The San Jose Sharks have been blessed with solid goaltending in their history.
The San Jose Sharks have been blessed with solid goaltending in their history.
The goaltending position has changed a lot throughout NHL history. Back in the '90s and early 2000s, goalies would be a lot.
Due to the downturn of scoring, goaltenders would also have longer careers.
Take a look at today's THN Archive story:
RIPE OLD CAGE GOALIES CLIMB SALARY SCALE
Vol. 52, Issue 2 Sept. 18, 1998
By Mark Brender
While President Bill tiptoed around Monicagate this summer, the NHL was doing a dance of its own. Call it the goalie shuffle.
We hereby swear under oath the following statement is both legally and factually accurate: at least nine of 27 teams (including the expansion Nashville Predators) will start the 1998-99 season with new No. 1 netminders. That’s not entirely surprising when you consider two factors. One, teams had to move goalies or risk losing them for nothing in the expansion draft. Two, unrestricted free agency means there will always be some goalies on the market and this summer happened to provide a bumper crop.
The really interesting part, though, isn’t the number of changes, but the age of the guys doing the moving and shaking. Maybe Mr. Clinton should take up a new sport. Old guys in goal are sexy again.
Look at this summer’s happenings:
Free agent Curtis Joseph signs a four-year, $24 million deal with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He’ll be 35 when it expires. The Philadelphia Flyers turn to free agent John Vanbiesbrouck to solve their woes in goal and give him a three-year contract that will see him through age 38. Bill Ranford is no geriatric at 31, but had a less than stellar season a year ago with the Washington Capitals. Despite a $3 million salary, the Tampa Bay Lighting traded to get him.
The Calgary Flames, with prized 21-year-old prospect Jean-Sebastien Giguere waiting in the wings, filled their starter’s job by trading for veteran Ken Wregget, 34, who will enter the season as a clear No. 1 for the first time in 11 years. “I feel like I can be a No. 1,” he said. ’1 think experience-wise I can bring my level of play up where I can do it.”
The best goalie of them all, Dominik Hasek of the Buffalo Sabres, will be 37 by the time his new deal expires.
And perhaps no one event is as telling as this: The goalie-challenged Vancouver Canucks tried (unsuccessfully) to talk 38-year-old Andy Moog out of retirement.
The ones still kicking are hardly lame ducks just putting in time until the next generation takes over. NHL goalies are greying…and prospering.
Ten years ago, in 1988-89, two-thirds of the league’s teams (13 of 21) went to war with their top two goalies under the age of 30. Entering training camp this season, there were only seven teams that did not have at least one 30-year-old among their top duo.
Only two teams this season-the Montreal Canadiens with locelyn Thibault or Jose Theodore and Phoenix Coyotes with Nikolai Khabibulin-enter the year with a No. 1 goalie 25 or under. Ten years ago, nearly a quarter of the 1 teams went through the entire year with their | top two goalies meeting those criteria.
I “Goalies have such an impact that you can’t | hide them,” said Nashville Predators’ goalie ’ coach Mitch Korn. “They’ve got to get k groomed.”
Olaf Kolzig was 27 when he took over the No. 1 job for Washington last year and his resume included two stints in the East Coast League. Byron Dafoe, Steve Shields and lamie McLennan have also spent time there. Theirs is now almost as common a path to the top as that taken by, say, Felix Potvin when he earned a full-time job with Toronto after just one season in the American League.
Of course, the bubble of now-veteran goalies who broke into the league largely in a five-year span from 1984 to 1988 is a talented bunch. Besides those already mentioned, the group includes, among others, Mike Vemon, Patrick Roy, Ed Belfour and Ron Hextali. Grant Fuhr (1981), Tom Banasso (1983) and Mike Richter (1989) fall on the outside edges. Of all goalies who played at least 20 games in 1988-89, 15 are still playing today.
But there’s a lot more to their durability than natural ability. With goalie coaches sprouting everywhere in the minor ranks, it’s not as if there aren’t good young goalies out there. The consensus, though, is the game has simply become too risky to let young goalies learn on the job when the veterans have been through it all and have proven their worth in the past.
According to Elias Sports Bureau, the average margin of victory in NHL games has been gradually declining since it hovered at about 2.4 in the early 1980s. It hit 1.87 last season-the lowest mark since 1956-57. More than 15 per cent of all games ended in ties, higher even than the number in 1982-83, the year before regular season overtime was introduced.
“Grant and I and Beezer and Kelly Hrudey (now retired), we grew up in an era where it was more run-and-gun type hockey,” said Vemon, who played 62 games last year for the San Jose Sharks, more than in his three previous seasons. “A good goals-against was 3.20,3.30. Nowadays, you can’t let in a bad goal.”
In short, the big save has become bigger; even a flubbed shot in mid-November can have playoff ramifications. Parity means there is less room for error, so there are fewer games in which a coach can start the second-stringer and still be confident of coming out with a win. On the high-scoring Edmonton Oilers’ teams of the 1980s, Grant Fuhr earned a reputation as a goalie who might let in some goals against a bad team, but never the crucial one that can tie you or beat you. Today that could be any team…and any goal. And so the traditional pattern of throwing the backup in against a weak team is reversed. It’s often a game the main man must play.
“Now, if you ever get a game you think you’ll have an easier time winning, you better damn well win it, said Phoenix coach Jim Schoenfeld. “Those games that you should win, you have to win.”
That’s why teams’ No. 1 goalies are playing more today than any time since perhaps the days of the Original Six. Last season an astounding 16 goalies played at least 60 games (and two others played 58). Ten years ago there were three to play that many.
Lower-scoring games have also brought about a readjustment of the goalie’s place in the salary scale. Goalies are one of the top three paid players on nearly half of league payrolls, which reflects their increased value. Along with big bucks comes the bulk of the playing time; too much money sitting on the bench does not make owners happy. “Right now, 22 games is a lot for your backup to play,” said Edmonton coach Ron Low, “if you’re paying that (No. 1) guy $7 million or $6 million or $5 million.”
Besides, the old goalies are a younger older than ever before. They stay in great shape over the summer, so like others players, can extend their careers. Better protective equipment is a huge factor in their longevity; Vemon says elder goalies even a decade ago might have questioned sticking around after taking a shot to the head, but advances in the goalie mask have essentially taken away the fear factor altogether. “I still enjoy playing,” he said, “and I don’t even mind practice that much.”
They have survived, too, by refining their games. Vemon says when he watches tapes of his early years, he laughs at what he sees. If he ventured so far out of the net today to cut down angles, at a time when most goals are scored in tight on deflections or rebounds, he’d get nickel-and-dimed right out of the league.
For now, though, Vemon will keep going, another two seasons at least. The same goes for many of his colleagues.
“I’ve always felt hockey was like a disease, you can’t really shake it,” said Wregget, who vows to keep strapping on the pads as long as they let him.
Younger goalies, despair not. You may feel as if you’re stuck in a never-ending traffic jam on the highway to the big time, but one of these years there’s going to be a massive turnover. Stay positive and your time will come. This generation can’t keep on playing forever.
Just don’t expect to land a TV commentator’s gig when your playing career is over. The broadcast booth will be pretty crowded.
THEY WORK HARD FOR THEIR MONEY
Felix Potvin has averaged 65 games per season the pas five full seasons, but he’s not the league’s only workhorse. Below is the number of goalies to play at least 58 games in a season in the past 10 full seasons (not included is the lockout shortened 1994-95 season).