Their numbers have been dwindling, dramatically, nearly yearly now. From 73 p.c of the NHL, to 51, and now all the way down to half that within the span of lower than 20 years.
Whereas it could really feel hyperbolic to name it a disaster in Canadian hockey, it’s actually a troubling notion that now often registers within the nationwide consciousness — particularly when their hockey groups head to a serious worldwide event, as they do that week on the 4 Nations Face-Off.
After proudly owning the crease for practically a century, the Canadian goalie is seemingly turning into outmoded.
The urgent query, all through worldwide hockey circles, is: How did this occur? How did Canada go from the world’s normal bearer — the nation of Jacques Plante, Ken Dryden, Patrick Roy and Martin Brodeur — to being outclassed at a very powerful place in its nationwide sport?
And the way can they repair it?
The top of Canadian dominance
Traditionally, Canada had at all times excelled in purpose at hockey’s highest ranges — even past its success at different positions. All the 5 goalies with essentially the most wins in NHL historical past, for instance, are Canadian. And Sweden’s Henrik Lundqvist is the one non-Canadian to crack the highest 10.
Lately, having Brodeur, Roberto Luongo or Carey Value in internet at the entire main worldwide occasions was a large benefit, and a giant purpose Canada received gold on the Winter Olympics (2002, 2010 and 2014) and World Cup (2016).
As just lately as 2000, Canada was so overwhelmingly in management on the place that two-thirds of all video games performed within the NHL have been by goalies from the nation. In the present day, nonetheless, Europeans are twice as prevalent as Canadians, and the Individuals are on the verge of passing Canada.
The development has develop into so pronounced that it roughly equates to Canada shedding a beginning place within the NHL each season.
It’s a shift that’s particularly evident among the many recreation’s elite goalies. A Canadian, for instance, has received solely one of many previous eight Vezina trophies because the league’s prime goaltender. Previous to 1993-94, Canadians had received the award an unbelievable 62 of 67 instances.
What’s reignited this dialog this season is Canada’s three netminders for the 4 Nations event, the primary best-on-best occasion since 2016, are underwhelming names: Jordan Binnington, Adin Hill and Sam Montembeault, who rank 14th, twenty fifth and twenty ninth in wins within the NHL since 2021-22.
Canada’s competitors on the event is telling. The highest two goalies in wins in that very same time-frame — Connor Hellebuyck and Jake Oettinger — are each American. Finland has Juuse Saros (sixth), and Sweden is led by Linus Ullmark (tenth) and Jacob Markstrom (seventh), who will miss the occasion attributable to harm.
The rest of the highest 10 are all from Russia, a nation that received’t be taking part within the occasion because of the struggle in Ukraine.
Cam Talbot, at 37 years outdated, leads all Canadians with 92 wins with 4 totally different groups unfold over the previous 4 seasons.
“It’s form of mind-boggling,” mentioned Brodeur, the NHL’s all-time chief in wins, in a latest radio interview about Canada’s struggles in purpose.
Why different international locations are taking up
The explanations behind this development are advanced and have befuddled hockey folks in Canada for greater than a decade. Canada, in spite of everything, stays a dominant energy at different positions, with Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar among the many finest gamers on the planet.
A part of the reply is in how Canada’s competitors has tailored, starting with European nations within the Nineties.
Dominik Hasek’s success within the NHL 30 years in the past was a revelation within the goalie world because the Czech with the slinky backbone received six Vezinas and in 1997 turned the primary goalie named league MVP within the recreation’s fashionable period.
When he stole the gold medal on the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, proving unbeatable towards hockey’s conventional juggernauts, it led to a goalie-development arms race, each within the NHL and amongst different international locations.
Canada nonetheless produced the overwhelming majority of NHL goalies throughout Hasek’s period of dominance. He was considered as an outlier. The main focus on the time was on the Made-in-Canada butterfly approach that relied on a prescriptive mannequin of dropping to your knees and blocking the puck.
That model was famously employed by Roy, who received 4 Stanley Cups between 1986 and 2001, and adopted by different college students of goalie coach Francois Allaire, who revolutionized the place within the Eighties.
A run of French Canadian goalies — led by Roy, Brodeur, Luongo, Marc-Andre Fleury, Felix Potvin, J-S Giguere and others — owned NHL creases. And so they made Canada practically unbeatable on the world stage.
However small international locations like Czechia, Finland and Sweden, all with populations of 10 million or much less, noticed one thing in Hasek. The sports activities leaders of these nations believed getting higher in purpose would enable them to compete with superpowers like Canada and Russia.
So that they poured assets into goalie improvement and training. And so they started to win.
What NHL groups quickly discovered was this new breed of European goalie who performed in another way than Canadians. An intense concentrate on educating what is likely one of the most technical and mentally demanding positions in professional sports activities was paying off, particularly within the Nordic international locations, the place assets could possibly be pooled and disseminated to each age group via their membership workforce system.
After a stretch of dominance from Finns and Swedes within the 2000s — led by Lundqvist’s rise from seventh-round choose to Corridor of Famer — different international locations started to repeat these fashions. In the present day, Russia and the US are making the largest good points. And Canada lags behind.
The place Canada has fallen quick
One situation goalie improvement specialists level to is the extreme professionalization occurring in Canadian hockey at younger ages, one thing that doesn’t at all times lend itself to grassroots improvement.
On the elite degree, successful is usually the first purpose, even with children as younger as 7 or 8 years outdated. This results in “tremendous groups” the place just one goalie is given a lot of the alternative, limiting the variety of children enjoying the place. It additionally exhibits up in Canadians hewing to custom and resisting new improvement methods, like smaller nets and cross-ice play for youthful kids.
Hockey Canada has been making an attempt — and it instituted cross-ice play for youthful age teams in 2017 — however it’s preventing an uphill battle towards many dad and mom and coaches.
“There’s actually no concentrate on goaltending improvement in minor hockey in any respect,” says Rob Gherson, a former Washington Capitals draft choose and professional goalie who has coached in Toronto’s prime youth leagues for greater than a decade. “That is one space we have undoubtedly fallen behind. Different locations — Sweden, the U.S., Russia — they’ve put cash into goaltending, and so they’ve put a concentrate on making an attempt to develop goalies.
“In Canada, coaches are underneath a ton of stress as a result of the main focus in minor hockey right here is about successful. And it is loopy. It is basically like these children have gotten professionals at 8 years outdated.”
This does kids a disservice, Gherson says, as fewer are allowed to even strive the place. And those who do get to play usually don’t attain their potential.
“On the finish of the day, they get one million plastic trophies or medals,” he says. “They do not get something out of it.”
In Sweden, in contrast, gamers nearly at all times play a number of positions, which permits them to develop into extra well-rounded athletes and perceive the game from a number of views. In addition they drive a goalie rotation, in order that it’s not merely essentially the most proficient 9-year-olds enjoying each minute.
USA Hockey’s improvement workers has been collaborating with Sweden lately and now focuses on getting as many children as attainable to strive the place. Their goal by 2030 is to have 10 p.c of all youth gamers be goalies.
They’re additionally extra extensively adopting gear improvements that enable gamers to swiftly swap out gear so children can “share” a begin. Getting a purpose, help and save in a recreation is their new-school model of a Gordie Howe hat trick.
“Individuals suppose it’s important to be a full-time goalie at 5 years outdated if you’re studying learn how to skate,” USA Hockey head of goalie improvement Steve Thompson says. “That’s one thing we strongly resist the households to do. We would like them to be a hockey participant first and a goalie second and actually perceive your complete recreation.
“We’ve seen a few of our nationwide workforce goalies that did not begin (in purpose) full time till they have been 13 or 14 years outdated. The final thought is that that is wild and the way on earth is that attainable? However the extra we’re seeing it, the extra we’re beginning to actually purchase into the truth that these are the very best athletes: Those which might be well-rounded earlier than they dive full in.”
A few of these approaches have met agency opposition in Canada, the place dad and mom and coaches need to train the best way they realized many years in the past.
“In minor hockey at 9, 10 years outdated, it is a top-shelf competitors,” Gherson says, utilizing the resistance to smaller nets for youngsters for instance. “No matter workforce can shoot excessive essentially the most goes to win as a result of the goalies cannot attain the crossbars.
“It’s like they’re enjoying a distinct place. While you’re teaching with these children, you nearly have to show them one thing totally different (than what they need to be studying).”
Gherson says Canada has the children prepared to study the place and the assets to help them, with many dad and mom shelling out tens of 1000’s of {dollars} on camps, coaching and gear yearly.
However that’s not working.
“(Youngsters) are going into the manufacturing unit of the goalie faculty,” Gherson says, explaining that many goalie camps value upwards of $1,000 per week, which additional limits the pool of goalies. “We spend a lot cash right here (on goaltending). It simply must be higher.”
How different international locations do it
When Andrei Vasilevskiy first arrived at Paul Schonfelder’s goalie clinic in Ottawa in 2010 as a 16-year-old, he skated and moved within the internet in another way than goalies who’d grown up being educated in Canada.
The longer term Vezina winner was uncooked when it comes to effectivity and construction on the ice, Schonfelder says. However Vasilevskiy had a novel skill to learn performs and was a exceptional athlete at 6-feet-4.
It was simple to see his potential, even when the Canadian goalies alongside him have been extra technically sound.
Wanting again, Schonfelder, now goalie coach for the Carolina Hurricanes, sees the younger Vasilevskiy as a prototype.
“He’d already developed a robust athletic piece in his recreation. And actually all that wanted to be added was the construction, but it surely was being added when he was older,” Schonfelder says. “I discover in Canada it is the other.”
Schonfelder, who has labored with Hockey Canada’s goaltending improvement program, says Canadian goalies usually look distinctive at youthful ages. That’s as a result of they concentrate on prescribed positions and micro actions for various situations from a younger age, usually drilling the actions throughout lengthy apply classes with a devoted coach.
“We get these children at 17 or 18 who’re extraordinarily structured and if you happen to requested them to do a sample within the crease, they seem like one million bucks,” Schonfelder says.
What they lack, nonetheless, is the athleticism of an elite goaltender, with a capability to get exterior a technical field and drawback resolve in recreation conditions. “They don’t have the flexibility to learn the sport and suppose on their very own,” Schonfelder says.
“That is a giant a part of the stagnation of goaltending,” says Thomas Magnusson, Sweden’s head of goaltending improvement. “Shooters do not do the identical factor over and over. They do various things. However in a goalie apply, a variety of instances you see goalie coaches doing the identical factor and repeat it over and over. That is not how the sport of hockey appears.”
The Russian goalies Schonfelder has labored with, nonetheless, don’t obtain this degree of teaching at youthful age. As an alternative, they’re allowed to go within the internet and play.
The simplest methodology, says Sasha Tyjnych — the agent who found Vasilevskiy — is to discover a good goalie with pure expertise and individualize their coaching.
They is likely to be extra inclined to face up in sure conditions, or butterfly in others, however finally the purpose is to enhance what already works for them. This matches with the USA Hockey’s present method, which inspires originality.
“For me, that is why Russian goalies are higher proper now,” Tyjnych says.
When Andrei Vasilevskiy first got here to Canada to be educated as a young person, he was a uncooked prospect. However later, he developed into one of many league’s finest. (Mike Carlson / Getty Photos)
In consulting with goalie coaches throughout the nation, Hockey Canada’s director of participant improvement Corey McNabb says there’s consensus that the extreme concentrate on approach at a younger age is problematic.
“In case you have the athleticism and bodily literacy first, the approach is less complicated to use afterward,” McNabb says.
However getting hockey dad and mom and youth organizations in Canada to purchase into this sort of change in mindset will be tough.
“We’re in a rush to attempt to get to best-on-best as a substitute of offering extra children with the possibility to play at a better degree for an extended time period,” says McNabb. “Sadly, in our system there are a variety of children who’re informed they are not ok too early. And we do not actually know at 14 years outdated who’s going to be the very best.”
The all-encompasing nature of Canada’s nationwide sport may additionally be a hindrance.
As youth hockey has develop into a year-round enterprise on the elite degree — between rep groups, summer season journey groups and improvement camps — some argue that the outcomes will be counterproductive.
Jon Elkin, director of goaltending for the Pittsburgh Penguins, has run summer season goaltending faculties within the Toronto space for the reason that early Nineties. He argues that for goaltenders, particularly, hyper-focused coaching will ultimately result in diminishing returns. Elkin believes goalies ought to take part in different sports activities to study totally different patterns of motion and response to enhance general athleticism.
The American and European goaltenders that attend Elkin’s youth camps are likely to take part in additional sports activities than the Canadian children, to their profit, he says.
“It is so quick, and there are such a lot of damaged performs and guys can shoot the puck. You’ve bought to have the ability to transfer, change path, stretch. Rise up and down, and have nice reflexes,” Elkin says. “So something that you are able to do to encourage that’s necessary.”
Compounding Canada’s overly selective method is the dimensions of goalies on the elite degree. The typical NHL netminder this season is 6-3, for instance, and it’s develop into widespread for a lot of professional netminders to be 6-5 or taller.
With fewer children getting time to develop in Canadian youth hockey leagues, an method targeted solely on successful can find yourself lacking on children who is likely to be sluggish in rising into the appropriate physique varieties.
“We lose so many children for foolish causes that could possibly be goalies,” Gherson says. “We’re simply not giving them an opportunity.”
The junior leagues situation
Canada’s struggles lengthen past the youth degree, nonetheless. As youngsters, the very best Canadian goalies are sometimes enjoying in mini-NHL environments in junior leagues the place, at 17 or 18 years outdated, they is likely to be backing up goalies two or three years their senior. A lot of these backups not often play throughout these pivotal improvement years.
The junior leagues additionally sometimes depend on goalie coaches who’re half time and low-paid, some incomes as little as $7,000 for a full season’s work.
Even Canada’s finest junior goalies might get just one or two seasons as a starter earlier than they bounce to the professional leagues, the place successful video games once more trumps improvement.
“Our construction in some methods is hurting the potential improvement of younger goalies,” McNabb says.
European and American goaltenders, in the meantime, are sometimes capable of play in much less aggressive environments for longer, both in lower-tier leagues or by going the school route.
This professionalization of the place impacts teaching, too. Most of the world’s prime goalie coaches are Canadian, however they usually work for NHL groups, different professional groups or their very own goalie faculties.
Hockey Canada has had a tough time retaining goaltending consultants as a result of they’re so steadily recruited by NHL groups, McNabb says. And internationally, Canada remains to be extensively considered as a frontrunner in terms of goaltending instruction.
The vast majority of the younger goalies who attend Elkin’s camps every summer season are actually from the US, Russia, and different European international locations, he says.
However steerage from a governing physique will be key. Living proof: Magnusson, who has overseen Sweden’s goaltending program for a few years. “He is completed a extremely good job and it comes all the way down to consistency to what they’re educating, how they’re educating it, why they’re educating it,” McNabb says of Magnusson.
The standardization of teaching, and high quality management, that has develop into a function of the Finnish and Swedish method — and one thing the U.S. has been quickly adopting — will not be presently the norm in Canada.
“Canada has not been capable of do issues on a nationwide scale,” Magnusson says. “It nonetheless appears, to me, prefer it did 10, 11 years in the past. There’s a variety of goalie coaches, sure, however they’re doing various things, which implies a goalie going up the system, from youth to juniors to professional ranks, will get totally different messages.”
This implies there’s not often a consensus about learn how to train on the decrease ranges.
“With all of the personal corporations, personal goalie coaches — and in addition the competitors for (NHL) jobs within the skilled goalie coach market — they should have their very own means of doing issues,” Magnusson says. “They’ve to advertise themselves. ‘That is my means. That is my terminology.’ Which mixes issues up for goalies.”
Hockey Canada acknowledged this actuality near a decade in the past, says McNabb. Upon witnessing Canada’s decline in goalie dominance, the group got down to discover a repair.
In 2019, Hockey Canada applied a coverage that urged youth groups to keep away from having a full-time goalie earlier than the age of 10. However it’s not an enforceable coverage.
For ages 10 and older, Hockey Canada encourages goalies to alternate video games, and to play ahead or protection slightly than sit on the bench when it’s not their flip to play in internet. Once more, it’s not a extensively adopted idea.
A piece group of goalie coaches from throughout the nation helped Hockey Canada develop a three-tiered course of to coach goalie coaches. The primary degree focuses on grassroots fundamentals, meant for groups that don’t have a devoted goalie coach. The second degree is meant for a extra superior perspective on skillsets, techniques and recreation play.
Prior to now two years, near 2,500 coaches from throughout Canada have attended the extent one and degree two clinics, McNabb says.
A 3rd degree of coaching permits coaches to obtain goalie coach certification. Round two dozen coaches are chosen to attend a camp in Calgary annually. Up to now, 120 coaches have acquired that certification.
“We will not be complacent on this space,” McNabb says. “We have to proceed to get higher and push the tempo and attempt to get extra goaltenders to the very best degree.”
Can Canada flip the tide?
Amid Canada’s declining dominance in purpose, there are causes for optimism. Seven of the previous 10 Stanley Cup-winning groups have had a Canadian goalie.
And this season, among the prime save percentages within the NHL have been put up by Canadians, like Mackenzie Blackwood, Logan Thompson and Darcy Kuemper.
The previous two seasons, Canadian goalies have truly posted a save share barely larger than the NHL common.
“It is not the top of the world right here,” says Elkin. “It is not as bleak as I feel it is made out to be.”
There’s a cyclical nature to this actuality, he argues: “There isn’t any purpose why we will not dominate once more.”
McNabb believes Canada is likely to be on the verge of reversing the development, pointing to a pipeline of younger goalies coming via Hockey Canada’s system.
“I feel proper now on the high-performance degree, it is wanting actually good for the longer term,” McNabb says.
In line with The Athletic’s newest rating, nonetheless, solely 4 of the highest 20 23-and-under goalie prospects are Canadian.
And so they’re up towards USA Hockey’s more and more aggressive method, together with its purpose of getting 50 p.c of NHL minutes performed by Individuals within the close to future.
A number of of Canada’s present starters like Talbot, Kuemper and Fleury are about to age out of the league, and whether or not they’ll get replaced by countrymen — or extra Europeans and Individuals — is an open query.
“Canada will at all times produce goalies,” Magnusson says. “It is only a matter of what number of.”
GO DEEPER
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(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photograph: Chris McGrath / Getty Photos)