inGoal in Vancouver: Americans Trying to Pick Apart Brodeur’s Unique Style

by Kevin Woodley

Kevin Woodley is a rec-league target and former contributing editor of the Goalie News. 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.

Wilson Taps Thomas’ Knowledge to Find Brodeur’s Weakness

The American practice was winding down late Saturday afternoon at the Britannia Ice Center, with Ryan Miller stopping shootout attempts from a handful of players at one end and Jonathan Quick scrambling around his crease in a rebound drill at the other when U.S. coach Ron Wilson ambled over to backup goaltender Tim Thomas at center ice to chat.

The conversation wasn’t loud enough to hear from the stands and left many media observes puzzled, but to anyone familiar with puck stopping the topic was obvious: Martin Brodeur.

At the request of his coach, Thomas was waving his glove hand in the air as he backed in slowly, dropping his right knee to the ice and tucking his blocker into his body just above the pad. In the age of the butterfly, the move was immediately recognizable, even to those who weren’t watching Brodeur use it while stopping the Swiss four-straight times Thursday.

As Thomas did his best impression of the living Canadian legend and last bastion of stand-up saves, Wilson pointed to various potential holes and attempted a handful of dekes and moves, talking with Thomas throughout about what might work against the unique style and why.

Afterwards, Wilson downplayed his strategic session with Thomas as just part of the Olympic process, saying he had tapes of every shootout goal ever scored against Brodeur, one of the only NHL goaltenders left who doesn’t drop both knees to the ice every time.
With so much on the line – Sunday’s winner went right to the quarterfinals – Brodeur was hardly surprised to learn how closely his throwback shootout style was being monitored.

“I didn’t know it until you guys brought it up to me,” Brodeur said after Canada’s practice. “Video is open for everybody. I’m sure everybody has been watching it. Not a big deal.”

(In Goal was monitoring Canada’s practice during the US media availability and unable to talk to Thomas back at Canada Hockey Place about his imitation of Brodeur, or about the fact he was wearing his old Bruins pads in practice and not his red-white-and-blue American pads).

Brodeur said he was hoping it didn’t come down to a shootout, which could mean having to play an extra qualification game on Monday. But if it does, there’s little question he presents some unique challenges to shooters. At a time when so many goaltenders are predictable – shoot low blocker or get them spread out with a deke and make sure to get the puck over that 11-inch pad – Brodeur’s patient on the skates style may be tougher to figure out. He tries to change things up, purposely showing shooters a potential hole and then taking it away.

Like the one-knee down move in the shootout, which loads up that glove side and begs under-educated shooters to test him on the blocker end, likely unaware that is the only way he can move explosively at that point because he still has his left skate edge (the right pad down means he has to edge on that side to push from).

Then again, in the course of an 82-game regular season, few teams spend as much time or go into as much detail as Wilson has preparing for Sunday’s showdown. And while the NHL mantra of shoot-high on butterfly goalies makes it easy at times for Brodeur to stay on his feet and pick off those shots in the regular season (he is 6-2 and has stopped 19 of 26 shootout attempts so far this year), it will be interesting to see if the added scrutiny of the Olympics leads to more shots along the ice – the very shots that the butterfly trend that Brodeur has so famously bucked was designed to stop – both in the shootout and beforehand.

It’s a tactic that Carolina clearly used in beating Brodeur and the Devils in the playoffs in both 2006 and 2009, and one Tampa Bay had success with in the 2006 playoffs before their own goaltending failed. It’s the kind of scouting report few teams attempt to exploit in the regular season – it’s just too hard to switch shooting mentalities for one game when almost every other goalie uses a purer butterfly – but one worth keeping an eye on under the Olympic spotlight.