Variety of factors behind fewer native Quebec netminders
IREMEMBER distinctly Martin Brodeur swelling with pride during the latter stages of the 2003 Stanley Cup playoffs, when three of the four No. 1 goaltenders in the conference finals hailed from Quebec — Brodeur, Ottawa’s Patrick Lalime and Anaheim’s Jean-Sebastien Giguere — and the fourth, Minnesota’s Manny Fernandez, was born in Ontario, but raised in Quebec.
“Oh, I remember,” Brodeur, now a Devils hockey department executive, told Slap Shots recently. “Those were the days.”
Eighteen Quebec-born netminders (plus Fernandez) started at least one game in the NHL that season. They were ubiquitous and they were elite, just as they had been since the days of Jacques Plante. Quebec-born netminders won eight of the 18 Vezina Trophies awarded from 1989-2008.
Now, they are an endangered species on the verge of becoming extinct. There are exactly two Quebecers in NHL nets this season: Vegas’ Hall-of-Fame-bound 36-year-old Marc-Andre Fleury and Detroit’s trade-deadline-bound 32-year-old Jonathan Bernier.
There are nine Finland-born netminders who have started at least one game this 2020-21. Plus eight who identify as Russian. Five from Sweden. Four Czechs. Two who hail from Germany. One from Denmark, one from Latvia, one from Slovakia. Sixteen Americans.
Again, two French-Canadians. This could represent the End of Days.
“There’s a few factors, I believe,” Martin Biron, whose 16-year career included stints with the Rangers and Islanders, told Slap Shots. “I’ve thought about this for a long time and have had discussions with a lot of people on the subject.
“One factor is obviously the European invasion — the Russians, the Swedes, the Finns, they’ve really developed their goaltenders to the level that was never there before. They have a structure in Europe that allows for development. They don’t rush their goalies. They allow them to play at their youth level, they don’t move them ahead two or three steps, they are able to play in the second league professionally and then they move them up to the top league.
“It really is a development model over there that I don’t think we have here, and it’s hurting, especially in Quebec,” said the loquacious 43year-old Biron, currently an MSG analyst on Sabres games. “So that’s one factor.
“The second factor is probably more of a direct factor to the actual goalies that are developed in Quebec. In my generation there was one hockey school in the summer you went to if you were a goalie and wanted to learn the game, and it was Frank and Benny’s Goalie School in Montreal. That was the Allaire brothers. They were the top. Everybody went there. It really set the development model in the province of Quebec.
“That school ended because Frank moved to Anaheim, Benoit took over the Montreal Canadiens before going to Arizona [and then the Rangers],” said Biron, selected 16th overall by Buffalo in the 1995 draft. “So that goalie school ended, and I really feel that left a void in the development of goalies in the province.”
➤ You know who is having a pretty good season? P.K. Subban, who has all but eliminated The Big Mistake from his repertoire and is playing reliably understated hockey in New Jersey, that’s who.
The Spirit of 76 has one year with a $9 million cap hit remaining on his deal. If the Devils retain half, contenders with needs on the right side of the blue line could do much worse than acquiring Subban.
➤ I have written this for years, but if the league wants to crack down not only on head hunters but also on the organizations that protect them, then: A) Teams should not be able to replace players suspended for headshots in the lineup, meaning they’d play a man short for the duration of the sentence; and, B) Head coaches should be suspended for the same length of time as the players they routinely enable.
I don’t think John Tavares has done enough at this point to be a Hall of Famer. Do you?
If you watched Jimmy Vesey during the 2017 playoffs, you would not have quite guessed this for the prize of the 2016 collegiate free agent class.
➤ The Rangers beat the Flyers, 9-0, on Wednesday, The Flyers beat the Islanders 4-3 on Thursday. Or as John Sterling said, “That’s hockey, Suzyn.”