The Puck Stops Here

There are some interesting comments in the I NOW Consider Mark Recchi a Hall of Famer thread when we are discussing whether or not Manon Rheaume belongs in the Hockey Hall of Fame. I believe she should be inducted as a player. Nightfly believes she does not belong in the Hall of Fame.

Manon Rheaume is the first woman to play in many men's leagues. She was the first woman to play major junior hockey in the QMJHL. She was the first woman to play in the NHL (an exhibition game in 1992). She is the first woman to play a professional hockey game. If you look at her stats against the men they are not that good. In any given season she has hardly any games played, a high goals against average and a low saves percentage. It doesn't matter which league you look at or which season.

The problem is that she came onto the woman's hockey scene before there were many opportunities for women to make a career out of hockey. When the opportunities started to develop a few years into her career so got married, retired and had two sons.

Manon Rheaume was a very dominant goalie in international woman's tournaments. In the 1992 World Woman's Championships she played three games with two shutouts. She had a .957 saves percentage and a 0.67 goals against average and winning the gold medal. It was this performance that got her signed by the Tampa Bay Lightning. It was a gimmick by the expansion Lightning. They didn't seriously expect her to make an NHL impact. It would be easier for a female goalie to play in the NHL than a position player since she could avoid physical play and Rheaume was the best female goalie in the world. She returned to the 1994 World Woman's Championships, won a second gold medal and was named the best goaltender in the tournament. In 1996, she played for the gold medal winning Canadian team in the Pacific Rim Woman's Hockey Championships. She put up a .962 saves percentage and a 0.50 goals against average. She played with the 1998 Canadian Olympic Team, the first year that woman's hockey was in the Olympics. She put up a .935 saves percentage and a 0.81 goals against average. These are outstanding results. These are outstanding statistics. Quite clearly, she was a dominant female goalie. If any man was as dominant against other men, he would definitely be a Hall of Famer.

The problem is that it is hard to sabermetrically show how dominant she was. There are not enough results. The quality of opposition is questionable. When they started to set up woman's leagues, she retired from the game. Exactly how good is she relative to other female goalies? Can we definitively show she is the best? The answer is probably no. If we have fifty years of woman's hockey results, it will still be a significant sabermetric problem to determine exactly where Manon Rheaume stands against other female goalies. She has few results and those that exist are largely played against men.

This is a problem with pioneers in men's hockey as well. As an example, we can look at Hobey Baker. Hobey Baker was a great American player who is in the Hockey Hall of Fame. The trophy for the best player in the NCAA is named after him. If we look on hockeydb here is the Hobey Baker page. It has no statistics. If I look a bit harder, I can look in the book Total Hockey, I can find some Hobey Baker stats. Statistics exist for three seasons that he played. In his final year at Princeton in 1913/14, he played 11 games, scored 12 goals and got two penalty minutes (assists were no kept). Playing amateur hockey after he graduated in the American Amateur Hockey League he played two seasons. In 1914/15 playing for St Nicholas, he scored 17 goals in eight games played (no other stats were kept). In 1915/16 he played seven games scoring nine goals. How good was Hobey Baker relative to other forwards in history? Who knows? It's very hard to compare his numbers with anyone who plays in modern times. How can we? He has very little statistics kept in very few games in leagues of questionable quality. He is clearly a dominant player in his time who had little opportunity to play against top quality opponents in his time. However, he is in the Hockey Hall of Fame and belongs there.

There exist women who have had longer careers than Manon Rheaume had and lasted long enough to get some more meaningful games against other women (Danielle Goyette is an example). Both belong in the Hall of Fame.

Manon Rheaume was a dominant goalie in the few games we have of her playing against top level women in international play. She had the reputation as the best female goalie in the world and thus was given the opportunity to be the first woman to play in several different leagues, including an NHL exhibition game. It is hard to judge just how good she was relative to other women - especially as women's hockey gets more and more organized. If a man was as dominant a goalie against other men as Rheaume was relative to other women, he would be a Hall of Famer. Rheaume should be inducted too.