The Striking Similarities between Martin Brodeur and Robert De Niro

With Dirty Grandpa hitting theaters this week, a film that somehow doesn't involve Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass gang, one thing has become abundantly clear: the end of an legendary actor's career can be just as depressing as the end of a legendary hockey player's career.

Once a titan of the film industry and the winner of more awards than most actors dream about, 72-year-old Robert De Niro is starring alongside Zac Efron in a movie that isn't being screened for critics, a sure sign the studio doesn't want anyone reviewing it.

De Niro, a goliath in his profession, is now making everyone cringe and weep whenever he is plying his craft in front of a camera.

Then it hit me.

Robert De Niro is Martin Brodeur.

Splashes onto the scene, fast rises, years of dominance and accolades during Hall of Fame careers, then conclusions that made everyone wonder about the costly nature of their divorces. "With all his money and stature, why would he ever subject himself to that?" is a question that unifies Brodeur and De Niro.

Do the Brodeur/De Niro connections go deeper than just their Dirty Grandpa/St. Louis Blues days? There's only one way to find out for sure.

Both Brodeur and De Niro have been powerful earners throughout their careers although it's impossible to pin down dollars on an actor. De Niro, according to the web site The Richest, has a net worth of $150 million while Brodeur earned $82 million. That's quite the disparity.

But when you consider that De Niro's career has lasted 50 years and Brodeur's only spanned 22 years and the wildly different salaries available in the NHL and Hollywood, the gap doesn't seem all that big. If Brodeur could have played another 30 years—and if he could have, he would have—the dollars earned between the two would be much closer.

According to a 2014 Hockey News article, with the aid of the late, great CapGeek, Brodeur was ranked eighth among all-time NHL earners. With CapGeek proprietor Matthew Wuest having shut down the site before his death in 2015, General Fanager has carried the torch quite well.

Using Spotrac's numbers, there are 19 current players (Zach Parise, Ryan Suter, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Shea Weber, Brad Richards, Jarome Iginla, Joe Thornton, Marian Hossa, Brent Seabrook, Anze Kopitar, Zdeno Chara, Evgeni Malkin, Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Henrik Zetterberg, Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, Henrik Lundqvist) that have either earned more than that or have contracts that will push them above $82 million by the time they expire. There are also nine players (Claude Giroux, P.K. Subban, Vladimir Tarasenko, Kris Letang, Eric Staal, Drew Doughty, Bobby Ryan, Erik Karlsson, Alex Pietrangelo) that will undoubtedly eclipse the $82-million mark with their next contract.

That leaves Brodeur as the 36th-richest player, in terms of on-ice earnings, in NHL history.

De Niro's $150 million net worth ranks him 34th in the history of entertainment. Just like Brodeur, there was a time when De Niro ranked much higher, but the inflated salaries of the younger generation have slowly overtaken De Niro's numbers.

Think of it like this: Giroux will out-earn Brodeur by the time his career is over despite not being the same caliber of player, just like Scott Speedman isn't the same caliber of actor as De Niro yet is already ahead of him in net worth because he starred in a werewolf/vampire movie saga.

Their elite statuses in their fields along with rising salaries have left Brodeur and De Niro at right about the same spot dollars-wise among their peers.

De Niro, Individual:

• Two Oscars as Best Actor (one leading, one supporting).

• Four other Oscar nominations for Best Actor, one Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor (seven total nominations).

• Nominated for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles by BAFTA.

Brodeur, Individual:

• Four Vezinas as Best Goaltender.

• Five other Vezina nominations for Best Goaltender (nine total nominations).

• Won Calder Trophy As Best Newcomer to the NHL.

De Niro, Team:

• Starred in two Best Picture winners (The Deer Hunter, Godfather Part II) and five other Best Picture nominees (GoodFellas, The Deer Hunter, Silver Linings Playbook, Awakenings). That's seven trips to the finals, if you will.

• Uncredited in American Hustle.

Brodeur, team:

• Starred in three Stanley Cup wins and was a finalist twice more. Won two Olympic gold medals. That's seven trips to the finals, if you will.

• Probably should have been uncredited in 2010 Olympics.

Al Pacino and De Niro never appeared on screen together for nearly three decades of their overlapping careers. Yes, they were both in the Godfather Part II, but their storylines took place in completely different time periods. Years and years went past before they eventually shared a scene in a legendary film.

In Heat, it happens. Pacino and De Niro sit down at a diner and there's intense dialogue about feeling heat coming around corners and not hesitating to take the other one out. It's hard to explain to anyone that wasn't an adult in 1995, but this was like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga collaborating on a dating app that… look, I don't know how to explain this to young people, but these were two of the greatest actors of all time going at it for the first time.

Enter Martin Brodeur vs. Patrick Roy in the 2000 Stanley Cup Final.

It was Colorado Avalanche versus the New Jersey Devils, arguably the two best teams of the era, going at it with the two best goaltenders to ever play the game. And just like the way Pacino put bullets into De Niro's torso as he was making his airport getaway in the last scene, Roy took down Brodeur a few miles from an airport in Game 6 and eventually claimed victory in their final game.

With these men at the peak of their powers, Brodeur and Roy, De Niro and Pacino, they delivered performances no one will ever forget that ended with Brodeur and De Niro coming out on the losing side.

From 1974-80, De Niro was electric. He was part of two Oscar-winning movies—the Godfather Part II and The Deer Hunter — and won Best Actor for Raging Bull and Supporting Actor for Godfather Part II. He also was nominated for Best Actor for Taxi Driver.

From 2000 to 2004, Brodeur was electric. He was part of two championship-winning teams—the 2000 and 2003 Devils—and won the Vezina Trophy in 2003 and 2004. He was also a Vezina finalist in 2001.

De Niro starred in Best Picture winners at 31 and 34.

Brodeur won his final two Stanley Cups at 27 and 30.

There figured to be plenty of good years left for them after that. And they had moments, but that was about it.

De Niro had Midnight Run, the Untouchables and Goodfellas; Brodeur had three more Vezina wins, an Olympic gold medal and a run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2012 (he fell two wins short). It's not as though they just completely fell off a cliff after their final Best Picture and Stanley Cup wins.

Brodeur won his final two Vezinas at age 34 and 35; De Niro won his acting Oscars at age 32 and 38.

Brodeur was a Vezina finalist for the final time at age 37; De Niro was last a nominee for Best Actor at age 49.

While it's tough to pinpoint the exact age correlation between acting and goaltending and when a noticeable decline begins, only 20 of 84 Best Actor winners have been age 50 or older and three goaltenders over the age of 37 have ever won a Vezina. It's almost more difficult watching De Niro's decline because his physical acumen doesn't prevent him from doing his job well the way Brodeur's did.

While Brodeur plodded along for seven years after winning his final Vezina, De Niro has been doing much of the same for the past seven years of his career. Both of their final acts ended in ways many of us will attempt to forget but never will.

Despite years of success and riches that allowed both to pick and choose roles in only the most discerning of ways, Brodeur and De Niro instead acted like starving artists desperate for another paycheck for reasons no one can ever fully understand.

Over Brodeur's final four seasons in New Jersey he posted save percentages of .903, .908, .901 and .901, and made one trip to a Stanley Cup Final.

De Niro's four most recent movies before Dirty Grandpa: Grudge Match, The Intern, Joy and Heist, with Joy not quite being Oscar-worthy but it was nominated for a Golden Globe. Grudge Match was the equivalent of an .823 save percentage.

The 2012 run and Joy were the same in that they were great but we all knew how they were going to end; the Devils were destined to get mauled by the Los Angeles Kings the way Joy was never going to beat a Leonardo DiCaprio movie in which he gets mauled by a bear.

But the saddest part is what brought us here: Dirty Grandpa and one month with the St. Louis Blues.

When Brodeur signed with the Blues, nobody understood why. Yet there it was. It looked like Brodeur. It seemed like Brodeur. But it was instead this heavier version of Brodeur flopping around in conditions that did not suit him and, more confusingly, he did not need. If that's not a shirtless De Niro bumbling around next to Efron in these Dirty Grandpa commercials, what is?

Brodeur had won everything a goaltender could win and had enough money to have generations of his family set for life. He could have walked away from his role as a superstar backstop and done anything else he wanted. Coach. Front-office guy. Bi-lingual TV guy. He could have reinvented himself in nearly any way he could imagine.

The same could be said for De Niro. Why would he do this? Why would they do this?

Brodeur and De Niro are kindred spirits. De Niro is giving us the blues with Dirty Grandpa in 2016 one year after Brodeur gave us all the blues with the Blues.