Hall of Not Bad, Volume 3: Jakab Holik (and Ariel Weinstein!)

[Gustav 6,469]

What up!

 

Anyone with BoG access who's active enough to deserve it will know the same old story every season--Hall of Fame contenders are introduced, generally there are one or two really obvious choices from more recent times, and if it's just one or if the other recent choices are borderline, generally three things will happen:

 

-We look at older players who may have been passed over, which, depending on your opinion, may or may not include Jakab Holik;

-@Beketov (half-jokingly at this point) complains that his old player is never going to get in, and;

-@Victor quite strongly disagrees with this, and most of the time the Holik discussion goes no further.

 

In short, I could go over players throughout every era of the VHL, but there really isn't anyone else who exemplifies "Hall of Not Bad" in the public-perception sense of the term--I don't know of another player whose HoF chances have been stuck in limbo for this long, always being half-considered but never quite gaining any sort of serious momentum. The only one, at least in recent memory, who even comes close is Tyson Kohler, whose story I covered almost 3 years ago. Talking about the reasons why Holik was great, he has the third-most wins and third-lowest GAA (and lowest out of all who played at least 400 games) among all non-inducted players, and the second-most shutouts ever--including the most by any non-inducted player. Further, he's got a career SV% of .921 and managed to win an Aidan Shaw Trophy in the middle of an era that featured some of the strongest play in net of all time. Plus--and this does probably influence a player's recognition, and thereby their influence--he was created by a hugely significant member of the league. So, why hasn't he been inducted yet, and does he deserve it?

 

I have been on both Team Yes and Team No at separate points in my time in the league, and I've been curious about the real answer for quite some time myself--after all, someone putting up Holik's numbers in the times that I've played in would be in the Hall of Fame easily. Well, today is the day I attempt to draw the line, form my opinion, and hopefully provide some decent support for one side of the debate.

 

My usual aim for these articles is to find players from the same era, both in and out of the Hall of Fame, with stats as similar to the player in question as possible, and try to reason why our title player might not be in (and maybe even uncover a reason or two why they should be, if I find one). To that end, we've got...

 

-Apollo Skye: a HoF player. Drafted by Davos in S51, Skye spent 6 seasons with Quebec during which he would win MVP twice, Top Goaler once, and pick up a cup in S56. 

-Rhett DeGrath: a HoF player. Though he would never win a championship, DeGrath was undeniably one of the greats of the S50s, winning Top Goaler 3 times, MVP once, and Most Outstanding once.

-Sandro Clegane: a HoF player. Greg Clegane--probably the greatest goaler of all time--was just too good to be compared here, but brother Sandro gives us a very fitting example of someone drafted a couple seasons before Holik rather than a couple seasons after. He would win Top Goaler three times, along with a championship and an MVP.

-Ariel Wienstein: NOT a HoF player. Drafted in S45, Weinstein would play for four different teams, with the longest stint coming with three seasons in Calgary. He never won a championship or any individual awards, but ended up with career stats similar to those of Holik.

 

 

You may remember a lot of graphs from these articles, and now it's time to provide.

 

 

 

Holik leads the group in shutouts and is tied (with Weinstein, who is interestingly far behind the others in shutouts) for second in wins. It's important to note that Clegane's pace was ahead of both of these numbers, though there's nothing here that would put Holik behind any others, and so far he's got an edge over Weinstein. Yes, he spent much of his career behind the others, but plenty of great players put in their best work at the end.

 

 

I've normalized everyone's numbers here to Holik's career total--that is, I've made Holik's 2.02 career GAA (!) equal to zero and subtracted that number from everyone else's. So far, we're still not seeing anything that should rule Holik out. I've seen a sentiment out there that GAA and wins literally do not matter when evaluating a goaler, and it's neither one I fully agree nor fully disagree with, but Holik even leads the group in this number despite starting at a 3.43.

 

 

Well, it had to end somewhere. The other end of what I just referenced is the idea that SV% is the only number that matters, and while that's not something I personally agree with, I do think it's easily the most important one to look at. Holik is perfectly fine in all the other numbers, but there's a clear difference between HoF and non-HoF players in this image, with Holik and Weinstein both ending up in about the same spot with a sizable gap up to Skye, who Holik has beat in everything else.

 

 

I like these charts because I also think it's important to break down which seasons specifically put some players over the rest (something that's about to raise an interesting point a bit later on here). For GAA--where Holik leads overall--we see two seasons where DeGrath was above the pack, and it takes three out of the five players' "best seasons" before we hit Holik. What this says to me is that Holik's numbers were reached more by consistent good performance (which we also can tell by looking at the left half of the chart!) than by one or two clearly-best-in-the-league seasons, which is something that can actually be hurtful to someone's Hall-of-Fame chances. That said, it's just as valid, and Holik has a significant presence on the better half of this chart.

 

 

Again, we see DeGrath owning the best parts of this chart, and Skye proving himself worthy. However, everyone else's best is better than Holik's. It's important to note that (in my opinion) the analysis up to this point does put Holik above Weinstein, but in terms of SV%, it's clear that he's coming up slightly short.

 

But.

 

Anyone who's looked at the two above sees one big fat purple line all the way to the right. That was Holik's rookie season, which looks like this:

 

7-33-4 | .901 SV% | 3.43 GAA | 0 SO

 

...all clearly below his, and everyone else's, career standard. And while it's normal to be worse in one's rookie year, and indeed every player we've looked at got better throughout their career, Holik clearly had the worst rookie experience out of them all. Davos had 5 skaters in S48, with the rest of the team made up with bots, and this clearly didn't help things out very much. We've spent the entire article comparing Holik to Sandro Clegane, too, so this does raise a fundamental question:

 

If we can evaluate, and induct, a player based on 7 seasons of work, why can't we do that for Holik?

 

Out of curiousity, this is what we get when we remove Holik's first season entirely and compare his hypothetical 7-season career to Sandro's.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a super interesting plot twist because treating Holik's rookie season as an outlier--and removing it entirely--puts him above another player whose rookie season was removed entirely in every category. It also puts Holik significantly--rather than barely--above the others in GAA, gives him the best pace out of the group in wins, and raises him above Sandro in that ever-important SV% while preserving every single one of his already-leading shutouts. I think that's significant, and I think this is the single most important point in Holik's favor.

 

And had Holik's career stacked up to the rest in every other way? I'd say this would be enough to put him in the Hall of Fame. There's one other difference that I can't really graph, though, and it's also historically meant quite a bit in HoF voting. Holik comes up short of all the others here (excluding Weinstein) when it comes down to individual awards--yes, he won the Shaw in S53, but that was it. He never won the Campbell--like every other HoFer we've looked at here--much less won any award multiple times, much less won a Cup (he has a losing record in the playoffs, which some of our others can proudly say they do not). Further, it's clear that his overall stats appearing mind-blowing to today's VHL aren't that far out in the context of the era, especially when we look at some other goalers from that era with shorter careers who have never been considered for the Hall of Fame:

 

Edwin Threencarnacion | S52-56 | 42-39-4 | .936 SV% | 2.21 GAA | 11 SO

Dmitri Dadonov | S49-53 | 135-172-26 | .925 SV% | 2.68 GAA | 29 SO

Astrid Moon | S53-58 | 255-105-26 | .919 SV% | 1.88 GAA | 75 SO

M.T. Power | S53-56 | 64-17-7 | .906 SV% | 1.89 GAA | 16 SO

 

So, with everything being considered here: is Jakab Holik a Hall of Fame player?

 

My short answer is that it's complicated, and I think it's rightfully been complicated for a long time. On one hand, we can clearly draw a line between the careers of our three HoF players here and that of Holik when we look at the overall stats, and we can point to the fact that he was really never on top of the league and instead built his reputation on just being a solid player for a long time. In addition, he didn't go anywhere in the playoffs, is clearly worse than the HoF players here in the most critical metric, and only ever took home one trophy. That said, though, I still think it's an extremely valid point that overall numbers-wise, Holik had a better 7 seasons than Sandro Clegane, whose 7 seasons got him into the Hall of Fame on the second ballot. Whether or not that's enough to push him over the line is up to you, but I think it's a viewpoint worth considering.

 

 

I'm too lazy to go through and count every single season, but I have confirmed that Holik entered the HoF ballot immediately after his retirement in S56 (in real-world time, October of 2017) and remains there to this day. Some seasons, he gets a vote or two, other seasons, he doesn't. More often than not, his name is mentioned. Whether or not my article aids in anyone's decision-making is up to them, but this series would not be complete without a Holik installment.

 

 

Others mentioned:

@Velevra

@STZ

@JardyB10

@Smarch

 

 

Previous Hall of Not Bad articles:

Alexander Pepper

Shawn Glade

 

 

1,844 words | 3 weeks

[Triller 1,687]

After this write up, my player now has something to realistically strive for! If HoF isn't in the cards, HoNB looks like an ok place to for Leonard to drift off into obscurity.  Amazing write up and I now know more about a non HoFer than I do about any HoFer.  You present the facts and enough information to make a case either way for Holik and after reading it all I can definitively say that he is...a candidate.  Unfortunately after this long, the induction class might have to be weak for a long time ballot rider to finally get his dues against more modern candidates. 

 

Again, a great read and a fun history lesson.  Being a first gen, it is great to read about the history of the league in any context.  Would be cool to have informative, old articles pulled out of the archives and featured once a week or something.  A snapshot of the times.  10/10 article!  Thank you for the effort put in.  I need to read the others now!

[Beketov 9,100]

Ultimately you touched on but skated around both points that I assume will keep him out: Playoffs and Competition.
 

I’ll admit I knew my rookie year was awful but didn’t realize it messed with things THAT much. What I did fully recognize from the start is that Holik was Swiss cheese in the playoffs despite being on strong teams. This is, I think, what held him back in those massively important first 5 ballots where most players who will go in are inducted.

 

After that point the playoff argument obviously still stood but the second one cropped up; there is a prevailing ideology (and Vic is especially fond of it) that being say third or fourth best goalie in a generation should not get you in the HoF even if your numbers are far superior to others from different generations that make it in. It’s a valid enough point since generations have a huge effect especially on goalie stats but it doesn’t make it sting less when the likes of Stopko go in (first ballot I believe) with fewer wins, a worse GAA, the same S%, and fewer shutouts. So what was the difference: Stopko’s generation of goalies sucked and he was by far the best one.
 

Playoffs keeping Holik out has always been totally valid in my book, he couldn’t stop a beach ball in the post season. The competition one irks me a bit more because it basically means if you play at a time with strong competition you’ll get passed over for worse players who got lucky on when they created. Vic and I have long argued over this.

 

Fun read either way, I expect Papa could join Holik on the “dies on the ballot” list soon but we’ll see. Possible he doesn’t even make it on. My goalies have this great tendency of having no consistency whatsoever.

[Victor 11,015]

1 hour ago, Beketov said:

The competition one irks me a bit more because it basically means if you play at a time with strong competition you’ll get passed over for worse players who got lucky on when they created. Vic and I have long argued over this.

I'm less wedded to this point these days however I should clarify that it means something slightly different to me. In my mind, if Holik had the exact same type of career (2nd or 3rd best most regular seasons, awful in the playoffs) but played 10 seasons later against Stopko, his save% and GAA would be so much worse that he wouldnt be under consideration. So in a way Holik was lucky to be 4th best of an insanely good generation to even be on the ballot and not be a Shawn Brodeur or Alexander Pepper or whoever else.

 

And by the same token, we aren't obliged to induct the best goalie of every generation so Stopko did do enough, especially in the playoffs, to warrant it. I think we're about to get to a similar dilemma with Papa actually in that we haven't inducted a goalie in a while and need to decide what is deserving.

 

1 hour ago, Beketov said:

I expect Papa could join Holik on the “dies on the ballot” list soon but we’ll see. Possible he doesn’t even make it on.

Biggest plot twist is I might end up being team Papa. He's certainly going to be on the ballot having looked at the career stats a couple weeks ago. But we can get into that in a month or so when the discussion begins. I do find it quite poetic that you are about to have 2 goalies at opposite extremes of the generational argument.

 

3 hours ago, Gustav said:

I don't know of another player whose HoF chances have been stuck in limbo for this long, always being half-considered but never quite gaining any sort of serious momentum

I think we'd have to check how long Kellinger and Chouinard were on the ballot as one of them certainly holds the record for longest wait overall but I know both were taken off at some point before experiencing a renaissance and making it in at last. Perhaps that's what Holik needs too!

 

3 hours ago, Gustav said:

he has a losing record in the playoffs, which some of our others can proudly say they do not

And as Bek says, this is actually a very important point which imo needed more than a throwaway line. I think the rookie season argument is a fresh take, albeit that opens a can of worms I'm not sure I want to open, for goalies and skaters in equal measure, but your analysis would definitely benefit from a section on playoff records. Great read though!

[JardyB10 4,868]

7 hours ago, Victor said:

Biggest plot twist is I might end up being team Papa. He's certainly going to be on the ballot having looked at the career stats a couple weeks ago. But we can get into that in a month or so when the discussion begins.

I expect you to be lobbying for Poopy Peepants more than Papa though.

[Victor 11,015]

1 hour ago, JardyB10 said:

I expect you to be lobbying for Poopy Peepants more than Papa though.

It's a challenge but my people are building the best case physically possible for the great man.

 

Surprised you've recovered from this killer Gus line though....

11 hours ago, Gustav said:

Greg Clegane--probably the greatest goaler of all time--was just too good to be compared here, but brother Sandro gives us a very fitting example

 

[Daniel Janser 2,215]

1 hour ago, JardyB10 said:

I expect you to be lobbying for Poopy Peepants more than Papa though.

Let's compromise on Papa Peepants?

[JardyB10 4,868]

1 hour ago, Victor said:

Surprised you've recovered from this killer Gus line though....

I'm used to everyone in the league being potatoes. (Throwback for the best people)

Edited January 15, 2023 by JardyB10

[Gustav 6,469]

Claiming Week 2 now

[Gustav 6,469]

Week 3