2009 – when Talbot wasn’t involved – were stellar. He posted a combined 1.80 goals against average and .928 save percentage. For the first time in his career, he displayed genuine Cup-winning goaltending.
But that was two years, and he played 17.
Throughout Ozzie’s 401-win career, he clearly benefited behind superstar rosters and a perennial winning franchise. Heck, Manny Legace won 62 percent (112 out of 180) of his games in Detroit – and we all know Legace was average.
Ozzie wasn’t much different.
Consider this: In his three years outside Detroit, he appeared in the postseason once with the New York Islanders, twice with St. Louis. Each postseason, he lost in the first round. The three-year stretch was his highest goals against average combined.
The Red Wings chose against Osgood for Mike Vernon in 1997, then again for Dominik Hasek in 2002. In between those years, he relinquished three long-range goals in ’98 (Jeremy Roenick, Al MacInnis, Jamie Langenbrunner), lost six of seven games to arch-rival Colorado during consecutive exits in ’99 and 2000, then helped Hollywood remember hockey existed without Gretzky in 2001.
And you know what’s maddening about Osgood? He was notorious for making the spectacular save, but then allowing the back-breaking softy.
Let’s flashback to the 1996 Western Conference finals.
It was overtime of Game 1 against Colorado. Joe Sakic fired a puck toward a gaping net, and here came Ozzie, sprawling with a post-to-post glove save that ranked among the postseason’s best. It was incredible, jaw-dropping beauty.
A few minutes later, it didn’t matter.
Mike Keane cut across the top of the right circle, floated a wrist shot for the game-winner, and the Avalanche bench emptied onto the ice.
Right then and there, vintage Osgood was born: Sometimes great, sometimes poor, certainly not elite.
And likely not Hall of Fame worthy.
Eric
How many coattails did Sawchuk ide in both Detroit and Toronto? More then a few, and what did he do in Boston, Los Angeles, and New York? Not much!
Dave
3 Cups, 2 as starter. 401wins good enough for tenth all time. 39th all time in save percentage, 17th all time in saves, 27th all time GAA at 2.49, 26th all time in shutouts with 50. 2 Jennings trophies and named to two all star teams. Regardless of the team in front of him, Ozzie is a HoF goalie. His stats say it all. And for the record, Ozzie carried the team through the 2009 playoffs. And if we had won he probably would’ve gotten the Conn Smythe.
Dave
Regular season wins are overrated? Regular season wins gets you into the POs an earns you home ice advantage. That pretty much sums up this article right there.
Bob Brontosaurus
Good grief, man. You’re comparing Ozzie with Sawchuk?!
Sawchuk shined in the Original Six era, back in a day when each team only carried one goalie. That meant that even the worst goalie in the NHL any given season was still better than all but five other netminders.
Like marginal athletes in all sports, Ozzie benefitted greatly not only from a strong supporting cast, but from expansion. He played in an era of 30 or 32 teams. Do you think he would have been one of the elite six, year in and year out, had he played back in Sawchuk’s day, much less the number-one goalie of his era? Of course not. He was never a dominant goalie like Sawchuk.
Sawchuk was all but washed up by the time he played with the Rangers and LA. In fact, if not for the NHL doubling in size, he probably wouldn’t have had a job. His nerves were shot (unlike Ozzie, Terry played in his prime w/o a mask or the Michelin Man-type protection Ozzie wore) but he badly needed a paycheck, so he kept trudging out there. Of course, he didn’t have anything left to prove…he’d already backstopped the WIngs and Maple Leafs to a combined four Cups in his stellar career and owned virtually every record in the book. In a golden era of NHL netminding, he was widely considered the best of them all, no matter what uniform he was wearing. He could take over a game like Ozzie never could.
The coattails argument can be made for any star in any sport. A strong supporting cast is obviously crucial to achieve a certain level of greatness, no matter who the player or sport.
Having said all that, I have a sense that Osgood’s 401 wins are gonna get him in the HOF someday—-kind of like 300 wins being an informal benchmark for pitchers getting into Cooperstown. Fat numbers like those often are more indicative of longevity than anything else. But who knows how voters down the road are gonna view those numbers?
Ron
Blasphemy. Besmirching the great Terry Sawchuk.
Only passed in wins due to the longer season and games, and only passed in shutouts 121 to 103 by Brodeur with another 250 or so games played.
Sawchuk is a Top 3 Goalie All Time.
Daryl
Let’s be honest when assessing Ozzie’s playoff’s with NYI & St.Louis.. NYI hadn’t made the playoff’s in 7 yrs before he got that and if not for the penalty shot in game four perhaps that series turns out differently and STL has since 74/74 made it past the 2nd round only twice more often than not getting bounced in the 1st rd, so too blame their exit on Chris isn’t fair
Daryl
I meant 74/75