In the regular season, I counted 35 soft goals allowed by Brodeur. The soft goals occurred across 27 games; or approximately 35% of the games Brodeur played in 2009-10. The Devils record in those 27 games was 12-14-1. Without knowing the record for other goalies in the league, I can't tell you that a winning percentage of 44% was good or not in games where soft goals were allowed. I can tell you that it doesn't seem so awful on it's own.

However, in those 15 non-wins, the soft goal allowed turned out to be the eventual game-winning goal 11 times. That's definitely not good. That said, I wouldn't immediately turn around and say that Brodeur was solely at fault for losing those 11 games. January 26 is a good example where I wouldn't argue that. The first goal Brodeur gave up was soft; but it was also the eventual game winner since the Devils were shutout by Ottawa 3-0. A quick look back of my recap of that game gives a better picture of what went on in the game (the Devils stunk in that one).

Adding to that, take a look at the playoffs. Brodeur gave up 3 soft goals out of 15 in two games (Game 1 and 4), and two of them turned out to be game winners. But anyone who saw the Devils' "attack" in the first round would know full well that had a lot more to do with the Devils faltering than the play of the goaltender.

It's still a good way to put the earlier work into context. Incidentally, those 15 non-wins represented 55.56% of all the games Brodeur lost in that 2009-10; and in each of those games, Brodeur gave up more than just one goal. It's not as if one error by Brodeur necessarily cost the Devils the game 15 times last season. Nevertheless, thanks to Todd for his question and I hope you, the reader, found this somewhat interesting. Please leave your thoughts in the comments, and as usual, thanks for reading.

The perception of a "soft goal" can be really subjective though. There are the obvious, blatant bad goals where pratically everyone knows that the goalie should have stopped it... But more times than not it's more of a gray area. Who was the shooter? Was it an odd-man rush? Was the goalie screened? People argue over these things all the time, and there is a lot that goes into making a save that some people seem oversee.

I think most of the importance of the save comes from key times in a game. Is the goalie allowing a bad goal when it's a one-goal game, late in the third period? Or is he allowing a bad goal when his team is up by a few? Obviously no one wants their goalie to let in a bad goal period, but it's going to happen.

The bottom line is, every goalie is going to let in crap goals from time to time...but what's more important is when is he allowing them, and how does he react after a bad goal?

Patrick Roy is still the better all time goalie.

Also, Dryden's stand-up style wouldn't do jack in this NHL. Same for Plante.

But I still don't think you should discount them all because they played in different eras. I would still consider them the best of the best, even though their styles might not be as effective as it was back when they played.