January 24, 2011
In The Crease
Roberto Luongo

by Philip Myrland

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Since recording his 400th career win, Chris Osgood has received a lot of attention from media around the NHL. Yet there is another goaltender in the league today that has also been climbing into rarefied air on the all-time list on a more important goalie stat, only he is doing it without much notice at all. The latter stat is Goals Versus Threshold, and here is the list of the current top 10 goaltenders in NHL history:

Goaltenders, Career GVT

Rank	Name			Career GVT
1.	Patrick Roy		433.7
2.	Dominik Hasek		425.6
3.	Jacques Plante		361.8
4.	Tony Esposito		354.5
5.	Glenn Hall		344.1
6.	Martin Brodeur		297.7
7.	Ed Belfour		270.7
8.	Bill Durnan		254.1
9.	Bernie Parent		249.0
10.	Roberto Luongo		248.6

According to this metric, Roberto Luongo has prevented more regular season goals against than all but nine goalies in hockey history, and by the end of this season, there is a good chance that there will only be seven names left ahead of him.

To achieve such heights is impressive, but it is made even more impressive by the fact that Luongo is still in the middle of his career. Here is the reordered list based on each of those 10 netminders' career GVT through the age of 31:

Goaltenders, Career GVT through Age 31

Rank	Name			GVT though Age 31
1.	Patrick Roy		289.9
2.	Roberto Luongo		248.6
3.	Bernie Parent		203.7
4.	Jacques Plante		202.7
5.	Tony Esposito		196.6
6.	Martin Brodeur		195.1
7.	Glenn Hall		194.9
8.	Bill Durnan		174.3
9.	Ed Belfour		154.9
10.	Dominik Hasek		151.7

Luongo not only ranks second on the list, but he achieved that ranking despite having three months left in the current season, plus an entire season lost to the 2004-05 Lockout. Under some fairly reasonable assumptions, Luongo might have been at the top if he had been able to make up those games played.