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This is written by Ken Dryden, a well-known retired goalie. Very cool. Essentially he is just arguing that because of the size of goalie pads, the most successful strategy has become cause chaos around the net and then try and push the puck in while the goalie is distracted. He’s right, I think, in that it does slow down the inherently high-speed nature of the sport.
So for shooters and coaches, that is the strategy. Rush the net with multiple offensive players, multiple defensive players will go with them, multiple arms, legs, and bodies will jostle in front of the goalie, and the remaining shooters, distant from the net, will fire away hoping to thread the needle, hoping the goalie doesn’t see the needle being threaded, because if he does, he’ll stop it. The situation for the shooter is much like that of a golfer whose ball has landed deep in the woods. He’s been told many times that a tree is more air than leaves and branches, but with several layers of trees in front of him, somehow his ball will hit a leaf or branch before it gets to the green. Somehow, the shooter’s shot will not make it to the net. So he will try again. Because what else can he do?
I played hockey for about a decade growing up, alternating between goalie and defense. One “unofficial” solution I had to this problem was to make it extremely unpleasant for other players to be around the net.
In hockey, you have a lot of leeway in terms of physicality and you can push, shove, lock the stick of your opponent, and do a number of other things that are completely penalized in basketball or soccer. The result was that opposing players became hesitant to get too close to the net, thus solving the problem somewhat.
If a player was on a breakaway, I’d also try to do stuff like this (as the goalie), which of course makes opponents stay far away from you.
A possible solution could be to expand the goalie-only area around the net. That would, in theory, force opponents to focus more on shooting and not on piling around the goalie.
> A possible solution could be to expand the goalie-only area around the net. That would, in theory, force opponents to focus more on shooting and not on piling around the goalie.
The point of the article is that the goalies are too big and therefore you have to crowd the net to even get a chance of scoring. Banning the crowding does not solve the root cause. The result (if the article is correct) would be a game with much fewer goals, probably boring.
Good comment. Expanding the crease is an interesting idea but I’m not a fan of it for one reason: it would likely lead hockey down the path of baseball, where so much of the game is “reviewed”. Inevitably if we expand the crease size more players are going to inadvertently cross through it because, well, skating on ice is a little chaotic. Which to me has always been the point (and the fun) of the game.
Edit: LOL just watched that video. I remember watching that game as a kid.
Yeah, these are common strategies for I think basically as long as I've watched ice hockey.
Have guy parked in front of the goalie. Keep other players in the attacking zone. Shoot from the blue line. Hope for the puck to hit players/blades along the way in the commotion that will change the direction so late that the goalie doesn't have time to react, but even if not, at least players will block the goalies vision.
Your idea to make it unpleasant to be parked in front of the goalie is also a common "solution" but that's why they place the big players there. :D Some are basically meant for this one position. I now recall "Demolition Man" Tomas Holmström back in the day. He even built special protection for the job, like a special back plate for the constant crosscheckings.
Yes, even if not for this reason, I think the goalie area should be expanded a bit. It always felt too small, like they could seriously disrupt the goalies job before even breaking rules.
I didn't see who the author was until the end, so I spent the article thinking "Wow, this is someone who's spent way too much time thinking about goaltending." And then I saw it was Ken Dryden, and it all made sense.
His book about being in the NFL, "The Game", is good.
There's a little box inside penalty box in soccer where the goalkeeper has by the rules relative freedom to do whatever he wants for his own safety in soccer as well.
Also similarly to crowding the goalie in hockey, own players sometimes build another wall to keep the view of the ball from goalkeeper. Haven't watched NHL for a decade but it seems all the sports constantly evolve to take maximums from situations.
Man that clip is so old time hockey I love it. Best part is the ref giving him the attaboy after.
I remember thinking that Hasek wearing the cage instead of a modern goalie mask was so cool as a kid.
The result was that opposing players became
hesitant to get too close to the net, thus
solving the problem somewhat.
So I took advantage of my size and the goalie equipment and got good at throwing my body into scrums around the net. I didn't even hit opposing players per se. But if there was a loose puck/ball I took advantage of the fact that I could make a beeline for it and if there happened to be an opposing player in my way... well, unfortunate for them!
A possible solution could be to expand the
goalie-only area around the net. That would,
in theory, force opponents to focus more on
shooting and not on piling around the goalie.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/343121-one-final-thought...
It was a boon for the goalies, not the scorers, and it turned every goal into a controversial mess. As a fan you couldn't even celebrate a goal -- you had to wait until the refs and/or replay decided if it was okay or not minutes later.
Part of the problem is that attacking players can't really control their position in a precise way in a scrum, given all of the contact and the fact that everybody's, well, wearing ice skates. Half of the time the goals were called off for a player being in the goalie crease it wasn't their fault.
And then there was Martin Brodeur, who absolutely broke the game for about a decade by skating around like an "invulnerable third defenseman nobody was allowed to touch." Effective, but really contrary to the spirit of the game and about as much fun as watching paint dry.
I really cannot think of a solution besides larger nets.
4-on-4 makes for really exciting hockey but that feels like fundamentally changing the sport too much. It would also IMO place too much emphasis on penalties. A 5-on-4 advantage for two minutes is one thing but 4-on-3 is quite another. Refereeing in a mass action sport will always be highly imperfect and that would really put the game in the refs' hands.
> In hockey, you have a lot of leeway in terms of physicality and you can push, shove, lock the stick of your opponent, and do a number of other things that are completely penalized in basketball or soccer. The result was that opposing players became hesitant to get too close to the net, thus solving the problem somewhat.
Also the goalie is given waaay more leeway. The goalie can get away with things that would definitely result in the penalty box for anyone else. I don’t know whether is is by convention, or because penalizing the goalie is such a heavy disadvantage that it isn’t done lightly.
>A possible solution could be to expand the goalie-only area around the net. That would, in theory, force opponents to focus more on shooting and not on piling around the goalie.
Pandora's box is already open. Bigger net, more space, smaller pads, etc. won't get players to necessarily focus more on skill shots... it will likely make the chaotic approach today more successful.
If a player was on a breakaway, I’d also try to do stuff like this (as the goalie), which of course makes opponents stay far away from you.
Yeah, nothing like trying to end a players career. Should have been suspended for the season and fined.
Bigger nets, and limit goal pad sizes
>If a player was on a breakaway, I’d also try to do stuff like this (as the goalie), which of course makes opponents stay far away from you.
I played soccer as a goalie at a high level in my youth, and this was my strategy on breakaways as well, completely legal move as long as I tackled the ball and not the player. I was a very intimating and athletic goalie at 6'5" ~220. Players did not like to be near me.
Ken Dryden is a legend - he was a tall butterfly goaltender in the 70s and is the prototype of professional goaltenders today.
I think it's funny he thinks goalies are too big given he was a huge goalie himself. I do think goalies might be too mobile on their knees, which Ken alluded to in this article.
Knee stacks and landing pads change the game in the early 2000s. Goaltenders now can drop in a butterfly and slide across the crease still on their knees, allowing them to cover backside plays, passes from behind the net, and wraparounds, which used to be bread and butter plays for offenses. Getting rid of the pads would force goalies to play the same "drop and pop" style Ken did, where goalies need to get to their feet more often to more laterally. This would give offenses more incentive to get the puck to behind the back line and open up the ice more.
Alternatively to that, goalie skates have also gotten smaller - there's less protective covering on them. This makes it easier for goalies to push off with their skates while on their knees, since more of the blade of the skate can touch the ice. I can image the NHL could declare "for goalie safety" that goalie skates must have a certain thickness of protection around the skate, which would make sliding less effective.
Of course, amateur goalies (such as myself) should be able to keep knee stacks, since they also reduce stress on the hip caused by the knees dropping into the ice. ;)
> I think it's funny he thinks goalies are too big given he was a huge goalie himself. I do think goalies might be too mobile on their knees, which Ken alluded to in this article.
This is actually what to me is the most enlightening. It is almost like a whistleblower coming out to say something is wrong. Similarly to how the sport of cycling in the 2000s was filled with doping across the board. All the players that played back then came out and admitted that they doped because everyone else was doping. But now they are retired so they didn't mind admitting how they played the game and broke the rules.
I think Dryden is basically doing the same thing. Although it isn't as scandalous as doping, he is basically saying that as a top-tier goalie (among the best of all time) he recognizes that he did so well in his career because of his size. He didn't have to rely as much on athleticism as the goalies before him. So now he is opening up about "the truth".
Ken Dryden was not a butterfly goalie. Almost no one was until Patrick Roy popularized it.
For me this brings to mind Formula 1 racing. Each year teams pore through the rules looking for any possible advantage they can gain within their strict letter. And each year the FIA looks at which teams managed to do this a little too well, and tweaks the rules the following season to prevent whatever they did. They also plan ahead, making significant changes to car design parameters every few years, in order to correct shortcomings in the state or trajectory of the sport. It isn't always executed perfectly, but the attempt is made and is certainly impactful.
I don't see any reason the NHL couldn't do the same. Goalie pads too long? Set a max length above the knee. Torso pads billowing too much? Specify a maximum difference between torso circumference with and without pads. Or find some other way to measurably define the problem and then regulate against it. Any issue severe enough to be a problem can be specifically defined and therefore corrected.
And if necessary, you can make larger changes as well, like F1 is doing with ground effects this year to allow cars to follow more closely without sacrificing so much downforce. For example (not saying this would be a good change, just an example of the sort of large change that's possible) the pad shape could be redefined with a bulge at the top so that they wouldn't lie completely flat on the ice.
These problems are solvable; it just requires a willingness to continually tweak the minutia of the rules when things aren't going as desired.
Unlike Formula 1, millions of kids play the game and want to play it like the pros. Constantly changing the rules is feasible for the NHL. Goalies probably get new equipment every year anyway. But you can’t expect goalies in the recreational setting to do that. Probably the only people who would like that are the pad manufacturers. You’re also forgetting that the main aspect of goalie pads is protection and there’s a natural increase in protection as shooting power increases with stick technology. That being said, the hockey world needs to rip the bandaid off and simply make the goalie pads 6 inches narrower (3 off each) if they want more goals.
F1 isn’t an example of success to emulate. The over-regulation of the sport is widely hated by fans. The situation they have now is a negative feedback loop of excessive regulation requiring the implementation of an ever increasing amount of further regulation. Small teams used to be able to innovate, but the regulations have pushed the barrier to innovation so high that you need hundreds of millions of dollars, and even then, if you didn’t manage to hire Adrian Newey or James Allison, then you have to cheat to be anywhere near the front of the pack. You’ll never see another Ross Brawn in F1 again. The new status quo is a few rich teams at the front, a couple of permanent midfield teams, and 4-5 teams teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. I would hope that no other sport ever chooses this path.
Formula 1 is funny because in some ways it is like a sport of lawyers and engineers. Engineers try to push the envelope and lawyers dive through the minutiae of the regulations to try to find loopholes and justifications for the car changes.
The league even has these little arbitrated court cases where the teams defend themselves against the regulations, while the league or other teams fight in opposition. If a loophole is discovered, then it is either patched in the regulations the next year, or it becomes adopted by every other team immediately.
Wouldn't Formula 1 be more interesting if everyone had to race with the same car? Then it would just be about driver skill? Otherwise all of the rules are just too easy to game for a season and dominate.
The removal of hookings and slashings from the game still makes it a much more open affair than it was back when goalies did acrobatic saves in smaller pads.
The speed and skill allowed now is completely different. The composite sticks means players can release shots without warning, that would take a full second to prepare back when everyone had a moustache. Goalies had a chancee because the guy with the moustache and wooden stick was getting slashed or cross checked while taking his shot. It was way less enjoyable than the game is now. The SV% and GAA is also mostly unchanged because of this. If the hookings were removed, players had the speed and composite sticks of late 2000's but goales looked and played like in 1980 - it wouldn't really be watchable.
Also, I love that a hockey article is at the front page of HN.
I created a blog post a few years back showing goalies aren't big enough http://randomlyunique.com/data/2015/goal-goalie-girth/index.... :-D
I honestly don't know what hockey Dryden is watching here. The game has gotten faster, and the players smaller over the last decade and a half. Most goals are tip shots, one timers, dekes, or power play goals. I agree that the goalie equipment size is out of whack, especially compared to what came before, but the rest of what he said makes me think he hasn't watched hockey since the 90s.
Atom and His Package called it years ago in his song "Goalie" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpe7R_KgdVo)
In hockey, you must score a goal.
Which one can not do if between me and the net there's no hole.I find it interesting the author didn't mention field hockey. My daughter is a goalkeeper for her youth club. The goalkeepers wear very similar pads, and face shots at similar speeds with the same safety concerns. (I wouldn't want to be hit with a puck or a field hockey ball).
The cage is much larger in field hockey: https://i2.wp.com/hockeyanswered.com/wp-content/uploads/2019...
The save percentages are about 70% vs the 90%+ in ice hockey, but the game scores tend to be similar to ice hockey.
If the goalkeeper is getting bigger because of the gear, even adding a few more inches onto the net to maintain the desired scoring percentage makes sense at least at the professional level.
This article is written by a famous retired goalie and it contains a lot of good points in it. Everything the author says about the modern method of scoring goals being to "scrum" in front of the net is pretty accurate, and it honestly takes away, at least in my opinion, a lot of the aesthetic enjoyment that hockey used to have. Sure goals may not be going down in number, but they're definitely less fun to watch being scored.
But I think that the title, and a large part of the article, ignores or at least only pays lip service to the other half of the problem, and I think that by focusing solely on goalie equipment, we actually limit the probability of the problem actually being solved.
And the other half of the problem is that players can shoot way too hard now. Its a chicken and egg problem, and I don't know which came first, but any attempt to cut down on goalie padding is going to have come up against the very real safety concerns caused by modern hockey sticks. Anyone who has used one of the new $300+ composite sticks can tell you they aren't just for showing off your income, these things actually work, and they honestly work too well. Goalies have a legitimate point that goaltenders of old could wear the equipment they did because players were probably shooting 20%+ slower on average. Right now every hockey player is walking around with the equivalent of a corked bat or an aluminum bat in baseball.
And so I think that any attempt to scale back protective equipment to something that doesn't strangle the game is going to have to be matched with a similar regulation to go back to plain wood sticks or something similar, to prevent any sort of composite material voodoo. Matching up a decrease in protective bulk, with controls on stick material and I think that you still have a faster, more skilled game, but you'll really open up the ability to express that skill and still keep goalies "safe" (I use quotation marks because they're still crazy people putting themselves in front of a rock hard rubber bullet, but hey some folks are just different). Just addressing the equipment is going to be a non-starter and even if it did get forced through I think it might open the game up too much and lead to too much scoring. There's definitely a compromise to be struck on both sides here.
"Take away the goalie’s eyes. If he can see it, he’ll stop it."
One heckuva instigator, NY Ranger Sean Avery, figured this out in the 2008 playoffs against NJ Devils Martin Brodeur.
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec_2oKWe2Gw
The day after, the NHL made a rule that makes it illegal for a player to stand in front of a goalie and wave his or her stick in the goalie's face. Dubbed "The Sean Avery Rule," it results in a 2 min unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
And yes, this play still has me riled up! :)
Nice article, though my first thought was a scene from 'The West Wing':
Sam: You know what I'd do if I owned a hockey team? I'd hire a sumo wrestler. I'd give him a uniform, transportation, 500 bucks a week to sit in the goal, eat a ham sandwich and enjoy the game. My team would never get scored on.
Josh: Your team would get scored on constantly.
Sam: Maybe, but we'd sell a few tickets.
Josh: Yeah, 'cause sumo wrestling sells out all the time in big hockey towns.
Sam: My idea's totally inviable?
Josh: Well, you're a Democrat. It's a pretty big club.
I feel like I would like to agree with the article, but I don't. It's described in a way that makes one believe that it's completely impossible to score a goal in a one-on-one situation, as the goalie can just sit on his knees and not move. As is evident by any recent shootout one may watch, this is not the case.
And regarding the good old times when goalies had to be acrobatic to actually make saves. Just yesterday I saw a highlight of Korpisalo from Blue Jackets making a crazy reaching stick-save to deny an empty-netter.
I think it's fine. I find the game exciting and dynamic enough to watch.
Why not make the goal bigger? Bigger to the point where we can see double digit scoring?
One thing that turned me off from watching Soccer one year was the amount of 1-1 games that led to PKs, and after just doing a little bit of research, Hockey has the longest overtime games by far, and occurs more often by far.
> The average NHL team has gone to overtime in about 23.1 percent of its games over the past three seasons. The Flyers have done so in about 31.1 percent of their games
It's not enjoyable for the casual viewer. Betting on sports which have O/U of 0.5, 1, 1.5 is ridiculous tbh.
Having thought about this a bit, I think the suggestion to increase the goal/reduce the goalie would make ice hockey considerably less interesting to watch.
It goes something like this. The inherent thrill of watching a sports event comes from multiple things: pace of the game, ratio between attempts/scores, watching skillful people do tricky things, but most importantly - not knowing who is going to win. So, it's not very exciting to watch a coin tossing championship, because there's no skill involved. But at the same time, it's not very exciting to watch something where the nominally stronger team wins with near absolute certainty. Like a game with a high attempt/score ratio with a single mode of scoring. Basketball solved this by introducing another mode of scoring that's also inherently more uncertain. So they introduced asymmetry and more uncertainty leading to more interesting games, as the certainty with which you can say who's going to win is reduced, as that depends on wider skill-sets across the team and also more luck.
Now, take a game with a low attempt/score ratio. The uncertainty about who's going to win is baked into that ratio. With some luck, the nominally weaker team still has a chance of winning the nominally stronger team. And this is what makes ice hockey interesting in my book. This is how Finland could win the world championships without any NHL players last year. Increasing the goal would increase the attempt/score ratio, without adding any other offsetting asymmetry to the game. This will reduce the uncertainty of who's going to win, making the game less interesting to watch. For a game with a relatively high attempt/score ratio that's also highly dynamic with a lot of attempts per game, and has somewhat similar strategies to hockey, I invite you to check out Innebandy/Floorball. It's a fun game, but not that exciting as a spectator sport. Because the nominally stronger team will win any given game with near certainty due to the large amount of attempts per game coupled with a high attempt/score ratio.
Watching Hockey in the states is very different from Canada. I grew up near the Washington Canadian border and so I was able to watch all the Hockey games on CBC. I didn’t know Hockey wasn’t regularly aired on TV until I moved. Going to a Hockey game is really fun.
Former college hockey goalie here (now a SWE).
Dryden is correct. Hockey goaltending has become incredibly technical and an essence of the game has been lost as goalies have gained mastery.
This is less about equipment being 'too big' and more about the technologic and strategic progression goalies have made. There aren't any equipment regulations that can unwind this progress.
While I played, I was vehemently opposed to changing the net-size. Now, as an outsider with no horse in the race, I think it's the right thing to do.
Every so often at practices, myself and my goaltending partner would agree to make 'highlight reel' saves for a drill or two. What this meant was abandoning our technique and adopt an athletic, intuitive style that resembled something of the past (kick saves, stacking the pads, catching the puck dramatically). We did this because it was fun; the shooters enjoyed it more too. Making the nets bigger would inject these elements back into the position.
I wonder if it's a viable start up news idea to have deep investigative journalism like articles that all have a sister article written in an Axios style that boil everything down to the major points.
The article was well written but I just am not interested that much in hockey to read the entire long form without any idea of the general points.
Extremely well written piece, but isn't the solution obvious? Make the goal larger.
It is interesting to compare hockey goalie strategy to lacrosse. The key difference is that the goal is significantly bigger—6x6 feet. Goalies in lacrosse general wear less pads then the other players on the field—often foregoing elbow and shoulder pads—for optimal mobility and because goalies are crazy (most do not wear shin pads because they will be made fun of by other goalies).
So I think another solution, that would surely be controversial, would be to make the goal slightly bigger. The minute goalie pads do not cover the whole area goalies will be forced to prioritize mobility over pad size.
This also answers why goalies aren't huge fat guys.
As the rules limit how big a goalie's pad can be, a huge guy might take up a lot of space, but much of his body will be unprotected from 150+ km/h slap shots.
There is a lot of history and posturing. And it's coming from one of the best goalies to ever play the game. But, I still think he's wrong.
There has been a slow crackdown on goalie gear size. We have seen scoring slightly go up.
But what's not talked about in the article is that the game really isn't static. The players have gotten better and better at picking up those tiny gaps and holes in the body. They are looking at video of movements of goalies, picking apart every weakness based on hundreds of hours of film. They offense is more equipped than ever to know and understand NHL goalies. We see hot rookie goalies like Andrew Hammond or Elvis Merzlikins come out with phenomenal numbers and generally fall to earth.
Why? I think a large part is coaching/scouting. There are teams dedicated to exposing goalie weaknesses on each team (Video Coaches). They can look at everything goalies have done and along with other coaching staff adapt strategies to take advantage of perceived weaknesses/tendencies/etc. If you actually watch NHL games, look at where the players are shooting. You'll often notice a pattern, are they going glove or blocker side more? Are they going high or right above the pads? Are they trying to make cross ice passes near the crease to get goalie moving side to side? There is probably a good chance the team thinks it sees a certain weakness somewhere in the goalie's play and is trying to exploit it.
And then sometimes you just have players say fuck it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-m8Fd93faw
No weakness in normal hockey? Just pick up the puck like a Lacrosse player and dunk it in a tiny hole from behind the net (originally called The Michigan, some calling it the Svechnikov after the first NHL player to do it).
Dryden wants to talk about how soccer players can bend the ball, the newest big move we get to see on rare occasion is the move in that video. It starts with one guy doing it at this level (Svechnikov - 3 times I think). And now Filip Forsberg has done it. Other players have made attempts (Kuznetsov 2018 before anyone had ever done it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGFQkWfkjxk). Nils Hoglander, canucks rookie did it three times in Sweden and their fanbase is excited to see his first NHL goal in that fashion. I would bet money it happens at some point given his history with the move and talent.
Point is, players are getting more creative, better with puck handling, the game is getting faster, and every little detail is being scrutinized deeper and deeper. Hockey has the most parity of all the big sports in the US and the most uncertainty. Seeking out every edge is what separates the teams with long stretches of success and the mediocre teams which sit puzzlingly at the bottom year after year despite often drafting immensely talented players.
One of my favorite goalie coach quotes, you can't teach size, is definitely true. It's an advantage for sure. But is it ruining the game? Not even close. Maybe he's watching a different sport than the rest of us.
One suggested improvement is to make the game 4-on-4 instead of 5-on-5. Less players on the ice typifies more offense, and less bodies covering the net causing chaos.
In some ways the game is already moving towards this, by changing overtime and the All-Star Game to be 3-on-3 a few years ago.
Shouldn't there be a fixed ratio of goalie surface area to goal face? Otherwise, this ends up in a Red Dwarf goalie for the 2224 World Cup which was a genetically engineered rectangular block of muscle the exact size of the goal...
I've never understood why they don't just hire extremely obese goalie (or some former sumo warrior), if you dress him in all protective gear therw won't be space for puck to pass, is there any NHL regulation about it?
Neither following nor playing either sport I'm on thin ice here (or maybe that's exactly what I'm not!), but isn't bandy sort of like hockey but with soccer-sized goals (and a ball instead of a puck)?
Of course, this was predicted by Adam and his Package: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpe7R_KgdVo
A long time ago in cricket there were no limit on bat sizes. So the entrepreneurial minded players started using bats that were wider than the combined width of the stumps.
Eventually laws were introduced to set limits.
Surely they just need to make the net a bit bigger?
Try "Ian Laperriere face" on google images for how fast the pucks move. I'd be wearing every bit of padding I could.
Maybe the professionalization of classic games has just gone too far?
Perhaps what was fun for kids in the winter wasn’t actually designed to be taken seriously by grown men/woman, with millions of dollars at stake?
I don’t know. I still watch F1, so perhaps I’m just off base here, but it seems that there is a disconnect between the sport and the spectacle.
The author makes 2 basic mistakes
1. Suggesting that goalies are nearly equally suited on their knees as on their skates.
2. Forgetting the goaltending rule exists in basketball.