Stand up goalie

[AndreRoy]

Dominic Hasek was perhaps the latest one to play with unorthodox style. Hopefully there will be another like him soon.

The Lightning had a backup goalie (Nabokov) a while back who played stand up. Nowhere near Hasek’s level of course, but more recent.

 

[nabby12]

The Lightning had a backup goalie (Nabokov) a while back who played stand up. Nowhere near Hasek’s level of course, but more recent.

Correction: The Sharks had a top-5 starting goalie in the NHL for ten years who played hybrid (Nabokov).

The level of disrespect is unbelievable.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Ban the rotating pads and things get at least a little bit more interesting.

This is pretty much what it comes down to. Under current conditions, butterfly is simply the superior style. For it to be unseated, we would need to see some sort of rule change — equipment bans, bigger nets, something.

 

[AndreRoy]

Correction: The Sharks had a top-5 starting goalie in the NHL for ten years who played hybrid (Nabokov).

The level of disrespect is unbelievable.

I referred to his time as a backup with the Lightning because I mistakenly thought that his days in San Jose didn’t outlast Hasek’s NHL career; however looking it up it seems I was wrong about that. No disrespect intended.

 

[Sinistril]

Goalie technique doesn't have much room for improvement, pads are light as feathers now, goalies are becoming NBA sized... Are we at peak goaltending?

 

[Bluesguru]

I don't think so. And what if goalie makes a butterfly save - his rebound control will also be bad.

Look at the NYI win today, the goalie flopped just a bit exposing a 5" at the crossbar. The goalie also has to play the odds on the kind of shot is coming. If the shooter has no angle to shoot as width-wise, why flop down even a little? - like today's gwg.


Todays snipers can hit that small high opening 7 / 10 shots.

That’s exactly what I’m trying to convey.

 

[OscarsCards]

A standup goalie could only try a standup comedy but I doubt it would be even funny.

 

[The S5]

Will there ever be a goalie that has the guts to buck the trend and be a stand up goalie? Not saying 100% like the old days, but there are so many short side goals where guys pick the top corner. Standing up would take those away. A goalie who is special. Someone cerebral and knows when to stand upright and has great reflexes, could really be special IMO.

And it would open up pucks along, or very close to, the ice to sneak in. Pick your poison.
Used to be stick side along the ice was most goalies weak spot. That is gone by way of the butterfly. Now, its bar down. It takes more skill to elevate the puck in tight than it does to slide it along the ice. Plus, most goalies today are much bigger, not considering new equipment, that those playing in the standup era. It allows them to more effectively cover the top of the goal from their knees.

 

[SML2]

The way equipment is made now makes this as ridiculous as entering a horse drawn carriage in the Indy 500. Prior to the Airlite pads in the late 80s, pads were leather and deer hair. Goalies stood up because the pads got heavier as they got wet. If you made a pad the size of today's with those materials your goalie would be lucky if he could stand up by the second period if he played butterfly. The change in equipment allowed the butterfly to succeed. It's the reason you never saw a 6'6" goalie back in the day. The position was all reaction and way less technique.

 

[jkrdevil]

No. The main reason why goalie used to use a stand up style was to protect their head because the masks absorbed impact and didn’t really protect much (or the didn’t wear one going back to the old old days).

Butterfly/hybrid styles protect more of the net, and modern masks are made to deflect away a shots energy.

 

[tsujimoto74]

Ban the rotating pads and things get at least a little bit more interesting.

Yeah, it's hard to imagine any meaningful innovation at the position unless the equipment changes first.

 

[slikki]

Will there ever be a goalie that has the guts to buck the trend and be a stand up goalie? Not saying 100% like the old days, but there are so many short side goals where guys pick the top corner. Standing up would take those away. A goalie who is special. Someone cerebral and knows when to stand upright and has great reflexes, could really be special IMO.

You do realize it is easier to shoot down than up

 

[Eisen]

They don't use the butterfly for shits and giggles. It works at stopping pucks. Not sure why a goalie would intentionally handicap his own performance.

True, but not so long ago, Brodeur did quite well. It's possible, but it seems harder.

 

[Eisen]

So take away the top corners only to let in a dribbler along the ice through the 5hole.

If I could get a dime everytime a goalie heard a shot, drops on his knees, only to be beaten in the top corners. Sure, the numbers for low shots are higher, but still.

 

[Eisen]

Ban the rotating pads and things get at least a little bit more interesting.

That would either raise scoring a lot or would force goalies to retire in their twenties.

 

[nergish]

It really was quite a thrill learning to tend goal in the era where butterfly was still considered a secret weapon.

I wore pads that were intended for standup goaltending, but wore the lower straps (boot to calf) super tight and the upper straps super loose. Voila, pads form a nice flat face butterfly instead of facedown on the ice.
It amazed me that I had this figured out at 12 years old and some NHLers still had the largest surface area of their gear facing the freaking ice.

I went to goalie clinics/camps, and a few of them tried to push antiquated techniques. But it was so obvious to see where the position was going.
We have mainly Patrick Roy to thank for the butterfly technique as we now understand it, but somehow it took 10 years for the rest of the world to fully grasp what he was doing.

 

[Fig]

I feel like everything ranging from Trapezoid rules, systems teams run and equipment/butterfly style all basically allude to the same thing: Stay in the net, don't move.

I honestly think the Trapezoid might be one of the bigger things over equipment size in getting goalies to stop acting like a totem pole.

For a minute I was thinking about goalie who works in entertainment industry.

Bryz?

 

[Muikea Bulju]

There were good reasons why they used to stand up

There was pretty much a "rule" that you shouldn't go to your knees:

1) the leather pads etc would suck up the water from the ice, becoming extremely heavy by the end of the game

2) no face protection, or bad protection: going to your knees left your head below the bar, thus making it prime target for shots

The butterfly came only after the better goalie masks & plastic foam pads became a thing in the 80s

 

[Michel Beauchamp]

Will there ever be a goalie that has the guts to buck the trend and be a stand up goalie? Not saying 100% like the old days, but there are so many short side goals where guys pick the top corner. Standing up would take those away. A goalie who is special. Someone cerebral and knows when to stand upright and has great reflexes, could really be special IMO.

You really want to go back to the good old Gilles Villemure's days ?

 

[blundluntman]

I don't think there's really any good reason to play standup nowadays. I'd pay good money to see a goalie pull it off and put up decent numbers but I doubt anybody would be allowed to play that way as funny as it sounds to say.

 

[notDatsyuk]

They are actually a bit more standup, or hybrid if you prefer, now than a few years ago. Now that they have cut down, even by a bit, the chest/ shoulder pads, the butterfly is exposing more of the top corners.

If you ever played wearing the old leather and horsehair pads, as I have, you know why we didn't go down much. Those pads weighed a ton even before they soaked up water, and they weren't designed for sliding post to post.

Near the end of my playing days I borrowed my son's pads and gloves for a game. The difference in weight (his pads and gloves combined weighed about the same a one of my pads), and what I could do in them, was amazing.

 

[SotasicA]

We'd see more standup or hybrid style goalies if they took away the rotating pads.

To make pad saves, you'd have to be upright. Or stack them.

 

[SotasicA]

I think to increase scoring, you should make minimum age for NHL goalie 50 years. Like senior tour golfers.

They could still play a decade or so.

 

[saintunspecified]

The comparison between the successes of Nabokov vs Giguere says it all. Nabokov was this extraordinary athlete. Giguere got in the right place. Giguere had the better career.

 

[Richard]

Ban the rotating pads and things get at least a little bit more interesting.

This 100%.

You don't even have to turn your legs, you push down and the pads rotate with a second level a padding above the knees.

Kinda ridiculous.