Lost in the shuffle of the NHL playoffs and the finalists for most valuable player was a small announcement that could have far-reaching implications on the way the game is played at the highest level.
The league and the National Hockey League Players' Association announced the formation of a nine-member committee that will take another stab at potentially shrinking goaltending equipment, with a view to giving players more net to shoot at.
The object is to get more goal scoring – something that didn't happen after the lockout of 2004-05, despite sweeping rule changes designed to make the NHL game more free-flowing.
The committee, consisting of five players and four general managers, will ponder the issue in Toronto on June 11 with a mandate to “examine the configuration and dimensions of goaltender equipment with respect to safety and performance.”
If the working group decides rule changes governing goaltending equipment are needed and would not jeopardize the goalie safety, the recommendations would be forwarded to the competition committee for consideration.
The issue of goaltending equipment as it relates to scoring is often controversial, depending on which side of the argument you're on. Even though the equipment most goalies wear passes muster under the guidelines introduced post-lockout, there doesn't appear to be that much of a difference.
The big NHL goalies – Jean-Sébastien Giguère of the Anaheim Ducks, Roberto Luongo of the Vancouver Canucks and others – look as big as ever.
As St. Louis Blues forward Paul Kariya, a 50-goal scorer in the mid-1990s, said in an interview this year: “Protection isn't width. It's depth.”
Kariya's point – that there is a “night-and-day” difference in the equipment from when he broke in until now – is indisputable. You only need to watch footage from classic games to see the difference.
Even in the current era, with equipment measured and monitored constantly by the league, goalies and trainers are finding ways of circumventing the rules. One former GM said a popular new technique is for goaltenders to sew extra padding into their long underwear. No one ever thought they'd need to measure the size of underwear when the last set of guidelines was unveiled.
The committee is nicely balanced between current goaltenders (Martin Brodeur, Rick DiPietro and Ryan Miller) and former ones (Jim Rutherford and Garth Snow) and a handful of skaters. Brett Hull, the co-GM in Dallas and the No.3 career goal scorer, whose playing career bridged the era when goaltending equipment widely expanded, is on the committee, too.
Snow was often criticized for the size of his equipment, so his perspective will be interesting. Rutherford, meanwhile, retired in 1983, back in the days when goalies could still get hurt because of how flimsy their equipment was.
Trying to find a balance between past and present, while ensuring goaltenders are properly protected, is Rutherford's main goal in terms of serving on the committee.
“I really want to hear from the goalies that are playing now,” he said. “Some of these top guys like Brodeur and [Marty] Turco and [Evgeni] Nabokov seem to have goalie equipment that looks pretty normal.
“It seems odd to me that they'd want to be playing at one end and see the guy at the other looking – I was going to use the word distorted – but who seems to be so much bigger than he is as a person.”
Goal scoring in the NHL topped out in the mid-1980s, during Wayne Gretzky's era with the Edmonton Oilers, when games averaged more than eight goals a night. Of late, scoring has dropped back into the low to mid-fives.
Equipment changes cannot address one of the fundamental changes relating to goaltenders: the across-the-board increase in their overall size and athleticism.
Compared with 20 years ago, on average, they are bigger, stronger, fitter, more flexible and well-schooled in technique because of better, individual instruction. They all study videotape with the personal goaltending gurus whom almost every club hires. Thus, they all know how to play the percentages.
The overall improvement in the quality of NHL goaltending didn't go away as a result of post-lockout rule changes; and that genie cannot be stuffed back in the bottle.
However, Rutherford believes changes can be made that will translate into more offence, without resorting to the most dramatic change that has been floated as a trial balloon, but pushed to the back-burner for now – bigger nets.
“Hopefully, we can put this goalie discussion to bed because it just keeps coming up again and again,” Rutherford said. “I'm not in favour of bigger nets, but at some point, if we don't come up with a solution, there will be enough people who will push for bigger nets.
“One way or another, there's going to be more net for the players to shoot at.”
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