Period ends early after Dylan Holloway takes puck up high and seems to collapse on bench after finishing the shift

[tarheelhockey]

The firehose method at work.

**** off with the condescension.

The butterfly style was not a result of the advent of the goalie mask (What's up, Glenn Hall?),

Yes Hall innovated in the (already somewhat established) concept of knees-down hands-up shot blocking, but was not a butterfly goalie in the modern sense. Both as a matter of save selection and as a matter of technique, he did not move like a post-Roy butterflier. If someone crossed the blue line and let a slap shot rip at Hall, he was going to jump and take that in the chest protector, or maybe kick it to the side. If someone went east-west, he would slide over with a pad stack or an outright dive at the puck. None of the horizontal shuffling, none of the defaulting to a butterfly posture. Same can be said of Tony Esposito, who used similar techniques and behaved nothing like a modern goalie in net.

and didn't really catch on widely until nearly two decades after masks became common place.

Yes, I detailed that evolution in my post. I directly stated that the butterfly didn’t develop into its modern and much more widespread form until 20 years later. That doesn’t mean it was wholly disconnected from the addition of masks — full-time butterfly is not a practical style without certain equipment improvements over what was being used in Hall’s era, one of which is the mandatory ability to protect your face when kneeling in front of an 80mph shot.

Tim Thomas is about the worst example of a butterfly goalie in the last 20 years.

And? He was still fundamentally a butterfly goalie, like all goalies of the past 20+ years.

CTE can only be diagnosed post mortem. We can suspect, but declarative statements on how advanced it is in an individual is conjecture, at best.

If Tim Thomas says directly and in so many words “playing goalie damaged my brain,” I’m not going to sit here and tell him that it’s conjecture and he needs to die before I’ll admit his point.

Ultimately, though, the only thing that I took issue with is the degree to which improvements in protective equipment may have inintended negative consequences in certain circumstances. I could be way off, but not when it comes to goalies as evidenced by the historical record of how small pre-mask goalies squared up to the shooter. Shoulder pads? That's something that the league let get way out of hand.

There’s a direct line from the advent of the slapshot, to the proliferation of goalie masks, to goalies developing styles that permitted them to deliberately put their faces in front of slapshots and use their heads as a blocking tool. Masks are not the only factor in that evolution, but they fundamentally altered the trajectory of the position by making it possible to safely experiment with the techniques which eventually cohered into the modern butterfly. And it’s beyond debate that the butterfly has proven to be more taxing on goaltenders’ bodies than stand-up or hybrid styles. Its relation to brain trauma hasn’t been fully documented, but as a matter of simple observation it’s very obvious that masks also enabled a far higher volume of sub-concussive impacts which are directly connected to CTE and other brain damage.

Which is all to say — masks can be an important safety tool, and also the cause of new safety problems, at the same time. The same can be said of hard-shelled shoulder pads which have been widely banned because they became a source of greater injury than they prevented, visors and cages which are known to increase reckless behavior with sticks and flying pucks, helmets which give players a false sense of safety when jumping full-speed into collisions, shin guards which have emboldened players to stand directly in front of world-class slapshots, and so forth.

This dynamic has cropped up so many times in hockey at least in part because by the very nature of the sport, it encourages players to push the extreme boundaries of safety in whatever context they’re playing. A bunch of guys playing shinny with no pads will try and knock each other down, but they won’t be plowing each other into the boards… Give those guys enough safety equipment and they’ll throw safety out the window altogether, engaging in car-crash level collisions and drilling slapshots into each other’s faces. It’s the nature of the sport, part of what makes it great, but also a good reason to make very careful choices about mandating more gear and more perceived safety.