Jean Beliveau
Dominik Hasek
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Jean Beliveau leads 1 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Jean Beliveau at #8 and Dominik Hasek at #10.
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The case for Jean Beliveau
Regal, powerful and impossibly graceful, Jean Beliveau captained the Montreal Canadiens through the most successful era any franchise has known. He won ten Stanley Cups as a player, more than anyone in history except his teammate Henri Richard, and lifted seven more as a club executive, putting his name on the Cup a record 17 times. Le Gros Bill scored 507 goals and 1,219 points, won two Hart Trophies and the inaugural Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP in 1965, and did it all with a dignity that made him one of hockey's most respected figures long after retirement. A big centre at a time when the position was being redefined, he combined a scorer's touch with a playmaker's vision and a leader's presence. Beliveau declined an offer to become Governor General of Canada, so revered was he. On the ice, his elegant stride and commanding two-way game set the template for the complete franchise centre that every organization has sought ever since.
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.