Golden era of goalies seems to be over
And that trend might help Ovechkin’s long-shot pursuit of Gretzky’s career goals record
When Alex Ovechkin ripped his peerless one-timer past Frederik Andersen at Scotiabank Arena on Thursday night, he didn’t simply help his Washington Capitals to a 3-2 win over the Maple Leafs. He reignited a fun hockey debate: Is it even fathomable that Ovechkin, now age 33, could catch Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goal-scoring record.
Ovechkin, who scored again Saturday in Buffalo, has 651 career goals. Gretzky scored 894. So for the Great Eight to match the Great One, he’d need 243 more. That would be a lot if Ovechkin ages like Gretzky did. In the seven full seasons after Gretzky turned 33, he averaged a meagre 16 goals a season. So far, at least, Ovechkin seems to be warding off Father Time more effectively. Currently on pace to lead the league for the eighth time with 58 goals — the second-best total of his career – the Capitals winger has shown few signs of decline. And given that his career average of 0.61 goals a game means he has averaged 50 goals a season over an 82-game schedule — well, if he averaged 50 goals from here on out, he’d pass Gretzky in a little less than five more seasons. Even if he averaged 40 goals a year from this point on — and he has 44 this season — he’d reach the milestone in a little more than six seasons, around the time he turned 40 in 2025.
Still, there’s another reason to like Ovechkin’s chances of running down a record that, in some eyes, has appeared untouchable. The NHL appears to be in the midst of an opening-up of offence. About three-quarters through the season, teams are combining to score more than six goals a game for the first time since the watershed change of 2005-06. What’s even more promising for goal scorers is this: After years of goaltender dominance, league-average save percentage has dropped to its lowest level in about a decade, down to .909 heading into Saturday after peaking at a post-1967-expansion high of .915 in 2014-15 and 2015-16.
“The golden age of goaltending is over,” said Jeff Blashill, the Detroit Red Wings coach, was saying earlier this month.
“He’s right. It is,” said one NHL goaltending coach. “The shooters have caught up to (the goaltenders).”
Four seasons ago, Jamie Benn won the Art Ross Trophy as the league’s leading scorer with 87 points; heading into Saturday, 22 NHLers were on pace to finish this season with more than that. Two seasons ago, Sidney Crosby won the Rocket Richard Trophy as the league’s leading goal scorer with 44
goals; heading into Saturday, eight NHLers were tracking to better that number. In the face of the relatively sudden deluge, even world-class goaltenders have spoken of approaching their jobs differently.
“You have to have the Grant Fuhr mentality,” Carey Price, the Montreal Canadiens goaltender, told NHL.com earlier this season.
Fuhr, of course, was a Hockey Hall of Fame goaltender known for making the big save while shaking off the repeated setbacks in the higher-scoring 1980s. Not that this season has exactly been a return to those goal-trading days — in Fuhr’s rookie year, teams combined to average more than eight goals a game.
Still, this year’s goal-scoring bump suggests a league once starved for offence is at least heading in the right direction, on pace to be the fourth straight season in which scoring has increased.
What’s behind the rise? Some have pointed to the goalies’ slimmer upper-body protection, which is new this season and the latest in the league’s years-long effort to streamline goaltending equipment.
“Pucks are squeaking through that wouldn’t have in the past,” said one goaltending coach.
Still, others don’t see the slimmer equipment as much a significant factor.
“There are guys who look just like the same Michelin men they looked like before,” said another goaltending coach.
The uptick in scoring certainly isn’t due to a rise in powerplay opportunities; teams are currently on pace for the second-fewest of those since the NHL began counting such things more than a half-century ago. And it’s not due, either, to a sudden rise in shots on goal per game. Those are actually down slightly over last season.
But there is a feeling around the league that, thanks to a combination of factors — including a crackdown on slashing that’s made life more difficult for defencemen — actual scoring chances have been on the upswing.
“I’ve noticed the chances are up,” said Jeff Reese, the goal- tending coach with the Dallas Stars. “Years ago, it would have been nice to keep them to 10 to 12. Now you’re probably looking at something more like 15 scoring chances a night.”
Still, a select handful of goaltenders continue to thrive. Andersen, the Maple Leafs’ No. 1, is on pace for his career year in save percentage as a starter. But even he acknowledges the level of skill from his puckslinging adversaries has vastly increased.
“You’re seeing guys who have quicker shots, better shots,” Andersen said. “I don’t know if chances are up, but they’re definitely making the most of their chances.”
Ovechkin, asked this week about the rise in scoring, shrugged matter-of-factly: “It’s our job — I think all the forwards have to score goals. The league adapted the new rules (against slashing). And I think the guys are more skilled.”
Indeed, the overriding conclusion of many goaltenders and goaltending coaches seems similar: More pucks aren’t going in because goaltenders are suddenly worse; it’s because the athletes shooting them have, over the past handful of seasons, become better. Where goaltenders were once outliers for spending time with specialized coaches honing their craft, it’s become commonplace for teams and individual skaters to employ skill-specific coaches of their own.
“In the off-season, players used to go work out, and then they’d scrimmage. That’s all they did all summer,” said one goaltending coach. “And now they finally figured out that, like we do, they should work on their individual skill sets … So now there’s no hitting, no clutching, no grabbing, no slashing. It becomes almost like a shinny-type scenario where there’s just a lot of time and space. And the players have become just so skilled, so adept, and they’re doing things with the puck we haven’t seen before.”
Skating coaches. Shooting coaches. Puck-handling coaches. They’ve all been around for a while now. And they’re making their presence felt. Equip ever-more-skilled players with composite sticks that some say have been noticeably improved in the past handful of years and you’ve got a recipe for shots that are both more precise and harder.
“The stick technology has allowed guys to get pucks on net a lot harder, a lot quicker,” said Garret Sparks, the Maple Leafs backup.
Will the trend help Ovechkin ultimately catch Gretzky? Perhaps it will depend on how long he wants to play. Given the uncertainty of age and injury, anything’s possible. And if Ovechkin’s goal-scoring pace happened to fall off a cliff, as has happened through history, it’s possible he’d need to play well beyond age 40 to keep up the chase. Then again, what if the current trend persists? What if the end of the golden age of goaltending leads to a gilded new era of scoring with the ageless Ovechkin at the forefront?
At least one goaltending coach is betting things will get worse for goalies before they get better.
“These skaters are so deceptive, so skilful, so precise — it’s just harder and harder to be that consistent goaltender everyone’s become accustomed to,” said the coach. “The skill edge (once enjoyed by goaltenders) is gone. And I’m not sure there’s a way to get it back.” Others aren’t so sure. “I think it’s cyclical,” said Frantz Jean, goaltending coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning. “We’ll find ways to be better.”
Andersen, while he spent a moment tipping his hat to Ovechkin’s greatness, suggested it would be unwise to underestimate the ability of goaltenders to plug the holes that have suddenly been exposed.
“Now it’s back on the goalies to try and find an edge. That’s the beauty of sports. It’s always a cat-and-mouse game,” Andersen said. “We’ve got some things in the works, but we can’t reveal them. State secrets. Stay tuned.”