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
Hockey Has a Gigantic-Goalie Problem
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
Could not have said it better.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.
THe ice should have been made bigger 25 years ago. Nets are fine
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?