A MARTY PARTY!
Devils great heads Hall of Fame class
There wasn’t any drama involved for Martin Brodeur, for his selection for enshrinement in the Hockey Hall of Fame was a mere formality in his first year on the ballot after the longtime Devils goaltender’s legendary career.
Tuesday’s announcement made it official that Brodeur will be inducted into the Hall this November, the threetime Stanley Cup winner and the NHL’s winningest goaltender and one of the best goalies ever set to take his rightful place among the game’s immortals.
Joining Brodeur in the 2018 class are former Ranger Martin St. Louis, Jayna Hefford and Alexander Yakushev, as well as Willie O’Ree and commissioner Gary Bettman in the Builder category.
“As a player, you get to meet Hall of Fame members and now to have my name in the same sentence makes me speechless,” Brodeur said in a statement. “I was fortunate to play on great teams that allowed me to play with my own personality, which is so important to a goaltender.”
Brodeur’s 691 wins are 140 more than Patrick Roy has in second place. Brodeur also holds NHL records in games played (1,266) saves (28,928) and shutouts (125). His 113 postseason wins and 4,830 playoff saves are both second-most in league history to Roy. Brodeur won at least 30 games in 12 consecutive seasons from 1995-96 through 2007-08, and he won 40 games in a season a record eight times.
The Montreal native is a four-time Vezina Trophy winner who finished in the top-five in the Vezina voting 13 times and nine times in the top three. The two-time Olympic gold medalist was part of the Canadian teams that won the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and the 2010 Vancouver Games. Brodeur is also a five-time Jennings Trophy winner and won the Calder Trophy in 1993-94. Last year he was included on the NHL’s 100 Greatest Players list.
A first-round pick, No. 20 overall, by the Devils in 1990, the hybrid-styled Brodeur played parts of 21 seasons with the Devils, logging 74,083 minutes across 1,259 regular-season games and 12,719 minutes in 205 playoff games. He left the Devils after the 2013-14 season at 42 years old with Cory Schneider ready to become the full-time starter.
After a brief seven-game stint with the Blues in the middle of the 2014-15 season, Brodeur retired and later became an assistant general manager with St. Louis, a post he still holds.
Brodeur’s impact on the game was such that his puckhandling skills was the impetus for a new rule coming out of the 2004-05 lockout, limiting goaltenders’ ability to play the puck behind the goal line with the creation of the trapezoid.
On Feb. 9, 2016, Brodeur’s No. 30 was retired and raised to the rafters at Prudential Center, outside of which a bronze statue of Brodeur was erected to honor the franchise’s greatest player who thrived in the most pressurepacked moments — exploits befitting a Hall of Famer.