January 24 was a great night for the New Jersey Devils with a come from behind overtime victory against the Vegas Golden Knights. It was a special hockey night in Central Florida as well. Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy picked up his 250th career win about 1,000 miles south of where Dougie Hamilton scored his second overtime goal in as many games.
The NHL statistics department made an interesting observation following Vasilevskiy’s historic win. Vasilevskiy was the second-fastest goalie in NHL history to reach 250 wins. The only goalie to do it in fewer games was Montreal Canadians’ legend Ken Dryden. It took Vasilevskiy 399 games compared to Dryden’s 381.
Maybe you’re a bit like us and were surprised Martin Brodeur wasn’t on the list. Then we realized that his second NHL season (1994-1995) was the lockout shortened 48-game season, so that likely had a lot to do with it. If the 1994-1995 season gone as planned, how would Brodeur hold up?
How Would We Calculate Brodeur’s “Lost” Games?
This exercise is pretty straight forward with the mark to beat is Dryden’s record of 381 games. That record was set before Brodeur’s playing days so that’s a nice benchmark. We kept all of Brodeur’s statistics from other seasons the same and only played with the lockout-shortened year. Judging by NHL statistics, the 250 career victories are all regular seasons. None of Brodeur’s playoff wins were counted towards this.
In 1994-1995, Brodeur had 19 wins as a starter in 38 games. Although he played 14 minutes in a 6-3 win over the New York Islanders on April 14, he was not credited with the win so that does not count. That put’s Brodeur’s winning percentage at exactly 50% for the shortened season.
Brodeur’s 38 starts accounted for a whopping 79.16% majority of games for that season. Over a full 82-game schedule, that would translate to 64.92 games as a starter. For sake of caution, we’ll round down to 64 games. Brodeur only started 47 games in his rookie year, so let’s further round down to 60 games just for sake of being a bit more realistic.
When Would Brodeur Have Gotten Lucky Number 250?
If Brodeur had 60 starts, that 50% win percentage would translate to 30 wins. That would have put Brodeur on pace to reach the 250-win benchmark during the 1999-2000 season. During the year where he would win his second Stanley Cup, Brodeur would have finished with 255 regular season victories, in our ‘assume he had 30 wins in 1994-1995’ model.
Now let’s get exact. If Brodeur finished with 255 wins that year, his estimated 250th win would have taken place on March 13, 2000 against the Pittsburgh Penguins. That was his 62nd start of the year. That means it would have taken Brodeur 428 starts to reach the 250 win mark.
Shouldn’t Brodeur Have Gotten It Earlier?
We couldn’t really put our finger on it, but didn’t it seem like Brodeur won more in that timeframe? Maybe we’re just a bit biased, because the statistics say otherwise. In the first seven full NHL seasons (1993-2000) Brodeur averaged 36.14 wins per season. We did use our “fake” 30 wins from 1994-1995 in that calculation for sake of continuity.
Vasilevskiy’s average wins per year is a bit difficult to calculate, since he has a shortened 56 game 2020-2021 season, an abruptly ended 2019-2021 regular season that turned into an early and longer than usual playoff but didn’t count as regular season stats, and this season which is still ongoing on his resume. That leaves Vasilevskiy with about four full, completed, and non-shortened seasons as a starter (2016-2017. 2017-2018, 2018-2019, and 2021-2022) and he averaged 36.25 wins a season. That’s roughly equal to Brodeur.
Maybe we’re underestimating how good Brodeur could have been in a full 1994-1995 season? Did that post cup winning season in 1995-1996 where the entire team sort of underperformed hurt his case? Maybe the fact the NHL still had ties took away some would have been victories? Who knows? The unlikely conclusion for us is that Brodeur unfortunately did not stack up against today’s best in the race for 250 wins, even when you forgive the lockouts.