After playing his 987th NHL game Tuesday, Martin Brodeur has earned the right to call himself the winningest goalie of all-time. Brodeur picked up his 552nd career win when the New Jersey Devils defeated the Chicago Blackhawks by a score of 3-2.

As I was driving home from work, I was thinking about this record and how unlikely it would be for anyone to break. Not only does Martin Brodeur have 552 wins but he also has 3 or 4 more years left in him. So, let’s say he wins an average of 37 games over the next 4 seasons, he would finish his career with 700. Now, if we look at the active leaders in wins we would find Curtis Joseph with 452 and Chris Osgood with 386. It is safe to say that as good as these two goalies are, they won’t come near Brodeur’s mark.

Now, we came to the conclusion that the goalies that are closest to Brodeur in wins have no chance in catching him, what about young goaltenders? Is there someone out there that could possibly rack up 650-700 wins? The first name that comes into mind is Evgeni Nabokov. Nabokov has 242 wins under his belt and he’s 33 years old. Let’s assume that he plays until he’s 40. That’s 7 more seasons. If he wins 45 games every one of those seasons he would have 557. He wouldn’t touch Brodeur’s record. Next! The second goalie that is comes to mind is Roberto Luongo of the Vancouver Canucks. Luongo is only 29 years of age and has a total of 223 wins in his career. Assuming he plays until he’s 40 and averages 42 wins a season, he will finish his career with 685. Hmm, this could be a possibility, but there are too many other variables that need to be considered.

The reason why Martin Brodeur has this record is because he was fortunate enough to play in front of a team that has consistently won games and made the playoffs throughout his career. If you look at Brodeur’s stats you would see that he’s been playing an average of 70+ games since the 95-96 season and has never had a losing record in a season. A lot of that has to do with the team you play with. Another factor is injuries. Martin Brodeur has rarely been injured in his career, with the exception of this year. Basically, if any goaltender wants to have a shot of breaking Brodeur’s record, they would have to play an average of 65-70 games a season, have a strong team in front of him, and stay healthy.

What we can get out of this is that it is unlikely that anyone will break Martin Brodeur’s record anytime soon. There are some promising goalies such as Steve Mason of the Columbus Blue Jackets and perhaps even Carey Price of the Montreal Canadiens, however, they would have to have a team of consistency and health on their side, which currently they don’t. In the end, my verdict is that this record won’t be broken in this generation of goalies and we’ll have to wait and see what the next has in store for us. Congratulations Marty!

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