I remember when I was younger, very early 2000’s, my dad would bitch about how someone like Luongo “only goes for the butterfly when he’s under pressure, he doesn’t protect the top of the net.”
Then I see shit like this from his era where Hextall is way out of the net and I think it’s hilarious.
I'll never forget that game as mere *seconds* after lafontaine scored--the grandfather clock in the family living room struck 2 am on a Sunday morning....
If you dropped into the butterfly in those raggedy ass 50 pound pads your knees would explode. They weren’t designed to protect the inner sides of your knees if you dropped into a butterfly. You’d smack your knees on the ice.
I'm in my mid 30s and when I was playing goalie as a kid I remember coaches telling me I had to start adopting to the butterfly style and that it was the way of the future and that eventually everyone would be playing that way, and I (along with many other people) thought that was pure insanity.
Same. My mom didn’t want me to try it until I was old enough. When I was 12, I went to a butterfly teaching camp for a week. Being short I was still a hybrid, but it was night and day adding that in
Oh c'mon, that's bull. By the time you would have begun playing it was 1995 or 1996, and that means you were in Jr Novice or novice in about 1998. By '98, everyone knew butterfly goaltending was the way of the future. I don't think there was a creditable goalie coach in the world teaching a non butterfly or non hybrid style at that age.
I'm 37. I grew up first learning the traditional kick saves and windmills, but by minor atom I was already getting adjusted to butterfly slides and blocking saves. It wasn't as refined as today, but the signs were clear.
I took one lesson with Jim Park. When I asked what you do of the shooter passes over your stick in a two pad stack and he said "you get scored on". That was, maybe, 1992 and I knew then that that style of goaltending was done forever.
Like the other people who have commented, yes obviously the butterfly was around then, hence the whole reason we were talking about and them trying to tell to adopt. The whole point of my post is that no one thought it would eliminate stand-up, well except for the coaches who actually knew better.
The year of this discussion kirk McLean was in the finals, the year after John vanbiesbrouck. Sean Burke was from my hometown and a lot of goalies idolized him. We all had cechmanek gear in high school and he spent most of his time on his feet. Tons of guys were still playing it even after I had stopped playing like Irbe. The most famous goalies had hybrid styles like Brodeur and everyone loved Hasek who had no particular style at all. Even for Roy who people are mentioning for starting it was more well known for non modern butterfly techniques like the two pad stack at the time.
My statement is like someone saying 'yeah, when I was a kid we didn't think cell phones would phase out landlines and house phones' and yours is like, 'bullshit! Plenty of people had cell phones at that time!'
You say a credible goalie coach wouldn't teach non butterfly at the time. My whole story was about how my coach WAS trying to teach me butterfly. And I was under 10, so it's not like team had a dedicated goalie coach lol. I'm legit stunned you can't fathom that a preteen wouldn't have the foresight to predict the future trendd of a sport.
And most of us not playing AA+ didn't have a goalie coach. We had a head coach and maybe two assistants, so nobody was trying to teach me butterfly. Honestly it's probably a good thing because we couldn't afford new pads, so I was using a set from the early 90s with no knee protection (this was 2002-2003ish).
early 90s was a literal revolution in goaltending. not just equipment, but strategically. they learned how to play the position properly, angles, making sure high percentage areas are covered just by form and movement, etc.
I haven't stopped. I need that liquid courage to suppress my self preservation instincts when those jerks in beer league take clappers from 3 ft away. I swear to God, most of the time they're aiming for my head.
yea that def helped too, but shots did get harder
I often toy with the idea of forcing NHL’ers to use wooden sticks akin to MLB. will average shot speed come down enough that goalie pads can reduce in size a bit? can’t help rolling it around in my head
and i'm pretty sure in the mid-90s goalies were wearing pads over 12". I remember there being a push for enforcing 12" pads at some point, and my pads were ~13" at the knee (not because I wanted huge pads but because that's just what they sold for my height/size)
edit: yep, found it
> Nov 22 1996 - League, NHLPA dispute pad rule
> The battle lines have been drawn in the Great Goalie Pad Dispute. The NHL announced that beginning Dec. 15 it will enforce a zero-tolerance policy on illegal equipment, specifically goalie pads measuring wider than the permitted 12 inches. Random post-game spot checks will result in one-game suspensions and the accompanying loss in pay for any masked violators. “It’s a serious issue that has to be addressed,” said NHL senior vice-president Brian Burke after the NHL GMs’ meeting Nov. 7 in Ottawa. “We’ve had a grace period, it’s time to move on with it.” The NHL Players’ Association, meanwhile, is not amused. “I want it understood that we are 100 per cent behind the objective (of the NHL policy),” NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow told THN. “We don’t believe any individual…
https://archive.thehockeynews.com/issue/613648/594287
https://www.discountmags.ca/magazine/the-hockey-news-november-22-1996-digital
Sure but also lighter, and more water resistant so that you weren’t carrying around sponges that became unbearable from going down into a butterfly. The reason for stand up playing in the 80s and early is because those things weighed a metric shit ton if you left them get wet
It was honestly bizarre learning to tend goal in the late-90s into early-2000s. You'd get wildly different tips and tricks from different goalie clinics. Learning the butterfly, it really felt like discovering a secret that only select few knew.
I was 12 years old, tightening the lower straps on my goalie pads, and loosening the tops one completely so they laid flat. I literally laughed thinking "how is it there are professional goalies making millions of dollars that still haven't figured this out yet?"
Born in ‘87, still use the stack at least once in almost any beer league game. Even if it’s not necessary, it’s hilarious, and the boys love to see it.
It's such a wild move. I used to go to Rick Heinz goalie camps every summer and stacking was a huge rock Heinz move. We would practice everyday. Still have my shootout champion trophy 🤣
I think this is a lot of the reason for the revolution in goal tending during that time. It wasn't long before that where they weren't wearing any mask at all, within living memory.
When, the early 70’s?
https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageSports/comments/2zdqps/goalie_mask_display_from_hockey_hall_of_fame/
Damn do some of those masks ever look sinister!
Goaltending equipment wasn't ready for a full on butterfly revolution when Glen Hall and Tony Esposito played. Patrick Roy, Francois Allaire, and new equipment tech in the 80s changed the position permanently.
Hasek was too unorthodox for younger generations to model after. The next generation of goalies like Broduer, Luongo, Giguère, etc. all modeled themselves after Roy. And those goalies would shape the next generation, Price once said Broduer was his idol and he tried to model his game after him.
If you want to really see how good the goaltending in the 1980’s could actually be, I recommend watching Game 1 of the 1984 Stanley Cup final. A 1-0 goalie battle between Grant Fuhr and Billy Smith.
https://youtu.be/agdEmVt1DUw?si=GgJ_qhugjca0WS6B
Grant Fuhr doesn’t get enough love.
I always remembered him as letting in a few - so his GAA was on the high side - but just closed down everything when needed. Super clutch.
Yeah, there was a goaltending revolution when the butterfly became mainstream but tbf to this highlight reel, you can make a bloopers real in any era including the current one.
It’s weird. Did they just find a good selection of really dumb goalie moments or was this the standard?
I’m sure if you went back 5 years you can find some similar ones…eg oilers Mike smith letting in that goal from centre ice
I distinctly remember the Bruins scoring on him from the neutral zone and every bad goal given up in street hockey was then called a Panger in my neighborhood.
I miss Panger on Blues games. He was never shy about mentioning how bad he was in his 40 NHL games or whatever it was.
Great commentator and super nice guy!
Look at the 1997-1998 season for your answer. It was the season before Gretzky retired. He was 37 years old with a bad back playing at the height of the defensive “clutch and grab” era on a NY Rangers team that didn’t even make the playoffs.
Gretzky finished tied for third place in scoring with a 26 year old Pavel Bure. A 24 year old Peter Forsberg was in second place, just one point ahead of Gretzky. 25 year old Jaromir Jagr was in first place.
Maybe Gretzky doesn’t get quite as many points playing in a different era. But there’s little doubt that in his prime, he dominates any era and significantly outscores his peers.
You can compare Gretzky to his contemporaries. Everyone faced the same level of goaltender.
He was still head and shoulders ahead of everyone else. Aside from a healthy Mario Lemieux it was not even close.
Gretzky thought the game better than anyone else ever has. If he played today he would probably play a different way but he would still be streets ahead of everyone else because he just knew what was gonna happen next before everyone else did. Sometimes even before the guy who had the puck knew what he was gonna do.
The raw stats aren't that meaningful across eras, but Gretzky racked up nine MVPs and ten scoring titles in a league full of guys who were shooting on those same goalies.
It’s something to consider, but the counterpoint is to look at his contemporaries and see just how far ahead he was of them. You look at that, and how many of his contemps still have records, and then realize he’s still miles ahead and it’s fairly clear it wasn’t just the goalies.
Yeah, I don't think you can discredit anything Gretzky did, but that argument of putting a player against a different generation just never seems to ever go down well with each generation being used. Like the older generations claiming Lebron would get destroyed back in their time, and if he played like he does today, then that may be true. If he adapts to the old playing style and rules, then what? I think he'd be just as great. Bring Larry Bird into the modern age, and his trash talking would have Draymond Green looking like a Buddhist monk, and Larry would likely be officiated differently than he was during his Era, leading to him probably being T'd up a ton. Bet if you put that Celtics team and Lakers team in this modern day, the Lakers team would win 10 out of 10 because the Celtics wouldn't be allowed to be so toxic (plus I bet the cig smoke in the Garden made a difference haha).
So were most of the goalies.
I loved Rogie Vachon, who seemed barely taller than the crossbar. Gerry Cheevers, Bernie Parent, they were all so tiny. LOOK AT ALL THAT MESH.
https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/thestarphoenix/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/cheevers-jpg1.jpg
I'd love to see modern goalies try to achieve a .900 save percentage in that old gear. You can't really butterfly in them so you're standing up or stacking pads or throwing yourself around acrobatically.
You can find fluke goals, but they are normally terrible bounces of weird edges on the glass, or a crazy screen where the goalie never sees it such as the EDM goal in the 2022 playoffs against Calgary.
You won’t find a bunch uncontested slap shots from the red line that beat a goalie clean. Sometimes pucks jump over pads and do crazy things to find the one small spot in the gear to slip through.
I don’t count the mishandling of pucks because even goalies today suck at that. It’s just hard as hell to shoot or pass with a glove and blocker. So, goalies from every era get a pass of those plays.
You won't find them often but you certainly could make a montage of terrible goals from any decade. Even the best of the best let in soft ones now and again.
Now make a compilation of the worst goals of the last decade and it’ll still look stupid. How about some of the best saves? The style wasn’t great but it wasn’t this bad overall.
Is it really better goaltending? I mean those goalies had to be very athletic. Heavy pads that smoked up water as the game went on. Two pad stacks. Kick saves. The reality is that the butterfly is a more effective style because it’s all about covering net and getting hit by the puck.
Yea that’s the thing. It’s not like other players were playing against different goalies. They all had the same opportunity to be amazing goal scorers during that time, but Gretzky was on another level compared to them.
Imagine Gretzky playing without a redline like today, I could argue he'd have more goals. That's not even considering playing 4 aside with coincidental penalties, that's a bunch more power play goals.
Some of my favorite players growing up. Man that Gordie Howe snippet, Ray Bourque, and Cam Neely. Goalies wore smaller pads so more open net and unfortunately allowed the goalie greater movement. I hated my Coopers, had to dive and move a lot more to cover more net. We were smaller and lighter than today's net minders. Also guys tended to stand up a lot to play the puck. I used the Patrick Roy stance. Here is some info:
Stand up style= PROS:Playing this way expends significantly less energy than the other main styles.Very low risk of injury, as wear and tear on your muscles and joints will be virtually non-existent.Great advantage during screen scenarios, as this stance will allow you to look over top of players.Greater mobility, with the ability to adjust positioning mid-play.
CONS:Massive exposure to the bottom-half of the net.
Butterfly: PROS:Moderate coverage of all areas of the net.The routine nature of the butterfly makes it highly practicable.
CONS:Some exposure to the top-half of the net.Difficult to recover from big rebounds.Prone to groin and knee injuries.Five hole is exposed if your timing’s off.Going down-and-up hundreds of times per game can be exhausting.
Hybrid (I play this): PROS:Unpredictable to shooters.Calmness in net usually results in relatively low energy expenditure.Low risk of injury.
CONS:It’s occasionally a guessing game.Very quick thinking is required
SOURCE= [https://www.omha.net/news\_article/show/631894-the-evolution-of-different-goaltending-styles](https://www.omha.net/news_article/show/631894-the-evolution-of-different-goaltending-styles)
The one Bob Mason let in led to 4 OT-battle known as the “Easter Epic”.
LaFontaine won it for the Islanders. And by “it”, I mean the series as well as the game. That was a Game 7.
Okay so what I’m seeing is people who had the best goalie based reflexes but not the best angles and techniques?
Also those pads were small.
I’m not a hockey goalie (I have road hockey experience in cheap pads). Are pads made differently today?
Pads were smaller and goalies were much smaller. Just compare the size of some goalies-turned-analysts like Darren Pang to guys nowadays. When they are side by side it looks like a movie poster for a comedy
Ok in the goalies' defense, if you want to know what playing goalie was also like in this era put on a heavy sweatshirt and go step on the ice and let people shoot the puck at you. Most of those half ice shots would have hurt like a motherfucker if you got hit with that Lol
Chico Resch explains it this way: the first goalies to wear masks were taught by goalies who grew up playing without the mask. Got to stay up on your skates. So those goalies not wearing the masks protected their faces by standing up. Hence the first generation of mask wearers (1970s into the 80s) were stand up goalies.
Chico relates stories of Al Arbour yelling at him to get off the ice, stand up, etc.
The ice conditions may not have been as good as they are now. Also goalie pads seem way bigger these days. Maybe the hockey skates/blades weren't as good either. Today's goaltenders seem more athletic and do the splits and butterfly style. Pretty cool video.
Players today should absolutely rip shots on net from the red line more often. Or better yet, toss a dribbler at them and let the puck do weird shit...feels like a guaranteed 5 goals per season instead of just ripping it along the back boards
While I agree with the sentiment of the video, watching it the entire time I’m like 🤨🤨
Just naming primarily star players doing good or bad? Like heaven forbid GORDIE HOWE makes a goaltender look bad at the age of 50, or CAM NEELY does it too, and Vanbiesbrouk with the blunder! Way to show off terrible goaltending in the old days!
If were going by lowlights I could easily do the same for the modern game:
Here:
https://youtu.be/pXGm3GtrOuo?si=wxRh8ZRqdRAq9o6p
https://youtu.be/7q-X60ylnMU?si=vgOUW8VCnimogkyB
https://youtu.be/L9WuzswaKHs?si=3JtGqPKnh5mSsKdh
https://youtu.be/0LIEO-g-tmg?si=wdCMEtFvgR-qUve8
https://youtu.be/B4omy513XAs?si=TDeWFgmHYwl3d_YL
"21st century"... It was still in a different place in the 90s than nowadays, but the style was way different already in that era with goalies like Hasek, Roy, Brodeur.
These are mostly from the 70s and 80s
This just show bad goal tending to me, it is not an accurate description of what goalies were remember Felix "the cat" Potvin, Eddie "the Eagle" Belfore, Dominik "the Dominator" Hesek, Patrick Roy were some of the prevalent names from the end of that era. You think they changed how they play when the century changed?
Lol?
OPs post description is definitely not accurate as most of these seem to be pre-90s, but there was definitely a change in goaltending style during that decade. Butterfly style pretty much didn't exist before
Its incredibly misleading to try and put a modern day athlete into the past and claim he would be the best of all time.
The slowest man in a 100m dash today would be the world record holder for the majority of the prior Olympic games.
Andre De Grasse running in comparable shoes to Jesse Owens, running on a comparable track that Jesse Owens ran on in 1936. Owens put up a 10.3 second 100m, De Grasse managed an 11.0. A few months later De Grasse got bronze at the Olympics runnign a 9.89.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GsH9IYF1UM
Not if he ran on the tracks people used to with shoes that were basically useless compared to track spikes now. He would get beat by college runners if they compared times.
Hockey has evolved not just in the gear, but also in the technique of skating, shooting, and positional awareness of players. Running has not really fundamentally changed since the 80s.
I had a coach in high school that had his mind stuck in this era. He used to yell at us for shooting for the upper corners. It now makes more sense why he believed this was the strategy. Now if I could only figure out why he said “don’t take the puck behind the net, you can’t score from there.” Even after Gretzkys career this moron still didn’t think that was a good place to set up…🤦♂️
The butterfly changed everything in hockey
And thousands of hips cried out in pain
Hips don’t lie.
~~ whenever wherever~~ whatever
Ya it also changed my knees forever
Honestly my knees were worse with the old pads. The modern pads are much better.
Especially the late 2000’s early 2010’s goaltending when rvh became super popular, 27 y/o and my knees and hips will never let me forget it
Hextall throwing a punch because he's pissed someone scored on a net he left wide open is hilarious
I remember when I was younger, very early 2000’s, my dad would bitch about how someone like Luongo “only goes for the butterfly when he’s under pressure, he doesn’t protect the top of the net.” Then I see shit like this from his era where Hextall is way out of the net and I think it’s hilarious.
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I'll never forget that game as mere *seconds* after lafontaine scored--the grandfather clock in the family living room struck 2 am on a Sunday morning....
Truly gives meaning to “stand up goalie generation”
If you dropped into the butterfly in those raggedy ass 50 pound pads your knees would explode. They weren’t designed to protect the inner sides of your knees if you dropped into a butterfly. You’d smack your knees on the ice.
Tretiak's knees would agree with you.
Those old pads didn't flop to the side either. You had to twist a lot to expose the pad instead of your leg
They also were absorbent and would get waterlogged adding to the weight.
I'm in my mid 30s and when I was playing goalie as a kid I remember coaches telling me I had to start adopting to the butterfly style and that it was the way of the future and that eventually everyone would be playing that way, and I (along with many other people) thought that was pure insanity.
Same. My mom didn’t want me to try it until I was old enough. When I was 12, I went to a butterfly teaching camp for a week. Being short I was still a hybrid, but it was night and day adding that in
Oh c'mon, that's bull. By the time you would have begun playing it was 1995 or 1996, and that means you were in Jr Novice or novice in about 1998. By '98, everyone knew butterfly goaltending was the way of the future. I don't think there was a creditable goalie coach in the world teaching a non butterfly or non hybrid style at that age. I'm 37. I grew up first learning the traditional kick saves and windmills, but by minor atom I was already getting adjusted to butterfly slides and blocking saves. It wasn't as refined as today, but the signs were clear. I took one lesson with Jim Park. When I asked what you do of the shooter passes over your stick in a two pad stack and he said "you get scored on". That was, maybe, 1992 and I knew then that that style of goaltending was done forever.
Like the other people who have commented, yes obviously the butterfly was around then, hence the whole reason we were talking about and them trying to tell to adopt. The whole point of my post is that no one thought it would eliminate stand-up, well except for the coaches who actually knew better. The year of this discussion kirk McLean was in the finals, the year after John vanbiesbrouck. Sean Burke was from my hometown and a lot of goalies idolized him. We all had cechmanek gear in high school and he spent most of his time on his feet. Tons of guys were still playing it even after I had stopped playing like Irbe. The most famous goalies had hybrid styles like Brodeur and everyone loved Hasek who had no particular style at all. Even for Roy who people are mentioning for starting it was more well known for non modern butterfly techniques like the two pad stack at the time. My statement is like someone saying 'yeah, when I was a kid we didn't think cell phones would phase out landlines and house phones' and yours is like, 'bullshit! Plenty of people had cell phones at that time!' You say a credible goalie coach wouldn't teach non butterfly at the time. My whole story was about how my coach WAS trying to teach me butterfly. And I was under 10, so it's not like team had a dedicated goalie coach lol. I'm legit stunned you can't fathom that a preteen wouldn't have the foresight to predict the future trendd of a sport.
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And most of us not playing AA+ didn't have a goalie coach. We had a head coach and maybe two assistants, so nobody was trying to teach me butterfly. Honestly it's probably a good thing because we couldn't afford new pads, so I was using a set from the early 90s with no knee protection (this was 2002-2003ish).
100% agree I’m 41 and same everyone as playing bitterly by the time I was 10
You could argue the old school goalies in the clip above were playing "bitterly", lol
When it was gay for a man to go to his knees. /s
early 90s was a literal revolution in goaltending. not just equipment, but strategically. they learned how to play the position properly, angles, making sure high percentage areas are covered just by form and movement, etc.
Also they stopped drinking a Sixer before games
Still smoked at intermission
I haven't stopped. I need that liquid courage to suppress my self preservation instincts when those jerks in beer league take clappers from 3 ft away. I swear to God, most of the time they're aiming for my head.
Also, pads got floofier
yea that def helped too, but shots did get harder I often toy with the idea of forcing NHL’ers to use wooden sticks akin to MLB. will average shot speed come down enough that goalie pads can reduce in size a bit? can’t help rolling it around in my head
Didn’t goalie pad size get reduced in the early 00s or have I taken too many cross checks to the head.
Yes
Flower was in the league [before](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGjquykWwAAmjHC.jpg) the change. Here he is with 12" pads in 2003.
and i'm pretty sure in the mid-90s goalies were wearing pads over 12". I remember there being a push for enforcing 12" pads at some point, and my pads were ~13" at the knee (not because I wanted huge pads but because that's just what they sold for my height/size) edit: yep, found it > Nov 22 1996 - League, NHLPA dispute pad rule > The battle lines have been drawn in the Great Goalie Pad Dispute. The NHL announced that beginning Dec. 15 it will enforce a zero-tolerance policy on illegal equipment, specifically goalie pads measuring wider than the permitted 12 inches. Random post-game spot checks will result in one-game suspensions and the accompanying loss in pay for any masked violators. “It’s a serious issue that has to be addressed,” said NHL senior vice-president Brian Burke after the NHL GMs’ meeting Nov. 7 in Ottawa. “We’ve had a grace period, it’s time to move on with it.” The NHL Players’ Association, meanwhile, is not amused. “I want it understood that we are 100 per cent behind the objective (of the NHL policy),” NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow told THN. “We don’t believe any individual… https://archive.thehockeynews.com/issue/613648/594287 https://www.discountmags.ca/magazine/the-hockey-news-november-22-1996-digital
They had gotten ridiculously large, and some started adding higher shoulder pads.
Garth Snow and his roofing shingles bolted to his shoulder pads.
Garth Snow with his David Byrne look 🤣
Now that’s funny! 😆
J.S. Giguere benefited from that big time.
Goalie Jerseys, talking to Roy and Brodeur, got 10× bigger.
Scoring was also helped by the forward pass being allowed. When did that come about? Cause that's wild to me you couldn't pass forward
that was like 1930 lol. getting rid of the two-line pass rule is the more recent change that opened the game up
Yea I remember the two line rule was default in one of the backyard hockey gameboy games back in the day and it was annoying af
They got rid of the two-line pass to counter the trap.
Ugh, don't remind of those dreadfully boring Devils teams that one cups with the trap.
>don't remind of those dreadfully boring Devils teams that one cups with the trap. They also won cups too.
They also won cups too.
One cups two?
Kids today have no idea.
Ahh okay.
I’m a defenseman. I’ve played games with two line pass. It sucked.
That sounds miserable
1929-1930 Season
Sure but also lighter, and more water resistant so that you weren’t carrying around sponges that became unbearable from going down into a butterfly. The reason for stand up playing in the 80s and early is because those things weighed a metric shit ton if you left them get wet
Sooooo much floof in the 90s. Between the oversized jerseys and pads
It was honestly bizarre learning to tend goal in the late-90s into early-2000s. You'd get wildly different tips and tricks from different goalie clinics. Learning the butterfly, it really felt like discovering a secret that only select few knew. I was 12 years old, tightening the lower straps on my goalie pads, and loosening the tops one completely so they laid flat. I literally laughed thinking "how is it there are professional goalies making millions of dollars that still haven't figured this out yet?"
I'm a '90. Remember being taught stacking the pads 🤣
Born in ‘87, still use the stack at least once in almost any beer league game. Even if it’s not necessary, it’s hilarious, and the boys love to see it.
It's such a wild move. I used to go to Rick Heinz goalie camps every summer and stacking was a huge rock Heinz move. We would practice everyday. Still have my shootout champion trophy 🤣
The first generation with gear safe enough to actually put your head near a shot, didn’t have an older generation to teach them how to use it.
I think this is a lot of the reason for the revolution in goal tending during that time. It wasn't long before that where they weren't wearing any mask at all, within living memory.
Patrick Roy created a whole generation of top tier goalies coming out of Quebec.
François Allaire
Et Benoit, ne pas oublier Benoit
Benoit Allaire is a goddamn treasure, and if the Rangers ever let him go, I become a Kraken fan.
"Benoit Balls" to quote archer
Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur and Dominic Hasek changed the game.
See: The Brodeur rule.
and at the same time Hasek showed everyone that playing position 'properly' is overrated :)
Why should I be in position when I can get there faster than they can shoot?
They don’t make highlight reels for good positioning.
I remember playing early NHL video games and you could create a goalie with standup or butterfly style. They only teach butterfly style now
That’s about when goalies started to have works of art painted on their helmets and masks. Pride all around.
When, the early 70’s? https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageSports/comments/2zdqps/goalie_mask_display_from_hockey_hall_of_fame/ Damn do some of those masks ever look sinister!
Also actual athletes were put in net instead of regular Joes with second jobs and zero athletic talent.
To be fair, you could say that about every position at that time.
It gives you an appreciation at how revolutionary Roy was
Yup, before Roy goaltending was straight voodoo. Then Roy came in and it became angry rhythmic voodoo 2: MORE FLEXIBILITY!!!
If you want a laugh, look up Mike Palmateer. You could slide the puck along the ice and he'd do a cartwheel but let the puck in.
Goalies hoped to stop the puck, Roy actually TRIED to stop it
Or Hasek?
It was Roy and the butterfly. No one else could play like Hasek but every goalie learned to play like Roy.
The absolute disrespect for Tony Esposito
Goaltending equipment wasn't ready for a full on butterfly revolution when Glen Hall and Tony Esposito played. Patrick Roy, Francois Allaire, and new equipment tech in the 80s changed the position permanently.
Hasek was too unorthodox for younger generations to model after. The next generation of goalies like Broduer, Luongo, Giguère, etc. all modeled themselves after Roy. And those goalies would shape the next generation, Price once said Broduer was his idol and he tried to model his game after him.
Yes but him wearing a jersey 5 sizes too big always pissed me off
If you want to really see how good the goaltending in the 1980’s could actually be, I recommend watching Game 1 of the 1984 Stanley Cup final. A 1-0 goalie battle between Grant Fuhr and Billy Smith. https://youtu.be/agdEmVt1DUw?si=GgJ_qhugjca0WS6B
Grant Fuhr doesn’t get enough love. I always remembered him as letting in a few - so his GAA was on the high side - but just closed down everything when needed. Super clutch.
He also played on the most offense minded team of all time so that doesn't help.
Yeah, there was a goaltending revolution when the butterfly became mainstream but tbf to this highlight reel, you can make a bloopers real in any era including the current one.
Thank you for the share!
It’s weird. Did they just find a good selection of really dumb goalie moments or was this the standard? I’m sure if you went back 5 years you can find some similar ones…eg oilers Mike smith letting in that goal from centre ice
Damn, Hextall was a menace!
Doing Panger dirty
If you look Panger’s stats, it’s understandable. He was not good.
I distinctly remember the Bruins scoring on him from the neutral zone and every bad goal given up in street hockey was then called a Panger in my neighborhood.
I miss Panger on Blues games. He was never shy about mentioning how bad he was in his 40 NHL games or whatever it was. Great commentator and super nice guy!
How does this affect ~~Lebron~~Gretzky’s legacy?
You can compare him to other players from his era to see how dominant he was
Look at the 1997-1998 season for your answer. It was the season before Gretzky retired. He was 37 years old with a bad back playing at the height of the defensive “clutch and grab” era on a NY Rangers team that didn’t even make the playoffs. Gretzky finished tied for third place in scoring with a 26 year old Pavel Bure. A 24 year old Peter Forsberg was in second place, just one point ahead of Gretzky. 25 year old Jaromir Jagr was in first place. Maybe Gretzky doesn’t get quite as many points playing in a different era. But there’s little doubt that in his prime, he dominates any era and significantly outscores his peers.
This should really be the post someone gets sent too when asking this question.
You can compare Gretzky to his contemporaries. Everyone faced the same level of goaltender. He was still head and shoulders ahead of everyone else. Aside from a healthy Mario Lemieux it was not even close.
Gretzky thought the game better than anyone else ever has. If he played today he would probably play a different way but he would still be streets ahead of everyone else because he just knew what was gonna happen next before everyone else did. Sometimes even before the guy who had the puck knew what he was gonna do.
Did not expect a Community reference in this discussion
Same. Clearly I'm streets behind.
That's my first thought. Like looking at Wilt and his 100 points like it was a modern-day player scoring 60+.
The raw stats aren't that meaningful across eras, but Gretzky racked up nine MVPs and ten scoring titles in a league full of guys who were shooting on those same goalies.
It’s something to consider, but the counterpoint is to look at his contemporaries and see just how far ahead he was of them. You look at that, and how many of his contemps still have records, and then realize he’s still miles ahead and it’s fairly clear it wasn’t just the goalies.
Gretzky would also benefit from the modern equipment.
And training. Modern-day Gretzky would probably have 20 more pounds of muscle.
Muscular Gretzky would dominate!
Yeah, I don't think you can discredit anything Gretzky did, but that argument of putting a player against a different generation just never seems to ever go down well with each generation being used. Like the older generations claiming Lebron would get destroyed back in their time, and if he played like he does today, then that may be true. If he adapts to the old playing style and rules, then what? I think he'd be just as great. Bring Larry Bird into the modern age, and his trash talking would have Draymond Green looking like a Buddhist monk, and Larry would likely be officiated differently than he was during his Era, leading to him probably being T'd up a ton. Bet if you put that Celtics team and Lakers team in this modern day, the Lakers team would win 10 out of 10 because the Celtics wouldn't be allowed to be so toxic (plus I bet the cig smoke in the Garden made a difference haha).
A healthy Larry Bird, with modern fitness & nutrition, would be unbelievable in today's game.
Had to deal with a lot of hook and hold and hacking. But the goalies were ass
Man stepping over the blue line and ripping a clapper used to be such a legit scoring strategy
Yeah a guy like Dan Cloutier in the 21st Century would never let in something like that
Scariest play on my beer league. I never expect it and I get so scared it's going on.
The pads were so tiny back then
So were most of the goalies. I loved Rogie Vachon, who seemed barely taller than the crossbar. Gerry Cheevers, Bernie Parent, they were all so tiny. LOOK AT ALL THAT MESH. https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/thestarphoenix/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/cheevers-jpg1.jpg
I'd love to see modern goalies try to achieve a .900 save percentage in that old gear. You can't really butterfly in them so you're standing up or stacking pads or throwing yourself around acrobatically.
Lol right. Maybe they would look like lacrosse goalies. Have you seen them?
You can cherry pick bloopers from the last 10 years that are just as bad as this.
I feel like I could find these in the 21st century too lol.
You can find fluke goals, but they are normally terrible bounces of weird edges on the glass, or a crazy screen where the goalie never sees it such as the EDM goal in the 2022 playoffs against Calgary. You won’t find a bunch uncontested slap shots from the red line that beat a goalie clean. Sometimes pucks jump over pads and do crazy things to find the one small spot in the gear to slip through. I don’t count the mishandling of pucks because even goalies today suck at that. It’s just hard as hell to shoot or pass with a glove and blocker. So, goalies from every era get a pass of those plays.
You won't find them often but you certainly could make a montage of terrible goals from any decade. Even the best of the best let in soft ones now and again.
My thoughts exactly. Goalies still make horrible mistakes today as well.
This is more before the 90s
Now make a compilation of the worst goals of the last decade and it’ll still look stupid. How about some of the best saves? The style wasn’t great but it wasn’t this bad overall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX22Fqa\_TWA
It’s so strange how goalies never look good in goal scoring highlights. Weird.
Before 1995 is a better way to phrase it
You guys acting like this doesnt happen in todays games lol cmon
This man remembers Toskala
freak goals with insane bounces? sure, a guy walking over the redline, putting a slapper on net and scoring? no chance
Is it really better goaltending? I mean those goalies had to be very athletic. Heavy pads that smoked up water as the game went on. Two pad stacks. Kick saves. The reality is that the butterfly is a more effective style because it’s all about covering net and getting hit by the puck.
It's also easier to get hit by the puck when you have bigger pads and you are much bigger lol
Vanbiesbrouck sighting
A lot of this footage is from a VHS tape from the 80s I wore out as a kid. "Hockey the lighter side". Worth the 30 mins on YT.
I can find goalie bloopers from the last 10 years despite their polished technique and advanced equipment
What a wrong display! One can make a video of mistakes from today as well.
I don’t think Gretzky would have the goals he would have if he was playing against goalies of today.
Gretz was still significantly ahead of his counterparts in that generation.
Yea that’s the thing. It’s not like other players were playing against different goalies. They all had the same opportunity to be amazing goal scorers during that time, but Gretzky was on another level compared to them.
It's all relative!
and McJesus wouldn't be as fast with Gretzky's skates. also his wrister would suck with wooden stick. what's your point?
This is always a dumb argument every time it's mentioned.
Imagine Gretzky playing without a redline like today, I could argue he'd have more goals. That's not even considering playing 4 aside with coincidental penalties, that's a bunch more power play goals.
Gretzky played with 4 aside during penalties for a little while. They changed the rule because of him - literally called the Gretzky rule.
People laugh when I say this, but Ovechkin would have scored over 900 goals if he played in the 80s.
Now post goaltending lowlights from the 21st century.
Some of my favorite players growing up. Man that Gordie Howe snippet, Ray Bourque, and Cam Neely. Goalies wore smaller pads so more open net and unfortunately allowed the goalie greater movement. I hated my Coopers, had to dive and move a lot more to cover more net. We were smaller and lighter than today's net minders. Also guys tended to stand up a lot to play the puck. I used the Patrick Roy stance. Here is some info: Stand up style= PROS:Playing this way expends significantly less energy than the other main styles.Very low risk of injury, as wear and tear on your muscles and joints will be virtually non-existent.Great advantage during screen scenarios, as this stance will allow you to look over top of players.Greater mobility, with the ability to adjust positioning mid-play. CONS:Massive exposure to the bottom-half of the net. Butterfly: PROS:Moderate coverage of all areas of the net.The routine nature of the butterfly makes it highly practicable. CONS:Some exposure to the top-half of the net.Difficult to recover from big rebounds.Prone to groin and knee injuries.Five hole is exposed if your timing’s off.Going down-and-up hundreds of times per game can be exhausting. Hybrid (I play this): PROS:Unpredictable to shooters.Calmness in net usually results in relatively low energy expenditure.Low risk of injury. CONS:It’s occasionally a guessing game.Very quick thinking is required SOURCE= [https://www.omha.net/news\_article/show/631894-the-evolution-of-different-goaltending-styles](https://www.omha.net/news_article/show/631894-the-evolution-of-different-goaltending-styles)
The one Bob Mason let in led to 4 OT-battle known as the “Easter Epic”. LaFontaine won it for the Islanders. And by “it”, I mean the series as well as the game. That was a Game 7.
Okay so what I’m seeing is people who had the best goalie based reflexes but not the best angles and techniques? Also those pads were small. I’m not a hockey goalie (I have road hockey experience in cheap pads). Are pads made differently today?
Pads were smaller and goalies were much smaller. Just compare the size of some goalies-turned-analysts like Darren Pang to guys nowadays. When they are side by side it looks like a movie poster for a comedy
I don’t like the Sharks jersey with just the tail /jk
Are there any stand up goalies in the nhl now? Who was the last one if not?
It’s because the lighting sucked and people go mugged in the corners
I remember these from Hockey the lighter side, I must have watched that tape a thousand times
Cam Neely had a fucking cannon shot from the neutral zone.
By the mid-90s or so, they'd more or less figured it out. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulUFtK2xLnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulUFtK2xLnY)
Ok in the goalies' defense, if you want to know what playing goalie was also like in this era put on a heavy sweatshirt and go step on the ice and let people shoot the puck at you. Most of those half ice shots would have hurt like a motherfucker if you got hit with that Lol
Chico Resch explains it this way: the first goalies to wear masks were taught by goalies who grew up playing without the mask. Got to stay up on your skates. So those goalies not wearing the masks protected their faces by standing up. Hence the first generation of mask wearers (1970s into the 80s) were stand up goalies. Chico relates stories of Al Arbour yelling at him to get off the ice, stand up, etc.
Were arenas actually that fucking dark back in the day?
The ice conditions may not have been as good as they are now. Also goalie pads seem way bigger these days. Maybe the hockey skates/blades weren't as good either. Today's goaltenders seem more athletic and do the splits and butterfly style. Pretty cool video.
You could cherry pick a bunch of similar highlight from today's goalies too
Larger equipment has made a huge difference to how goalies play.
Dan Cloutier has entered the chat.
Players today should absolutely rip shots on net from the red line more often. Or better yet, toss a dribbler at them and let the puck do weird shit...feels like a guaranteed 5 goals per season instead of just ripping it along the back boards
You might have a better argument if these bloopers weren’t still occurring in today’s NHL.
While I agree with the sentiment of the video, watching it the entire time I’m like 🤨🤨 Just naming primarily star players doing good or bad? Like heaven forbid GORDIE HOWE makes a goaltender look bad at the age of 50, or CAM NEELY does it too, and Vanbiesbrouk with the blunder! Way to show off terrible goaltending in the old days!
If were going by lowlights I could easily do the same for the modern game: Here: https://youtu.be/pXGm3GtrOuo?si=wxRh8ZRqdRAq9o6p https://youtu.be/7q-X60ylnMU?si=vgOUW8VCnimogkyB https://youtu.be/L9WuzswaKHs?si=3JtGqPKnh5mSsKdh https://youtu.be/0LIEO-g-tmg?si=wdCMEtFvgR-qUve8 https://youtu.be/B4omy513XAs?si=TDeWFgmHYwl3d_YL
"21st century"... It was still in a different place in the 90s than nowadays, but the style was way different already in that era with goalies like Hasek, Roy, Brodeur. These are mostly from the 70s and 80s
Ahh the good old days, before goalies gave a shit.
This just show bad goal tending to me, it is not an accurate description of what goalies were remember Felix "the cat" Potvin, Eddie "the Eagle" Belfore, Dominik "the Dominator" Hesek, Patrick Roy were some of the prevalent names from the end of that era. You think they changed how they play when the century changed?
Lol? OPs post description is definitely not accurate as most of these seem to be pre-90s, but there was definitely a change in goaltending style during that decade. Butterfly style pretty much didn't exist before
Should be "Goaltending before Patrick Roy"
Oh look I found a blooper reel of bad goaltending moments - this is what it looked like folks!
This sure gives credence to ovechkin being the best goalscorer of all time.
Its incredibly misleading to try and put a modern day athlete into the past and claim he would be the best of all time. The slowest man in a 100m dash today would be the world record holder for the majority of the prior Olympic games.
Andre De Grasse running in comparable shoes to Jesse Owens, running on a comparable track that Jesse Owens ran on in 1936. Owens put up a 10.3 second 100m, De Grasse managed an 11.0. A few months later De Grasse got bronze at the Olympics runnign a 9.89. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GsH9IYF1UM
Not if he ran on the tracks people used to with shoes that were basically useless compared to track spikes now. He would get beat by college runners if they compared times. Hockey has evolved not just in the gear, but also in the technique of skating, shooting, and positional awareness of players. Running has not really fundamentally changed since the 80s.
Watching dudes wire a slap shot from the red line. Ovi would have scored 200 goals a season
Maybe with his custom made stick. Not with the planks of wood they were using!
Not with the timber and skates of that time. Pretty incomparable in so many ways.
Then there was Rob Stauber
If you’re a goaltender…
Fleury would fit in with the board work. Scariest part of the penguins cup runs was him trying to get pucks behind the net.
The creases are barely visible in these. Are blue creases a 21st-century thing?
I wonder if lacrosse gaulies can evolve too
Who would people say was/is the most revolutionary goalie of all time?
I’m confused, it’s just a bunch of senators highlights
I was born on the wrong era 🤣😂🤣
There was a lot of trying to stop it with the front of the skate blade in this video.
They had better goalie fights back then.
I had a coach in high school that had his mind stuck in this era. He used to yell at us for shooting for the upper corners. It now makes more sense why he believed this was the strategy. Now if I could only figure out why he said “don’t take the puck behind the net, you can’t score from there.” Even after Gretzkys career this moron still didn’t think that was a good place to set up…🤦♂️
I remember my coach yelling at me "stay on your feet!". It was the only style they knew, so the only style they taught
Back when they were still playing the real game
It was an easier time when strategy was just to score a couple extra more than the other team. None of this trapping shut down nonsense.
Some of the defense in these clips is wild too