Ken Dryden - Hockey Has a Gigantic-Goalie Problem

[ole ole]

Long article, summary?

Goalies are not good enough they need bigger equipment to help stop the puck.

 

[torniojaws]

Has there been a season where goalies never had bad games? Even top tier goalies have bad games.

Not ~50 % of the games they started.

 

[razor8]

Goalies are not good enough they need bigger equipment to help stop the puck.

Yeah, well maybe players should go back to smoking two packs of cigarettes every day and drinking beer in the locker rooms. Maybe then goalies wouldn't need bigger pads. Just a thought...

 

[Hynh]

I think the latest round of reductions has got goalies to a good place. Defensive schemes are more damaging IMO, especially the ones built on daring the refs to make constant soft calls.

That looks like lots of room. Look at the Oilers insatgram. Best camera I have seen. It shows JP going in on Helly basically at ice level. I as shocked at how much there was to shoot at with Helly looking so big too

Note the stick left by RNH right before Puljujarvi shoots. Without that there is no goal, even with that much space

 

[Rosy Cheeks]

It would make the sport more exciting if goalie athleticism got favored more and positioning/coverage got favored less.

I think this is a separate issue than amount of goals scored.

Sometimes we focus too much on symptoms instead of the underlying problems and sometimes results of change are counterintuitive so I decline to suggest certain problems or fixes.

 

[DickSmehlik]

Dryden is not wrong.

So much of goaltending nowadays is make yourself big as possible and pray the puck hits you.

Adding a couple of extra inches to the net would force goaltenders to actually play their positions, like Hasek excelled at.

 

[nhlfan9191]

Yes, if those were the "only" games. But those kind of statistics have been going on this entire season, even for "good" goalies. Carey Price has had .821, Bobrovski had .854, Juuse Saros had .792 (and below .853 for four games in a row), Vasilevski had .857, MAF had .826, and so on. And it's not just one game each - almost half their games have been total garbage statistics-wise, being mid-850 or even lower that is not good enough even for AHL.

If they worked in corporate world, they would have been fired a long time ago.

What a stupid argument. Goaltending is a specialized position. This is like saying McDavid had no points and was a -1 and that play is unacceptable even for an minor leaguer. They’re going to have bad games. Sample sizes are what matter for goalies. And even then, it’s more complicated then that.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

 

[HockeyHistorian]

Dryden wants smaller goalie equipment. He basically says the game is fast and beautiful but goalies are just huge with purpose built equipment to cover as much net as possible, who’s entire strategy revolves around net coverage instead of reflexes like it did before.

As long as the goalies are safe, I'm all for making their equipment smaller all around. It should be easy to do.

The last thing I want to see is that they make the nets bigger. I hope I never see that. It changes the whole aesthetic of the game too much.

 

[Woncka]

Completely agree either decrease goalies equipment or increase net size. Sometimes when they show POV of shooters there is almost no way to score.

Its not like we have A dead puck era going

 

[OKR]

I don’t really care about the pads, but if they need to make something smaller it’s the chest protector. There are goalies who literally look like they’re hiding a dinner table under their jerseys. Khudobin atleast used to be perfect example, he is about as wide as he is long with it.

 

[Five Alarm Fire]

I've never felt this was a problem. The league has a good amount of goal scoring right now, and whenever we go into a drought it usually has more to do with defensive systems and how penalties are enforced than goaltending.

Despite the equipment there is still clearly a skill gap amongst the league's goaltenders.

 

[WaveRaven]

The garbage can lid glove is ridiculous.

 

[Ukkosenjumala]

Odd timing for this considering scoring is up quite a bit in the last years. I believe one factor that contributed to a problem for a while was the lack of talent in the NHL for the most part while goalies kept increasing in size. It's not that long ago that NHL was still littered with all kinds of garbage players and enforcers even. Now with a massive influx of young talent along with minor changes to equipment, a corner seems to have been turned.

As for basketball, you could very well say they traded one extreme for the other. There's a ton of veteran bball fans that view modern basketball as trash due to the 3 or nothing approach, foul baiting and lack of defence that comes with NBAs conscius decision to make the game more offense friendly via certain kind of refereeing.

 

[ES]

The 1970s equipment makes Ken Dryden look bigger. Both Dryden and Connor Hellebuyck are listed as 6'4"

 

[Cotton]

Dryden wants smaller goalie equipment. He basically says the game is fast and beautiful but goalies are just huge with purpose built equipment to cover as much net as possible, who’s entire strategy revolves around net coverage instead of reflexes like it did before.

The goalies will counter by bringing up the sticks; Wood sticks didn’t make everybody’s shot harder and faster.

Make both changes (Sticks/goalie equipment).

 

[Just Linda]

I think the era of composite sticks and Ovi/Matthews snipers killed athletic saves. Half the goals you see nowadays are ones where the goalie has no chance to react on. Goalies have become essentially position machines. Whereas Dryden goalies were good or bad based off athleticism and reflex, modern goalies are good based on puck tracking and rebound control.

 

[razor8]

Yeah, the game has changed "a bit" since Dryden's days. I mean come on, looking at his highlights it looks like a completely different game back then.

 

[DustyMartellaughs]

Dryden was a great goalie. He is also a pompous ass, and comparing eras of goaltending is ridiculous. Put out the skaters of 1972 in the equipment they wore with the sticks they used against the goalies of today and the goalies would excel. Put out the skaters of today and their sticks against the goalies of 1970 and they too would excel.
The argument that goalies today are too big belies the fact that everything about the game has changed.

 

[DustyMartellaughs]

Yeah, the game has changed "a bit" since Dryden's days. I mean come on, looking at his highlights it looks like a completely different game back then.

Beat me to it.

 

[Chimpradamus]

Dryden wants smaller goalie equipment. He basically says the game is fast and beautiful but goalies are just huge with purpose built equipment to cover as much net as possible, who’s entire strategy revolves around net coverage instead of reflexes like it did before.

Well, to be fair to the goalies, it's basically impossible to save pucks with your reflexes today. The players can just shoot ridiculously fast shots. So if the equipment gets smaller, how about banning those flex sticks and go back to wooden sticks?

There's no problem with the scoring in hockey today, but goalies are basically forced to play positionally and get hit, because they can't make reflex saves that much.

 

[TOGuy14]

Doesn’t change the fact he wore equipment that was huge for his size. Giguere pre lockout was the worst IMO.

 

[Offseason Champs]

What a stupid argument. Goaltending is a specialized position. This is like saying McDavid had no points and was a -1 and that play is unacceptable even for an minor leaguer. They’re going to have bad games. Sample sizes are what matter for goalies. And even then, it’s more complicated then that.

Hard agree. It’s important to note that a goalie who gives up 3 goals on 27 shots has an under 900 save percentage. Because that’s how percentages work. Giving up 3 goals is not the most uncommon thing in the world. Like even 3 goals allowed on 30 shots is .900 which is considered low when it’s your aggregate. Save percentage for a game is, in my opinion, a really silly stat. You need a larger sample size because it tells a more complete story about the quality of a goalie. If you get lit up for four or five goals in a game you would have needed to make 45 saves to hit .900 basically as soon as four goals are in the likelihood of a good save percentage are near zero. It doesn’t tell you anything other than oh, they had a bad game.

 

[TheOtherOne]

Guys, without reading the article, this is just the same old, tired, rerun of the "goalie pads are too big" argument we've been having forever.

Atlantic articles are generally very good and this one is quite interesting and easy to read. If you were gonna read 10+ pages of shitposts in this thread anyway, just read the article instead. It's worth it.

 

[LakeLivin]

The garbage can lid glove is ridiculous.

This. If the glove below was good enough for Gump . . .

Ok, maybe a little bit bigger, but no need for the fishing net size used today.