Hayward had a stretch of fringe Vezina consideration (4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th place finishes, respectively from 1985-1989). Basically every year that he played at least 35 games except for his dreadful 1986 campaign in Winnipeg.Today's gordle was Brian Hayward.
He played from 1982-1993 and his career best save percentage was .896 and his overall career rate came in at .874 meaning 1 in every 8 shots went in on this cat across 357 games.
I know mikey loves talking about how bad goalies were during a large part of this era. It's funny to see these types of stats at the individual level
It's also noteworthy that a year after Patrick Roy went on a cinderella run to the Smythe in '86, he was replaced by Hayward after a miserable game 1 of the 1987 Adams Division Final vs rival Quebec. Hayward went the rest of the way and saved the series - Montreal winning in 7. Hayward would run into another young goalie on a hot streak in the Wales Final (see: RIP thread) when they lost to Ron Hextall's Flyers in 6.
In 1988, after getting a 3-0 lead on Hartford in the Adams Division Semi-Final, Roy was unable to close the door on the series. They turned to Hayward again. He won the series and started the next series against Boston (as Cam Neely was a bit of kryptonite for Roy in his career) before giving way to Roy again for the start in game 3. But with Montreal unable to score in the series, they bowed out quickly...