Montreal Canadiens: This Day In NHL History: Habs Most Underrated Goalie Get Call to Hall of Fame

Montreal Canadiens goaltending greats roll off the tongue pretty rapidly for a Habs fans.

Carey Price. Patrick Roy. Ken Dryden. Jacques Plante. If you ask any Canadiens fan to name the four best goalies in team history, you are likely to hear those four names.

However, there is one more who stands among those greats, but he rarely gets the same recognition. He did finally get his due from the Hockey Hall of Fame on this day, August 29 in 1964.

Bill Durnan played just seven NHL seasons, all of them with the Montreal Canadiens. He was named the Vezina Trophy winner in six of those campaigns. While the award was more of a team award at the time, as it was given to the goalie who played on the team that allowed the least number of goals, it shouldn’t distract anyone from Durnan’s accomplishments.

If you think it was easy to pile up Vezina Trophy’s for the Canadiens in the 1940’s when Durnan was winning every year, consider that his predecessors as well as Gerry McNeil who took over for Durnan in the Habs goal for the 1950-51 season never got their name on the Vezina Trophy.

Durnan’s counterparts during his time included a couple of Hall of Famers as Turk Broda and Frank Brimsek were tending goal in the league at the same time. The fact he won six Vezina Trophy’s in just seven seasons is quite a feat. The only goalie to ever get their name on the award more was Jacques Plante who won it seven times in his considerably longer 18 year NHL career.

Durnan really burst onto the scene in 1943-44 as a 27 year old rookie. He was ambidextrous, meaning he basically wore two blockers and would switch his stick from side to side depending on where the puck was on the ice. This obviously kept shooters off balance when crashing towards the Canadiens goal as his career 2.36 GAA would suggest.

Durnan won two Stanley Cups to go with his six Vezina Trophy’s during his seven year career. Though he doesn’t get as much attention as some of the other all-time greats, he still sits fifth in Canadiens history for goaltenders in games played, wins and shutouts.

It took nearly 15 years after he retired, but the Hockey Hall of Fame finally inducted Bill Durnan on this day in 1964.