TALL ORDER
A new breed of big men in goal are shutting down NHL scorers,
If you’re a fan of NHL offence — and you’ve got to be of a certain age to have lived through an era when offence prospered — you don’t need to be told it’s shaping up to be another dead-puck season in the NHL.
Teams are averaging fewer goals per game than they have since 2003-04, that snooze-inducing tipping point that prompted the Shanahan summit and its broad re-thinking of the way the game is played. Back then, the target of reformers was clutching and grabbing. This time, it’s excessive padding. Goalie equipment, it seems to be universally agreed upon by everyone not a blood relative of a netminder, needs to get smaller. Nets, in a more divisive argument, may or may not need to get bigger.
But here’s what seems to be the surest thing of all: Goaltenders, sans their comically sized gear, are arriving in the league taller and taller. Witness June’s NHL draft, wherein 10 of the first 12 goaltenders selected were listed at sixfoot-three or more. In the past five NHL drafts there’ve been 108 goaltenders chosen. Precisely five of them have been listed at less than six-feet tall.
Facts like these are well known by Jeff Reese, the former Maple Leafs goaltender who played 176 NHL games in the 1980s and ’90s at an anachronistic fivefoot-nine. Reese, now goaltending coach for the Dallas Stars, was mulling the tall-man trend earlier this season after a morning skate at the Air Canada Centre.
“Eventually,” said Reese, “some guy is going to come along that’s seven feet tall and athletic and he can almost play the whole game on his knees. “That’s in the future.” Ever-bigger goalies are a big part of the present. Heading into Friday’s games there’d been precisely one NHL game this season in which both starting goaltenders were under six feet — a 2-1 L.A. Kings win over the New York Islanders in which Jhonas Enroth (five-foot-10) outdid Jaroslav Halak (five-foot-11).
In 1981-82, there were 543 such games, or 65 per cent of all contests, this according to research from Randy Robles of the Elias Sports Bureau.
Name a Hall of Fame goaltender and there’s a better than 50-50 chance he topped out below the six-foot threshold. Grant Fuhr, Billy Smith, Bernie Parent, Tony Esposito, Johnny Bower, Terry Sawchuk — all were listed in programs at fivefoot-10 or five-11. There’s a decent chance none of them would been drafted in today’s NHL on the basis of their stature alone.
Larry Sadler, a GTA-based goaltending instructor, recalled a group discussion at a recent conference attended by 143 goaltending coaches, many of them employed by NHL teams. A question came up: Would a goaltender five-foot-11 or smaller ever break into the NHL again? Sadler said that, among the North American goaltending coaches who voiced an opinion on the matter, the answer seemed to be a unanimous no. It was only European goaltending coaches, Sadler said, who saw the possibility of a sub-six-footer ever prospering in the NHL again.
And even those Europeans would likely agree with Sadler’s philosophy on the topic.
“If you’ve got two goaltenders of equal skill, you’re going to go with the taller guy,” said Sadler.
Given that projecting goaltending ability is something of a mystery to many executives, many executives seem to be inclined to go with the taller guy almost exclusively.
“It’s a guess,” Jonathan Bernier, the Maple Leafs goaltender listed at six-foot, said of the prevailing methodology of drafting goaltenders. “They probably just go for the size and they hope the guys will develop the right way. But not everyone who’s tall is going to be as good as Pekka Rinne and Ben Bishop.”
Indeed, Nashville’s Rinne, at sixfoot-five, and Tampa Bay’s Bishop, at six-foot-seven, are among the pre-eminent practitioners of their craft. But they haven’t been successful simply because of their stature.
As Mitch Korn, the Washington Capitals goaltending coach, was saying recently: The single most important factor in stopping pucks is skill.
“I’m talking about goalie skill, and there are a lot of components. There’s the physical part, the mental part, the emotional part. There’s a variety of skills a goalie has to possess. So I want a guy who has the goalie skill, no matter how tall he is,” said Korn. “The problem is probably 20 per cent of every game has nothing to do with skill and has everything to do with square footage. We have the world at our disposal. So find me the most skilled guy that’s as big as you can find him. And you know what? They’re finding ’em. They’re there.”
Korn said the challenge, for a smaller goaltender, comes down to simple math.
“When you’re small you need greater depth. Depth means you’re further from the goal line. And when you’re further from the goal line, you have greater distances to travel to your left and to your right to seal posts and get to pucks on rebounds, on deflections, on pass plays,” Korn said. “So you’re either going to be vulnerable on the back door. Or, if you stay back in the net as a smaller guy, you’re going to be vulnerable on the front door. Either way, you are vulnerable.”
Garret Sparks, the six-foot-two Maple Leafs prospect currently playing for the Toronto Marlies, said the state of the game doesn’t exclude a five-foot-something goaltender from succeeding. It just makes it tougher.
“You can’t teach size. At the end of the day, if you get a six-foot-five kid who’s willing to learn and willing to put in the time to do what it takes to become a pro goalie, he’s probably ultimately going to be a better goalie than a guy who’s six-foot and has been technically sound since Day 1,” Sparks said. “NHL teams have such good coaching staffs and athletic development people that if you get a guy with an athletic six-foot-five frame who’s willing to work at it, there’s no reason he can’t be an NHL goalie.”
If it were that easy, of course, there’d be a line of failed basketball forwards making a beeline for goalie schools.
“There’s a lot of six-foot-six goalies that got drafted that never panned out,” said James Reimer, the Maple Leafs goaltender.
Indeed, there’s a feeling among some in the goaltending community that there’s a law of diminishing returns on lankiness.
“The bigger the legs, the bigger the holes,” said Korn. “I believe there’s a point where you’re covering more of the glass over the net than the net. Big goalies that have limited mobility or have bad hands or who don’t process — they don’t succeed. You still need goalie skill. Don’t think size alone gets it done. It does not. I would imagine there’s some geometric equation, algebra and geometry together, that would probably create the optimal situation.”
What’s optimal, of course, comes down to the numbers. And this year the collection of mostly six-footers who’ve been patrolling the NHL’s blue paint are on pace to put up the lowest collective goals against average (2.50 heading into Friday’s games) since 2003-04.
In a season that’s also seen leaguewide save percentage on pace to threaten last year’s record of .915, there’s another number that likely will be inflated in years to come. Goaltenders preparing for the draft will surely be inclined to sneak onto their tippy toes when they’re being measured. Said Reimer, who is listed at six-foot-two: “I’m actually sixfive.”
As he spoke, he was laughing. In a season in which Reimer has put up the league’s third-best save percentage, a sterling .943, the Leafs netminder, as a member of a goaltending brotherhood that’s dominating the game, has plenty to smile about.
“Just because you’re tall doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to be a Vezina candidate,” said Reimer.
“But it helps.”