Goalies aren’t worked the same way as they used to be in the NHL. More and more teams are starting to go with more of a ‘1A-1B’ goalie duo instead of clear cut No. 1 and a backup, so we might not see many goalies reach the 40-win mark moving forward.
It’s not easy to win games in the NHL and it certainly isn’t easy to win 40 in a single season as a goalie, considering you don’t even play every single game on the calendar. There have been a handful of goalies who hit the 40-win mark once in their career and never got back there, but there’s hundreds of goalies who never won 40 games in a single season once during their career.
This list contains all the goalies in NHL history who won 40 games in a season more than once, and you might be surprised to see some of the greatest netminders of all-time missing from this list.
The Philadelphia Flyers earned their reputation in the 1970’s as one of the toughest and grittiest teams in NHL history, but they also had a pretty good goalie in between the pipes for them to help them out. Bernie Parent is one of the greatest Flyers of all-time and he sits second on the franchise’s all-time goalie wins list. In 1973-94 Parent started more than 70 games for the first time in his career and he won 47 games. The following season he played 68 games - the second most of his career - and put together 44 wins.
Ryan Miller didn’t exactly have the greatest teams in front of him, but you wouldn’t know that by watching him play or by looking at his numbers with the Buffalo Sabres. In his second year as the team’s every day starter, Miller won 40 of the 63 games he started to make a name for himself around the league. A few years later he topped his own personal record by winning 41 games in the 2009-10 season. Almost every year he started for the Sabres he was good for at least 30 wins, except for his final two years with the club.
Ed Belfour is one of the few goalies and players who can say they found success in just about every city they played in (we’re going to ignore his one season with the Panthers and even shorter stint with the Sharks). In his rookie season, Belfour was the talk of the town as the young goalie won 43 of his 74 games and led just about every goalie category that year to win both the Vezina and the Calder Trophy. A couple of years later he put together a 41-win campaign, but that would be the last time he would win 40 games or more in a season, and the second-last time he would start 70 or more games in a year.
Roberto Luongo is one of the few players who went through all the changes in the NHL and still got the same amount of workload year after year. Luongo started more than 70 games four times during his career, and started at least 60 of the 82 games nine times. Luongo picked up 47 wins in his first season with the Canucks and put together another season of 40 wins a few years later when he went 40-22-6 in 68 games. The following year he came two wins shy of the 40-win mark, despite playing eight less games than the previous year.
It’s not very often you see a goalie go first overall in the draft, but if he does you better make sure he’s a lock. That’s exactly what Marc-Andre Fleury was and is. By his second full season a the team’s every day starter, Fleury picked up 40 wins in 67 games. While he followed that up with 35, 37 and 36-win seasons, it was 2011-12 where Fleury set his personal record of 42 wins in 67 games.
It’s pretty wild that the San Jose Sharks’ goalie duo at one point was Evgeni Nabokov and Miikka Kiprusoff. We’ve seen two goalies capable of being starters share the crease on a team before, but this duo was one of the best - even if they never brought home the Stanley Cup. The Sharks ultimately rolled with Nabokov as their franchise guy, which helped the Calgary Flames land Miikka Kiprusoff.
Nabokov ended up winning 40 games or more in three straight seasons from 2007-08 to 2009-10, while Kiprusoff had three campaigns of his own where he won 40 or more games in the season. Nabokov won 353 games over his career to Kiprusoff’s 319, but it was the latter who came closer to winning a Stanley Cup.
NHL seasons have consisted of a minimum of 70 games since 1949-50, so we’re a little surprised that the list is dominated by players who came into the league as early as 1991. However, three players from the past who you most likely never saw play are on this list, and two of them are tied with the former Sharks duo with three seasons of 40 wins or more.
Terry Sawchuk won 44 games in his first full season as a starter, and he followed that up with another 44 wins the following year. After 32 and 35-win seasons, Sawchuk hit the 40 mark again a few years later when he won 40 of the 68 games he started in 1954-55. Meanwhile, Jacques Plante put together his campaigns of 40 wins or more at different points of his career. Plante’s first season of 40 wins or more came in his second year as a full-time starter in 1955-56, followed by a 40-win campaign in 1959-60, and a 42-win campaign in 1961-62.
Pekka Rinne’s best days might be behind him, but he was one of the best goalies to play the game when he was in his prime. Rinne only started 70 games or more once during his career, but he still managed to win 40 games or more in three different seasons. His last season of 40+ wins came in 2017-18 when he went 42-13-4 in 59 starts, and it landed him the first and only Vezina Trophy of his career.
Braden Holtby is one of the few goalies in today’s NHL who was worked like the old school goalies even after things changed, and he put together some really solid campaigns. Holtby put up three straight seasons of 40 wins or more (2014-2017), which included him tying Martin Brodeur’s record of 48 wins in a single season during the 2015-16 campaign. Like Rinne, Holtby has only started 70 games or more once in his career, but he’s got three seasons of 40 wins or more to his name.
Only one goalie in NHL history won more than 40 games in a single season more than three times and that was Martin Brodeur. Depending on how much you actually wanted to play as a backup goalie, the New Jersey Devils’ backup goalie job was a dream setup - or nightmare, depends who you’re asking - as they usually only needed to play 10 games or less.
Sure, goalies aren’t worked the same way today that were back in the day, but only a selected few got the kind of starts that Brodeur did. Over his career, he started 70 games or more 12 times and picked up 40 wins or more in eight of those seasons, and had one year where he finished with 39 wins. The NHL’s all-time goalie wins leader also shares the record for most wins in a season (48) with Braden Holtby, who tied the record nearly 10 years after Brodeur set it.
