23 Intently Staring Goalies
Czeching in on Junior Hockey
by lsefton on 09/02/12 at 03:39 PM ET
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There's been a serious paucity of goalie stories this past month. August is usually the month of signings and first look at new masks (and yes, Chris Mason has once again come through with a way cool Iron Maiden themed mask!)
Luckily, Junior Hockey has started up. They're currently in the pre-season, and teams are deciding who's in goal, which means there's a lot of new kid getting used to the bump up to Junior hockey, and for a lot of them, getting used to playing in a new locale.
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Huet on the Move?
by lsefton on 08/08/12 at 07:58 PM ET
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How slow is it? It’s so slow that the curent number one goalie story is about whether Cristobal Huet will go with the Kings or the Canucks
When the travails and travels of a soon to be 37 year old French goalie is covered in minutiae by the hockey press, you know there isn’t much going on.
But go on we shall.
So, what’s the deal here? You can look at it from two ways—that the Canucks and the Kings are getting ready to jettison a goaltender, and they’d like to have a seasoned goaltender in place, either to be the backup, or be the insurance in case their first choice of backup doesn’t work out.
Or you could look at it from the other direction—that Huet’s agent has decided that these are the two teams most likely to jettison, and would be the most likely customers for Huet’s wares.
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Tags: cristobal+huet,
goalie,
nhl
Goalie Derivatives—do we pay too much for a future product?
by lsefton on 07/18/12 at 04:53 PM ET
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If it wasn’t for the ongoing CBA discussions, I’d say we were smack in the middle of silly season, where the front office starts to take vacations, and the columnists start looking for anything to write about.
One of this Summer’s subplots is the on-going Robert Luongo watch, which has been about as exciting as watching the daily Oats pit at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. However, one aspect of where Luongo is going to land has started up a bit of conversation, and that’s about contracts.
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Tags: contratcs,
derivatives,
goalie+pay,
goalies
Anthony Brodeur—the Next Generation?
by lsefton on 07/09/12 at 02:19 PM ET
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Who knows? Maybe in five years we’ll have a new sports question—“Name the father/son NHL goaltending duo with the most wins”
Or we’ll get to hear Doc Emrick announce “Brodeur vs Roy in the nets tonight”.
It’s only been a few weeks since the NHL draft, but there’s always time to take a look at next year’s prospects, and one of them may be Anthony Brodeur.
From Luke Fox at Sportsnet:
Anthony Brodeur is a little older, and by all accounts covers more of the net, than he appears in the photo above, snapped 12 NHL off-seasons ago, following the second of father Martin Brodeur‘s three Stanley Cup victories.
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Tags: brodeur,
goalies,
goaltender
Drafting a Goaltender—when is “no” the right answer?
by lsefton on 06/22/12 at 03:09 PM ET
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It’s Draft Day, and there’s some chatter about drafting goalies as either a quick fix to a current goaltending issue, or as insurance against an aging goaltending duo.
Insurance? Always a gamble, but teams need to refresh and develop their goaltending talent. Note “develop”—most goalies aren’t ready fresh out of the box, especially at age 18, so a team will have to wait two to four years before they can get an idea of the finished product. It’s sort of like tasting out of the barrel; you get an idea what the wine’s going to be like, but that Cabernet Sauvignon is also going to be much too raw to be drinkable. And you still may end up with jet fuel down the road.
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Tags: malcolm+subban,
nhl,
nhl+draft
Goalies—looking past, up, and forward
by lsefton on 06/16/12 at 06:30 PM ET
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The Stanley Cup is about to head out on its Summer tour, so it’s time to take a look at what else is going on. Not that there isn’t hockey to be had, it’s just the emphasis has shifted to the back office, where the deals are already starting to take place.
But first—Martin Brodeur. If anyone had asked back in November if Brodeur was going to be playing past April, the consensus would have been a resounding no. There was even talk that Brodeur just ought to hang them up before he embarrassed himself any further. Shows why he’s playing hokey for a living, and a lot of others aren’t making a living writing about it. Marty, you’re the last man standing on my “Goal Patrol” poster, and you acquitted yourself admirably in the playoffs. Brodeur showed you don’t have to have the proportions of Godzilla while playing 59 minutes on your knees to be an effective goaltender. I hope scouts and coaches are paying attention.
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Tags: anders+lindback,
goalies,
jonathan+quick,
martin+brodeur,
nhl
Quick! Don’t Miss Him!
by lsefton on 06/07/12 at 03:49 PM ET
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There are times I’m tempted to send the extra-large pot of coffee to the east-coast media, usually when they start up on “where did
In other words—Jonathan Quick—he’s been here all along!
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Tags: goalie,
jonathan+quick,
los+angeles+kings,
nhl
Cabernets and Goalies—both improve with age?
by lsefton on 05/30/12 at 08:31 PM ET
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It’s the Stanley Cup Finals, and the goalie mot talked abut is…. Dominik Hasek! Hasek wants to make a return to the NHL, and he’s purportedly talking to at least two (depending on who’s reporting, pick two of three: Detroit, Buffalo and Tampa Bay) teams about mounting his comeback.
There’s been a lot of talk about how goalies have started to last until they are on the edge of 40. And I’m surprised that Johnny Bowers’ indeterminately aged career hasn’t been brought up, other than it was a different game 40-50 years ago.
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Tags: dominik+hasek,
goalie,
nhl
Sean Burke—Coaching from Experience
by lsefton on 05/22/12 at 08:45 PM ET
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I have in my possession a close-up photo I took of Sean Burke in a Hartford Whalers mask. Nope, he didn’t suddenly spring up from the seafoam—which would be a neat trick in Arizona—and become the hottest goalie coach in the NHL.
If someone has asked me back then if I thought Sean Burke was going to become a premier goalie coach, I wouldn’t have considered it. Burke was better than a good goalie, but he also had a rep for having a bit of a temper on-ice. He’s hit the league with a splash, fresh from the Canadian National Team, and looked like the goalie of the future for the New Jersey Devils.
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Tags: goalie,
nhl,
phoenix+coyotes,
sean+burke
The Understudy knows all the parts: Jason LaBarbera
by lsefton on 05/15/12 at 04:39 PM ET
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I wonder if Jason LaBarbera wakes up at 3AM and wonders about how he arrived where he is right now. He’s Mike Smith’s backup, and a goalie who’s been on both teams in the Western Conference finals. (For the bar bet of the week, he’s also tended goal for the Vancouver Canucks and the New York Rangers.) He’s been the #1 goalie in the minors, but other than one season with the LA Kings, he’s played understudy.
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Tags: coyotes.+kings,
goalie,
jason+labarbera
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About 23 Intently Staring Goalies
23 Intently Staring Goalies comes from the 23 close-up photos of goalies that used to line the walls of my office.
On the good side, it kept down interruptions, but it also made sure I had to leave my trash outside my door if I wanted it picked up.
I've been watching and analyzing goaltenders for going on 40 years. Some of that was spent drawing goalies on my grade 8 math homework. Then it was taking my card decks and printouts to Indianapolis Racer games. Luckily, the Internet took off, and by 1991 I was half of the duo that would ultimately become the Plaidworks hockey mailing lists. I wrote "Handicapping the Goalies' for the San Jose Sharks mailing list, and took a lot of photos of goalies in action. I have around 5000 slides of mostly goaltenders in action from 1989 through 2001 from the WHL, IHL and NHL. Since I've gone digital, I've added about 10,000 more images to the library. During summers and when the league went dark, I was reading through multiple SF By area news papers, tracking ice hockey from the 1917 recreational leagues up through the California Seals.
We'll be talking about goalies and goaltending. We'll talk about whats going on now, who's in the system, and when the doldrums hit, I'll haul something out of the big bag of history, or something from the photo archives. We'll talk about who's hot and why, and who's not and what they can do to get back on track. We'll take a look at the trends in scouting goalies, and why a style may work for one team but not another. I'll battle with my dictation software to get it to understand Bryzgalov and Bobrovsky.
It should be interesting--hope you want to come along for the ride!
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Becoming “The Richard Bachman”
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