NHL will renew effort to unstuff goaltenders
Pad-size changes preferred over bigger nets
TORONTO • The other day Kay Whitmore was at a local hockey arena and he couldn’t believe what he saw.
A kid, who was maybe 10 or 11 years old, was standing in net. He was so small his head did not come up to the crossbar, yet the oversized equipment he was wearing caused him to fill most of the net.
“Somewhere in this pair of pants was a little goalie trying to get out,” said Whitmore, a former NHL goalie who is the league’s director of hockey operations and goaltender equipment. “I couldn’t stop laughing.”
Whitmore sees a lot of that kid in today’s NHL, where goalies remain somewhat overstuffed despite recent efforts to trim the size of certain items of equipment. bigger nets were talked about at the Gm meetings earlier this week as a way to increase goal scoring, but the more realistic option is to continue to shrink the goalies.
“I think the topic with scoring has … continued to be the size of the goalie equipment, which I think personally is ridiculous,” Toronto maple Leafs general manager Lou Lamoriello told Sportsnet’s Hockey Central program on Friday. “I think if we have to go to larger nets to convince the goalies that there has to be some adjustments … then maybe we have to. maybe the threat is what’s necessary, because this equipment has gone too far.”
When the league’s competition committee met in June and discussed how to increase scoring, players brought up the ballooning size of goalie pants, and chest and arm protectors. One idea was to make equipment more streamlined. The human body is round — “Other than your chest and your abdomen, there’s not a lot of flat spots on your body,” said Whitmore — and the equipment should reflect that by hugging the curves rather draping over it.
Since that June meeting, Whitmore has been working with engineers and manufacturers to not only develop tighter-fitting equipment, including jerseys, but to also develop a mathematical formula to determine what size each goalie should be wearing. The NHL hopes to present prototypes to goalies at the All-Star Game in Nashville at the end of January.
“The argument was always that, ‘We’re going to get hurt,’ “Whitmore said. “but there’s a lot of different products out there now and the time is right to examine this and do a good job.”
We’ve been down this road before, of course. The length of leg pads have been tailored to fit a goaltender’s specific proportions and equipment is supposedly more streamlined than it was 10-15 years ago, but goaltenders are still finding ways to bend the rules and add heft to their meagre frames.
The difference now, said Whitmore, is that a lot of the calls for change are coming from goalies who are afraid of losing their job to someone who is larger but has less ability.
“Some goalies are taking more than they need, because the rules aren’t strict enough,” Whitmore said. “I think we’re trying to dial down and make a goalie look like how he does when he doesn’t have his equipment on. There should be a difference between a 250-pound and a 160-pound goalie.”
Whitmore did not name any names, but vancouver’s ryan miller has become the poster boy for this problem. The 6-foot-2 and 168 pound goalie has the rail-thin body of a marathon runner. but once he straps on his equipment, there is no real difference between him and Jonathan Quick, who is six-foot-one and 220 pounds.
“What size person is an extra large? Why isn’t anyone in a small? I’ve asked these questions and no one can give me an answer,” said the five-foot-11 and 175-pound Whitmore, who wore medium-sized pants when he was playing. “It’s just a matter of slotting guys in the right spot.”
miller, who has worked with the competition committee in past reductions to goalie gear, said he is “on board” with “streamlining equipment and cutting it down.” After all, the better goaltenders are not the ones who are worried. They tend to believe once you strip them down, the lesser talents will be exposed.
but miller also does not want the league to make a knee-jerk reaction without properly investigating the issue.
“We have to have legitimate testing,” miller said. “It can’t just be, ‘Hey we’ve got this great idea. Throw it on.’ Take your time, do it right, check it out, test it.
“do it right so that we’re not doing this every three or four years.”