Bobby Orr
Dominik Hasek
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Bobby Orr leads 1 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Bobby Orr at #2 and Dominik Hasek at #10.
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The case for Bobby Orr
Bobby Orr redefined what a defenceman could be, and many who saw both call him the most purely dominant player ever. Before Orr, blueliners defended; he attacked, rushing the puck end to end and quarterbacking the offence with unprecedented speed and vision. He remains the only defenceman to win the Art Ross as scoring champion, doing it twice, and his plus-124 in 1970-71 is a record that will never fall. Orr won eight consecutive Norris Trophies as the league's best defenceman, three straight Hart Trophies as MVP, and two Stanley Cups with the Boston Bruins, the first sealed by his airborne, flying goal in overtime of the 1970 Final, hockey's most famous photograph. Chronic knee injuries wrecked his body and forced retirement at 30 after just 12 seasons, leaving fans to wonder what fuller health might have yielded. Even truncated, his peak, a stretch of the early 1970s when he led the entire league in scoring from the back end, stands as arguably the highest any player has reached.
The case for Dominik Hasek
No goaltender ever stopped the puck quite like The Dominator. Unorthodox to the point of chaos, flopping, sprawling, smothering pucks with his back, his mask, anything, Dominik Hasek was mesmerizingly effective, and his .922 career save percentage remains elite decades on. He won a record six Vezina Trophies as the league's best goaltender and, astonishingly for a netminder, two Hart Trophies as overall MVP in 1997 and 1998, the only goalie to win it twice in the modern era. In 1998 he backstopped the Czech Republic to a stunning Olympic gold in Nagano, shutting out Canada in a shootout and blanking Russia in the final, a performance that made him a national hero. He won two Stanley Cups with Detroit late in his career, in 2002 and 2008. Hasek's flexibility and competitiveness let him steal games single-handedly, and at his mid-1990s peak with the Buffalo Sabres he was arguably the most valuable player in the sport regardless of position. He reinvented what elite goaltending could look like.