Re-thinking goalie gear (or why it’s premature to make the nets bigger)

Ottawa Citizen:

This player has specific beefs: the fat layers of kneepads most NHL keepers are now using, and the thick flaps that stick out whenever they drop to their knees.

“It basically eliminates the five-hole,” he says. “There’s no reason they have to be that big.”

The novelty here is not the subject, it’s the person complaining.

He is Marty Turco. GOALIE.

Turco’s job is to keep pucks out. But he also cares deeply about the game, and believes the league needs more pucks going in. Unlike many keepers who shriek in terror at the thought of more equipment shrinkage, Turco is open to the idea…As long as it is in the right places. And for him, that means those darn kneepads and flaps.

“The problem is a lot of the guys wear a pad under their socks, and then another one over their socks. So when they go down, they are several inches higher. Then you have these flaps which are like putting a board in front of the five-hole.”

He told the NHL’s Competition Committee in the summer that all this extra knee “protection” was excessive. Nothing came of it.

Turco wears some of this padding himself, but keeps it much smaller so he can move around better. Just watch the highlights and compare the size of his stuff to, say, J.S Giguere, who still looks like a float in the Macy’s Parade.

This issue has been a continuing debate here between myself and Laurie (my resident retired goalie), after I broached the idea that maybe larger nets might not be a bad idea. I survived that discussion, but only barely. both of us agree in general, though, that the league has to take a close look at the equipment before even considering changing the net — if only because the goaltenders have shown a significant tendency toward adapting to changes, and I’m just not convinced at this point that a change to net size will have a significant AND LASTING effect on the game.

I do believe that if we can’t fix the balance between goalie and skater in the game any other way, though, that it has to be considered and experimented with.

One of the things I’ve been doing recently (thank you, NHL channel) is watching some of the classic games — Billy Smith, Bernie Parent, etc, with a specific look at how the game has changed in the last 30 years or so, and what that might mean to how we need to think about improving it today.

It is amazing just how different goaltending is today. I’m not criticizing goalies of earlier eras in any way here — but the position is just radically different than it was. Not just in terms of equipment, but in all aspects.

You can break those changes down into three key aspects:

o Gear

o Conditioning

o Technique

The difference in player conditioning from 30 years ago is stunning, not just for goalies, but for all players. In our collection, we have a book published by Tommy Woodcock (see footnote 1) (then in St. Louis, later in San Jose), “Hockey from the Ice Up”, published in 1973. It was in its way a look at state of the art in player conditioning — and discussed not allowing players water on the bench or between periods. Instead, if they really need something, consider oranqe quarters. Goalie conditioning was at about the same level as player conditioning — good for its day, but lightyears behind what players today do. Goalies today are faster, stronger, taller, heavier and more flexible and mobile than their peers 30 years ago.

Goalie gear and technique go hand in hand (or glove in blocker); watch games from 30 years ago, and what do you see? Goalies that stand up instead of butterfly — but even more critical to me, goalies that are trying to block shots with their pads, not their bodies (and goalie masks were still in their infancy, the thought a goalie might actually use his head voluntarily would be insane. Today, insane goalies DO that. If you watch these classic games — and we’re talking about Cup Final series games here, supposedly the best of the best of the time — you don’t see goalies getting in front of a shot, you see goalies trying to get the shot on a blocker or a leg pad. the chest as a barrier just doesn’t seem to be a primary technique. What that means is that even ignoring equipment size and player size the “holes” were much larger, because goalies were primarily stopping pucks with their arms and legs, not their entire body.

The pads of 30 years ago were much heavier than today’s gear — 35 pounds or more, while at the same time smaller. Pads of those days also sucked up moisture, so it wouldn’t be at all unusual for them to weigh 10 pounds heavier at game end than game start. Those issues alone make a goalie of 30 years ago less mobile than one today; you try stopping a shot with a 6 or 7 pound blocker instead of a 3 pounder, especially after 50 minutes of play…

Wind the clock forward to today, what do you have? Well, goalies have adopted the butterfly, or a modified butterfly, in huge numbers. Goalies now have coaches (an innovation of the last ten years), and coaches have video; 30 years ago, when a goalie’s game went sideways, either he figured it out himself, or if he was lucky, the spare goalie or some coach might have some suggestions. Today, every shot, every rebound, every interaction is caught on video in numerous angles, and evaluated endlessly between games.

Throw in the improved gear — especially chest gear where a player can now take a Iafrate slap shot to the sternum and barely feel it — adn suddenly a player isn’t trying to get past a goalie’s leg pads, you have a goalie where the entire body’s become a wall of steel. (digression: the day I realized we had to fix goalie gear is easy for me to remember: I was listening to Bryan Hayward on XM being interviewed, and he was talking about a conversation he had with a current goalie about gear, and the goalie said “you can’t reduce the gear, I might get a bruise!”; we’ve come a LONG way from Jaques Plante and his half an inch of upholstery foam underneath his jersey, folks…).

So 30 years ago, a shot comes from the point, and Pete Peeters tries to kick it into the corner. He’s standing up, a good part of the goal is available for a well-placed shot, both along the ice and up high.

Today, J.S. Guiguiere drops to the ice and splays his legs out. His pads close out the five hole (when tony Esposito tried putting netting between his legs, the league slapped him. today, current pad technology makes that hack look — quaint. Patrick Roy was a master at building flaps into his gear that sat flat to meet league specs, but which magically stood out at attention in use to close off holes and turn him into a fortress; he was a hell of a goalie, but he was also a master of stretching the rules on gear…). Evgeny Nabokov and Marty Turco aren’t trying to stop a puck with their blocker, they stand square to the shooter and happily take it off the chest. They have coaches that get their positioning down to inches, and since they’re low to the ice, a shooter simply has NO place to put the puck, unless it’s a perfect shot and in the upper half of the net. There IS no hole for a low shot any more.

And, of course, goalies ARE bigger. So is their gear. And their gear is lighter, but beyond that, it’s not absorbent, so instead of 35 pounds of gear that’s 45 in the third period, it’s 20 pounds of gear that’s 20 pounds in the third. And the improved gear makes goalies fearless, even to the point of sometimes using their head to voluntarily stop pucks (which I still think is insane, but then, goalies are, right?)

And that’s given the goalies a huge advantage, and there’s really nothing a shooter can do today to even that out. If there’s no hole to shoot at, it doesn’t matter, and that’s where we’re headed in this game. The only way to score is by getting the goalie moving and forcing a hole open — the days of Mike Bossy or Bobby Orr picking a corner from the point are simply gone (and I haven’t even started with defensemen going whole hog into shot blocking — Craig Ludwig, what have you done? — it’s not a goalie you have to shoot through, it’s three, or four).

So, what to do? Larger nets is one option; frankly, I’m willing to consider it given how much more territory of the open net a goalie can cover today. but first, I want to see the league rethink goalie gear.

We aren’t going back to the days of goalies being the worst skater or smallest body on the team, team’s understand just how key goalies are to success now, you can’t legislate them to unlearn that. you can’t force goalies to not train, to not watch video, to not be coached, to not butterfly (even if you wanted to, which I don’t).

But you can make a decision that the pads are there to protect the goalie, and not to stop the puck; put the burden of stopping the puck BACK on the goalie and less on the goalie being something you hang these massive pads on.

The question is just how far and in what ways you can cut back the pads without risking injury (and while I tend to agree with Hayward on this “might get a bruise” thing, goalies shouldn’t have to worry about being hurt or injured — but not feeling the puck at all? it’s gone a bit too far, IMHO).

Obvious options: leg pads slimmed down to protect the leg, not turn the lower half of the net into a fortress. Get rid of any kind of hack that fills holes. I’d consider — seriously — making leg pads have a shape that matches the leg, rather than flat, so that the goalie has more trouble directing a rebound. A few weird bounces might make the game more fun (except for the goalie), and pads with a curved profile would do that.

Cut back the blocker in the same way. Cut back the glove to a size similar to what goalies wore 30 years ago, instead of today’s bushel baskets. Make sure that the shoulder pads only protect the shoulders (no Garth Snow lacrosse specials), and the same for all pads.

the idea is to try to create SOME of those holes that existed 30 years ago, put more of the onus of stopping the puck on the skill of the goalie, and not just the goalie’s ability to stand in front of the net and get hit by the puck. Give the shooter a CHANCE, which today, they basically don’t have. And do it without putting the goalie at risk — we have to remember, 30 years ago, we didn’t have a dozen guys shooting like Al Iafrate at chest or face height, either…

And if that happens, and doesn’t work, THEN make the nets bigger. I certainly don’t want to turn hockey into indoor soccer or arena football — but if the average game was about 4-3, I’d be happy (currently, we’re seeing 5.6 goals a game, I’d like to see that at 6.5-7. It’s not a huge change, actually, but it’d seem so because you’d have a few more multi-goal periods).

Unlike some, I don’t think this is a huge problem — not yet serious enough for a significant change like changing the size of the net, but now would be a good time to think hard about the purpose of a player’s gear — for both goalie and skater — and make a fundamental decision that the purpose of that gear is to protect the player, not (in the case of goalies) to turn into an inpenetrable wall, or (in the case of skaters) to be used as a weapon against other players, as hard-shelled elbow pads have become (in fact, if it were me, I’d outlaw hard-shell gear on players completely, except for shin pads and knee protection. but that’s a different post…)

chuq

(footnote 1: we actually found TWO copies of this book; one we got autographed by Tommy, which amused the hell out of him and the sharks in the locker room, because it got passed around before we got it back. The other we gave to Tommy, because it turned out he didn’t have a copy himself any more. We also found out that he played for New Haven for about 3 games in the 50′s, and found out we had a program with his name in it in the collection, so we gave that to him around the time he retired from the Sharks. But for some reason, he balked at autographing our copy of the book “I’ll always remember that night in Port Alberni….” — no idea why. But Woodcock, before he was a trainer, did some time in the minors, mostly in the old Eastern Hockey league. Great guy, too.)

You might also want to read:

1. Capitals Web editor will play backup goalie against Sens Capitals Web editor will play backup goalie against Sens – Puck Daddy – NHL – Yahoo! Sports: Pretty amazing story coming out of DC tonight:...
2. Time For A Two Goalie System? KuklasKorner : The Puck Stops Here : Time For A Two Goalie System?: The San Jose Sharks have been the best team in the NHL...
3. Paring down the goalie gear Paring down goalie equipment seems to be the continuing story this season. We came into the season with the usual suspects whining about the goalies...
4. Let’s cut down the goalie gear already! Dallas Stars Blog:: SLIM-N-FAST: As of Monday, NHL goaltenders had combined to make 35,033 saves. Yes that’s a lot of rubber hitting human, but this...
5. We need bigger nets (oh, no we don’t!) KuklasKorner : Hockey: “Goalies have to get smaller or the nets have to get larger,” Regier said. “That goalie has to get significantly smaller for...