Seems Like Old Times

A strain of goaltender feared extinct these past 20 years—stingy and dominant, so stinting that each goal is paid for in blood and exhaustion—has suddenly, emphatically resurfaced in the NHL. After record-shattering abuse at the hands of an era of scorers like Gretzky, Lemieux, Hull and Yzerman, and after seasons of bloated goals-against averages when shutouts were eclipse-rare and the goaler's lunch was nightly fare, the masked thieves of the crease have returned.

The statistical evidence is plentiful. Last season there were 99 regular-season shutouts, 30 more than in 1992-93 and nearly five times as many as in '82-83, when there were just 21. Goalie save percentages, too, are on the rise—the league average was .883 last season, up from .871 a decade ago. Twelve goalies had a save-to-shot ratio above .900 last season, and the average goals per game plummeted from 7.2 to 6.5, the lowest in the NHL in 20 years. Those trends have continued in '95. In the season's first three weeks, the goals-per-game average fell to 5.9 while the save percentage was .898.

Some of those numbers, to be sure, can be attributed to expansion. The league has added five teams in the past three years, so there is a general dearth of scorers. This has happened before. When the league doubled in size in 1967, from six teams to 12, the goals per game fell from 6.0 to 5.6. To compete, the expansion teams buckle down defensively, and the coaching in the league has become so sophisticated that if a team is determined to cut its goals allowed, it can do so with minimal talent. "Our scoring chances have dropped dramatically in the last couple of years," says Doug Risebrough, general manager of the Calgary Flames. "It's not that we're seeing fewer shots. We're seeing fewer high-percentage shots."

Still, the individual brilliance of some of today's young goalies, guys who might still be in Europe or on the bench or in the minors if it hadn't been for expansion, is too lustrous to be ignored. Everywhere one turned last season, most particularly during the playoffs, goaltenders were stealing the show.

Dominik Hasek of the Buffalo Sabres, a 29-year-old Czech with only 53 NHL regular-season games' experience before '93-94, had a goals-against average of 1.95 for the season, becoming the first netminder since Bernie Parent (1.89) in '73-74 to allow fewer than two goals per game. Hasek continued his sparkling play in the postseason, notably in Game 6 of Buffalo's first-round series against the New Jersey Devils, when, with his team facing elimination, Hasek made 70 saves in a 1-0 quadruple-overtime win.

The losing goalie in that 1-0 classic? Martin Brodeur, the Devils' sensational rookie, who at 22 seemed the very embodiment of the curse of the New York Rangers by extending the eventual Stanley Cup champions into double overtime of Game 7 in last spring's conference finals before New York's Stéphane Matteau slipped the series-winner past him in a 2-1 thriller. "To be honest, the transition between junior hockey and the American Hockey League was tougher than between the AHL and NHL," says Brodeur. "Our defense in New Jersey was so good I was only facing 22, 23, 24 shots."

Except on those occasions when—to use Game 7 against the Rangers as an example—Brodeur kicked out 46 shots to keep his outmanned teammates in the contest. "When I was with Montreal, I saw that a kid could come up and play well his first year in goal," says Devil coach Jacques Lemaire, who had no qualms about starting a rookie in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the playoffs. "Rogie Vachon. Ken Dryden. Patrick Roy. We had a number of them. They come up with a lot of confidence, a lot of excitement. You try to put the kid in when the team is playing at its best so you don't destroy that confidence. They aren't afraid, these young guys."

Twenty-eight-year-old Arturs Irbe, a third-year pro from Latvia with 49 games of NHL experience before last season, was another newcomer who was magnificent in net in '93-94. He led the San Jose Sharks to the biggest one-year improvement in league history in the regular season, then engineered the most startling upset of the playoffs by slamming the door on the high-scoring Detroit Red Wings in the first round. The Sharks were knocked off in the next round by the Toronto Maple Leafs, who for the second straight year rode into the conference finals on the goaltending of Felix Potvin. The 23-year-old Potvin was a rookie sensation in '92-93 and now seems destined for a decade or more of greatness.

"It's time we admitted that young goalies can play this game earlier than we ever thought they could," says Boston Bruin general manager Harry Sinden, who has a 24-year-old rookie, Blaine Lacher, as his starting goalie. In Lacher's first seven games, he had a 6-1 record and had allowed only 2.26 goals per game. "Based on the success of kids like Brodeur and Hasek, we thought it was worth a try," says Sinden. "Having these kids step right in and do the job wasn't something people thought could happen 20 years ago."

That's funny, considering it was 23 years ago that 23-year-old rookie Ken Dryden played six of the Canadiens' last 11 regular-season games, then was named MVP of the playoffs, leading the underdog Habs to the 1971 Stanley Cup.