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What is up with Canada's goaltending?

Czechboy

Czechboy

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I was looking at this years playoffs and noticed 2 things.

1. not many elite goalies left (eg. the Russian elite trio is gone for instance). I'd say the best one is Oetinger (US)
2. not many Canadian goalies in the playoffs at all. There were 3 in round 1 with Broissoit, Skinner and MAF. Broissoit had a nice .915 and Skinner/MAF were below .900

Round 2 sees only 2 Canadian Goalies (Broissoit and Skinner) and they are facing each other.

Then I looked at the CSS North American Rankings:

1683133881633.png


2 Canadians, 3 Czechs, 1 Slovak and the rest are US (who seem to be up there with Russia for creating goalies right now).

When I look at threads for best goalie prospects the names Wolf (US), Askarov (Rus) and Walstedt (Swe) come up a lot.. I always add in Dostal but I'm bias.lol

Give how good the Canadian F's and D's are, what is going on with the Goalies? Seems, to me, like an all time low point?
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WarriorofTime

WarriorofTime

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It was a bad year for Goaltenders in the U.S. in the 2022 Draft, with only Tyler Muszelik going in the 6th round.
 
Czechboy

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Trey Augustine is 3rd ranked in this draft (for NA)
Oettinger looks to be a Vezina candidate one day
Dustin Wolf looks very promising.
Connor Hellebyuck is a pretty recent Vezina winner
I covet Swayman for my Oil!

The 2 highest represented nations in round 1 of playoffs were Russia and USA. Seems like it's going pretty well. I'd say second behind Russia (who amazingly still have goalies in the playoffs despite the elite trifecta going out in Round 1)
 

CanuckHockey

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IMO it has a lot to do with the cost of living in Canada. Let's face it, hockey ain't cheap, and goaltending is on a whole other level. You've got the gear, and if you want your kid to be good, you're likely going to need to shell out for specialized training as well. For a family that can barely afford to pay the mortgage, it's not really feasible to be spending thousands of dollars per year to have your kid play net. So, you're really shrinking the talent pool down to kids from upper-middle class families who can afford all of that, and year over year there are less and less families in this country who fall into that "upper middle class" category. I definitely think this is a problem that we'll see continue to get worse.
 
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Mathieukferland

Mathieukferland

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CanuckHockey said:
IMO it has a lot to do with the cost of living in Canada. Let's face it, hockey ain't cheap, and goaltending is on a whole other level. You've got the gear, and if you want your kid to be good, you're likely going to need to shell out for specialized training as well. For a family that can barely afford to pay the mortgage, it's not really feasible to be spending thousands of dollars per year to have your kid play net. So, you're really shrinking the talent pool down to kids from upper-middle class families who can afford all of that, and year over year there are less and less families in this country who fall into that "upper middle class" category. I definitely think this is a problem that we'll see continue to get worse.
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But how do goaltenders from a middle to low income country like Russia become so good?
 
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Czechboy

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CanuckHockey said:
IMO it has a lot to do with the cost of living in Canada. Let's face it, hockey ain't cheap, and goaltending is on a whole other level. You've got the gear, and if you want your kid to be good, you're likely going to need to shell out for specialized training as well. For a family that can barely afford to pay the mortgage, it's not really feasible to be spending thousands of dollars per year to have your kid play net. So, you're really shrinking the talent pool down to kids from upper-middle class families who can afford all of that, and year over year there are less and less families in this country who fall into that "upper middle class" category. I definitely think this is a problem that we'll see continue to get worse.
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But there were 3 Czechs and 1 Slovak in the top 10 ranking? Definitely not countries with more money than Canada and US. (note: not saying those goalies are particularly better but just using the ranking)
 
Boonk

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Mathieukferland said:
But how do goaltenders from a middle to low income country like Russia become so good?
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I remember reading that the Russians hired a shit ton of the Finnish goalie coaches that developed guys like Rinne, Kipper, Backstrom, Niemi, Rask during that time. Seems to have paid off if true.
 
ORRFForever

ORRFForever

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CanuckHockey said:
IMO it has a lot to do with the cost of living in Canada. Let's face it, hockey ain't cheap, and goaltending is on a whole other level. You've got the gear, and if you want your kid to be good, you're likely going to need to shell out for specialized training as well. For a family that can barely afford to pay the mortgage, it's not really feasible to be spending thousands of dollars per year to have your kid play net. So, you're really shrinking the talent pool down to kids from upper-middle class families who can afford all of that, and year over year there are less and less families in this country who fall into that "upper middle class" category. I definitely think this is a problem that we'll see continue to get worse.
Click to expand...
It's the same in the U.S. and they produce high quality goalies.

Like everyone else, I don't understand it. Just based on the law of averages, Canada should produce a top end goalie once every couple of years. To go decades(?) makes NO logical/mathematical sense.

As I always say, "Thank God we only need ONE".
 
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PanniniClaus

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The hockey news do an annual goaltender issue and they identified over coaching at a young age to be a culprit for us here in Canada. Then it's into the CHL pressure cooker for the best ones at 16 years of age.. often there as backups that don't play a great deal right away.. I don't claim to have the answers.
 
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Czechboy

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PanniniClaus said:
The hockey news do an annual goaltender issue and they identified over coaching at a young age to be a culprit for us here in Canada. Then it's into the CHL pressure cooker for the best ones at 16 years of age.. often there as backups that don't play a great deal right away.. I don't claim to have the answers.
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That is a interesting point. Using Czech goalies, they are playing in shitty Czech junior leagues with 100 fans in the stands. A good Canadian kid would play OHL in a barn with 10,000 fans.
 
Chainshot

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Czechboy said:
That is a interesting point. Using Czech goalies, they are playing in shitty Czech junior leagues with 100 fans in the stands. A good Canadian kid would play OHL in a barn with 10,000 fans.
Click to expand...

Except the issue is that the CHL kid isn't getting the reps in game situations to improve. They sit as the backups. It's not the number of fans, it's repetitions on game situations.
 
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Czechboy

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Chainshot said:
Except the issue is that the CHL kid isn't getting the reps in game situations to improve. They sit as the backups. It's not the number of fans, it's repetitions on game situations.
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Do you know what happened to the NO Euro goalie rule? I thought the concern was that they'd bring in older Euro Goalies and that would cost the younger Canuck goalies their jobs. I thought it was a good call and was fine with not allowing them?
 
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