Welcome to LWOS’ Summer Hockey Series, Best of the Rest. Plenty of sites do a version of a 30 greats in 30 days series, but this year we are doing something a little bit different. We want to look at the best player from each team who is not in the Hockey Hall Of Fame. In order to do this there are some rules. First the player must have been a significant part of this franchise (franchises include their time in a previous city… see Winnipeg/Atlanta) and must be retired for at least 3 years, making them Hall of Fame eligible. To see all the articles in the series, check out the homepage here.
When the Florida Panthers franchise was born into the National Hockey League, president Bill Torrey and general manager Bobby Clarke had high hopes. Filling up their team with the expansion draft followed by the 1993 NHL Entry Draft, Clarke and Torrey had built a club that held the promise of being competitive. While their first two seasons weren’t up to par with expectations, they did set an NHL record at the time by filling up their home arena with over 27,000 fans. Unfortunately, Eastern Conference Champions is as close as they have come to the Stanley Cup in franchise history.
The aforementioned Torrey earned his Hockey Hall of Fame nod back in 1995 due in part with building the Panthers organization upon it’s birth and later becoming their general manager. Roger Neilson coached two seasons in Florida but only saw one round of playoff action during his time. Pavel Bure spent four years as a Panther but his recognition as a player lies elsewhere, despite the fact that he won back-to-back Maurice Richard Trophies in 1999-00 and 2000-01 as the league’s top goal scorer. Igor Larionov spent just one year with the team while Ed Belfour, Dino Ciccarelli and Joe Nieuwendyk lasted two.
Rob Niedermayer was a 5th round pick for the Florida Panthers and had all the promise in the world and a Hall of Fame tag with his name on it. Unfortunately, concussion problems got the better of Niedermayer and he went from a goal scoring winger to a defensive forward with limited offensive upside. Upon that, his major success — a Stanley Cup ring — was achieved with the Anaheim Ducks while his best run with the Panthers was their 1995-96 loss in the finals to the Colorado Avalanche.
The present holds a large amount of expectations, to the level of their arrival into the NHL. Players like Dmitri Kulikov, Jonathan Huberdeau, Alexander Barkov and the newly-drafted Aaron Ekblad all have the potential to put on Hall of Fame careers, knock on wood of course. But that is now and we are talking about players who have since retired from the game of hockey and have moved on, either to a managerial position or something entirely different. With not many choices to choose from, the Panthers selection seems like a no-brainer.
Florida Panthers – John Vanbiesbrouck
He was small, but boy could he play. John Vanbiesbrouck was a natural hybrid-style goaltender. His butterfly style wasn’t enough to cut it with his stature so he managed to blend in some stand-up attributes into the mix and thus created the perfect style for his stature. His confident-style helped him achieve great success with both the Rangers and the Panthers and he even set some records in the Rangers camp for most assists by a goaltender in one season. His rebound control was good, he could cover his angles and he never panicked during scrambles in his crease.
Selected 72nd overall by the New York Rangers in the 1981 NHL Entry Draft, Vanbiesbrouck had something special in him. In his first season with the OHL’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, Vanbiesbrouck posted a 31-16-1 record. After being drafted, The Beezer would play two more seasons — and one game with the Rangers, a 2-1 victory against the Colorado Rockies as an emergency call-up — before moving on to the Central Hockey League, playing for the Tulsa Oilers.
Tulsa was somewhat of a hectic situation at the time. The team went bankrupt and were forced to play the remainder of the 1983-84 season on the road. At one point, they were forced to practice inside a mall and even then, the team couldn’t shoot pucks which meant Vanbiesbrouck was doing pirouettes after his morning stretch. That didn’t stop him from doing things his own way, as he had tennis balls fired at him in the parking lot of that very same mall. Anything to get a feel for the game. Despite the hard times in Tulsa, Vanbiesbrouck led the team to the CHL Championship that year and was a co-winner of the Terry Sawchuck award, along with back-up Ron Scott, for fewest goals against in the CHL. Vanbiesbrouck was also a co-winner of the Tommy Ivan Trophy as MVP of the league, along with Bruce Affleck.
Rangers fans witnessed the true potential of Beezer in the 1985-86 season, where he’d set a career-high in wins with 31. His glorious season continued into the playoffs as he led the Rangers past the Philadelphia Flyers in an upset. The following round, the Rangers got a good look at why that year’s Washington Capitals team had registered over 100 points but again, Vanbiesbrouck stood his ground and the Rangers moved on to the Eastern Conference finals. It was there that they met their match, losing to the eventual Stanley Cup winning Montreal Canadiens. Still, his work did not go unnoticed as Vanbiesbrouck was the recipient of the Vezina Trophy and was named to the NHL’s First All-Star Team that year.
After signing a three-year deal in the off-season, Vanbiesbrouck never topped his 31-win campaign, coming close with 27 wins in 56 games in the 1987-88 season and 28 wins in the same amount of games the following season. The correlation between the two is the fact that Beezer suffered two injuries over those two seasons. In the 87-88 run, during a practice no less, Vanbiesbrouck was hit with a puck underneath his mask, fracturing his lower jaw and breaking a tooth. Luckily the injury did not require his jaw to be wired shut but the following year, he was not so lucky. While working with some video equipment he had purchased to capture the life of his son, who was expected soon at that time, the glass table Beezer had been sitting on gave in and the glass broke. As he fell, Vanbiesbrouck reached back to catch his fall and in doing so he cut his ulnar nerve while also doing damage to three other nerves. The result; microsurgery to remove the glass from his wrist and repair the damage to his nerves and tendon. While the time frame was set to 4-6 months of rehab, Vanbiesbrouck returned three months later, just in time to start the Rangers pre-season camp.
The following year, head coach Roger Neilson decided to go with a rotating tandem between Vanbiesbrouck and freshly called-up Mike Richter. The two helped the team reach the playoffs and defeat the New York Islanders in the first round before bowing out to the Washington Capitals in the second round. In the 1990-91 season, the Richter-Vanbiesbrouck duo became one of the best goaltending tandems in the NHL. By the 1992-93 season, an expansion draft loomed over the NHL and the Rangers were forced to make a decision; trade Richter or Vanbiesbrouck, as the other would be liable to get drafted out of New York. The Rangers decided to go with the younger Richter, trading Vanbiesbrouck to the Vancouver Canucks for future considerations.
The move made by the Canucks was clearly strategy as they had no desire of actually keeping Vanbiesbrouck and the Florida Panthers made their first overall selection; John Vanbiesbrouck.
In the first two seasons with the Panthers, Vanbiesbrouck recorded a career-high in save percentage (.924 in his first season) but ultimately fell short by one point, missing the playoffs both years. His 1993-94 season also included 21 wins and he was on the shortlist for both the Vezina and Hart trophies along with a Second Team NHL All-Star nod. However the season that defined Vanbiesbrouck’s NHL career came in the 1995-96 season. While posting an ordinary 21-25-11 record and 2 shutouts, the numbers were not a clear indicator to just how important Vanbiesbrouck was to that Panthers team. He was, in fact, the glue that held everything together. As the season began to hit a low, it was Vanbiesbrouck’s performance against the New Jersey Devils, a shutout no less, that propelled the Panthers into the playoff picture.
Defeating the Boston Bruins in five games was just their first test and the second round was an obstacle that seemed impossible; The Philadelphia Flyers. After posting a shutout in game one, Vanbiesbrouck actually held the Flyers off the scoresheet completely for a total of 116:46, back-stopping the team to a series win in six games. The next series was no walk in the park as the Panthers were heavy underdogs against Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr and the Pittsburgh Penguins. After going down 3-2 in the series, the Panthers tied it up in game six and Vanbiesbrouck stopped 39 shots in game seven to give the Panthers a 3-1 win, eliminating the Penguins, much to everyone’s surprise. Then… came the Colorado Avalanche. A team so stacked from top to bottom, Vanbiesbrouck couldn’t have done it alone even if he had transformed into the second coming of Patrick Roy — his goaltending foe of the finals. The Panthers would go on to lose the series in four straight, but Vanbiesbrouck went out in spectacular fashion. Stopping 55 of 56 shots in the final game, it was one of the many reasons why Vanbiesbrouck finished just 3rd in voting for the Conn Smythe trophy.
The next year, Vanbiesbrouck was voted in as the starting goaltender of the All-Star Game via fan voting, with a whopping 200,457 votes, the highest in the Eastern Conference. Finishing the season with the 6th best save percentage, the 5th best goals against and 27 wins, the Panthers were eliminated by the New York Rangers in the first round of the playoffs. In the following season, Vanbiesbrouck earned his 300th win on December 27th, 1993 after the Panthers defeated the Islanders by a score of 6-2. He became the 15th goaltender to hit the milestone and just the second American-born goaltender to do so. Statistically throughout the season however, Vanbiesbrouck struggled and so did the rest of the Panthers team, finishing 12th in the Eastern Conference. This would be the last season of Vanbiesbrouck in Florida as well.
Vanbiesbrouck would go on to play with the Philadelphia Flyers for two seasons, split a season with the New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils and finally finish his career in 2001-02 with the Devils. In the two seasons with the Devils, Beezer played just 9 games combined, posting a 6-3 record while backing-up Martin Brodeur in the middle of his prime years.
On an International level, Vanbiesbrouck struggled as much as the entire US squad did during that era. A Silver medal in the 1991 Canada Cup was the best finish for Vanbiesbrouck and subsequently the only time he reached the podium. Vanbiesbrouck also appeared on the US Olympic team in the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics but he played just one minute of one game, sitting on the bench for the remainder of the tournament and watching his team end their run with a disappointing 6th place finish.
So what does Vanbiesbrouck bring to the table that would make him Hall of Fame worthy? He has no Stanley Cup ring, little international success and just one Vezina trophy. On top of that, the Trevor Daly incident which included a racial slur by Vanbiesbrouck back in Sault Ste. Marie, while he was the head coach during the 2002-03 season, has left many with a sour taste in their mouth despite a sympathetic apology on Beezer’s behalf.
Well, Vanbiesbrouck does have that Vezina trophy, as previously mentioned. He has also appeared in four All-Star games and was even named Top Goaltender of the Skills Competition in 1997. Vanbiesbrouck is also just the 2nd American-born goaltender to reach 300 wins and in doing so, he was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame back in 2007. Ranking 31st in the top 100 Ranger Greats book, Vanbiesbrouck also made an appearance on the cover of the video game NHL ’97.
Vanbiesbrouck also currently holds the Rangers all-time franchise records for most assists in a single season by a goaltender with 5 and most career assists by a goaltender with 25. On top of that, Vanbiesbrouck is the most winningest goaltenders among those born in America with 374 career victories and also leads all American-born in the shutout category with 40 career donuts. For Hall voters who like to acknowledge national contributions, that can certainly help his case.
His career wasn’t pretty, far from it, but what Vanbiesbrouck did for the Florida Panthers organization during his four year stay is astronomical. He inspired hope during their Stanley Cup run and gave Panthers fans something to cheer for through the aches and pains of being the new guy in the big town that is the NHL. Is it enough to get him in the Hall of Fame at any point in his life? He has it in tough but eventually, we should see the best player to ever wear the number 34 in the Hall of Fame.
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