I wonder if Canadian fans' attitude towards the WJC is contributing to this. If I'm right, it's becoming more and more of a thankless job. If you get a shutout, almost no one remembers. But if you lose - even a hard fought game - you're the first one everyone blames.
In Sweden/Finland, goaltending is treated with prestige.. similar to how football teams see their starting quarterback. There is a sense of pride being the goalie. In Canada, it seems that there is almost some sort of 'stigma' of being the goalie.. usually it's the least-athletic kid, etc that are picked to be the goalie and there is a lack of honour with the position. Top this with the costs of equipment, the lack of focus on goalie development in in-season drills where goalies are peppered with shots all practice, kids just don't want to be the goalie here anymore. A lot has to change in Canada.
If Canadian fans at the WJC are any indication, it also seems to become more of a thankless job. When you're on your game, hardly anyone remembers. But lose a game - even a well-played one - and you're first to be blamed.
There's a good article called "The Oracle of Hockey" that delves deep into what Finland and Sweden in terms of developing goalies. It's definitely a more hybrid style compared to what they teach here in Canada (as a former goalie). USA hockey has been building a good development for their tenders, but I find their goalies tend to have a blocking wall style. Apparently Bobrovsky took everything he learned from Ian Clark (Canucks goalie coach and the reason why they have been so good the last few years) back to Russia and they adapted those teachings into their training and development program. It seems like Canada hasn't changed much at all and really only focus on big and tall goalies while simply waiting for the next Carey Price to emerge.
@@stephennichol3620 and carey played through a lot of his prime in a ridiculous amount of pain in comparison to what a regular person goes through on a day to day. It makes me look back on his last playoff run knowing not only was he as physically beat up as ever but was dealing with some tough mental issues at the same time. That kreider incident absolutely took a toll on price and lead to a continuation of bad injuries. To pile onto all of that he NEVER had an elite team in front of him, he played some of his best hockey on teams that many other goalies would've been snuffed out by. Carey price was my favorite athlete to follow and i dont think that ever changes. Started when i was a kid and saw all of it
Carey Price was wasted in Montreal. It's a shame the Habs only started showing competent management the first year he essentially retired. Given their current direction, a young Carey Price would have been the final piece needed for a Stanley Cup winning team. I say this as a Canadiens fan.
@@nc8507 100% true. Montreal was always bottom of the league in offense in 00s to early 20s yet Price singlehandedly brought us to the finals and conference finals several times. That 2014 version of Price is the greatest goalie of all time, no doubt.
There is also no system for goaltending in Canada. It's up to a goalie to go to a school but past that very few teams/leagues that focus on goaltending until it's too late. Goalies are treated like targets until they are 16.
There is a system, for some reason, they are teaching these kids from a very young age to play on their knees. I worked in the game for quite a while, hours are long and the pay isn't that great, but most of what I was seeing where goaltenders from South of the border being better than Canadian goaltenders. The best kid out of the US that I saw in the last 10 years, and stands out to this day, the kid was a stud in Alaska, unbeatable. Coaching is the biggest problem in the country, most of the coaches are trying to get 4ft nothing kids to play like goaltenders that are 6ft4 6ft5. The need to be taught the mobility aspect of the game and work on reflexes and identifying situations.
Funny, I wrote that before I watched it and it's what I noticed most living on the Western seaboard, the improvement and influx of American goaltending. Very different way of practicing and training at younger ages. A lot of the training is old school, stacking of the pads, reflexes, and mobility around the crease
There, as I mentioned below, overcoaching is the issue. It's brutal to watch these kids at young ages being taught to go down when they don't need to. They are being taught to be too robotic.
Goalies used to be multi-sport athletes, playing baseball in summer ,etc. Now they're just goalies who go through goalie schools and copying their favourite goalie. Oh and it costs way too much to be a goalie now, so we probably just have way fewer goalies.
@@nicko9046 Agree 100 percent. Many players were into other sports, Gretzky was possibly as good at baseball as hockey. A lot of others played lacrosse - Joe Nieuwendyk and Gary Roberts among others played at a high level.
@Mrvegas6666 I don't get this argument, it's getting expensive everywhere (arguably even more expensive in other countries), yet they produce more goalies
My boy is 11 years old goalie, started playing in the net when he was 7. We relocated two years ago from Moscow, Russia to Canada and I was literally shocked with the kids goalie development here. Every hockey team in Moscow has a fully dedicated professional goalie coach for kids since 7 years old, they work on the specific aspects of goalie skating on the ice as well as reaction, juggling, stretching and conditioning in the gym. Here in Canada NOBODY REALLY CARES about goalies in the kids and juniors teams, just play as you want (or can). There are no assigned goalie coaches at the bench at any team even at the AAA or Provincial Teams level. However, these ages of 7-13 are fundamental for a goalie, if he won’t get used to good habits especially proper skating and be flexible he’ll never reach the top level, it might happen only as an individual exception. That needs to be changed if we really want Canadian goalies to be competitive with the rest of the world.
Because goalies are not what wins the cup anymore. Offense and defense does. If it wasn't for the panthers going 0-3 against the oilers this year (which was largely thanks to their offense) they wouldn't have beaten the oilers. They almost didn't. Bob was broken and letting in goals galore. The reality is, the best defense is a swift and decisive offense. It's not an ideal strategy to rely on a goalie. Your goalie is your last line of defense.
@@randomassname445 Shouldn't be your last line of defense be good though? Doesnt matter how good your defense is you cant just throw in some random bum from the SPHL and expect to go anywhere
@@irogen2 Yet the Carolina hurricanes used a Zamboni driver to beat the leafs in 2020... A Zamboni driver. If you want an example that spans over a bigger time period, Stuart Skinner for Edmonton Oilers is a useable example of what I'm talking about. He gets trashed but his performance was enough to get the oilers to game 7 of the SCF. And they largely got there because of their insane offense. Not Skinner really. Let's face it. Oilers offense brought them there.
The reality is the costs of hockey are what is killing the sport in general. Think of how many potential great players ( goalies and players ) are being missed in general cause of costs period. It’s a by product of the economy and no one wants to acknowledge that fact. Until Canadian families can afford to play then we’ll slowly see this trend continue. Hockey has become a game for a certain demographic of ppl and excludes most middle class families now.
As a goalie who played against Sam Reinhart and Jake virtanen as a kid I’ll just say what coaches told me my whole life. “Your position is worthless, and any player on this team could play it.” Not joking… A1 coaches told me that. So I’m not surprised that all the goalies left hockey immediately upon hitting 18. Hockey Canada did it to themselves honestly.
I was a goalie in my youth in Canada. The problem is we’re treated as cannon fodder for skaters to practice on with very little specialized attention by coaches.
Too true, I played AAA every year in minor hockey and was never given a “goalie coach” on any of my teams. I just faced 1000 shots a practice while players worked on skills/development
Most parents aren't keen to spend almost 10 000$ for full new equipment 10 000$+ for AAA hockey and 40-80$/hr for extra goalie clinics that aren't offered by a lot of AAA teams apparently (which is crazy)
Montembault should be the starter. He just won gold with “Canadas worst team ever”. At the same tournament where Binnington played like crap with a better team around him.
No goalie that allows 5 goals on 9 shots in 1 period should be considered for the national team. Binnington showed us why Hockey Canada hadn't contacted him since the 2013 WJC.
From my limited vintage point as a hockey parent, I see many teams' goalies being forced to take the position (often a coach's child), there is often no specific coaching given to the goalies, and goalie gear is just outright not affordable (teams giving goalie discounts in registration fee, etc., only marginally help). Canada as a nation needs to be more purposeful in directing some resources in developing our goalies - I am sure there are tonnes of future Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur, Roberto Luongo and Carey Price out there - they just need to be properly developed, coached, and supported.
What fascinates me is that while Canada's men's team is facing a severe goaltending shortage, the women are dealing with the opposite: a log jam leading up to these Olympics (with at least 4 goalies fighting for the 3 spots, and several more waiting behind them). Is there a difference in development or something?
@@mathman80 The women's team essentially only competes against one other country (the U.S.) for quality of players at any position, while the men's team's quality at each position is measured against 4 other countries. The number of Canadian goalies considered to be olympic-level on the women's team would most likely decrease if more countries' women's teams were truly competitive, so I don't know how much the women's goalie situation could be compared to the men's.
Man is this insightful!!! Buttons comment on the over focus on technique too early is impacting the development of hockey sense. Great goaltenders #1 asset is almost always an uncanny ability to anticipate the next move, shot, pass, etc.
As an American, I’ve always felt that Canadian goalies at all levels get critiqued too much at all levels, from NHL guys to little kids. I’m from Michigan, we compete with most nations in terms of goalie output as just one state. But we have a mentality here of “work hard and be as good as you can be” and “be the best goalie you can be for your team”. We also have a lot of unity between goalies and goalie coaches in an effort to move goaltending ahead. In Canada (as an outsider) it almost seems there’s hostile competition between goalies coaches specifically and goalies themselves too to a certain extent to be better than the next guy. It’s like they break themselves down but don’t bring each other back up if that makes sense. Canada has more than enough infrastructure and talent to produce great goalies, they are just missing that one link. Ala the Bruins this year, record breaking team, but they didn’t have the spark to go all the way. That’s what it’s seems to be decade after decade for Canadian goaltending development. There also something to be said about Canadas terrible youth hockey system which is harming overall player development, but that’s a wholeeee other discussion.
I'd say the butterfly style killed Canadian goaltending lol. Brodeur, and Roy were 2 of the top goalies and they played a hybrid style. Goalies now seem to be taught to drop to their knees whenever they can, and with the snipers we are now creating in the system they are picking them apart. Bring back the stack pad and standing post coverage and cut off angles properly and we'll be back on top in no time (only partly serious on this comment having been a goaltender in the Canadian system many moons ago during the transition to butterfly)😂
Exactly. We’ve turned them into blocking goalies that can’t make saves. In Europe they have them making saves and being athletic. Watched a floor hockey game in Finland and you could see how they’ve adopted that style.
No one is teaching drop and block in butterfly anymore. That was end of 90's early 2000. The butterfly fly is taught as a tool and its not a blocking position with hands place to cover holes anymore. Active hands for reaction is what's up now
@@ryana3679 yes sorry, I meant to say no one *who is up to date* is teaching pure blocking style. There's many out dated coach who are teaching obsolete stuff. And I always thought that teaching blocking style to a 5'2 minors goalie who doesn't have the body to cover the net isn't a great idea
@@pierreluc5382 well from what I’ve been seeing and everything is butterfly based. Is it better than in the early 2000s yes but it’s just blocking based. I get it. It gets quick results and kids do improve but they never branch out.
Imagine what Montembeault could do with a good team around him. He’s been the best part of the rebuild the last 2 years. He’s hung out to dry nightly and still playing great with solid numbers
It's also a lot of the big-name Canadian goalie prospects have been busts in recent years, you look at some of the goalies for Canada at the world juniors in the last 10 years who had hype around them, Zach Fucale, Michael DiPietro, Malcolm Subban, Mackenzie Blackwood, the guys who were supposed to carry the torch after the likes of Price and Fleury, none of them are starters, the only ones who have seem to hit have been I guess Jordan Binnington (who wasn't even that hyped as a prospect and was Subban's backup on the 2013 team) and Sam Montembeault who initially wasn't even named to the 2016 world junior team. And even then Canada has only had the top goalie in the tournament twice since 2008. Now yes there are some guys like Levi, Hofer, Skinner, and guys like Hill and Thompson who've come out of nowhere but I guess we'll have to see if they can keep it up
I think Canada can survive this at least in the short term. Adin Hill, Darcy Kuemper and Jordan Binnington are all cup winning starters in the last 5 years and they're all Canadian. Even the oilers who were just 1 win short this past season had a Canadian starter. In an era where scoring has gone up so much, goalies might not be as important as 20 years ago.
Technique training has probably brought up the average of goaltending by a significant amount but it might also be a hindrance to goalies creativity and hamper critical thinking of what suits their personal style
If I am an elite athlete I am going to play the position that pays me the best, seemingly any position but goalie. I think for a time elite athletes were becoming goalies because they were valued and were payed well (I think of Roy, Brodeur, Bobby Lu and flower to name a few). That trend seems to be gone. NHL teams are not willing to pay big money for goalies anymore. The few exceptions were Price and Bob who had salaries at 10m or more, to name two. Goalies also seem to be the easy scapegoat if an NHL team gets bounced early in the playoffs. Samsonov seemed to be blamed for the Leafs early playoff exits but the Leafs offence dries up in the post season but easier to blame him. I also think the CHL allowing import goalies into the leagues reduced the opportunity for Canadian tenders. If I recall, I think the CHL reduced this. My two cents.
When i was a kid, Luongo, Price and Brodeur were my heros. Bobby Lu and Price were my 2 favourites. Price being from vancouver. However in minor hockey when i was growing up. You are always blamed for loses so it makes it hard. As i wanted to be a goalie as early as i could. But then you have parents stigma. Oh hes too short, how he sucks as he just started, oh we lost its his fault he cant stop pucks. Association didnt give us Goalie camps with a goalie coach it was up to my parents bless them to reach out to a goalie coach to help me just get better and have fun. TBH left on my own i wouldnt have learned how to butterfly slide, t push and etc. My dad was a goalie in the 80s but it was so different then it was in the 2000s. Practices were called well lets do shooting drills and you cant a barrage of players for 5 minutes with no time to recover. Now in canada from what i hear kids dont want to be goalies and parents dont want to as why should they? if they pay an association money to play goalie. and the goalie doesnt get a goalie coach instead a parent that thinks they know goalie. whats the point? Couple that with the fact in canada our dollar has gotten worse it is way more expensive to buy equipment for hockey in general not just goalie. Yes you can buy used gear but other stuff like masks, jocks, knee pads, skates are so much more than it is in the US plus our tax. I think its often in minor hockey no goalie development. I dont know if in the US its better but its weird how i see alot of coaches based in the US that work with kids on a regular vs here you do see it but you have to look. I also think in the higher level its still mostly the same? as when i tried out in rep there wasnt a goalie coach idk if in aa and aaa there is one but i assume its more or less the same here in canada where its parents. Thats my two cents. I think in Canada associations and leagues are behind. We need proper goalie development. Man i feel old LOL
Canada is in better shape than you think! They might not have elite big names to chose from, but there are plenty of cup winning goals to chose from! They have nothing to be concerned about
Hello from Victoria BC ! I am very proud to say that my son got the news today after about two hard weeks of try outs made the U15 Rep tier two team , his first year and he is about a year younger than all the other ? kids ? hopefuls ? just to play hockey
Well, you can't be the best at evrey position, so if Canada has less amount of quality goalies, then Finland, Sweden, USA and Russia can shine more. In the 90's, the Czech Republic was also a great producer of elite level goalies beyond Dominik Hasek with; Roman Turek, Roman Čechmánek, Tomáš Vokoun, Milan Hnilička etc. but they also have dropped off.
It’s really difficult to make hockey more accessible because equipment and ice time costs so much, especially with inflation. I think the big problem is cost. It costs way more to be a goalie than a player. It’s hard to justify the cost of hockey if people are struggling to make ends meet with groceries, rent and other necessities
It's probably just a cycle. I remember a few years ago people were saying what is wrong with the Russian goaltending. Everybody sees what's going on with the Russian goaltending now. Canadian goaltending will come back. But having good goaltending options for so long, Canada was bound to dip at some point. And the rest of the world is not too sad about it. 😉😉
What has changed is the game at a younger age, as in way too young to start getting technical training considering they don't have the height at a young age. Teaching these kids to go down and take away the bottom portion of the net, playing the percentages, is not the age to be training these kids to play like that. The training around mobility, reflexes and getting around your crease with efficiency, and something else, the kids should be playing with smaller equipment too to learn better precision. I scouted for the last 20, I scouted goaltending, as a former goaltender myself. The biggest mistake was to let the whole province of Quebec was allowing Francois Allaire to be the goaltending guru, and then the copycats started coming out and the whole country was training the same way. That's the biggest failure. Kids are trying to copy NHL goaltenders and not understanding the steps that need to be taken. Each player is going to be different in his development and that is a failure to identify with a lot of coaches in Canada too. What needs to happen is a complete redesign on how our young players are going to be developed going forward.
I'll say this as a former goalie in minor hockey in Canada. 1. The pricing of hockey travel, equipment, and whatever else for a kid requires 2 very midrange-high range income parents. It's not cheap at all. 2. When I was in rep and scouted, it was always at "larger city" or US Rinks scouts were, hard to get noticed/support. 3. Even tho I stopped playing purely out of personal life issues, not many kids seemed overly interested in becoming a goalie. 4. To even get a real goal tender training, it was like a $600-800 goalie academy for a few days or so. Your average team coach doesn't know much about a goalie technique or style, I can promise you that. No you don't need to be doing extended crossovers, you're gonna trip over your pads and injure yourself.
Price is last great goalie I remember watching Roy,Belfour,Cujo,Luongo,Broduer,Fluery,Theodore and now there's Binnington,Kuemper,Hill,Thompson... Hockey has turned into a rich man's sport considering its 8k plus AAA and junior some places. And Goalies equipment is most expensive. Lack of being individuals has changed everyone trains the same same advice on how to play instead being themseleves. And development sometimes we talk about a fwd/d prospect being buried in system. Most goalies these days start off ECHL/AHL and get stuck. By NHL carasel Take a former WJC goalie I think has promising future Milic tore up WHL went undrafted,as overager was drafted by jets playing for Seattle over Ratzlaff who's probably Canada's goalie this WJC and last Years. But Jets sent Milic Echl then he worked his way up to AHL Starter as a 20-21yr old. And was on Spengler Cup. This is good development... at 20 most other teams keep goalies in NCAA or CHL. Flaherty has been a great goalie coach to Hellebuyck,Brossoit. Now other teams you'll see a 1st round pick goalie playing behind a 33yr old in AHL for years never getting better til ages out or gets a chance like JackCambell did Toronto. Or LoganThompson McCrimmon knew him from WHL/Wheat king days but kept eye on him even when he played University in Canada. For overseas goalies they have chance keep playing high level KHL,SHL ect while here after USports/NCAA/CHL it's over time get real job or play senior mens/AllanCup.
Problem is, Most of the time the fee to buy goalie equipment and goalie lessons is simply way too extreme. The barrier of entry is already so high, then on top of that you now have to be min 6'-4" or scout/team will not look at you in Canada, Same thing is true with the politics of how teams and goalies are even selected in Canada. You have to be extremely fortunate to even be in a position financially to play. You also have to not only actually be good but win the politics to end up on a high level team. Add it all up and the reasoning is don't be a goalie when being a player is cheaper. League fees often don't even give the goalie a price break they pay the same fee as players.
Although the situation is sad, there is still hope for Canadian men’s hockey teams to win medals during the 2024-25 NHL season. I say more, in a direct response to the TSN video, on having goalies with Canadian citizenship mattering more for international tournaments than on teams in specific leagues. For soccer tournaments outside of Olympic ones that feature teams from different FIFA member states, having a specific nationality matters, with, within the British Isles, the situation quite complex because the UK proper features teams that represent each of Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales going clockwise. Yet during the last season of the England Men’s Premier League (aka EPL), only one of the four goalies on Nottingham Forest FC, which finished 17th in that league and thus avoided relegation, was known to have had citizenship of a British Isles entity, with Wayne Hennessey having been born in the north of Wales. Of those teams from the British Isles that qualified for this summer‘s men’s Euro 2024 tournament, the: - English team that made it to the championship game (but lost) featured all but two players from teams not just based in England, but in the EPL - Scottish team finished last in Group A and that didn’t advance beyond the group stage, 4 players, including 2 then having been playing for teams based neither within the British Isles nor Schengen Area, hadn’t back then been playing for a team based in England, Scotland or elsewhere within the British Isles
I remember hearing similar concerns during the late 90's and early 2000's too. Back when Hasek, Kolzig and Carey prevented any Canadian goalies from winning for 8 years straight. Even when Brodeur, Luongo, and Price were the best Canada had... they still had to contend with Lundqvist, Thomas, Miller, Nabokov, Kiprusoff, Quick, Bobrovsky, etc. Now with the best goalies being Vasilevskiy, Ullmark, Demko, Shesterkin, Hellebuyck, etc... similar trends with the NHL overall, more European players with an impact. I wonder if it has to do with the pool of players that filters through the system. Competitive hockey is basically reserved for the richer upper class... with annual costs ranging from $15000-60000/year. The prices are probably higher for goaltending. Maybe the key for European goalies is that it's overall cheaper to get into the sport. I mean, if university in Sweden is way less than in Canada, then hockey fees (besides travel and equipment) are probably way cheaper than in Canada.
I'm 65+ years old, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather (twice over). It NEVER occurred to me, until VERY RECENTLY, that we would ever see a dearth of great Canadian goaltenders and, by this, I mean, THE BEST Goaltenders in the World... Much less, that we would ever see the demise of what everyone long knew as, 'THE QUEBEC GOALTENDING FACTORY!' xxx For longer than I, or anyone I know, can remember... Canadian goaltenders were the best puck handlers, BAR NONE (NHL GMs get rid of that DAMN TRAPEZOID!) Canadian goaltenders were the most athletic and the most courageous, BAR NONE Canadian goaltenders were the Biggest, Big Time, Money Goalies/Playoff Performers PERIOD For years... Quebec Goalies, goalies from 'La Belle Province'... Most notably, goalies from the illustrious Francois Allaire School... were 'AHEAD AHEAD OF THE CURVE', were world leaders, in terms of positioning and technical skill development AND IT DOESN'T END THERE... xxx Newsflash: Yanks and Euros didn't invent this game, WE CANUCKS DID! Newsflash: Tretiak bouncing multiple tennis balls against a wall wasn't invented by Anatoly Tarasov, Tarasov learned that trick from Lloyd Percival's 'Hockey Handbook' , a book Tarasov had translated into Russian (With 500 copies made, in the first printing alone), a book Tarasov called, 'HIS BIBLE'. That tennis ball thing is an exercise Percival recommended for Terry Sawchuk WAY BACK in the Early Fifties. xxx Don't GIve me this 'Hockey's Gotten TOO EXPENSIVE' B.S. HOCKEYCANADA has more money than you can shake a stick at! xxx ENOUGH IS ENOUGH... Time for those FAT-CATS (that BrainTrust, or LACK THEREOF) at HockeyCanada to Hold a Goal-tending Summit, with the Goal of Devising a Plan to Make Canada's Goaltenders NUMBER ONE AGAIN... NOT 2, NOT 3, NOT 4 or 5 HockeyCanada BRASS: First, Tell Us WHERE AND WHEN the First Official Canadian Goalie Development Summit WILL BE HELD ... AND Do So by this Christmas, at the latest Second, Show Us, and Tell Us, YOUR 'Grass Roots' PLAN... And do so BEFORE this year's SLC Playoffs Failing that, Ladies and Gents, HAND IN YOUR PINK SLIPS!!! xxx END-RANT
Good goalies are looked over for good looking goalies(newer gear). Limited spots with the same amount of politics leads to fewer kids with potential being placed in positions to succeed. All you’re ever told is if you’re good enough they’ll find you but it’s damn hard to be found from a local community’s A team.
As stated in the video, one big problem is that Quebec as a province has completely fallen off at producing hockey players. Quebec used to be Canada's goalie factory. Now the QMJHL usually has about 1 first round pick per year, whereas the OHL and WHL still have 5+ each.
All these Canadian NHLers stay in the States after retirement and teach the game. And also, wealthy Canadians in general move to the States for various reasons. Canada is a good place to live if you’re not rich. And nowadays parents can’t afford to put their kids in hockey.
Main issue is that goaltending is overcomplicated from the moment kids put the pads on now in Canada. There are many 6 years old out there that'll loose motivation by the time they get to high school just because coaches are making movements are technique a priority (which isn't wrong when the goalie is like 12) but for that age (6 to 10), goalies should just be having fun stopping the puck and learning the basics (goalie stance, butterfly, butterfly slides, t push, shuffle, puck tracking and that's it). They shouldn't be practicing more complicated stuff like moving out of RVH etc. And when goalies are old enough, it feels like most coaches are soft, but want you to practice 7 days a week. On the other hand, when I went to the US and had the opportunity to work with one of their goalie coaches, it was short, simple and intense. Canada suffers from a quantity over quality issue when it comes to goalie in my opinion
Canada is so thankful that Russia is excluded from the 4 nations cup. Because Canada would be embarrassed off the ice like they were against the Czech Republic in Nagano Japan in 1998. It's like the old saying goes, "If you can't beat 'em, ban 'em" - George W. Bush
Hopefully Russia is allowed 2026 Olympics or to me medal doesn't mean as much. Goalies Vasilevskiy,Sorokin,Boborovsky,Shesterkin Defence Sergachev Mintyukov Orlov Provorov Nikishin Romanov Kulikov,Nesterov,Gavrikov Forwards Panarin Malkin Kucherov Kaprizov Kuznetsov Svechnikov Barbashev Michkov Ovechkin Nichushkin Namestnikov Dadonov Kuzmenko,Gusev,or older players could be chosen or younger guys like Podkolzin,Yurov,Chibrikov.
Well no... Canada's forward group is better and deeper than Russia and their defence is not even close. Russia only wins in goaltending and that's just 1 player. The only country that can match Canada on paper is the US.
1. Canada's not the one that banned Russia - that was the IIHF. 2. The Four Nations Faceoff is run by the NHL, not the IIHF. They could have ignored the ban but chose not to.
@@jordanstreib3898 You might be waiting a while. There's a good reason why, when the initial ban was announced and later extended, several fans of European countries were expressing approval of the decision. Leaving Ukraine might only be the first of many steps.
most great goalies like roy , luongo , fleury or brodeur in canada were from quebec. back then there was also jacques plante who owns many records. there are still good goalies in canada but hockey is an international sport and they do find even better goaltenders elsewhere. the hockey did not change much in canada but other countries did improve in many ways. btw jacques plante was in my family :)
I actually really understood that over-training line. I mean, if you pay attention to the modern game, it is incredibly practiced and robotic. It does feel like it's based more on probability than emotion and creativity, which is fine, I guess. The older I get the more I understand that over-training isn't great and, in many ways, even for people much more elite and younger than myself, a real problem.
As a former goaltender going up through the system, we have become way to technical and focused on the wrong things. There’s no more personality in goaltending seen with Roy, Brodeur, etc. Plus with how expensive it is it makes sense why this is happening
Yup. I have the feeling that reading the game has been undervalued over proper technique. Heck, the last one great still playing, Flower, ain't the most technical.
@@sebastiencarrieres8825one of my buddies who has a goalie school admitted to me that they can get results faster by teaching the butterfly blocking technique. Drove me nuts when I played Tier 2 and higher when they would bring coaches in that were North American.
It’s sad that proportionately there are fewer Canadian goalies under contract to NHL teams than before. There’s also no doubt that last NHL season, among Canada’s under-18, under-20 (WJC) and adult men’s teams, it was a mixed bag, with the: - U18 team having won gold (an improvement over having barely won bronze during the previous tourney or even bow out in the quarterfinals during the second-most-recent tourney) - WJC having narrowly lost in quarterfinal action (compared to having won gold in the previous tournament) - adult men’s team lost its semifinal and bronze-medal games en route to just its 2nd post-2014 tourney without a medal (the other 7 how many featured each time an appearance in the gold-medal game) So how did the WJC and adult men’s teams miss the podium in their most-recent respective tournaments? The WJC team had won its first two round-robin games but against its Swedish counterpart in the third ended up not scoring at all. A team that doesn’t score in a given game should be a red flag, and that would by no means be the end of issues with that team as it would lose in regulation to its Czech counterpart in quarterfinal action 3-2, the winning goal in that game having come with just 11 seconds to go in regulation. For the WJC tournament that starts this December and ends the following month, there will have to be big changes for the Canadian team to have a chance of appearing in a gold-medal game, and because under IIHF rules no player on that team can in 2025 have a 21st or later birthday, 2004- or earlier-born Owen Beck, Nate Danielson, Jagger Firkus, Fraser Minten, Matt Poitras, Jordan Dumais, Matt Savoie, Connor Geekie, Jake Furlong, Noah Warren, Jorian Donovan, Maveric Lamoureux, Ty Nelson, Denton Mateychuk, Matthis Rousseau and Sam St-Hilaire won’t get to play on the 2025 WJC team. That leaves just 1 goalie and 6 other skaters from that 2024 team eligible to play in the 2025 tournament. IIHF rules for adult men’s teams don’t specify a maximum age for a given player, but specify, as the minimum age as of the start date of a given tournament: - 18 without an underage waiver - 16 with an underage waiver Finding enough players who, even before the 2025 adult men’s tourney starts, whoever turned 18 and will thus won’t require underage waivers shouldn’t be too much of a problem, considering that for the last tournament, only one player, Finnish centre Konsta Helenius (who the following month would be drafted 14th by the Buffalo Sabres), had needed to sign an underage waiver as during the second day of that tournament he would turn 18. Finding enough players with the ability to score during the semifinal so that the relevant Canadian team will qualify for the gold-medal game is a bigger challenge because during that semifinal against its Swiss counterpart, the relevant Canadian team scored just two goals before that game would be decided in a shootout. The bronze-medal game didn’t go much better, with a 4-2 lost to the relevant Swedish team. Among forwards selected by hockey Canada for that adult men’s team, Brandon Tanev, PLD, John Tavares, Connor Bedard, Dylan Cozens, Andrew Mangiapane and Brandon Hagel, over the past two games the relevant Canadian team played in that tournament, scored or assisted on at least one goal. With just two goals scored by the relevant Canadian team in each of the last two games, it’s time to look at the forwards who neither scored nor assisted on a goal, and of those I count Jack McBain, Dawson Mercer, Jared McCann, Nick Paul and Ridly Greig. The round-robin went relatively well for the Canadian adult men’s team with 19 points over seven games and only the relevant Swedish team having played better (with the Canadian team having won 2 such games in OT, but with the Swedish team having won all of its games in regulation). One may think that not-great goaltending hurt Canada’s adult men’s team at the last relevant IIHF tournament, but I believe a bigger factor was the lack of offence from enough of those forwards when there had been a need for pretty much all hands on deck so that in either of the last two games, but ideally in the semifinal, the Canadian team would’ve scored at least three goals and moved onto the gold-medal game. The U18 women’s team, during the last relevant tournament, scored three or more goals in each game other than the semifinal one, going to town on the relevant Finnish team in the bronze-medal game at 8-1 including 3-0 in the opening 20 minutes. The adult women’s team did even better, not losing a single game in regulation during the last relevant tournament, with the only loss in that entire tournament having come via a 1-0 in OT to its US counterpart that would be avenged in the gold-medal game via a 6-5 OT win. There’s no doubt that the adult and U20 men’s Canadian teams need some big changes to better their chances to qualify for the gold-medal games during those tournaments that end in 2025 considering how in too few critical games in those tournaments that had ended in 2024 enough forwards stepped up when they had needed to. It’s tempting by contrast to say, considering how well the U18 men’s team ended up doing (winning gold), that Hockey Canada should just run the team back. Yet of those players who participated in the most-recent relevant tournament, Marek Vanacker, Malcolm Spence, Maxim Massé, Jett Luchanko, Roger McQueen, Ollie Josephson, Ryder Ritchie, Porter Martone, Carson Wetsch, Tij Iginla, Liam Greentree, Cole Beaudoin, Kashawn Aitcheson, Harrison Brunicke, Henry Mews, Frankie Marrelli, Spencer Gill, Charlie Elick, Ryerson Leenders and Carter George will at some point next year turn 19 and thus not be eligible to participate in future U18 tournaments as players. Just one goalie and four other skaters who participated in the 2024 U18 relevant tourney will get to participate in the 2025 one. I don’t want to ignore out of hand that proportionately fewer Canadian goalies under contract to NHL teams are elite than what used to be the case. That said, I see the lack of scoring in enough playoff games as no smaller an issue for the 2024 WJC and adult men’s teams lack of medals. Of goalies under contract to: - Canadian NHL teams for least this season I count, of those under contract with Canadian citizenship, going from Western to Eastern Canada to the: - Canucks, 1 (Ty Young) of 5 - Flames, none of 4 - Oilers, 4 of 5 - Jets, 1 (Eric Comrie) of 5 - Leafs, 1 (Matt Murray) of 6 - Sens, none of 4 (all originally from member states of the Nordic Council [2 from Sweden]) - Habs, 2 of 4 (excluding Carey Price, currently on long-term injured reserve and unlikely to ever play another NHL preseason, regular-season or playoff game) - teams that otherwise appeared in: - a Stanley Cup final from the 2019-20 season to this past June, I count, among goalies with Canadian citizenship under contract to the: -- Bolts, 1 (Matt Tomkins) of 3 -- Avs, 2 of 4 -- Golden Knights, 1 (Adin Hill) of 5 not on injured reserve -- Panthers, 1 of 4 -- Stars, 1 of 5 - any of the past five conference finals I count, among goalies with Canadian citizenship under contract to the: -- Isles, 1 of 6 -- NYR, 3 of 6 - other teams whose last conference final appearance was no later than 2019, I count, among goalies with Canadian citizenship under contract to the: - Ducks, none of 6 - Bruins, 1 of 3 - Sabres, 2 of 4 - Canes, 2 of 5 - Blackhawks, none of 4 - Blue Jackets, 3 of 5 - Wings, 4 of 7 - Kings, 2 of 5 - Wild, 1 of 5 - Preds, 2 of 4 - Devils, 4 of 6 - Flyers, 1 of 5 - Pens, 1 of 7 - Sharks, 1 of 4 - Kraken, none of 6 - Blues, 4 of 5 - Utah Hockey Club (ex-Yotes), 3 of 5 - Caps, 3 of 6
Of our 3 main goalies over last year's men's tournaments, Carter George (U18) was easily the best performer. Rousseau looked... not as good as George, at the WJC. And the less said about Binnington, the better.
@@ngarcia103 I definitely look forward to the five upcoming IIHF top division tournaments that feature Canadian teams in action, with the: - WJC one scheduled for December-January in Southeastern Ontario (TBD whether Carter George will be 1 of the goalies) - U18 women’s one scheduled to be held from 5-12 January 2025 Eastern European Time in Southern Finland - adult women’s one scheduled to be held in Southern Czechia from 9-20 April Central European Time - U18 men’s one scheduled from 23 April-3 May Central Daylight Time in Northern Texas - adult men’s one to take place in Eastern Sweden and on Denmark’s Jutland Peninsula in May, starting the week after the last day of the U18 men’s tourney
@@georgefox4982 of the three IIHF men’s top-division tournaments scheduled to end in 2025, the WJC one will as usual take place during the NHL regular season, with the U18 and adult ones scheduled for the NHL postseason. The last 3 NHL seasons have featured a mixed bag of success of Canada’s NHL teams, with the Oilers having gone the furthest in postseason play in each (in the last three respective seasons to the conference finals, conference semifinals and Stanley Cup final). With the existing contract of Leon Draisaitl to expire in June and no word yet on a contract to cover any month after that, this coming NHL season may be the last for awhile to feature an Oiler win of a playoff series. With no more than 3 other Canadian teams having joined the Oilers in postseason play during any of the past 4 seasons, pretty much anything goes on how many of those other Canadian teams will qualify.
A major factor is the relative calibre of international goalies has risen to meet that of Canada. It’s not that our goalies are worse now, the rest of the world has caught up with techniques and training.
They are worse. They block like lacrosse goalies. They don’t make saves. It makes for fast results in minor hockey cuz the shooters aren’t as good but once they get to 16 and up they get exposed. Europeans have figured out the game.
2 out of 3 of our Canadian goalies won cups in the last 5-6 years, and one was just in the cup final. None of the other goalies on the other 3 teams won a cup. I'm not saying the Canadian goalies are better because they're not right now, but they got hardware to back it up. And especially backstopping that Canada team, they shouldn't have a problem.
All this despite a 4 year. Ban from international goalies being drafted into the CHl. This was supposed to help push Canadian goalies back to the top ...
I think a part of the multiple reasons why Quebec have no more great goalie is because they stop broadcasting on Radio-Canada (CBC french version) the NHL games in french long time ago. When I was a kid, I watch every game of Montreal on Radio-Canada, now, you need to pay for watching games in french So, it not maintream anymore in some part of Quebec where people live there life in French like me when I was young.
8:56 Over-coaching. Completely agree with Craig. My goaltending style was a bit more like Dominik Hasek. I would’ve loved to be more structured like Carey Price but I wasn’t as successful that way. I had to do my own thing. At a young age one of my coaches told me I’ll get myself hurt playing that way and I have to stop it “the right way”. I honestly didn’t care, as long as I was stopping the puck. Coaching is important, but let the kids natural instincts take over once in awhile
Great goalie coaches produce great goalies. 25 years ago, the most influential goalie coaches were Quebecois, such as Francois Allair, and the result was a surge of great goalies from Quebec. Now, the innovators and cutting edge goalie coaches are elsewhere.
It seems pretty obvious. Hockey has always been more expensive than other sports but now it's out of control. Canada doesn't even have a majority of the players in the league anymore, because we're not looking for the best talent, we're looking for who can pay the most.
It has only been 3 years since the best goalie in the league retired and guess what, he was Canadian. We are currently lacking in Canadian elite goaltending, that’s no secret. The last 2 best goalies just happen to be Habs fyi. Fortunately when Canada ices a team that consists of Mcdavid, Crosby, Mackinnon, Bedard and Makar the goaltending is of little importance!
It's easy to feel like you're losing when others start playing. Canada isn't behind, the world is catching up. ..and It only took a generation for some of those European countries to implement a hockey culture and start producing stars..
It’s very expensive to be a goalie in Canada and compared to other countries goalie development, Canada virtually has none. I’ve been playing goalie my whole life and I have never had a head coach who is remotely familiar with goaltending as a position and what it takes to play that position; and unfortunately they often get the final say when picking the roster. If we wish to catch up in goalie development we need to follow the footsteps of Scandinavian countries goalie development.
I can tell you exactly what’s going on. As the parent of a young goalie I can tell you hockey associations aren’t taking the most talented, athletic, goalies. They’re not taking the kids who are best at stopping the puck. They are taking the kids who best pretend to be goalies. The kids who pose the best. The kids who hold their catcher and blocker in the textbook position whether they have the athleticism, and goalie sense, to actually stop the puck. Year after year our best youngsters are getting passed over for our weakest. Even if your kid survives the politics of youth hockey he’ll get screwed by the “goalie expert” evaluating. The “expert” more impressed by the kid he’s never seen, who had more goals against than saves during the season. They should be taking the best, most gifted, goalies and developing their technique. Not taking the kid who practices in front of a mirror and trying to make him talented. I guarantee that’s not what’s going on in Europe.
I’ve been between the pipes in 5 different countries. It comes down to coaching. Canadian coaches have failed their pupils. They have adopted the lacrosse style of goaltending. Be big, be in position and block the shot. The Europeans have done a great job of adopting their floor hockey style of quickness and athleticism. The latest SCF proved just that. Sadly canadian coaches want quick results and scam parent into turning their kids into blocking ridged commodities. I’ve done goalie evaluation for teams and it’s gotten so much harder to evaluate the goalies because they’ve all been coached the same way. They move the same way. They treat the game the same way. Nothing sets themselves above the rest. Every once in a while you’ll get an outlier who hasn’t been trained the NA way. It’s a thing of beauty when you see them actually make saves.
Hockey Canada needs to seriously do something about the development of goalies in this country. We are failing extremely behind other top countries with this and the attitude towards goaltending has been pathetic the last decade. If it continues it will only get worse.
Hellebuyck played multiple seasons in the NAHL, a feeder Junior B league for College. No way US is “helping in his development” until he’s a top tier college goalie
sad stuff... hearing the drop of kids league play has dropped, I bet it's cos of video games and internet stuff. Sucks to see it happening but can't force kids to play hockey
I'm not saying this is 100% the solution, but I think Russia has a rule that forces KHL teams to have at least 1 russian goalie, which would make the need to actually developp good ones a necessary step to winning
I voiced my concern about this heading into the 2026 Olympics and had many people telling me that Skinner, Hill, Kuemper, all of them would be amazing, and while I can agree they could be great, do we really believe they can match up to the shit Roy, Luongo, Brodeur and even Price pulled off?
Look at the Stanley Cup winning goalies in the past 20 years though... around 80% of them are Canadian if not more. Canadian goalies still find a way to win in the end.
1. WAY too expensive for quality gear 2. Coaching staff selecting teams in Tryouts have no idea what they should be looking for in a quality goaltender 3. Lack of development time in relation to team practice time.
Goalie equipment cost more and kids know a goalie is the most critiqued member
Plus Canada doesn't promote our hockey youth anymore. Smaller talent pool with it becoming a elitist sport
And the fewest job openings
I wonder if Canadian fans' attitude towards the WJC is contributing to this. If I'm right, it's becoming more and more of a thankless job. If you get a shutout, almost no one remembers. But if you lose - even a hard fought game - you're the first one everyone blames.
@@ngarcia103but if you save a game you’re seen as a national hero
@@ngarcia103that’s every hockey Canadian fan
In Sweden/Finland, goaltending is treated with prestige.. similar to how football teams see their starting quarterback. There is a sense of pride being the goalie. In Canada, it seems that there is almost some sort of 'stigma' of being the goalie.. usually it's the least-athletic kid, etc that are picked to be the goalie and there is a lack of honour with the position. Top this with the costs of equipment, the lack of focus on goalie development in in-season drills where goalies are peppered with shots all practice, kids just don't want to be the goalie here anymore. A lot has to change in Canada.
If Canadian fans at the WJC are any indication, it also seems to become more of a thankless job. When you're on your game, hardly anyone remembers. But lose a game - even a well-played one - and you're first to be blamed.
Well said 👍 and that's the SAD TRUTH 😢 we have to live with
Fav canada loss was Zegras and Jake Sanderson game
I loved seeing USA defeat 'fancy pass' Canada @@ngarcia103
There's a good article called "The Oracle of Hockey" that delves deep into what Finland and Sweden in terms of developing goalies. It's definitely a more hybrid style compared to what they teach here in Canada (as a former goalie). USA hockey has been building a good development for their tenders, but I find their goalies tend to have a blocking wall style. Apparently Bobrovsky took everything he learned from Ian Clark (Canucks goalie coach and the reason why they have been so good the last few years) back to Russia and they adapted those teachings into their training and development program. It seems like Canada hasn't changed much at all and really only focus on big and tall goalies while simply waiting for the next Carey Price to emerge.
Goalies aren't real people and shouldnt be allowed to vote
Price is the last Canadian hall of fame quality goalie
I was about to reply what about Fleury but you're right he is older than Price
@@stephennichol3620 and carey played through a lot of his prime in a ridiculous amount of pain in comparison to what a regular person goes through on a day to day. It makes me look back on his last playoff run knowing not only was he as physically beat up as ever but was dealing with some tough mental issues at the same time. That kreider incident absolutely took a toll on price and lead to a continuation of bad injuries. To pile onto all of that he NEVER had an elite team in front of him, he played some of his best hockey on teams that many other goalies would've been snuffed out by. Carey price was my favorite athlete to follow and i dont think that ever changes. Started when i was a kid and saw all of it
Carey Price was wasted in Montreal. It's a shame the Habs only started showing competent management the first year he essentially retired. Given their current direction, a young Carey Price would have been the final piece needed for a Stanley Cup winning team. I say this as a Canadiens fan.
@@nc8507 100% true. Montreal was always bottom of the league in offense in 00s to early 20s yet Price singlehandedly brought us to the finals and conference finals several times. That 2014 version of Price is the greatest goalie of all time, no doubt.
Braden holtby ?
There is also no system for goaltending in Canada. It's up to a goalie to go to a school but past that very few teams/leagues that focus on goaltending until it's too late. Goalies are treated like targets until they are 16.
There is a system, for some reason, they are teaching these kids from a very young age to play on their knees. I worked in the game for quite a while, hours are long and the pay isn't that great, but most of what I was seeing where goaltenders from South of the border being better than Canadian goaltenders. The best kid out of the US that I saw in the last 10 years, and stands out to this day, the kid was a stud in Alaska, unbeatable. Coaching is the biggest problem in the country, most of the coaches are trying to get 4ft nothing kids to play like goaltenders that are 6ft4 6ft5. The need to be taught the mobility aspect of the game and work on reflexes and identifying situations.
Funny, I wrote that before I watched it and it's what I noticed most living on the Western seaboard, the improvement and influx of American goaltending. Very different way of practicing and training at younger ages. A lot of the training is old school, stacking of the pads, reflexes, and mobility around the crease
There, as I mentioned below, overcoaching is the issue. It's brutal to watch these kids at young ages being taught to go down when they don't need to. They are being taught to be too robotic.
Goalies used to be multi-sport athletes, playing baseball in summer ,etc. Now they're just goalies who go through goalie schools and copying their favourite goalie. Oh and it costs way too much to be a goalie now, so we probably just have way fewer goalies.
Seriously, why does it cost thousands of dollars for some high density foam pads wrapped in fake leather?
@@nicko9046 Agree 100 percent. Many players were into other sports, Gretzky was possibly as good at baseball as hockey. A lot of others played lacrosse - Joe Nieuwendyk and Gary Roberts among others played at a high level.
There's the reason right there, too expensive to play goalie.
@Mrvegas6666 I don't get this argument, it's getting expensive everywhere (arguably even more expensive in other countries), yet they produce more goalies
Don't forget that the NHL changed the rules to get rid of good goalies.
My boy is 11 years old goalie, started playing in the net when he was 7. We relocated two years ago from Moscow, Russia to Canada and I was literally shocked with the kids goalie development here. Every hockey team in Moscow has a fully dedicated professional goalie coach for kids since 7 years old, they work on the specific aspects of goalie skating on the ice as well as reaction, juggling, stretching and conditioning in the gym. Here in Canada NOBODY REALLY CARES about goalies in the kids and juniors teams, just play as you want (or can). There are no assigned goalie coaches at the bench at any team even at the AAA or Provincial Teams level. However, these ages of 7-13 are fundamental for a goalie, if he won’t get used to good habits especially proper skating and be flexible he’ll never reach the top level, it might happen only as an individual exception. That needs to be changed if we really want Canadian goalies to be competitive with the rest of the world.
Truth! There’s very little for goalies at a young age in Canada.
yeah emphasis seems to the focus on the Fowards
Because goalies are not what wins the cup anymore. Offense and defense does. If it wasn't for the panthers going 0-3 against the oilers this year (which was largely thanks to their offense) they wouldn't have beaten the oilers. They almost didn't. Bob was broken and letting in goals galore.
The reality is, the best defense is a swift and decisive offense.
It's not an ideal strategy to rely on a goalie. Your goalie is your last line of defense.
@@randomassname445 Shouldn't be your last line of defense be good though? Doesnt matter how good your defense is you cant just throw in some random bum from the SPHL and expect to go anywhere
@@irogen2 Yet the Carolina hurricanes used a Zamboni driver to beat the leafs in 2020... A Zamboni driver.
If you want an example that spans over a bigger time period, Stuart Skinner for Edmonton Oilers is a useable example of what I'm talking about. He gets trashed but his performance was enough to get the oilers to game 7 of the SCF. And they largely got there because of their insane offense. Not Skinner really. Let's face it. Oilers offense brought them there.
The reality is the costs of hockey are what is killing the sport in general. Think of how many potential great players ( goalies and players ) are being missed in general cause of costs period. It’s a by product of the economy and no one wants to acknowledge that fact. Until Canadian families can afford to play then we’ll slowly see this trend continue. Hockey has become a game for a certain demographic of ppl and excludes most middle class families now.
Minor hockey coaches with "30 years of experience" is what happened.
People can't afford groceries yet alone goalie equipment + fees in Canada
Who can't afford groceries? All those people with iPhones and Air Jordans? What a joke.
those pesky rich russian kids lol
As a goalie who played against Sam Reinhart and Jake virtanen as a kid I’ll just say what coaches told me my whole life. “Your position is worthless, and any player on this team could play it.” Not joking… A1 coaches told me that. So I’m not surprised that all the goalies left hockey immediately upon hitting 18. Hockey Canada did it to themselves honestly.
I was a goalie in my youth in Canada. The problem is we’re treated as cannon fodder for skaters to practice on with very little specialized attention by coaches.
Too true, I played AAA every year in minor hockey and was never given a “goalie coach” on any of my teams. I just faced 1000 shots a practice while players worked on skills/development
Getting lit up by players like RNH, Matt Barzal, Reinhart(s), Morgan Rielly and many more as a 13 yr old undertrained goaltender also a mind f
Most parents aren't keen to spend
almost 10 000$ for full new equipment
10 000$+ for AAA hockey
and 40-80$/hr for extra goalie clinics that aren't offered by a lot of AAA teams apparently (which is crazy)
Do the coaching yourself then
@@Pain-tw4cu absolutely retarded take
hey dad?
you know the new pads you bought for me 6 months ago... they're too short already.. I need new ones!!!
40 to 80? 125 -225/hr in calgary
@@MrGamman3yt The coach better be Jesus himself for that price
Montembault should be the starter. He just won gold with “Canadas worst team ever”. At the same tournament where Binnington played like crap with a better team around him.
This is it here.
No goalie that allows 5 goals on 9 shots in 1 period should be considered for the national team. Binnington showed us why Hockey Canada hadn't contacted him since the 2013 WJC.
@@ngarcia103 Patrick Roy let in 9 goals on 26 shots your point is invalid all goalies have bad games
he's a bum, go look at he's numbers, he's a mid level back up lol
@@nadaduo1765 his numbers show he had the 3rd best GSAA and 2nd best GSAx this season.
From my limited vintage point as a hockey parent, I see many teams' goalies being forced to take the position (often a coach's child), there is often no specific coaching given to the goalies, and goalie gear is just outright not affordable (teams giving goalie discounts in registration fee, etc., only marginally help). Canada as a nation needs to be more purposeful in directing some resources in developing our goalies - I am sure there are tonnes of future Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur, Roberto Luongo and Carey Price out there - they just need to be properly developed, coached, and supported.
Bought all new equipment; costed me $4000. That’s the answer folks
What fascinates me is that while Canada's men's team is facing a severe goaltending shortage, the women are dealing with the opposite: a log jam leading up to these Olympics (with at least 4 goalies fighting for the 3 spots, and several more waiting behind them).
Is there a difference in development or something?
That takes down the cost argument. I doubt boys and girls equipment have a big price difference.
@@mathman80 The women's team essentially only competes against one other country (the U.S.) for quality of players at any position, while the men's team's quality at each position is measured against 4 other countries. The number of Canadian goalies considered to be olympic-level on the women's team would most likely decrease if more countries' women's teams were truly competitive, so I don't know how much the women's goalie situation could be compared to the men's.
@@sophiewang1025 I think your argument holds more water.
Man is this insightful!!! Buttons comment on the over focus on technique too early is impacting the development of hockey sense. Great goaltenders #1 asset is almost always an uncanny ability to anticipate the next move, shot, pass, etc.
As an American, I’ve always felt that Canadian goalies at all levels get critiqued too much at all levels, from NHL guys to little kids.
I’m from Michigan, we compete with most nations in terms of goalie output as just one state. But we have a mentality here of “work hard and be as good as you can be” and “be the best goalie you can be for your team”. We also have a lot of unity between goalies and goalie coaches in an effort to move goaltending ahead.
In Canada (as an outsider) it almost seems there’s hostile competition between goalies coaches specifically and goalies themselves too to a certain extent to be better than the next guy. It’s like they break themselves down but don’t bring each other back up if that makes sense.
Canada has more than enough infrastructure and talent to produce great goalies, they are just missing that one link. Ala the Bruins this year, record breaking team, but they didn’t have the spark to go all the way. That’s what it’s seems to be decade after decade for Canadian goaltending development.
There also something to be said about Canadas terrible youth hockey system which is harming overall player development, but that’s a wholeeee other discussion.
I'd say the butterfly style killed Canadian goaltending lol. Brodeur, and Roy were 2 of the top goalies and they played a hybrid style. Goalies now seem to be taught to drop to their knees whenever they can, and with the snipers we are now creating in the system they are picking them apart. Bring back the stack pad and standing post coverage and cut off angles properly and we'll be back on top in no time (only partly serious on this comment having been a goaltender in the Canadian system many moons ago during the transition to butterfly)😂
Exactly. We’ve turned them into blocking goalies that can’t make saves. In Europe they have them making saves and being athletic. Watched a floor hockey game in Finland and you could see how they’ve adopted that style.
No one is teaching drop and block in butterfly anymore.
That was end of 90's early 2000.
The butterfly fly is taught as a tool and its not a blocking position with hands place to cover holes anymore. Active hands for reaction is what's up now
@@pierreluc5382 yes they are and you can see it. There is more activity yea but it’s not the same as Europeans.
@@ryana3679
yes sorry, I meant to say no one *who is up to date* is teaching pure blocking style.
There's many out dated coach who are teaching obsolete stuff.
And I always thought that teaching blocking style to a 5'2 minors goalie who doesn't have the body to cover the net isn't a great idea
@@pierreluc5382 well from what I’ve been seeing and everything is butterfly based. Is it better than in the early 2000s yes but it’s just blocking based. I get it. It gets quick results and kids do improve but they never branch out.
Imagine what Montembeault could do with a good team around him. He’s been the best part of the rebuild the last 2 years. He’s hung out to dry nightly and still playing great with solid numbers
His thing is one good game 3 bad games
what do you the Habs been doing this offseason
@@JBTriple8 I’m saying about last season and 2 seasons ago
I can imagine him blowing 80% of the games he plays like he naturally does
Bahahahahahahaha 😂😂😂
It's also a lot of the big-name Canadian goalie prospects have been busts in recent years, you look at some of the goalies for Canada at the world juniors in the last 10 years who had hype around them, Zach Fucale, Michael DiPietro, Malcolm Subban, Mackenzie Blackwood, the guys who were supposed to carry the torch after the likes of Price and Fleury, none of them are starters, the only ones who have seem to hit have been I guess Jordan Binnington (who wasn't even that hyped as a prospect and was Subban's backup on the 2013 team) and Sam Montembeault who initially wasn't even named to the 2016 world junior team. And even then Canada has only had the top goalie in the tournament twice since 2008. Now yes there are some guys like Levi, Hofer, Skinner, and guys like Hill and Thompson who've come out of nowhere but I guess we'll have to see if they can keep it up
I think Canada can survive this at least in the short term. Adin Hill, Darcy Kuemper and Jordan Binnington are all cup winning starters in the last 5 years and they're all Canadian. Even the oilers who were just 1 win short this past season had a Canadian starter. In an era where scoring has gone up so much, goalies might not be as important as 20 years ago.
That was a well done video
Technique training has probably brought up the average of goaltending by a significant amount but it might also be a hindrance to goalies creativity and hamper critical thinking of what suits their personal style
If I am an elite athlete I am going to play the position that pays me the best, seemingly any position but goalie. I think for a time elite athletes were becoming goalies because they were valued and were payed well (I think of Roy, Brodeur, Bobby Lu and flower to name a few). That trend seems to be gone. NHL teams are not willing to pay big money for goalies anymore. The few exceptions were Price and Bob who had salaries at 10m or more, to name two. Goalies also seem to be the easy scapegoat if an NHL team gets bounced early in the playoffs. Samsonov seemed to be blamed for the Leafs early playoff exits but the Leafs offence dries up in the post season but easier to blame him. I also think the CHL allowing import goalies into the leagues reduced the opportunity for Canadian tenders. If I recall, I think the CHL reduced this. My two cents.
When i was a kid, Luongo, Price and Brodeur were my heros. Bobby Lu and Price were my 2 favourites. Price being from vancouver. However in minor hockey when i was growing up. You are always blamed for loses so it makes it hard. As i wanted to be a goalie as early as i could. But then you have parents stigma. Oh hes too short, how he sucks as he just started, oh we lost its his fault he cant stop pucks. Association didnt give us Goalie camps with a goalie coach it was up to my parents bless them to reach out to a goalie coach to help me just get better and have fun. TBH left on my own i wouldnt have learned how to butterfly slide, t push and etc. My dad was a goalie in the 80s but it was so different then it was in the 2000s. Practices were called well lets do shooting drills and you cant a barrage of players for 5 minutes with no time to recover. Now in canada from what i hear kids dont want to be goalies and parents dont want to as why should they? if they pay an association money to play goalie. and the goalie doesnt get a goalie coach instead a parent that thinks they know goalie. whats the point? Couple that with the fact in canada our dollar has gotten worse it is way more expensive to buy equipment for hockey in general not just goalie. Yes you can buy used gear but other stuff like masks, jocks, knee pads, skates are so much more than it is in the US plus our tax. I think its often in minor hockey no goalie development. I dont know if in the US its better but its weird how i see alot of coaches based in the US that work with kids on a regular vs here you do see it but you have to look. I also think in the higher level its still mostly the same? as when i tried out in rep there wasnt a goalie coach idk if in aa and aaa there is one but i assume its more or less the same here in canada where its parents. Thats my two cents. I think in Canada associations and leagues are behind. We need proper goalie development. Man i feel old LOL
Canada is in better shape than you think! They might not have elite big names to chose from, but there are plenty of cup winning goals to chose from! They have nothing to be concerned about
Hello from Victoria BC ! I am very proud to say that my son got the news today after about two hard weeks of try outs made the U15 Rep tier two team , his first year and he is about a year younger than all the other ? kids ? hopefuls ? just to play hockey
Great video, Guys 👍🏻👍🏻
Well, you can't be the best at evrey position, so if Canada has less amount of quality goalies, then Finland, Sweden, USA and Russia can shine more.
In the 90's, the Czech Republic was also a great producer of elite level goalies beyond Dominik Hasek with; Roman Turek, Roman Čechmánek, Tomáš Vokoun,
Milan Hnilička etc. but they also have dropped off.
It’s really difficult to make hockey more accessible because equipment and ice time costs so much, especially with inflation. I think the big problem is cost. It costs way more to be a goalie than a player. It’s hard to justify the cost of hockey if people are struggling to make ends meet with groceries, rent and other necessities
It's probably just a cycle. I remember a few years ago people were saying what is wrong with the Russian goaltending. Everybody sees what's going on with the Russian goaltending now. Canadian goaltending will come back. But having good goaltending options for so long, Canada was bound to dip at some point. And the rest of the world is not too sad about it. 😉😉
The goaltending riches didn't even leave - they just migrated to the women's team.
What has changed is the game at a younger age, as in way too young to start getting technical training considering they don't have the height at a young age. Teaching these kids to go down and take away the bottom portion of the net, playing the percentages, is not the age to be training these kids to play like that. The training around mobility, reflexes and getting around your crease with efficiency, and something else, the kids should be playing with smaller equipment too to learn better precision. I scouted for the last 20, I scouted goaltending, as a former goaltender myself. The biggest mistake was to let the whole province of Quebec was allowing Francois Allaire to be the goaltending guru, and then the copycats started coming out and the whole country was training the same way. That's the biggest failure. Kids are trying to copy NHL goaltenders and not understanding the steps that need to be taken. Each player is going to be different in his development and that is a failure to identify with a lot of coaches in Canada too. What needs to happen is a complete redesign on how our young players are going to be developed going forward.
I'll say this as a former goalie in minor hockey in Canada.
1. The pricing of hockey travel, equipment, and whatever else for a kid requires 2 very midrange-high range income parents. It's not cheap at all.
2. When I was in rep and scouted, it was always at "larger city" or US Rinks scouts were, hard to get noticed/support.
3. Even tho I stopped playing purely out of personal life issues, not many kids seemed overly interested in becoming a goalie.
4. To even get a real goal tender training, it was like a $600-800 goalie academy for a few days or so. Your average team coach doesn't know much about a goalie technique or style, I can promise you that. No you don't need to be doing extended crossovers, you're gonna trip over your pads and injure yourself.
Price is last great goalie
I remember watching Roy,Belfour,Cujo,Luongo,Broduer,Fluery,Theodore and now there's Binnington,Kuemper,Hill,Thompson...
Hockey has turned into a rich man's sport considering its 8k plus AAA and junior some places. And Goalies equipment is most expensive. Lack of being individuals has changed everyone trains the same same advice on how to play instead being themseleves.
And development sometimes we talk about a fwd/d prospect being buried in system. Most goalies these days start off ECHL/AHL and get stuck. By NHL carasel
Take a former WJC goalie I think has promising future Milic tore up WHL went undrafted,as overager was drafted by jets playing for Seattle over Ratzlaff who's probably Canada's goalie this WJC and last Years.
But Jets sent Milic Echl then he worked his way up to AHL Starter as a 20-21yr old. And was on Spengler Cup.
This is good development... at 20 most other teams keep goalies in NCAA or CHL. Flaherty has been a great goalie coach to Hellebuyck,Brossoit.
Now other teams you'll see a 1st round pick goalie playing behind a 33yr old in AHL for years never getting better til ages out or gets a chance like JackCambell did Toronto.
Or LoganThompson McCrimmon knew him from WHL/Wheat king days but kept eye on him even when he played University in Canada. For overseas goalies they have chance keep playing high level KHL,SHL ect while here after USports/NCAA/CHL it's over time get real job or play senior mens/AllanCup.
Roy and Brodeur. Oh my oh my. What a fuckin combo
Used to always be able to depend on Quebec to give Canada the best goalies
Problem is, Most of the time the fee to buy goalie equipment and goalie lessons is simply way too extreme. The barrier of entry is already so high, then on top of that you now have to be min 6'-4" or scout/team will not look at you in Canada, Same thing is true with the politics of how teams and goalies are even selected in Canada. You have to be extremely fortunate to even be in a position financially to play. You also have to not only actually be good but win the politics to end up on a high level team. Add it all up and the reasoning is don't be a goalie when being a player is cheaper. League fees often don't even give the goalie a price break they pay the same fee as players.
Hockey has always been a rich sports, but nowadays nepotism is at a all-time high we see more and more young kids who cant play the game.
Sad situation
Although the situation is sad, there is still hope for Canadian men’s hockey teams to win medals during the 2024-25 NHL season. I say more, in a direct response to the TSN video, on having goalies with Canadian citizenship mattering more for international tournaments than on teams in specific leagues. For soccer tournaments outside of Olympic ones that feature teams from different FIFA member states, having a specific nationality matters, with, within the British Isles, the situation quite complex because the UK proper features teams that represent each of Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales going clockwise. Yet during the last season of the England Men’s Premier League (aka EPL), only one of the four goalies on Nottingham Forest FC, which finished 17th in that league and thus avoided relegation, was known to have had citizenship of a British Isles entity, with Wayne Hennessey having been born in the north of Wales.
Of those teams from the British Isles that qualified for this summer‘s men’s Euro 2024 tournament, the:
- English team that made it to the championship game (but lost) featured all but two players from teams not just based in England, but in the EPL
- Scottish team finished last in Group A and that didn’t advance beyond the group stage, 4 players, including 2 then having been playing for teams based neither within the British Isles nor Schengen Area, hadn’t back then been playing for a team based in England, Scotland or elsewhere within the British Isles
Marc Andre-Fleury is gonna leave a huge void hopefully that leads to Canada scrambling the next Quebecois Goaltender it maybe beneficial.
Already extinct. Not "going."
I remember hearing similar concerns during the late 90's and early 2000's too. Back when Hasek, Kolzig and Carey prevented any Canadian goalies from winning for 8 years straight. Even when Brodeur, Luongo, and Price were the best Canada had... they still had to contend with Lundqvist, Thomas, Miller, Nabokov, Kiprusoff, Quick, Bobrovsky, etc. Now with the best goalies being Vasilevskiy, Ullmark, Demko, Shesterkin, Hellebuyck, etc... similar trends with the NHL overall, more European players with an impact. I wonder if it has to do with the pool of players that filters through the system. Competitive hockey is basically reserved for the richer upper class... with annual costs ranging from $15000-60000/year. The prices are probably higher for goaltending. Maybe the key for European goalies is that it's overall cheaper to get into the sport. I mean, if university in Sweden is way less than in Canada, then hockey fees (besides travel and equipment) are probably way cheaper than in Canada.
I'm 65+ years old, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather (twice over). It NEVER occurred to me, until VERY RECENTLY, that we would ever see a dearth of great Canadian goaltenders and, by this, I mean, THE BEST Goaltenders in the World... Much less, that we would ever see the demise of what everyone long knew as, 'THE QUEBEC GOALTENDING FACTORY!'
xxx
For longer than I, or anyone I know, can remember...
Canadian goaltenders were the best puck handlers, BAR NONE (NHL GMs get rid of that DAMN TRAPEZOID!)
Canadian goaltenders were the most athletic and the most courageous, BAR NONE
Canadian goaltenders were the Biggest, Big Time, Money Goalies/Playoff Performers PERIOD
For years... Quebec Goalies, goalies from 'La Belle Province'... Most notably, goalies from the illustrious Francois Allaire School... were 'AHEAD AHEAD OF THE CURVE', were world leaders, in terms of positioning and technical skill development
AND IT DOESN'T END THERE...
xxx
Newsflash: Yanks and Euros didn't invent this game, WE CANUCKS DID!
Newsflash: Tretiak bouncing multiple tennis balls against a wall wasn't invented by Anatoly Tarasov, Tarasov learned that trick from Lloyd Percival's 'Hockey Handbook' , a book Tarasov had translated into Russian (With 500 copies made, in the first printing alone), a book Tarasov called, 'HIS BIBLE'. That tennis ball thing is an exercise Percival recommended for Terry Sawchuk WAY BACK in the Early Fifties.
xxx
Don't GIve me this 'Hockey's Gotten TOO EXPENSIVE' B.S.
HOCKEYCANADA has more money than you can shake a stick at!
xxx
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH...
Time for those FAT-CATS (that BrainTrust, or LACK THEREOF) at HockeyCanada to Hold a Goal-tending Summit, with the Goal of Devising a Plan to Make Canada's Goaltenders NUMBER ONE AGAIN...
NOT 2, NOT 3, NOT 4 or 5
HockeyCanada BRASS: First, Tell Us WHERE AND WHEN the First Official Canadian Goalie Development Summit WILL BE HELD ... AND Do So by this Christmas, at the latest
Second, Show Us, and Tell Us, YOUR 'Grass Roots' PLAN... And do so BEFORE this year's SLC Playoffs
Failing that, Ladies and Gents, HAND IN YOUR PINK SLIPS!!!
xxx
END-RANT
Love goalie content! More please
Good goalies are looked over for good looking goalies(newer gear). Limited spots with the same amount of politics leads to fewer kids with potential being placed in positions to succeed. All you’re ever told is if you’re good enough they’ll find you but it’s damn hard to be found from a local community’s A team.
It’s going to be about building the D core and defensive forward group to limit shots against in my opinion. Like Vegas did for Aiden Hill.
This was true for Tampa Bay as well, despite how good Vasi was. They don't win those Cups without McDonagh and Hedman.
As stated in the video, one big problem is that Quebec as a province has completely fallen off at producing hockey players. Quebec used to be Canada's goalie factory. Now the QMJHL usually has about 1 first round pick per year, whereas the OHL and WHL still have 5+ each.
All these Canadian NHLers stay in the States after retirement and teach the game. And also, wealthy Canadians in general move to the States for various reasons. Canada is a good place to live if you’re not rich. And nowadays parents can’t afford to put their kids in hockey.
Because
It’s
Not
Good
Overall
Montembeault
Main issue is that goaltending is overcomplicated from the moment kids put the pads on now in Canada.
There are many 6 years old out there that'll loose motivation by the time they get to high school just because coaches are making movements are technique a priority (which isn't wrong when the goalie is like 12) but for that age (6 to 10), goalies should just be having fun stopping the puck and learning the basics (goalie stance, butterfly, butterfly slides, t push, shuffle, puck tracking and that's it). They shouldn't be practicing more complicated stuff like moving out of RVH etc.
And when goalies are old enough, it feels like most coaches are soft, but want you to practice 7 days a week. On the other hand, when I went to the US and had the opportunity to work with one of their goalie coaches, it was short, simple and intense.
Canada suffers from a quantity over quality issue when it comes to goalie in my opinion
Canada is so thankful that Russia is excluded from the 4 nations cup. Because Canada would be embarrassed off the ice like they were against the Czech Republic in Nagano Japan in 1998. It's like the old saying goes,
"If you can't beat 'em, ban 'em" - George W. Bush
Hopefully Russia is allowed 2026 Olympics or to me medal doesn't mean as much.
Goalies
Vasilevskiy,Sorokin,Boborovsky,Shesterkin
Defence
Sergachev Mintyukov
Orlov Provorov
Nikishin Romanov
Kulikov,Nesterov,Gavrikov
Forwards
Panarin Malkin Kucherov
Kaprizov Kuznetsov Svechnikov
Barbashev Michkov Ovechkin
Nichushkin Namestnikov Dadonov
Kuzmenko,Gusev,or older players could be chosen or younger guys like Podkolzin,Yurov,Chibrikov.
Well no... Canada's forward group is better and deeper than Russia and their defence is not even close. Russia only wins in goaltending and that's just 1 player. The only country that can match Canada on paper is the US.
there excluded because Biden sabotage peacetalks between Russia and Ukraine saying this as a Moderate Voter
1. Canada's not the one that banned Russia - that was the IIHF.
2. The Four Nations Faceoff is run by the NHL, not the IIHF. They could have ignored the ban but chose not to.
@@jordanstreib3898 You might be waiting a while. There's a good reason why, when the initial ban was announced and later extended, several fans of European countries were expressing approval of the decision. Leaving Ukraine might only be the first of many steps.
People forget that a Canadian goalie has represented a team in the cup finals four years in a row now, two of them being pretty young as well.
Every new beginning quote is originally from a famous Stoic philosopher named Seneca :-)
most great goalies like roy , luongo , fleury or brodeur in canada were from quebec. back then there was also jacques plante who owns many records. there are still good goalies in canada but hockey is an international sport and they do find even better goaltenders elsewhere. the hockey did not change much in canada but other countries did improve in many ways. btw jacques plante was in my family :)
Was hoping to see my buddy in this video. Was the back up for world juniors in 2021? Great goalie
So much is put into “playing the proper position” than reading the play
I actually really understood that over-training line. I mean, if you pay attention to the modern game, it is incredibly practiced and robotic. It does feel like it's based more on probability than emotion and creativity, which is fine, I guess. The older I get the more I understand that over-training isn't great and, in many ways, even for people much more elite and younger than myself, a real problem.
As a former goaltender going up through the system, we have become way to technical and focused on the wrong things. There’s no more personality in goaltending seen with Roy, Brodeur, etc. Plus with how expensive it is it makes sense why this is happening
Yup. I have the feeling that reading the game has been undervalued over proper technique. Heck, the last one great still playing, Flower, ain't the most technical.
They pushed the blocking technique over making saves.
@@sebastiencarrieres8825one of my buddies who has a goalie school admitted to me that they can get results faster by teaching the butterfly blocking technique. Drove me nuts when I played Tier 2 and higher when they would bring coaches in that were North American.
I’m way more comfortable with Montembeault between the pipes than Binnington based on the last 2 world championships..
It’s sad that proportionately there are fewer Canadian goalies under contract to NHL teams than before. There’s also no doubt that last NHL season, among Canada’s under-18, under-20 (WJC) and adult men’s teams, it was a mixed bag, with the:
- U18 team having won gold (an improvement over having barely won bronze during the previous tourney or even bow out in the quarterfinals during the second-most-recent tourney)
- WJC having narrowly lost in quarterfinal action (compared to having won gold in the previous tournament)
- adult men’s team lost its semifinal and bronze-medal games en route to just its 2nd post-2014 tourney without a medal (the other 7 how many featured each time an appearance in the gold-medal game)
So how did the WJC and adult men’s teams miss the podium in their most-recent respective tournaments? The WJC team had won its first two round-robin games but against its Swedish counterpart in the third ended up not scoring at all. A team that doesn’t score in a given game should be a red flag, and that would by no means be the end of issues with that team as it would lose in regulation to its Czech counterpart in quarterfinal action 3-2, the winning goal in that game having come with just 11 seconds to go in regulation. For the WJC tournament that starts this December and ends the following month, there will have to be big changes for the Canadian team to have a chance of appearing in a gold-medal game, and because under IIHF rules no player on that team can in 2025 have a 21st or later birthday, 2004- or earlier-born Owen Beck, Nate Danielson, Jagger Firkus, Fraser Minten, Matt Poitras, Jordan Dumais, Matt Savoie, Connor Geekie, Jake Furlong, Noah Warren, Jorian Donovan, Maveric Lamoureux, Ty Nelson, Denton Mateychuk, Matthis Rousseau and Sam St-Hilaire won’t get to play on the 2025 WJC team. That leaves just 1 goalie and 6 other skaters from that 2024 team eligible to play in the 2025 tournament.
IIHF rules for adult men’s teams don’t specify a maximum age for a given player, but specify, as the minimum age as of the start date of a given tournament:
- 18 without an underage waiver
- 16 with an underage waiver
Finding enough players who, even before the 2025 adult men’s tourney starts, whoever turned 18 and will thus won’t require underage waivers shouldn’t be too much of a problem, considering that for the last tournament, only one player, Finnish centre Konsta Helenius (who the following month would be drafted 14th by the Buffalo Sabres), had needed to sign an underage waiver as during the second day of that tournament he would turn 18. Finding enough players with the ability to score during the semifinal so that the relevant Canadian team will qualify for the gold-medal game is a bigger challenge because during that semifinal against its Swiss counterpart, the relevant Canadian team scored just two goals before that game would be decided in a shootout. The bronze-medal game didn’t go much better, with a 4-2 lost to the relevant Swedish team. Among forwards selected by hockey Canada for that adult men’s team, Brandon Tanev, PLD, John Tavares, Connor Bedard, Dylan Cozens, Andrew Mangiapane and Brandon Hagel, over the past two games the relevant Canadian team played in that tournament, scored or assisted on at least one goal. With just two goals scored by the relevant Canadian team in each of the last two games, it’s time to look at the forwards who neither scored nor assisted on a goal, and of those I count Jack McBain, Dawson Mercer, Jared McCann, Nick Paul and Ridly Greig. The round-robin went relatively well for the Canadian adult men’s team with 19 points over seven games and only the relevant Swedish team having played better (with the Canadian team having won 2 such games in OT, but with the Swedish team having won all of its games in regulation).
One may think that not-great goaltending hurt Canada’s adult men’s team at the last relevant IIHF tournament, but I believe a bigger factor was the lack of offence from enough of those forwards when there had been a need for pretty much all hands on deck so that in either of the last two games, but ideally in the semifinal, the Canadian team would’ve scored at least three goals and moved onto the gold-medal game. The U18 women’s team, during the last relevant tournament, scored three or more goals in each game other than the semifinal one, going to town on the relevant Finnish team in the bronze-medal game at 8-1 including 3-0 in the opening 20 minutes. The adult women’s team did even better, not losing a single game in regulation during the last relevant tournament, with the only loss in that entire tournament having come via a 1-0 in OT to its US counterpart that would be avenged in the gold-medal game via a 6-5 OT win.
There’s no doubt that the adult and U20 men’s Canadian teams need some big changes to better their chances to qualify for the gold-medal games during those tournaments that end in 2025 considering how in too few critical games in those tournaments that had ended in 2024 enough forwards stepped up when they had needed to. It’s tempting by contrast to say, considering how well the U18 men’s team ended up doing (winning gold), that Hockey Canada should just run the team back. Yet of those players who participated in the most-recent relevant tournament, Marek Vanacker, Malcolm Spence, Maxim Massé, Jett Luchanko, Roger McQueen, Ollie Josephson, Ryder Ritchie, Porter Martone, Carson Wetsch, Tij Iginla, Liam Greentree, Cole Beaudoin, Kashawn Aitcheson, Harrison Brunicke, Henry Mews, Frankie Marrelli, Spencer Gill, Charlie Elick, Ryerson Leenders and Carter George will at some point next year turn 19 and thus not be eligible to participate in future U18 tournaments as players. Just one goalie and four other skaters who participated in the 2024 U18 relevant tourney will get to participate in the 2025 one.
I don’t want to ignore out of hand that proportionately fewer Canadian goalies under contract to NHL teams are elite than what used to be the case. That said, I see the lack of scoring in enough playoff games as no smaller an issue for the 2024 WJC and adult men’s teams lack of medals.
Of goalies under contract to:
- Canadian NHL teams for least this season I count, of those under contract with Canadian citizenship, going from Western to Eastern Canada to the:
- Canucks, 1 (Ty Young) of 5
- Flames, none of 4
- Oilers, 4 of 5
- Jets, 1 (Eric Comrie) of 5
- Leafs, 1 (Matt Murray) of 6
- Sens, none of 4 (all originally from member states of the Nordic Council [2 from Sweden])
- Habs, 2 of 4 (excluding Carey Price, currently on long-term injured reserve and unlikely to ever play another NHL preseason, regular-season or playoff game)
- teams that otherwise appeared in:
- a Stanley Cup final from the 2019-20 season to this past June, I count, among goalies with Canadian citizenship under contract to the:
-- Bolts, 1 (Matt Tomkins) of 3
-- Avs, 2 of 4
-- Golden Knights, 1 (Adin Hill) of 5 not on injured reserve
-- Panthers, 1 of 4
-- Stars, 1 of 5
- any of the past five conference finals I count, among goalies with Canadian citizenship under contract to the:
-- Isles, 1 of 6
-- NYR, 3 of 6
- other teams whose last conference final appearance was no later than 2019, I count, among goalies with Canadian citizenship under contract to the:
- Ducks, none of 6
- Bruins, 1 of 3
- Sabres, 2 of 4
- Canes, 2 of 5
- Blackhawks, none of 4
- Blue Jackets, 3 of 5
- Wings, 4 of 7
- Kings, 2 of 5
- Wild, 1 of 5
- Preds, 2 of 4
- Devils, 4 of 6
- Flyers, 1 of 5
- Pens, 1 of 7
- Sharks, 1 of 4
- Kraken, none of 6
- Blues, 4 of 5
- Utah Hockey Club (ex-Yotes), 3 of 5
- Caps, 3 of 6
Of our 3 main goalies over last year's men's tournaments, Carter George (U18) was easily the best performer.
Rousseau looked... not as good as George, at the WJC.
And the less said about Binnington, the better.
2024 aside Canada won 2 out of the last 3 men's world championships and silver in the other year. The junior u20 won 4 of 7
@@ngarcia103 I definitely look forward to the five upcoming IIHF top division tournaments that feature Canadian teams in action, with the:
- WJC one scheduled for December-January in Southeastern Ontario (TBD whether Carter George will be 1 of the goalies)
- U18 women’s one scheduled to be held from 5-12 January 2025 Eastern European Time in Southern Finland
- adult women’s one scheduled to be held in Southern Czechia from 9-20 April Central European Time
- U18 men’s one scheduled from 23 April-3 May Central Daylight Time in Northern Texas
- adult men’s one to take place in Eastern Sweden and on Denmark’s Jutland Peninsula in May, starting the week after the last day of the U18 men’s tourney
@@georgefox4982 of the three IIHF men’s top-division tournaments scheduled to end in 2025, the WJC one will as usual take place during the NHL regular season, with the U18 and adult ones scheduled for the NHL postseason. The last 3 NHL seasons have featured a mixed bag of success of Canada’s NHL teams, with the Oilers having gone the furthest in postseason play in each (in the last three respective seasons to the conference finals, conference semifinals and Stanley Cup final). With the existing contract of Leon Draisaitl to expire in June and no word yet on a contract to cover any month after that, this coming NHL season may be the last for awhile to feature an Oiler win of a playoff series. With no more than 3 other Canadian teams having joined the Oilers in postseason play during any of the past 4 seasons, pretty much anything goes on how many of those other Canadian teams will qualify.
A major factor is the relative calibre of international goalies has risen to meet that of Canada. It’s not that our goalies are worse now, the rest of the world has caught up with techniques and training.
They are worse. They block like lacrosse goalies. They don’t make saves. It makes for fast results in minor hockey cuz the shooters aren’t as good but once they get to 16 and up they get exposed. Europeans have figured out the game.
Fingers crossed on Sebastian Cossa then
2 out of 3 of our Canadian goalies won cups in the last 5-6 years, and one was just in the cup final. None of the other goalies on the other 3 teams won a cup. I'm not saying the Canadian goalies are better because they're not right now, but they got hardware to back it up. And especially backstopping that Canada team, they shouldn't have a problem.
All this despite a 4 year. Ban from international goalies being drafted into the CHl. This was supposed to help push Canadian goalies back to the top ...
Who needs an elite tendy when you have McDavid and the boys to put up five goals or more per game?
I think a part of the multiple reasons why Quebec have no more great goalie is because they stop broadcasting on Radio-Canada (CBC french version) the NHL games in french long time ago. When I was a kid, I watch every game of Montreal on Radio-Canada, now, you need to pay for watching games in french So, it not maintream anymore in some part of Quebec where people live there life in French like me when I was young.
8:56 Over-coaching. Completely agree with Craig. My goaltending style was a bit more like Dominik Hasek. I would’ve loved to be more structured like Carey Price but I wasn’t as successful that way. I had to do my own thing. At a young age one of my coaches told me I’ll get myself hurt playing that way and I have to stop it “the right way”. I honestly didn’t care, as long as I was stopping the puck. Coaching is important, but let the kids natural instincts take over once in awhile
They turn goalies into blockers and not goalies that make saves.
Well there's one in Edmonton to keep your eye on
From San Diego 😯. Wow, I didn’t know that Demko is Native American. That’s cool
Connor Ingram for team Canada
Great goalie coaches produce great goalies. 25 years ago, the most influential goalie coaches were Quebecois, such as Francois Allair, and the result was a surge of great goalies from Quebec. Now, the innovators and cutting edge goalie coaches are elsewhere.
It seems pretty obvious. Hockey has always been more expensive than other sports but now it's out of control. Canada doesn't even have a majority of the players in the league anymore, because we're not looking for the best talent, we're looking for who can pay the most.
*respectfully clears throat*
"SSSSTTTTTTUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU"
Its not just a canada thing there really isnt top elite goaltenders anymore they all are very similar skill wise with some slightly better.
It has only been 3 years since the best goalie in the league retired and guess what, he was Canadian. We are currently lacking in Canadian elite goaltending, that’s no secret. The last 2 best goalies just happen to be Habs fyi. Fortunately when Canada ices a team that consists of Mcdavid, Crosby, Mackinnon, Bedard and Makar the goaltending is of little importance!
It's easy to feel like you're losing when others start playing.
Canada isn't behind, the world is catching up. ..and It only took a generation for some of those European countries to implement a hockey culture and start producing stars..
It’s very expensive to be a goalie in Canada and compared to other countries goalie development, Canada virtually has none. I’ve been playing goalie my whole life and I have never had a head coach who is remotely familiar with goaltending as a position and what it takes to play that position; and unfortunately they often get the final say when picking the roster. If we wish to catch up in goalie development we need to follow the footsteps of Scandinavian countries goalie development.
I can tell you exactly what’s going on. As the parent of a young goalie I can tell you hockey associations aren’t taking the most talented, athletic, goalies. They’re not taking the kids who are best at stopping the puck. They are taking the kids who best pretend to be goalies. The kids who pose the best. The kids who hold their catcher and blocker in the textbook position whether they have the athleticism, and goalie sense, to actually stop the puck. Year after year our best youngsters are getting passed over for our weakest. Even if your kid survives the politics of youth hockey he’ll get screwed by the “goalie expert” evaluating. The “expert” more impressed by the kid he’s never seen, who had more goals against than saves during the season. They should be taking the best, most gifted, goalies and developing their technique. Not taking the kid who practices in front of a mirror and trying to make him talented. I guarantee that’s not what’s going on in Europe.
canada: "who are you?"
finland: "i'm you, but stronger"
Not many exciting Canadian goalies on the way either, Levi and Cossa are the first two that come to mind
As a kid i played goalie, couldn’t afford proper ice hockey pads so i just stuck to ball hockey
I’ve been between the pipes in 5 different countries. It comes down to coaching. Canadian coaches have failed their pupils. They have adopted the lacrosse style of goaltending. Be big, be in position and block the shot. The Europeans have done a great job of adopting their floor hockey style of quickness and athleticism. The latest SCF proved just that. Sadly canadian coaches want quick results and scam parent into turning their kids into blocking ridged commodities. I’ve done goalie evaluation for teams and it’s gotten so much harder to evaluate the goalies because they’ve all been coached the same way. They move the same way. They treat the game the same way. Nothing sets themselves above the rest. Every once in a while you’ll get an outlier who hasn’t been trained the NA way. It’s a thing of beauty when you see them actually make saves.
Mackinnon, McDavid, Bedard, Power, Celebrini, etc... Canadian hockey is hyper focused on offense.
Goaltending is an after thought.
Hockey Canada needs to seriously do something about the development of goalies in this country. We are failing extremely behind other top countries with this and the attitude towards goaltending has been pathetic the last decade. If it continues it will only get worse.
Turned them into blocking goalies and not goalies that can make saves.
All of canadas goalie options have gone to a game 7 or won the cup outright. No other nation has that.
Craig Button is BANG ON. We do NOT have a goaltender who is clearly the #1 right now.
Hellebuyck played multiple seasons in the NAHL, a feeder Junior B league for College. No way US is “helping in his development” until he’s a top tier college goalie
Do you understand how expensive it is to play junior hockey in Canada now? Add onto that the cost of all the extra equipment that goalies need?
sad stuff... hearing the drop of kids league play has dropped, I bet it's cos of video games and internet stuff. Sucks to see it happening but can't force kids to play hockey
I'm not saying this is 100% the solution, but I think Russia has a rule that forces KHL teams to have at least 1 russian goalie, which would make the need to actually developp good ones a necessary step to winning
I voiced my concern about this heading into the 2026 Olympics and had many people telling me that Skinner, Hill, Kuemper, all of them would be amazing, and while I can agree they could be great, do we really believe they can match up to the shit Roy, Luongo, Brodeur and even Price pulled off?
Look at the Stanley Cup winning goalies in the past 20 years though... around 80% of them are Canadian if not more. Canadian goalies still find a way to win in the end.
Yes.
Goalie is easily the most important position. Not enough respect gets thrown their way.
Yall are sleeping on Ingram
ong
You didn’t even mention Trav4oliers!
I wonder if the whole "goalies are weird" thing makes people shy away
Regular people don't want to be weird, stand out or be different
Montembeault is literally the best goalie in the NHL
I watched the Gretzky-Hlinka cup, and Canada’s goalie, Ivankovic is incredible. There are people in the pipeline. Just skipped a generation.
1. WAY too expensive for quality gear
2. Coaching staff selecting teams in Tryouts have no idea what they should be looking for in a quality goaltender
3. Lack of development time in relation to team practice time.