News Article: The size of the net.

[meefer]

Say what you will about the man, the myth, the legend, but Dryden writes well. I found this to be an interesting take on a discussion that has been going on for years.

Hockey Has a Gigantic-Goalie Problem

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[Stephen]

Ken Dryden's nostalgia has got it all wrong.

The goalie position has experienced a revolution in equipment and technique in the past 25-30 years and hardly resembles the game he played. This is true.

But I can appreciate there's a different beauty to the more systematic and blocking techniques of the goalies in the game today that is very different to the small, acrobatic and terribly inefficient stand up styles of the past when goalies stood on their feet, cut the angle, guessed wildly, flopped embarrassingly and did two pad stacks with their water logged deer hide goalie pads.

Yes, we have giants playing boring goaltending today, but there's a big difference between an Andrei Vasilevsiky and a Mikko Koskinen. And there's also a young generation of scorers like McDavid, Matthews, Mackinnon and Draisaitl who are beating these goalies and their big pads like stars in the 80s did vs their goalies. Because speed skating, shooting, creativity are all evolving at the same time. And an even better breed of goalie will come along after a while.

That's the nature of the game, always evolving. There's no going back to some imagined golden age.

 

[Le Cobra]

Making the net bigger would be an interesting experiment and could work in the NHL but not for minor leagues. Long gone are the days of the athletic goalies like Cujo and Hasek. Making the net bigger could see a return to that, they would need to increase the height of the net significantly more so than the width due to these giant goalies.

I feel like the NHL is in a good place so I’m not sure we need higher scoring games. Leads are doing pretty well in this department.

perhaps they can experiment with bigger nets for the all star game just for fun

 

[Stephen]

Making the net bigger would be an interesting experiment and could work in the NHL but not for minor leagues. Long gone are the days of the athletic goalies like Cujo and Hasek. Making the net bigger could see a return to that, they would need to increase the height of the net significantly more so than the width

But why? Players like McDavid and Matthews are dominating today's modern goalies and providing tons of excitement in the process. Shooters have to evolve with the times. We don't need a return to Guy Lafleur vs Dan Bouchard.

 

[Darcy Tucker]

Does any one really like Ken Dryden tho?

 

[Captain14]

Ken Dryden's nostalgia has got it all wrong.

The goalie position has experienced a revolution in equipment and technique in the past 25-30 years and hardly resembles the game he played. This is true.

But I can appreciate there's a different beauty to the more systematic and blocking techniques of the goalies in the game today that is very different to the small, acrobatic and terribly inefficient stand up styles of the past when goalies stood on their feet, cut the angle, guessed wildly, flopped embarrassingly and did two pad stacks with their water logged deer hide goalie pads.

Yes, we have giants playing boring goaltending today, but there's a big difference between an Andrei Vasilevsiky and a Mikko Koskinen. And there's also a young generation of scorers like McDavid, Matthews, Mackinnon and Draisaitl who are beating these goalies and their big pads like stars in the 80s did vs their goalies. Because speed skating, shooting, creativity are all evolving at the same time. And an even better breed of goalie will come along after a while.

That's the nature of the game, always evolving. There's no going back to some imagined golden age.

Could not have said it better.
It’s hilarious watching the goaltending styles of the 60’s and early 70’s.

 

[Mickey Marner]

No problem with league-wide goal scoring. It's been at about 6 goals per game the last few years, that's a good scoring level. I mean, Kucherov just has the most points in two decades a couple years ago, Matthews is a goal per game, McDavid is almost two points per game. Nothing's broken.

The game was a fantastic book, but Dryden's been a bit whiney ever since.

 

[ULF_55]

They could make one change to increase scoring without any cost or change.

Make goalies use a regular stick.

That was easy.

 

[ITM]

I think there's some merit in his analysis. Perhaps changes smaller than suggested. Instead of an aggregate of a foot and a half top to bottom and side to side, move parameters a few inches. Three inches on each side and six inches total would serve as a decent test model. Perhaps the same in height. The dimensions Dryden is referring to seem outlandish. Almost widening to the play to resemble soccer, and perhaps forgetting that obligating a goalie in hockey to power dive like goalkeepers in soccer would expose them to undue threat.

Stick technology and the development of better mechanics is what drives the advancement in goalie equipment, not the "The goalie is the problem. The goalie is the answer" thesis Dryden offers. Wasn't the goalie mask a reaction to improved shooting technique? Not to say that the concept wasn't contemplated previously as a necessity. But I think like any good dogma, the truth of it exists long before it's clarified and established as obligatory long before the pronouncement.

The average height, weight, strength, speed and skill of hockey players has increased and improved as a collective. If anything, perhaps what Dryden is trying to say -- and it's something I've heard from other long time fans (friends of mine) -- is that the game has become so fast as to remove a certain intangible quality from it's identity. I might call it anticipated suspense. There seemed to be a slower build up, more interruptions that punctuated plays and provided moments of question until the play was broken up and pushed through to goal. Not that I can't continue to follow the play (and speaking for those friends) or they can't. But it seems at times, less dramatic? Don't know if that's a function of systems simply being too effective, athletes being too strong and fast, but there's a depth of character and individual style ebbing that increased speed would obviously have a negative impact on.

Increasing dimensions (slightly) might accent the game in a favourable light, but to that possibility, it's not like the current Swedish Elite League is more of an attractive possibility than the current NHL, C-19 notwithstanding. Can't see how the goalie is the answer absent the rest of the game also supplementing the answer. But I get his frustration, just curious is to how he misses the forest for the trees here.

Then again we live in an age measured in dramatic fashion by increase in increment...Who knows...

 

[Stephen]

If Ken Dryden is trying to turn back the clock to a Boom Boom Geoffrion vs Johnny Bower or a Guy Lafleur vs Dan Bouchard type of interaction, it's a lost cause. The game has always evolved on the arms race between speed, skill, shooting, passing and thinking of players vs goaltending technique and equipment, and that balance of systematic technique and athleticism.

I don't want to see little acrobatic fools dancing in the crease when I know there are more evolved forms of goaltending. I want to see guys like McDavid and Matthews pushing the envelope on what is possible for a shooter to do with a puck, and I want to see Hart and Askarov come up with a way to stop them.

For such a student of the game, he's really gotten lost in what it means for the game to change and evolve.

 

[RogerR]

THe ice should have been made bigger 25 years ago. Nets are fine

 

[Stephen]

THe ice should have been made bigger 25 years ago. Nets are fine

When I watch next generation players like Matthews, Mackinnon, McDavid, Draisaitl, Makar, Hughes, Rantanen, Aho, Pastrnak, Eichel, Barzal, Point making highlight reel plays every game and scoring at a late 80s and early 90s clip, I feel like everything is right with the game. Haven't felt this impressed with the level of high end talent in the game for a long time. Just call the obstruction penalties, protect the stars and everything will work out. There's no justification to knee cap the goalie position to bring the game back to some imagined ideal past.

 

[meefer]

I'm happy to see the discussions here, some interesting takes. I'll ask: what do you make of his view that increasing net size will impact the amount of goals that are scored from further outside the 'dirty' area that so many talk about, and that by doing so, the defense will be forced to expand it's area of concern, thus reducing the 'collapse' to the net posture so many teams take (see Columbus v Leafs last year)? Does it allow the more talented a greater opportunity to use their skills in ways we all enjoy?

 

[Stephen]

I'm happy to see the discussions here, some interesting takes. I'll ask: what do you make of his view that increasing net size will impact the amount of goals that are scored from further outside the 'dirty' area that so many talk about, and that by doing so, the defense will be forced to expand it's area of concern, thus reducing the 'collapse' to the net posture so many teams take (see Columbus v Leafs last year)? Does it allow the more talented a greater opportunity to use their skills in ways we all enjoy?

Ken Dryden's formative emotional experiences with the game are from a different era than the kids playing it at the highest level today, and the way he played the game at the highest level bears little resemblance to the way goalies play today. So whether he's consciously aware of it or not, it seems like his intellectual foundation is to bring the game back in alignment to "when it was good" to bring back the visuals of an acrobatic little goalie playing free. I think he's completely out to lunch.

I was a kid in the early 90s and my reference points are all different from Ken Dryden's. The first thing that attracted me to the game was the way Felix Potvin played his hybrid butterfly game. Beautiful equipment, amazing cat like reflexes, paddle down, hybrid butterfly style and cool as a cucumber under playoff pressure. I fell in love with that whole generation of goalies. Joseph, Brodeur, Roy, Hasek, Belfour, etc. Thought all the guys playing the game in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were out to lunch.

Then over the years, the equipment got massive during the Dead Puck Era. J-S Giguere was unbeatable in 2003 and people accused him of being a Michellin man making a mockery of the game. He just sat back and let the play come to him, let the puck disappear in his equipment. Then the lockout happened and the league started policing obstruction calls and the salary cap made the game younger, faster. They policed equipment sizes. Scoring went up again.

And the goalies got bigger. Seems like in the 2010s, every team had a 6'4"+ monster in net who could block systematically, who could improvise with Hasek-like emergency moves. They certainly weren't playing a stand up style anymore or guessingly wildly on routine plays or beat by slap shots from far out. But we also saw the game speed up and more skill introduced to the game year after year.

What's important is there's an arms race between goaltending and scoring and things are constantly evolving. You don't see a lot of Guy Lafleur style low slap shots going in off the rush, but what about an Ovechkin rip from the faceoff dot? They weren't scoring like that in the 70s.

The game is in as good shape as it's been in 25 years, so this is a weird time for Dryden to be diagnosing this 'problem.'