Hi there, it’s your friendly neighbourhood author here ready to go down part two, thankfully the last part, of this article talking about two greats: Shannon Szabados and Florence Schelling. In Part One we went over how loud and impactful both of their careers were, and how anyone with a curiosity towards hockey history should be able to find a slam-dunk case for both of them to be in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Now we’re back to solidify the claim that Schelling and Szabados are two of the best women to ever put on the goalie pads. It’s impossible to describe the era of Florence Schelling, Shannon Szabados, and Noora Räty to those who weren’t there to witness it. We’re not talking about Räty this time around because she’s not eligible yet and hasn’t been denied. Instead, we’re going to focus on her two equals who have been repeatedly denied and why they belong as examples of peak goaltending performance.
We’ve gone over Schelling’s accolades at the NCAA level, but just how good was she? Well, in her four years at Northeastern University, wearing one of the silliest looking helmets you can put on a goalie, Schelling finished top five (fourth, second, first) in SV% three of her four seasons. The one time Schelling missed out on the top five she still finished with a 0.930 SV%. In comparison Noora Räty went four-for-four (fourth, fifth, third, first) in her top five NCAA SV% finishes.
Let’s take a stroll in the NCAA record book, starting with top 25 single-season NCAA SV% records. Florence Schelling is in there twice, Noora Räty once, Aerin Frankel three times, and Ann-Renée Desbiens twice to give it some context. Looking at career NCAA SV% we see Florence Schelling 10th All-Time with a 0.940 SV% and ahead of her with a 0.946 SV% is Noora Räty. Career stats has Räty with the slight edge but I think it’s important to mention that while their SV%’s are so close, their team strength was vastly different. With Northeastern Schelling saw her team win +20 games (22 wins) once and there was even a 12-20-3 season in there. With Minnesota, Räty was on a team whose worst season was 26 wins and they once won all 41 games they played. That includes playoffs, for the record.
Looking at Schelling’s time in the SDHL, it looks like she went there to prove she’s too good for it. She was only there for three seasons, but it was three seasons of dominance. Her first season (15/16), she leads the league in SV% (0.938), is second in GSAA (13.195) despite being the only goalie in the top four of GSAA to be at 21 games while everyone else is at 30/31 games, and takes her team to the championship leading the playoffs in SV% (0.943). They lose to a recently created and supercharged Luleå HF team that would go on a streak winning 7/8 championships to start their SDHL existence. The next season tragedy happens as Schelling takes a knee injury five games into her season, and doesn’t even make it out of September.
Doctors tell her she can rehab and play on it without damaging it further but that she’s going to be in a lot of pain until she gets surgery. Schelling rehabs, comes back to play five more games, finishing her SDHL regular season with a ridiculous 0.963 SV%. She finishes third in GSAA (13.518) despite only playing 10 games, never posts a start below a Quality Start, and loses in the semi-final to the eventual SDHL Champion Djurgårdens despite having a 0.946 SV% in the playoffs. Oh, and during all that Schelling made a quick stop at the Olympic Qualifiers to go 3-0 with a 0.941 SV% to send Switzerland to the 2018 Olympics.
In her last SDHL season Schelling would leave with a BANG! She set four single season records of only which one has been beaten. The beaten record was highest GSAA, which Schelling set at 29.326 and was only beaten in 2020/21 by Stephanie Neatby with a 30.355 GSAA. The three records still remaining are most wins in a season (27), most shutouts in a season (10), and highest GSAA/30 while playing in +30 games (1.046) in season.
Unfortunately for Schelling, she never got that SDHL Championship. Linköping made it to the Final against Luleå for the second time in three years and lost in three games (series was a best two-of-three). It was a wild playoffs for Schelling, who posted a 15.370 GSAA in NINE GAMES. She had four shutouts to go along with her six wins and had a crazy 0.966 SV%.
Schelling’s NCAA and SDHL career compare extremely well to the best goalies we’ve seen as well as are seeing. Kim Martin Hasson, Klára Peslarová, Aerin Frankel, and Noora Räty are goalies Schelling is either on par with or ahead of in her two noticeable stretches in the SDHL/NCAA. However, if you’re thinking this isn’t enough for the HHOF let alone to be considered one of the best, that’s more than fair. Where Schelling really makes her mark in women’s hockey history is on the international stage—specifically the WHC and Olympics.
Strap in, this is about to get fun. There are only three goalies to have been to the Olympics four times and seen game time: Kim Martin Hasson, Florence Schelling, and Noora Räty. Two goalies are tied for most wins (10) in the Olympics: Florence Schelling and Noora Räty. When it comes to career Olympic shutouts Schelling stands alone with five ahead of Kim St-Pierre and Shannon Szabados, who have four each. Most shutouts in a single Olympics is a seven-way tie of which Schelling is a part.
The records continue for Schelling. She holds the Olympic career GSAA record at 12.002 GSAA, has the most Olympic career saves at 591, and she finished in the top three of Olympic GSAA three out of her four appearances. Those three Top Three GSAA finishes are tied for most with Shannon Szabados and Kim Martin Hasson. I’ll also say it again that Schelling is still the only goalie in Olympic women’s hockey history to be named tournament MVP.
When it comes Schelling’s Olympic resume there are places where she didn’t finish first but comes close to it, such as the most Olympic games played, along with most minutes played. Those belong to Räty but Schelling is one game and ~90 minutes behind her. Schelling is also second in most wins in a single Olympics (four) tied with HHOFer Kim St-Pierre and behind Ann-Renée Desbiens. To finish off her Olympic resume, Schelling is third among goalies who have been to two Olympics or more in GSAA per an appearance at 3.001 behind Desbiens (3.120) and Szabados (3.662).
To say Schelling made an impact at the WHCs might be an understatement. As mentioned above, her first WHC was when she was 14 years old, and she was playing games! It’s not hard to imagine Schelling owning the WHC games played record with 44 games played. Curiously enough, she’s only second in WHC appearances with 10 while Swedish Sara Grahn is at 11 WHC appearances. Before the 2025 WHC she was the owner of most career WHC wins but was surpassed by Desbiens. For the people who like goalie points, Schelling holds the record for most career WHC goalie points with three.
There are more records that Schelling possesses and, mostly likely, will never be beat. Two of the records are for most top five finishes in SV% and in GSAA. Out of her 10 appearances she finished in the top five in both of those categories seven times, and remember she started her WHC career at 14yo. She finished third in GSAA (2.524) at 14yo in her first WHC. The closest active goalie to Schelling amount of top five SV%/GSAA finishes is Desbiens who has four top five SV% finishes and three top five GSAA finishes.
My personal favourite record of Schelling’s is holding the WHC career GSAA record with a 33.377 GSAA. The next closest inactive goalie is Kim St-Pierre at 28.358 GSAA in 24 games which shows why she’s in the HHOF. The closest active goalies are Anni Keisala at 12.252 GSAA in 17 games and Nicole Hensley at 8.658 GSAA in 15 games. No one is even on pace to catch her. Schelling averaged 3.338 GSAA per a WHC appearance and the next active closest is Keisala at 2.450 who is also beginning to lose WHC games to other Finnish goalies. Which goes to show how elite Schelling was in that no one was taking the starting spot from her.
I could keep going on Schelling but I can tell by this point my editors are sharpening knives and I haven’t even gotten to Szabados’ career numbers. It’s a good thing this work is all remote. At this point though it’s just hammering home a point that’s already embedded thoroughly. The amount of records Schelling holds wherever she’s been only finds other elite, future HHOF goalies to be close to her resume. There’s a real argument she’s the absolute best goalie women’s hockey as seen but at the very least saying she’s top three should be considered a cold take by this point.
Go get yourself a snack, a drink, or a nap then get ready as we tackle Shannon Szabados’ career. This is going to be shorter because Szabados has had a unique career. We’ve already went through a lot of it as she did time in the AJHL, ACAC, and SPHL, seeing a lot of success. The problem is she was the only woman to pull that off, so kind of hard to compare her to anyone. Then there’s that one year in the NWHL/PHF where she dominated, but we’ve been over that. That leaves us with Szabados’ WHC and Olympic career.
We’ll start with her WHC resume as it would be considered the weakest, but keep in mind that weakest is a relative term. Szabados made game appearances in five WHCs and was the number one goalie for each tournament. This is the best streak we’ve seen out of a Canadian goalie and impressive when you consider all the Canadian goalie talent that’s always vying for game time. She finished tied for 10th in WHC career shutouts with five but it only took her 16 starts to rack up five shutouts.
I think what impresses me the most about Szabados is how consistent she was. She was the starter for five straight WHCs and with all that pressure she only had two games below a Quality Start out of 16 starts. That’s a 0.875 QS% with the only goalie beating her being Nicole Hensley, who doesn’t have Szabados’ track record of being the undisputed number one. Szabados is also sitting nineth in career WHC GSAA (8.988) with four of the eight goalies in front of her having played more games. She’s tied with Keisala, Tamae Satsu faced over 50 shots a game in a tournament where the average SV% was 0.815, and then there’s Sami Jo Small/Zuzana Tomcikova who were great in the short amount of time they were on the ice.
Out of her five WHC appearances Szabados ended up in the top five of SV% and GSAA three times each. That’s 60% of her appearances she was at least a top five goalie in either category, putting her sixth all-time for goalies who appeared at a WHC at least three times. Szabados was never awarded top goalie or named to the tournament all-star team, surprisingly. If you’re going to point to where she was obviously snubbed it’d be the 2017 WHC. She led the tournament in GSAA (4.919), was second in SV% (0.954), tied for first in shutouts (two), and didn’t have a single start below a Quality Start.
That’s okay though because when it came to the biggest stage of them all, the Olympics, Shannon Szabados was the undisputed Queen of the Crease. She’s the only North American goalie to be the starter in three Olympics. Despite playing half of the games of Schelling, she’s right on Schelling’s tail. Szabados finished two career wins, one career shutout, and 1.015 career GSAA behind Schelling for first. I mentioned how consistent Szabados was in WHC games and she somehow turned it up a notch for the Olympics.
Szabados played nine Olympic career games in her three appearances and every single one was a Quality Start. She only has one loss at the Olympics to go with her eight wins and it came in a skills competition that is no longer the decider for Gold Medal Games because the IIHF finally realized how silly it was to decide games in a shootout. Half of Szabados’ wins are shutouts which includes the 2010 Gold Medal Game, the only time we’ve seen a shutout in an Olympic Gold Medal Game.
There’s only four goalies ahead of Szabados in career GSAA/30 (1.699) who have been to two Olympics or more and all four of them were a starting goalie for one Olympics at most. None of them had the responsibility to carry a team in the Olympics for two tournaments let alone three like Szabados did. She’s the only goalie to win two Top Goalie Olympic honours and has an All-Star team honour to boot as well. To put the stamp on Szabados’ Olympic career, she currently has the highest average GSAA per appearance at 3.662 GSAA.
We can debate all night and day about whether Schelling or Szabados had the better career. Both dominated in whatever domestic league they were in, they won a vast amount of individual awards, and on the biggest stages in women’s hockey they were the best. At the end of the day there’s no doubt that in my mind that Florence Schelling and Shannon Szabados are two of the best three goalies to ever see the ice in women’s hockey. For the record, Noora Räty rounds out the top three for me.
If the bar is Kim St-Pierre, as she’s the only goalie in women’s hockey in the HHOF, it’s been reached and long been jumped over. If this was men’s hockey the idea of leaving Patrick Roy and Dominik Hasek or Martin Brodeur out of the HHOF would be seen as reason for a mass call of resignation for the HHOF committee. These two are long overdue to be in the HHOF and there’s been zero reason to keep them out. They are top three at their position—they aren’t competing with an equal at forward or defence that’s losing them their spots. This is just ignoring history and their accomplishments. Hopefully next year we won’t be here again wondering why these two aren’t in the HHOF.