The downfall of Finnish NHL goaltending (spoiler: the future looks pretty bleak)

[gritdash60]

Hilarious thread. It starts with 14 goalies got a start from Finland, which is so ridiculous, 14 goalies from Finland? Do people understand how f***ing much that is from a country with 5,5mil people?

And then goes to say "next season it's only 8 or 9" lol.

If there is more than 5 goalies getting a game in the NHL we are still punching above our weight in terms of population/registered players.

Edit: shit i think if we get above 2 goalies that get meaningful time in the NHL, we are doing above expected in terms of active players.

 

[Svedu]

Well...

UPL looks to be hella strong nowadays and the Sabres most important player if you ask me. Has starting to live to his potential. I've seen a couple o 6 games earlier this year and he was always pretty damn good even if Power and actually sometimes Dahlin and especially the whole team and their structure did look horrendous in their own zone at times. That says how strong of a season he's having.

Annunen hasn't disappointed anyone. Quite the contrary, I wasn't as sure on him as UPL and now we seem to have two big goaltenders who could join Saros.
Blomqvist isn't looking too shabby in the AHL as well.

Imagine, Rinne and Rask are now gone and we only had Saros and all of a sudden our goaltenders seem to be on the rise again with two other guys eventually replacing them.
No, Finlands biggest problems are and will keep on being defenders for at least a couple of years down the road.

 

[FiLe]

Gonna toot my own horn, but yeah, over the last three years things have pretty much progressed as I laid out in this post. The well was looking a bit dry when this thread was opened because amongst the prospects born in the first half of the 90s there was not a single elite goalie. But we had a plenty of solid talent born in the latter half and onwards - and now that talent has matured (once again, goalies hit their prime later than skaters), so things are looking better again.

 

[JabbaJabba]

Yeah, it looks like things are turning around for the better with Luukkonen and Annunen leading the way. Too bad we didn't get to see Blomqvist in action, he's another one I have faith in.