Interesting- if you have time, I'm definitely interested in hearing more about Peeters.
As we wind down, let's Peeter out...
I don't have Peeters exceptionally high. He was around 60 on my prelim, so I'm not his biggest fan. But he's better than a number of, what I feel are, unrankable players that are available this round. Also, I got asked to do a write up on him, so I will...
One thing that's interesting about Peeters is that he's sort of a pattern breaker for the way goaltending was going at the time. We're a ways into this by now, so folks have seen how the late 70's and 80's goalies look and how they processed things. A lot of smaller guys threw themselves at whatever they could and went down (down down) swinging.
Peeters was a bigger goalie. Among guys that played at least 100 games in the first half of the 80's, only Liut (6'2") was definitively bigger. Doesn't seem like much now, but more than one-third of goalies in this same time range were 5'8" or smaller.
Also, against the grain of a lot of guys of this era, is that Peeters was very patient and more of a blocker type goalie. Not a flailing athletic type. It's a damn shame we didn't get to talk about goalies like Gilles Meloche and Dan Bouchard because of the teams they played for, but that's life...but these types of guys struggle to get noticed unless they're in situations that can really support them. Ken Dryden - a much better version of Peeters - on the Golden Seals wouldn't be anywhere near the spot we voted him into, ya know?
Peeters caught a break early on being on a defensively oriented, goalie friendly (team tactics, coaching, and having a great veteran tactician in Parent) Philadelphia Flyers team. As such, he's up for discussion.
Ok, let's check the tape...
Flurry of activity around his net here on the Isles PP here in the 1980 Cup Final. Now, there's prohibitively slow and there's "economy of movement". Peeters really toes that line haha.
He's not fast, but there's an element of economy to him in that he really knows where his net is. He tracks well. So, at a time where pads absorb water, **** is heavy, maybe you're playing 3 in 4 nights flying commercial...you want to be able to conserve energy on things that have nothing to do with you. Peeters is almost a "Destroyer of Corsi" haha (that is, the initial use case for Corsi which was goalie workload for shots attempted, not just shots on goal). He hardly has any interest in shots that are wide. He's in position, he doesn't need to throw himself all over the place. Stand in the net...make saves when called upon. It's a good philosophy.
Peeters sees ya...Peeters don't care.
Again, I'm old fashioned because I like it when my goalies are in the net. A really effective method of stopping pucks from going in the net is to remain in it, studies show. I believe that Peeters played the 6th most games of any goalie born in the 1950s. And half of the guys ahead of him are all guys born in 1950 exactly: Billy Smith, Dan Bouchard, and Gilles Meloche. What do they all have in common? Super economical goalies. Smart, they stay in the net, they're positionally sound. As such, they lasted a lot longer than their peers. Even they didn't necessarily peak as high stats wise. At a time when the game was wide open, it was the guys who favored positioning over kamikaze nonsense that were actually able to retire from NHL earnings.
Here we go with a semi-break situation. He reads the defensive help, he lays the stick out there to ensure that Gillies can't get across his body to open side, and then he just absorbs this shot without creating a lot of holes through him.
And that's what you get with him. Narrow stance, not a lot of gets through him, he managed his crease really well with his stick.
"Ok, so why don't you have him higher?"
Well, while you probably can't shoot it through him...you can definitely shoot it around him. Also, his glove is atom level...
Besides this play being a mile offside, you can see how he reacts to cross net-line movement. It's taxing for any goalie, but it's especially taxing for him. He hangs with this pretty well because he reads it well. But the more he has to telescope out, especially with his glove, the more his game deteriorates.
Tough to see, so if someone sees it differently than me, please correct it...but this appears to be a very glove-able puck that he sort of tosses into the air...and then it's slapped down his throat for the Isles first goal.
Again, things happen...but his glove didn't impress me on film. He was really intent on just being a blocker. He's sort of like a lesser 1980's version of Olaf Kolzig in some ways. So, if you like Kolzig, then you probably have some time for Peeters here below him on your ballot.
Some folks will look at this and go, "this isn't for me" and I think that's totally valid. It's barely for me. But why I value positioning a lot during this time is because we're still at a time where absolute garbage like this was happening...
That's Ron Hextall being one of the worst goalies that you can find. Hard to believe he became available for discussion as he's a total zilch.
Anyway, back to Peeters, we see that a lot of the same traits sort of hold over time...
His reaction to a wide shot (though, this is probably a shot pass), or lack thereof haha
But again, very similar tactics...
Managing the crease area with this stick very well. Not flying off the handle. Stay in the net, track, track, track. Be economical.
On the flip side, despite Warren Strelow trying to help his glove (he did help his feet, you can see he moves better in 1988 than he did as a youngster in 1980), it's just coming from such a deficit...he might as well have been jingling change in his pocket on this one...this "floor" goes past Kolzig and filters down to Giguere level. And that's not where we want to be either.
So that's where we're at...there's very few really good goalies on this list. With Peeters you get the size, positioning, smarts, and stickhandling. But on the other hand, you don't get athleticism, a glove, or a lot of shots on the edges of the net.
So, how scalable is his game? Meh, not super scalable. He has to play for a team that can protect him...BUT he can take a defensive team really far because not a lot is going to go through him. So, he had the defensive Flyers of the late 70's/early 80's...he had the defensive Capitals of the late 80's...I can't really speak too readily about what was going on in Boston in terms of tactics during his time there, maybe
@Dennis Bonvie could.
Resch is a much better version of Peeters for me. I think Kolzig is a better (butterfly) version of Peeters too. But there are a high number of very unreliable goalies available to us right now that Peeters definitely has an advantage over.
