Kevin Woodley is a rec-league target and former contributing editor of the Goalie News magazine. He has written about the Vancouver Canucks and NHL for The Associated Press, USA Today, Sports Illustrated and The Hockey News for the last decade, and is currently at the Olympics for AP.
By now the entire world knows Canada’s Olympic fate rests with Roberto Luongo.
The more interesting question for fellow goaltenders is why? After hearing coach Mike Babcock break it down Monday, the bigger questions may be why it took so long to go away from living legend Martin Brodeur, and does the move maybe come too late?
“We’re in the winning business and to win games at any level you need big saves. You need momentum-changing saves and we’re looking for Lou to do that for us,” Babcock explained of his goaltending switch “He’s a great big butterfly goaltender and if you look at the way the puck went in our nets last night, with traffic and people in front a lot, which is the way the game is now. Sometimes just being down in that big butterfly things hit you and bump into you. We believe Lou gives us a real good opportunity to win.”
In other words, Babcock appears to agree with the inGoal analysis detailed in this space after the Americans beat Canada 5-3 on Sunday, that three of the goals that beat Brodeur on Sunday would have been stopped by most butterfly goaltenders.
It’s true the first one was deflected off Sidney Crosby, a fact both Crosby and Brodeur quickly pointed out after the loss. But it still went in on the far side about eight inches off the ice as Brodeur went into his old school one-pad down technique, leaving no backside coverage along the ice. Deflection or not, that puck hits Luongo or Marc-Andre Fleury in the right pad.
Ditto the second goal, which Brodeur tried to stop with an awkward sliding two-pad stack as ex-Devils teammate Brian Rafalski shot the puck low through a screen. The fourth goal, on another low shot by Rafalski, deflected through his legs, a space most butterfly goalies fill.
Add in the fact Brodeur’s puckhandling, thought to be an advantage with the restrictive NHL trapezoid eliminated for the Olympics, was causing more problems than it solved because his defensemen didn’t know where to go – another detail outlined in this space before the loss – and led to the first two goals, and Babcock had to make the switch.
“I felt going into the tournament we set ourselves up for the possibility of making one change,” Babcock said, adding it was Luongo-or-bust from here “We played both guys the first two and felt if we needed a change we had one, and now we’re making it.”
Why they didn’t make it earlier is a question that may haunt Canadians for years.
If inGoal could successfully predict the problems Brodeur’s style might cause against an American team that pre-scouted him heavily and had three current and former Devils to help break those weaknesses down, why couldn’t the Canadian coaching staff, which is notably devoid of a goalie coach?
It’s hardly a secret Brodeur has bucked a butterfly trend that started because most goals were scored along the ice, and while NHL teams rarely adjust their shooting strategy for one game of 82 in the regular season, they have done so against him in the playoffs, with Carolina shooting pucks into his feet en route to two postseason series victories, and Tampa Bay coming close in another.
“You mentally prepare differently when he’s in net. He’s a great goalie, but a different goalie,” New Jersey teammate and U.S. forward Zach Parise said of Brodeur. “A lot of the butterfly goalies you know they are going to go down so sometimes the upstairs is going to be open, but with him we talked about throwing a lot pucks from everywhere in his feet. When he had the puck to not give him a lot of time to make that initial breakout pass he’s so good at making. We went right at him and caused a lot of turnovers, which is something we talked about before.”
When the Devils hired and fired Claude Julien in 2006-07, Brodeur called it his toughest season, telling the now-defunct Goalie News magazine that the shot-blocking style Julien implemented left him dealing with too many “grenades” as pucks changed direction and came through screens. Brodeur is probably the greatest goaltender in the history of hockey when it comes to reading and reacting to shots, but the Devils have always done a good job of making sure he can see them, clearing lanes and rebounds rather than trying to front screens or block shots. And that made him a poor fit in the Canada net, especially against a U.S. team loaded with players armed with that first-hand knowledge. Think Rafalski walks into the slot unchecked and shoots along the ice against anyone else?
“Playing with him he would always make sure he could see the puck, he didn’t want us standing in front of him, so our forwards got in front of him and we got shots low,” Rafalski said Tuesday.
The problem now is that loss leaves Canada needing to beat Germany and Russian on consecutive nights to even have a chance to medal – and win four games in six nights against the world’s best teams to make it gold. And the real irony may be that Brodeur gives them a better shot to beat Russia on Wednesday because of his ability to stare down shooters one-on-one, as he did on a pair of breakaways against the U.S., and because the Russians don’t appear willing to play the same throw-pucks-at-the-net style that the U.S. used so effectively, and don’t appear to have scouted opposition goaltending as well as the Americans.
Then again, based on results so far, neither did Canada.