It’s going to be a long while until this Patrick Roy record is surpassed.
With 151 career wins in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Roy is 38 clear of No. 2 Martin Brodeur. Grant Fuhr comes in at No. 3 with 92 victories and Ed Belfour ranks fourth with 88.
There are two goalies still alive in this year’s playoffs who are in the top 40 in this stat but one of them, Pekka Rinne, doesn’t crack the top five among active players, although he would get there by earning five more wins with the Predators on their current run.
At least one name on this list may surprise you, but here are the top five active leaders in playoff wins by a goalie.
5. Antti Niemi – 36 wins
Today, Niemi is overpaid at $4.5 million against the cap as his play has deteriorated with the Dallas Stars. The 33-year-old has one season left on his contract and, along with teammate Kari Lehtonen, is a buyout candidate next month now that the Stars have Ben Bishop signed for the long-term.
But it wasn’t that long ago Niemi was making a couple Western Conference final and even winning a Stanley Cup. Niemi first made his name with the Blackhawks in 2010, posting a .912 save percentage in 39 games before earning 16 wins in 22 playoff games and posting a .910 save percentage. It was the year the Hawks broke their own curse and won their first Stanley Cup since the 1960s.
Then, Niemi went to the San Jose Sharks after Chicago walked away from his salary arbitration reward, making him a free agent. With the Sharks, Niemi reached the conference final again in 2011 and posted a career-best .923 save percentage in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season. He failed to get past the first round once with San Jose, but missed the playoffs altogether in his last year with the team.
4. Jonathan Quick – 46 wins
Ranked No. 22 on the all-time list, Jonathan has shot up the rankings relatively quickly.
He secured the top job in 2009-10 just as the anticipated goalie of the Kings’ future, Jonathan Bernier, was graduating from the AHL. After a couple of first-round exits, Quick led the Kings to their first-ever Stanley Cup and won the Conn Smythe Trophy with an outstanding .946 save percentage. He posted a .934 SP in the 2013 playoffs, but Los Angeles was eliminated by Chicago in five games in the Western Conference final.
In 2014, the Kings again won the Stanley Cup (.911 SP for Quick) and it looked like their goalie would be racking up plenty of playoff wins for the years to come. But the team has taken an unexpected tumble, qualifying for just one more post-season, and Quick has earned just one Stanley Cup playoffs win since. [sidebar]
3. Corey Crawford – 48 wins
Crawford, 32, has been Chicago’s goalie since Niemi’s departure, but although he’s seen a ton of playoff games, there wasn’t instant post-season success.
In Crawford’s first two years as a starter the Hawks lost back-to-back first-round series, but in Year 3 he posted a .932 post-season save percentage as the Hawks won another Stanley Cup. The following year they reached the conference final again, losing to the Kings in seven games, and then in 2015 Crawford earned 13 wins as the Hawks secured their place as a modern definition of an NHL dynasty.
He’s won just three playoff games in the two years since and it was shocking he didn’t earn even one win this year, which would have tied him with Glenn Hall for 19th all-time.
2. Henrik Lundqvist – 61 wins
The only goalie on this list without a Stanley Cup win, ‘The King’ has had success measured in consistency. The Rangers have missed the post-season just once (2009-10) since he took over in the Rangers crease following the lost season of 2004-05 — although he didn’t earn his first win until his second playoff showing.
Lundqvist’s first conference final appearance didn’t happen until 2012 when the Rangers lost to the Devils and he finally got into his first Stanley Cup final in 2014, losing to the Kings in five games.
The 35-year-old posted a .927 playoff save percentage this season, which was one of the better marks he’s ever posted, but of course the Rangers fell to the Ottawa Senators in Round 2. Time is running out for him to get the ultimate prize. Lundqvist is 14th on the all-time post-season wins list and the only goalie still above him who never won a Cup is Curtis Joseph, who sits at 63 wins.
1. Marc-Andre Fleury – 62 wins
With a 1-0 win in Game 2 against Ottawa, Fleury passed Lundqvist on the all-time active wins list and he’s three years younger than the Ranger. Fleury has near-instant playoff success, reaching the Stanley Cup final in just his second post-season appearance. Although the Penguins fell to the Red Wings in six games that season, they followed it up by beating the same Detroit team the following season in seven games, and Fleury closed out his first Cup win with a last-second diving save on Nicklas Lidstrom.
That win was supposed to launch a Penguins dynasty, but it didn’t exactly happen that way. The Pens made one conference final in the following six seasons — not even winning a game — and when they got back to the Cup final last season, Fleury wasn’t even the starter.
In fact, he wasn’t supposed to be the starter this year either, as 22-year-old Matt Murray had usurped the No. 1 job. But after Murray sustained a lower-body injury during warmups prior to Pittsburgh’s opening game, Fleury came in and has been putting on a Conn Smythe-level performance ever since.
If the Penguins capture the Stanley Cup and Fleury earns all the wins, he’ll finish this season at 69 playoff victories, passing Andy Moog for No. 10 on the all-time list.
Should Fleury end up in Vegas with the expansion Golden Knights after that, there’s no telling when his next playoff win would come.
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