...at least do some research. This piece by Mac Engel of the Ft Worth Star-Telegram came down the wire service today , and was picked up by a bunch of newspapers.
Anyway, here's the phrase that pays:
"While many goalies of yesterday were little people with munchkin pads, the average height of today's NHL goalie is more than 6 feet. Twenty years ago, 6-foot-5 Coyotes goalie Sean Burke would have been the Manute Bol of his day."
Let's take a look at how many ways this shows a lack of research, okay?
At 6 ft 5, Sean Burke would be one inch taller than Ken Dryden and Gary "suitcase" Smith, who weren't playing in 1983, mainly because they had retired four seasons previously. Oops!
Even the goalies who were playing in 1983 weren't a pack of runts. 83-84 was the first season for Tom Barrasso, who's listed at 6ft3. He won a Vezina and a Calder that season for Buffalo. Mike Liut, at 6ft 2 is playing in St Louis. And a bunch, including Ken Wregget, Doug Soetaert, Steve Penney, Pete Peeters, and Bob Mason, are coming in at 6ft. And there are a couple of kids in the system by the name of Ron Hextall and Patrick Roy, who both measure past 6ft tall.
That, by the way, took me 10 minutes looking through a Sporting News Hockey Register from the 84-85 season.
So, let's take a look at the 1960's then? Okay, Gary Smith shows up mid-60's for Toronto, right before he descends into expansion hell, so there's your "high water" mark.
Glenn Hall is listed as 5 ft11, Terry Sawchuk is listed as 5 ft11, and so is Tony Esposito. Eddy Giacomin is also 5ft11 and and Jacques Plante is 6ft. True, goalies are a bit smaller, but guess what? So are the rest of the players! Bobby Hull is 5ft10-5ft11, and Phil Esposito is considered "huge" at 6ft2 and 210 lbs. Just by eyeballing the numbers, I'd have to say that goalie height has fairly well tracked skater height.
Looking up those numbers took another 10 minutes, and I was eating a salad at the time.
Finally, there's the myth of the goalie as the youngest brother, or the kid with the coke-bottle lenses, or some semi-in shape pudge who was stupid enough to want to stop pucks for a living. Even if there were goalies who had that background, the goalie as the worst conditioned player on the team went away permanently by the 70's. Think about it--the synthetics that were going to make equipment a lot lighter and flexible was still 5-10 years off, but this was the era where both the butterfly and flopping goalies came to the forefront. Slap on some 1970's era gear and throw yourself to the ice repeatedly for 60 minutes. Gee, not getting up quickly? Maybe you should work on your conditioning?
The big changes in goaltending hit when there was a full generation of well-trained and conditioned goalies that came up through the ranks, combined with the new materials that allowed goalies to be able to play without being encumbered with 35 lbs of leather that soaked up a couple of gallons of water and sweat during the game. The trouble is, this is the same time that Islanders and Oilers were playing offense, offense, offense (but backstopped by Billy Smith and Grant Fuhr--interesting how high scoring teams that do well have a killer goaltender? No, you cannot get away with "don't worry, we'll score more" as a playing philosophy), and nobody noticed!
So, do goalies have too much of an advantage? I think that's not yet played out, but is are the goalies suddenly too big? Are goalies suddenly so much better in shape than they were? I don't think so.
Posted by lsefton at September 23, 2003 08:17 PM