Hockey goalies are too big now
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
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.
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.
Maybe boring, but maybe not. Football does really well at attracting attention globally, and they only have a handful of goals in a match at most. Sometimes even zero.
(Germany scoring seven goals against Brazil in the World Cup a while ago was big news.)
A lot of this is about audience perception, and considerations of what makes a good spectator sport in different cultures.
More than perhaps anywhere else, sport in North America often tends to be about the spectators. Think NASCAR where you can generally see the whole track and there is a lot of overtaking, and a lot of crashes, or basketball which is a high speed, high scoring game played on a smallish court that, again, maximises action. There's a noticeable emphasis on creating the most exciting and intense spectacle for the audience. I think the same is true of contemporary ice hockey, which is like a ludicrously amped up version of regular hockey: the high scores are all part of that.
I'm not an avid follower of any of these sports but, as a casual viewer, I find I'm much happier to sit down and watch them than some of the original sports on which they're based because they're very accessible and high on action and entertainment value.
The one sport where this really comes unstuck for me is American football: the stop/start structure built into the game just drives me up the wall, and I find myself significantly preferring the (by comparison) rarely interrupted action and flow of rugby. That's not a critique of American Football at all - it's obviously a deeply tactical and nuanced sport: this is just my personal preference for a longer arc of play, on average. And, by the way, I'm talking specifically about rugby union: I've never followed rugby league.
Honestly, and I say that as someone who loves basket ball and often stays up during the night to see the NBA playoffs, basketball is often far from the level of tension and excitement you can get in (European) football. In football, most of the time a single goal is a game changer even when you have some margin (let say 2-0 and the opponent team is now 2-1,they have regained the momentum now and the match is totally different). In terms of adrenaline, the entire football game is like the fourth quarter of the seventh game and every single goal feels like a buzzer beater!
The scarcity of goals is invaluable.
The problem with basketball is last two minutes. What should be the most exciting part of the game becomes a drag with timeouts and intentional fouling.
The fouling is usually by the team trying to mount a last-moment come-back (stop the leading teams momentum, hope they miss the free-throws, and then get possession and shot to close the gap). Making penalties more costly would prevent this and likely just allow the leading team t to win. Though maybe they generally do anyways, so no real loss? I'd have to look at past game stats.
TOs - We could probably do without them in the last moments. That would shift focus from the coach to the team captain to coordinate play. Less set plays, more fluid teamwork. Possibly a net gain for the viewer with no real impact on the teams?
Tennis is at the extreme end of high scoring and even watching matches you don’t care about between average players can be entertaining though not memorable. Longer term it’s only the truly exceptional games of any sport you’re going to remember anyway.
I think that’s cultural/an acquired taste.
One could argue the outcome of high-scoring games is more predictable, making them less tense.
If, say, on average party A scores a point every minute and party B scores one every 40 seconds, party B will win almost every one hour game against party A (the expected outcome is 90-60), and each individual score is only marginally important. So, why would a spectator be enthousiast about a (missed) score after 20 seconds of play?
If, on other hand, party A scores a goal every 30 minutes and party B one every 20 minutes, party A has a much higher chance of beating party B in a one hour game, and each missed opportunity becomes a potential game changer.
In soccer, some of the most tense games end in 0-0, 1-0, or 0-1 (especially at major tournaments, where, often [1], each result counts)
[1] for one where that wasn’t the case, watch West-Germany against Austria (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gijón).
You need to design a sport so scoring is expected every game even if it’s rare within each game. A slightly larger net say 1 foot wider and 6 inches taller with an expanded goalie only area say extra 2 foot radius is a reasonable option. Tweak thing so the most common score it’s say 1-2 or 2-3 and you’re fine.
There's a simple change that I'd like to see tried in soccer that might up the action a bit in the second half enough to get more people in the US interested, without changing it so much that the rest of the world would lose interest.
Simply move the penalty shootout tie-break from after the second period to the break between periods. The penalty shootout would still only count if the game is tied at the end of the second period, but now the teams would go into the second period knowing who wins if it comes to tie-breaks.
In the second period there will always be one team in a "must score" situation, which should cause that team to play more aggressively. That might boost the action enough to get people in the US to watch.
This doesn't apply to soccer at all though. Even a 2-0 lead is often list in a few minutes. What makes soccer exciting isn't the scoring, but that you are always just second away from a goal that could change the game. That's why you'll hardly ever see in soccer that the audience leaves the stadium before the end of the game like you are in baseball all the time.
Those type of events are outliers and not worth using
> Football does really well at attracting attention globally
That's only because everyone else is watching it. I got tired of following football around 14, its inherently repetitive and boring (unless you play it yourself) not to mention the extent of match fixing.
Yes, that was exactly my point. A score of 7 is considered an extreme outlier. That tells you that normal scores are much lower.
> That's only because everyone else is watching it. I got tired of following football around 14, its inherently repetitive and boring (unless you play it yourself) not to mention the extent of match fixing.
I don't watch any sports myself, but I don't think the people who do so are all deluded.
Yes, there's a social aspect to it, but that's not the only thing.
> Those type of events are outliers and not worth using.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_up_the_score
> Running up the score occurs when a competitor continues to play in such a way as to score additional points after the outcome of the game is no longer in significant question and the team is all but assured of winning. In the United States and Canada, it is considered poor sportsmanship to run up the score in most circumstances
> The term and the concept are not common elsewhere in the world.
> In professional soccer, the concept of "running up the score" is mostly unheard of;
Pulling your punches in the football world cup would indeed have been seen as the ultimate insult.
If you compare with baseball, I don't know that I've ever heard of a strong aversion to running up the score. Maybe you're not exactly sending out your substitute batter in the top of the ninth when you're up 10, but I've never seen a team give up and not put in a reasonable effort.
Wildly disparate scores seem pretty common in basketball as well. Even in college (American) football, scores of like 70-0 are not that uncommon. You only really quit trying in football when you can run out the clock, or you pull your starting players to prevent injuries.
I think a clear case of this though is when a team has the ball with the lead and less than 2 minutes to go, and the other team has no timeouts, it's customary to just take a knee ("victory formation") rather than going on a drive and trying to score again.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_cricket#Play, https://cricketershub.com/how-to-win-cricket-match/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoring_(cricket)#Winning_scor...
However, it may not have been the best strategy. It was a semifinal, the final was next. If you are dominating, it makes sense to calm down a bit to avoid wearing out your players and limit the risk of injury. Germany still won the cup, so we can't really criticize.
Even in international hockey: Canada, USA, Russia will thump teams 20-0 sometimes. There is no way any member of any team, coaching staff or otherwise, to ease off.
Also, 0-0 ties and 1-0 wins don't really provide much information. These sports are typically played in the contexts of seasons, where teams are trying to win a championship. Very low scores don't really meaningfully establish which teams are better than others. 0-0 and 1-1 ties are obviously not really disclosing much, but winning 1-0 is really too low-granularity to mean all that much also.
Basketball is a bit ridiculous in the other direction, of course, but I assume that scores in the high single digits to low double digits should be the target, if we are to actually use them to figure out how to rank teams.
Hurling (teams typically score 10-30 points in a game) and baseball (5-20) seem like they're in the right range. Soccer / football (0-10, but often on the bottom end of that) seems way too low.
https://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/features/major-indoor-soccer-...
> Played on artificial turf in ice hockey arenas with teams of six, 12ft-by-6ft nets, a hi-vis orange ball and rebounds off the hockey boards, this was the Americanisation of football taken to its logical conclusion. Games would produce 10 to 20 goals; one 1980 match saw a record 165 shots on target. The American obsession with stats was also catered for: players were precisely graded with points for goals and assists. It worked. Supporters weaned on the all-action scoring of basketball preferred it to the 'boring' one-nils of the NASL, and flocked to watch.
21 seconds.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nhl/2020/03/23/bill-mo...
https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2017/06/13/six-of-the-fastest-hat...
This doesn't seem to have caused any problems for soccer.
One major issue is that because goals are so scarce and penalty kicks are so high-percentage, there is an extreme incentive to dive.
US NCAA basketball is, IMO, one of the most exciting sports for viewing. Scores in the 70 point range[2] (per side, 30-35 baskets at 2 or 3 per) in about 2 hours (40 min clock ends up close to 120 min actual game length).
1 - FIFA World Cup matches haven't averaged more than 3 goals per match since 1958. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269031/goals-scored-per-...
2 - https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2013/01/14/colle...
This is such an interesting perspective to me, because I get nothing out of basketball (although watching it in person with people is okay). It's just so repetitive, the same things happen over and over the whole time. Scoring is so constant that none of the goals seem particularly special or spectacular.
I feel like both American football and Australian football hit a kind of sweet spot, where there are a lot of different kinds of athleticism on display, different sorts of positions in which different things can happen, and scoring isn't rare enough to make ordinary gameplay boring (soccer) but it's still infrequent enough that each one feels like something it makes sense to stand up and cheer for. With American football in particular, you can really say that two games are very rarely alike, whereas both soccer and basketball have a kind of "seen one, seen them all" vibe to them, with some very rare special games that elevate above that, obviously.
As for American football - I used to be a huge fan of NCAA and NFL games, even though I never played myself. Of the core American professional sports, it's the only I used to watch regularly. My son played into high school. I happily helped coach his youth teams. But, with the discovery of CTE, I've gone right off watching it. Knowing that the players literally concussing themselves stupid took the fun out of it.
I agree - it's just that basketball is basically the same for me. The only difference is that with basketball, they score about 25% of the time (or whatever). But the scores are all kind of the same, with a rare spectacular three pointer. Whereas in American football the teams kind of "feel each other out" and change strategies over time, have different formations, and so on, to the casual observer basketball is just a bunch of guys running towards defenders, hoping to spot a weakness, and either succeeding or failing, over and over. And when they succeed it doesn't matter that much, it's 2 points in a game where the teams will score a combined 200!
I've attended two NCAA basketball games, SEC and Big 10 respectively. In both cases when our (the home) team scored, we didn't stand up and cheer, we clapped. I felt like I was watching golf!
> Knowing that the players literally concussing themselves stupid took the fun out of it.
You're absolutely right about this, I was praising football on the abstract level but actually haven't watched it in years. I've sort of gotten myself into watching the occasional Australian football game for exactly that reason; it has some of the same appeal to me without the physicality that creates so many injuries.
Wrong conferences. ;)
ACC games are bonkers.
The goalkeeper in soccer (as the article points out) has a much larger space to guard, and this provides opportunity showcasing ability. Both for the shooter and the keeper, as well as other defenders who can make impressive saves without the use of hands.
Fans like showcases of ability. There are boring soccer games, just as there are boring hockey games and boring basketball games. But to me, a well-played soccer game is exciting almost all of the time. A goal can be scored from essentially anywhere on the pitch (much like basketball) and there are an enormous number of possible strategies to make this happen.
This article seems to indicate that there is only one viable strategy just at the minute, and that's detrimental to the game. I don't really care much about hockey, and I'm not well educated on it, but I bought the argument.
E.g. when one of your strikers is about to make a shot on goal, opposing strikers will likely move in anticipation that the goaltender might recover the ball and set up their own attack. Your defenders will need to move in response to this; if they mistake the play being set up, this can be a significant disadvantage. However, unless you recognize the play being set up, you don't see any of this and it just looks like a failed goal attempt.
Disclaimer: I don't actually know much about soccer/football, and am paraphrasing an explanation from memory.
That's entirely possible. I played very little soccer (or any team ball sports) as a youth. By high school I had moved on to rowing and mountain biking.
Surely a game with more goals is therefore more boring, because it has more time with everyone dawdling back to the centre line and the referee holding the ball/puck/whatever.
Edit: LOL just watched that video. I remember watching that game as a kid.
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”.
2line pass is now a 3line pass rule.
they moved the goal line back for to increase playmaking space.
There’s no more ties; which means fewer matches where only 2 points are awarded.
The outer part is if you step into this and don’t immediately step out within 2 seconds, it’s a penalty while the inner part is immediate penalty.
There's a much simpler answer: increase the size of the net. Hockey sticks are pretty incredible these days, and the torque generated from flexing the stick is pretty unbelievable. Playing in net in hockey is mostly about setting up at the right angles and blocking the highest percentage of the net that you can, combined with athleticism and instinct.
But a bigger goal would lead to more goals, if that's the end goal for the NHL.
Average semi-professional game ends something like 6-3.
Average kids on the backyard soccer game ends 10-5 or something like that :)
Compared to "real" players kids suck as goalkeepers but so what? They are still having fun. The score doesn't matter that much at that level anyway.
Kids also usually play on smaller fields with smaller goals but it's not mainly because of scoring chance - it's because schools don't have the space and kids don't have the stamina to run for 90 minutes on a full sized football pitch.
I don't think anybody minds weird scores in lower level games.
Keep in mind that the number of kids who can pick a corner and kick a ball into it consistently is pretty small too.
The skill level of the goalie and the skill level of the kickers will actually likely balance out.
He is not talking about backyard kids. He is talking about teenagers and adults playing hockey in hobbyist amateur teams. These typically tend to be much better players then kids in backyard.
These are semi-professional adults playing on full sized football field with regular sized goals for full 90 minutes.
It's not unheard of to score or lose 20 goals at that level :)
Also, I am still not talking about "reserve team". I am talking about hobbyists who want to have some fun while exercising and socializing, who maybe used to play in some team as kids but dropped out never being close to be stars.
Some adults don't just watch sports, they do actively play them.
Kids are also often playing with 1 goal and 1 goalkeeper and 2 teams trying to score (you have to move past half the pitch after regaining possession before shooting)- that way on 1 field you can have 2 games going on at once and only 1 person has to be the goalie in each of these games.
And we've played soccer on random backyards - you just put 2 backpacks as the goalposts and you're ready to go. I think the focus on rules and dimensions is very american, kids just want to dribble and shoot, the score and the minute details aren't important :).
As for replay they were introduced in high-level football last few years. It's called VAR and most fans hate it because it spoils the celebrations after a goal is scored and you have to wait to know if it's really a goal or not.
> handball calls are still shambolic.
that's because handball calls are interpretation of intent and slow motion won't help you with that.
So then they changed the rules to ignore the intent and it became a valid strategy for a striker to try to shoot the ball at a defender arm for penalty.
I think it would be easier to somehow limit area blocked by goalie equipment together - so if the goalie is very tall, pads would need to be either narrower or not that high to keep some max blocking area. And this is only IF we really need to do some change at all.
Maybe it’s my goalie experience speaking, but the highlight of hockey to me was always the direct confrontation between a shooter and the goalie. The more chaotic the goals, the less interesting the sport is.
Just as the viability of 3-point shooters opened up the floor in the NBA, making it viable to score from the blue line in the NHL would open the ice as well.
When I was a kid in the 80s players would score from the blue line all of the time.
They were still relatively low percentage shots but a guy could absolutely score with a slapper from the blue line. Enough that you had to respect the threat. Not unheard of for a d-man to score 20 or 30 in a year.
As a fan that was fun too! Not as fun as a magical "sexy" Gretzky goal. But you could hear the anticipation in the building when the puck went back to some guy who had a cannon from the blue line. Al Iafrate, etc.
Today, if a defensemen actually scored from the blue line, the team would probably immediately release the goalie and fire the goaltending coach lol. Only reason to shoot from long range is so you can get the puck into the scrum in the slot and hope some something happens from there.
[1] https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/video/chara-levels-slapshot-blu...
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.
His book about being in the NFL, "The Game", is good.
Then at the end with the author's bio I almost wanted to go read the whole article again, realizing this is one of the best goalies to play in the NHL.
It's not an official rule, but it is the common interpretation, to the point of players relying on this in competitive matches.
Another change that makes it easier for goalkeepers to defend in soccer was calling offside when a player is in offside position and doesn't receive the ball, just obstructs the visibility or messes with defenders and somebody else (not in offside position) score thanks to that.
It's a little inconsistent and I don't like it, but it doesn't seem to help the defenders and goalies too much.
Despite the rule changes in soccer goalies seem to be losing the arms race - there's more and more goals a game and last few years the meta moved to very high pressing and constant offence. Which I very much like - makes for a more entertaining games.
As for hockey I would like them to split the goal into 2 halves and put them 1 meter apart :)
So it sucks to be a goalkeeper and I sympathise with anyone tasked with organising the defence when faced with this trend. But for us fans this is quite good news :-)
If you’re going to bring that up, we could talk about the hows and whys of the NBA not allowing goaltending.
Have you ever noticed that one player just can’t jump up and sit in the goal for the whole of the game?
It’s rather small, so the game then would be about who could remove the man from the area above the basket.
Perhaps we could just make the goalie have to stay away from the crease in the NHL and wear something similar to that which everyone else wears? (Unfortunately, there are a number of good reasons things are the way they are[1].)
[1]- https://hockeyanswered.com/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-goalie...
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.
The most radical change I can imagine them considering would be eliminating offsides.
What do you think?
But if the goalie can cover 90% of the small
goal, and 70% of a goal just a few percent
bigger, it makes sense to me that could be a
bigger change than changing the number of players.
It's also a very coarse adjustment. Versus changing net dimensions, something they could experiment with in small increments at the minor league level.
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.
Historically its because goalkeepers have been vulnerable when in the air and outfield players leading with their feet when reaching for a contested ball.
Match Penalty - If, in the judgement of the Referee
, a goalkeeper uses his blocking glove to punch an
opponent in the head or face in an attempt to or to
deliberately injure an opponent, a match penalty
must be assessed.
Also around here it is quite uncommon for goalies to fight, but especially goalies coming from Canada tended to "payback" in some brawls around crease with blocker and paid dearly for it, as they had to leave the crease during important play-off game afterwards.
Still there's probably plenty of area where the penalty could be a two-minute minor (served by another player instead of the goalie), and where goalies are still permitted to defend their crease with means that would be considered roughing or something similar if done by skaters.
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.
It is becoming increasingly rare to see "normal" goals anymore in NHL hockey. Goalies are simply too good that normal goals won't go in. So if a defensemen wants to slapshot the puck, his forwards (who are down in front of the net) need to "screen" the goalie so the goalie can't see the puck. The forward then needs to try to dodge the puck at the last second before the goalie can react.
We also are seeing probably half or so of NHL goals come from deflections to pinball the puck around so the goalie can't even track the puck. It is amazing how good NHL forwards are getting now at deflecting. We routinely see triple deflections now.
The rest of the goals are just from diving the net. With 6-8 players in front of the net (3 attacking forwards, and 5 defending forwards+defensemen) just slapping at the puck in the chaos as it bounces around, it eventually goes in.
So I have long since believed that they should widen the net (just by 4-6 inches). But I do think that the NHL players have just gotten so good at creatively combatting the goalie, that widening the net might end up with too many goals in games. There is a fine balance between not enough scoring like in Soccer (Football outside USA) and with too much scoring (like in Basketball). American Football does a good job balancing the scoring. Most games have 3-4 touchdowns between both teams, plus a handful of other scoring opportunities like field goals and conversions. It keeps the touchdowns exciting (players even dance in the endzone on live TV), while still moving the game along with smaller scoring opportunities throughout the game.
An experienced viewer might be able to pick out this sort of mini battle during other sports, and there are also more nuanced battles in football that a random viewer may not pick up on. But for somebody casual, or even just listening on the radio or checking for updates on an app, there is a lot more "result" happening on a football field.
Plus the pauses help, when somebody gets the better of their opponent in a traditional goal-based sport you usually know mere moments later whether it had an impact on the game. A 3rd down conversion on the other hand can have minutes of game time (let alone real time) before one knows whether it led to a score. And even if it didn't, there is at least a clear impact on time of possession.
So I think perception of too little vs too much scoring can be helped by this dynamic, where real scores still feel very impactful but there are "fake" scores one can also root for on a shorter timescale.
Yeah, nothing like trying to end a players career. Should have been suspended for the season and fined.
Now in the past couple years the NHL has cracked down significantly on player safety. This type of thing would probably lead to a suspension if it had happened during the current season. Players are getting suspended for a lot less right now.
One thing that the league looks at is whether the headshot was avoidable and predictable. This is a weird shot, because the forward was looking at the goalie, which means that its both avoidable and predictable (meaning the player could expect to be hit and should prepare for it). But because it was a goalie coming at him, the player probably never expected that the goalie would actually make contact with him. This makes it far less predictable, and therefore less avoidable.
Usually the goalies come up really far during these types of breakaways to create more favorable angles to protect the net. The player was most likely expecting the goalie to stop at some point and start backing up, and he was probably waiting for that to happen so he could deke (move around the goalie while he's immobilized from stopping) and get an easy open net score. So they essentially played a game of chicken, but the goalie never disengaged. This is very unexpected. To me the goalie should be suspended for this. Virtually no forward in the league would have expected the goalie to do that and the way the goalie hit him, it was clear that it could have been dangerous.
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.
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. ;)
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".
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.
Hockey is already expensive - for goalies especially. More rule changes = more $$$ spent, and not always for great reasons.
Where I’m from in northern Ontario, a hockey centric place in the world, more kids played in recreational leagues than at the local barn rinks. Sure, playing shinny is really fun, but at the end of the day, kids want to play hockey as seen on TV. Whenever I went to the barn rink with my goalie equipment, people loved it because it was one of the few times they actually could shoot on a goalie. Playing posts or with a fake goalie is just as challenging (given I wasn’t very good) but it’s not the same as the real thing.
Also as the article states, for most younger players, these changes wouldn't be an issue as the goalie isn't quite big enough to cause the rules to be needed.
You'd still need some regulations around how the equipment is worn, but that's the case regardless.
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.
There are plenty of other major racing series around the world that use standardized vehicles. The reason F1 is special is the engineering, plain and simple. The aerodynamics involved, the engine efficiencies... Mercedes' ICU (traditional fuel part of the power unit) has achieved a thermal efficiency of over 50%. That is astounding. You just don't get these sort of advances with a spec series; there's no motivation for it.
If you combat the imbalance in team success at all, you do it by inserting negative feedback loops and spending limits. Making total available budget be not the #1 determining factor is an obvious choice. Some caps are in the works currently. And for negative feedback loops, these are things like -- the higher your finishing position for the season, the less wind tunnel time you have available to use in the offseason. Something like that, things that make it so if you win, it's a little bit harder to keep winning the next time.
You definitely don't turn it into a spec series, because then you have killed the sport.
Like what Fangio had to drive.
This already exists. Formula 2 is essentially Formula 1 racing, but everyone races the same car with the same specs. IndyCar is another example of Formula style racing where everyone races the same vehicle.
But Formula 1 is fascinating because it pushes the technological envelope of what is possible. The engineers back at car-manufacturer headquarters are the athletes participating on the team. The main driver of course is important, but there are plenty of examples of amazing drivers in less desirable cars that lose repeatedly. Because the engineering is part of the sport. Formula 1 drivers have quit teams over engineering decisions. Formula 1 is so interesting because the cars just keep pushing the engineering envelope of what is possible with 4 wheels.
This is similar to the old Ford vs Ferrari days at Le Mans, where car manufacturers had to build cars that were capable of racing at high speeds for 24 hours straight. Of course the driver is important. But more important than the driver is the car. The car must be able to last, and especially back in the 60s, cars really couldn't do that.
Much of the technology that is developed at those races trickled down into what we drive today and have built more reliable cars. Technology like fuel injection that we take for granted in cars today came from these races.
It would be a different sport. Not necessarily worse or better, just different. The engineering constrains and challenges are, et this moment, part of the point.
Formula E is closer to what you’re talking about, i believe only the power train is customisable.
Spec racing certainly has its place, and it is indeed also nice to see drivers pitted against each other on skill (and luck) alone. But that's never been Formula 1.
I don't understand, what's the purpose of wind tunnel trials when you're not designing the car?
In a sport where everyone drives the same car, marginal gains (1% more performance) can be what wins a race.
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.
Comparing to the Habs[1], the Oilers had a full goal + on any other team. Plus the Oilers were averaging 5 goals a night with some 8-0 and 7-1 out there. Likely still could have won some of those games without a goalie.
alkonaut - This is really cool. I was a bit struck seeing this on HN and from an Atlantic article and Dryden writing the article.
[0]: https://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/EDM/1985.html [1]: https://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/MTL/1985.html
https://laxgoalierat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/BoxLacro...
In hockey, you must score a goal.
Which one can not do if between me and the net there's no hole.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.
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.
I think the argument is: scale back protective equipment to something that doesn't strangle the game, and goalies must play a different style in order to stay safe. Which they will.
Having said that, I agree, we should also go back to non-composite sticks. The game was no less fun to watch when Mario and Wayne were playing the game with wooden sticks.
Can you go into more detail about this for someone who doesn’t followed hockey that closely?
Under the standup style of the 80s, you see these very short and narrrow goalie pads. If a modern goaltender were to drop to the butterfly using these pads, they wouldn’t cover as much of the net, and they’d be risking injury as the pads don’t extend to cover the top part of the leg.
The size of pads today, not just width but length too, allows the goalie to cover large parts of the bottom of the net. And also slide to the post and cover a pretty enormous area there too.
This video is another good example: https://youtu.be/cggFu52LnCE
Goalie pads today really are unusually and unnecessarily large. Goalies will tell you they need them for safety, but that’s only because they have exploited them to their fullest advantage.
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! :)
This should be legal in beer league hockey. I spend a good amount of time in net with my defense men standing right in front of me, facing away from the net - I would love someone to come in and fan away all the beer farts from the crease.
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.
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.
But to say that goalies today aren't acrobatic or fit or flexible or amazing athletes is totally wrong. To be able to put your body into the butterfly position, to be able to push off to move while staying in the butterfly, to be able to slide post to post as the puck moves behind the net and keep the post-side leg upright: THIS IS EXTREMELY HARD!
Goalies today are basically 6 foot+ tall gymnasts.
My knees, groin, and hips surely can no longer perform the kinds of movements which I used to be able to do. I was not anywhere near being NHL caliber, so maybe I have a different appreciation for watching top level goalies today. But damn, these goalies today are seriously impressive in how they can move their bodies.
Sure, the equipment regulations might need to change for bantam or midget level leagues and up, but the younger kids aren't big enough to take advantage of the equipment so any changes the NHL wants to implement shouldn't affect the vast majority of kids playing the game today until (if) they get to a high level of play and high school age or beyond.
I think the NHL should continue to change the rules, not just for goalies, but for the whole game. And if things work, then other leagues should adopt those rules over time, too.
Goals are considerably down from the late 1970s and 1980s. Larger goalies are merely properly offsetting the offensive gains made from better sticks and the slap shot, which had temporarily provided a scoring advantage and boosted goals per game.
Rather than it being a problem as implied by the article, larger goalies have balanced the game back out and returned it to where it was.
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.
For comparison, before the addition of shootouts to resolve games still tied after overtime, each game was worth exactly two points: both went to the winner, or they were split in the case of a tie.
Now there is the weird situation that teams are not competing for a fixed number of standings points. Instead rather a new point gets created whenever a game goes to overtime. This makes a huge incentive not to try to break ties in regulation.
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.
For example, many Americans see soccer as slow and boring and are bothered by the low scores and frequent draws. None of those things are a detriment for hundreds of millions of global soccer fans who see the game as fast and exciting (which it is).
All I can tell you is that following the puck is a non-issue to hockey fans. As others mentioned, at some point you just get a feel for what's going on and you'll have no problem figuring out where the puck is and following the action. If you want to be into hockey, invest time and join some hockey communities to learn the 'meta' of the game, and you'll get it.
We definitely don't have the same quantity of beer leagues, though. I wish we would.
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.
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.
But The Atlantic isn't news stories. They are general interest essays. They are all long form stories that tell a narrative and dive deep into topics.
For example, sometimes I'll watch videos of snooker games on YouTube. Chances are you know absolutely nothing about snooker, but the thing is, I don't really either. I can't keep the rules straight because I so rarely pay attention to it. I can't name more than one professional snooker player. It's fun to watch and can relieve a few minutes of boredom, but that's about it for me. And ... I think that's okay? Some sports, like lacrosse, I know absolutely nothing about, and that seems okay too!
I guess what this comment boils down to is that I don't think I understand what you would get out of a "bullet points" version of an article like this. Do you need to know anything about hockey? Preparing for a Jeopardy tournament or something? Despite not really enjoying hockey myself, what I got out of this article was some pleasure inherent to reading the thoughts of someone who has obviously thought very hard about a specific subject, and writes about those thoughts in a clear way.
Yes. I love The Atlantic. They are long-from general interest stories and usually written exceptionally well. But they post a lot of essays every day in a wide range of topics. Not all of them are for everyone. You got to pick what you want to read. There are plenty of essays that they publish that I have no interest in. But that's ok. They are interesting to someone. And isn't that what makes life so interesting? That everyone is so different?
I think we forget that now. Every story must be written for everyone collectively. It leads to less interesting stories.
To be honest, this story wouldn't benefit from bullet points. Not everything can be summarized. Imagine a campfire story and you say, "i don't want to wait until dark and make a fire and hike into the woods to hear the story, just give me the bullet points". It would be pointless. Life is about the nuances.
I think a kind of executive summary would make this drier and less engaging, with less flavour and context. So a worse article overall. In any case, the TL;DR is already in the title.
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.
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 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.
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.
You'd want a very fat, short guy, right? Well even if he manages to be as wide as 80% of that net that leaves a massive 20% of unattended space. So now this extremely obese, extremely squat goalie needs to move faster than a puck to protect that 20%? Not gonna happen.
And that's just hoping he can survive until the 1st intermission before you have to drag him off the ice as he's, you know, extremely obese.
I don't know if you've seen the bruises that pro hockey goalies get even when they take a puck through the pads, but I really wouldn't want someone with unprotected flesh to have to make a decision about allowing a goal or getting hit.
Garbage TV link, but they address your question. One thing they get very right is that, in non-game, non-rushed environments, even the worst NHL hockey player can pick any corner of the net.
(Others may correct me, I’ve been to one bandy game my whole Life)
Eventually laws were introduced to set limits.
Warning, graphic and not for the faint of heart: https://mobile.twitter.com/AugieLens/status/1355249355507163...
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.
1. Suggesting that goalies are nearly equally suited on their knees as on their skates.
2. Forgetting the goaltending rule exists in basketball.
NHL shooters have no problem hitting the uppermost part of the goal at will, and a goaltender on his knees simply doesn't cover enough of that area. This is a 6'5" goalie in that position (presumably having dropped down from upright after the shot is taken): https://www.1stohiobattery.com/columbus-blue-jackets-news/20...
If the shooter is 5 or more feet away, and has a couple seconds to set up a shot, and the goaltender is on his knees, it is virtually an automatic goal. Someone employing the strategy Dryden suggests should be the standard would lose every game for their team.
This takes away from his other very good commentary about the aesthetics of the game changing.
He doesn’t claim that goalies should always be on their knees, but rather than it’s common for them to do so, exploring the reasons why.
It’s an article in the The Atlantic, not a formal proof.
Every NHL goalie plays much of the game on their knees, as they should, because they end up there in response to low shots and close-approaching shooters. What Dryden is wrong to imply is that they should adopt this as their default posture.
As I reread I see that even worse, he downplays the danger of adopting this position leading to taking a slap shot to the helmet, saying a modern goalie mask protects the head "as much as a catching glove does the hand". Just utterly false. https://www.tsn.ca/nhl-concerned-by-rise-in-goalie-concussio...
> Only the ball needs to get to the hoop, and in this NBA game, it doesn’t matter whether you are 7 feet tall or 8 feet tall; a ball shot from beyond the 23-foot-9-inch arc will loop over the outstretched arm of even the tallest player.
That is absolutely untrue. Any player that can dunk can goaltend any shot.