[HN Gopher] Hockey goalies are too big now
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Hockey goalies are too big now
Author : emptybits
Score : 304 points
Date : 2021-03-10 20:27 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| Larrikin wrote:
| I wonder if it's a viable start up news idea to have deep
| investigative journalism like articles that all have a sister
| article written in an Axios style that boil everything down to
| the major points.
|
| The article was well written but I just am not interested that
| much in hockey to read the entire long form without any idea of
| the general points.
| kergonath wrote:
| I know nothing about hockey, will certainly never play and
| probably never watch a game. The article was well written and
| interesting even from my distant perspective. I learnt a couple
| of things, which, admittedly, will never have any use to me.
| Still an interesting read.
|
| I think a kind of executive summary would make this drier and
| less engaging, with less flavour and context. So a worse
| article overall. In any case, the TL;DR is already in the
| title.
| thekyle wrote:
| Some sites (CNBC comes to mind) put summaries in the form of a
| bullet list at the top of most of their articles which I think
| is pretty cool.
| TheButlerian wrote:
| Fuck off, lazy cunt.
| [deleted]
| a0zU wrote:
| The death of writing is a bullet-list of major points, put some
| effort in, maybe you'll become more interested in hockey after
| reading the article.
| peferron wrote:
| I loved the article and read it entirely, but I'm definitely
| even less interested in hockey now.
| Larrikin wrote:
| I enjoy reading well researched articles, just not all the
| time. The ideal would be this article with an alternate
| version, not the reduction of the article to the bullet
| points only. Books aren't dead just because wikipedia has a
| plot summary on every important one.
| andrewzah wrote:
| What I do in these cases is bookmark the article / save it
| elsewhere, and read it when I'm in a mood to digest a
| longer article. For what it's worth, I enjoyed the prose of
| this article and I would rather see more articles like it,
| than condensing everything to bullet points.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| But the pinnacle of journalism, the gold standard, the One
| True Way that's taught to every journalist - and then
| promptly forgotten when they go to work - is the Inverted
| Pyramid. The LOD/mipmapping equivalent for words: start with
| a very short summary of most important things. Then expand
| the details. Then expand them more. Repeat recursively.
| jacurtis wrote:
| The inverted pyramid is used for news stories. That is what
| you would expect from the NYTimes, CNN, or your local
| newspaper.
|
| But _The Atlantic_ isn 't news stories. They are general
| interest essays. They are all long form stories that tell a
| narrative and dive deep into topics.
| bscphil wrote:
| I totally get you, but maybe the better conclusion is just that
| the article isn't for you? I mean that in the opposite of a
| judgy way; think for a second about just how much _knowledge_
| there is out there. Even if you leave out stuff that goes
| infinitely deep like the sciences, there 's way more _details_
| to all the topics you might come across in life than anyone can
| learn in a lifetime.
|
| For example, sometimes I'll watch videos of snooker games on
| YouTube. Chances are you know absolutely nothing about snooker,
| but the thing is, I don't really either. I can't keep the rules
| straight because I so rarely pay attention to it. I can't name
| more than one professional snooker player. It's fun to watch
| and can relieve a few minutes of boredom, but that's about it
| for me. And ... I think that's okay? Some sports, like
| lacrosse, I know absolutely _nothing_ about, and that seems
| okay too!
|
| I guess what this comment boils down to is that I don't think I
| understand what you would get out of a "bullet points" version
| of an article like this. Do you _need_ to know anything about
| hockey? Preparing for a Jeopardy tournament or something?
| Despite not really enjoying hockey myself, what I got out of
| this article was some pleasure inherent to reading the thoughts
| of someone who has obviously thought very hard about a specific
| subject, and writes about those thoughts in a clear way.
| jacurtis wrote:
| > the better conclusion is just that the article isn't for
| you
|
| Yes. I love _The Atlantic_. They are long-from general
| interest stories and usually written exceptionally well. But
| they post a lot of essays every day in a wide range of
| topics. Not all of them are for everyone. You got to pick
| what you want to read. There are plenty of essays that they
| publish that I have no interest in. But that 's ok. They are
| interesting to someone. And isn't that what makes life so
| interesting? That everyone is so different?
|
| I think we forget that now. Every story must be written for
| everyone collectively. It leads to less interesting stories.
|
| To be honest, this story wouldn't benefit from bullet points.
| Not everything can be summarized. Imagine a campfire story
| and you say, "i don't want to wait until dark and make a fire
| and hike into the woods to hear the story, just give me the
| bullet points". It would be pointless. Life is about the
| nuances.
| mrspeaker wrote:
| Atom and His Package called it years ago in his song "Goalie"
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpe7R_KgdVo)
| In hockey, you must score a goal. Which one can not do if
| between me and the net there's no hole.
| krrrh wrote:
| Wow, there's a name I have not heard in a long long time.
| Thanks for the waves of nostalgia.
| justinator wrote:
| And almost like magic "Happy birthday Ralph, I love you"
| plays in my head as if it was only yesterday.
| [deleted]
| alkonaut wrote:
| The removal of hookings and slashings from the game still makes
| it a much more open affair than it was back when goalies did
| acrobatic saves in smaller pads.
|
| The speed and skill allowed now is completely different. The
| composite sticks means players can release shots without warning,
| that would take a full second to prepare back when everyone had a
| moustache. Goalies had a chancee because the guy with the
| moustache and wooden stick was getting slashed or cross checked
| while taking his shot. It was way less enjoyable than the game is
| now. The SV% and GAA is also mostly unchanged because of this. If
| the hookings were removed, players had the speed and composite
| sticks of late 2000's but goales looked and played like in 1980 -
| it wouldn't really be watchable.
|
| Also, I _love_ that a hockey article is at the front page of HN.
| soperj wrote:
| GAA & SV% is actually much higher than in the 80s. Grant Fuhr
| had only 2 seasons with an above .900 sv% and those were in the
| last half of the 90s. Mostly had a GAA of over 3.5. You
| wouldn't be an NHL goalie with those numbers these days.
| lunatuna wrote:
| IMHO, Grant Fuhr was underrated for his skills. He was left
| to do most of the defending himself while the rest of his
| team was out hunting goals. Even lots of beer and old video
| of his games would likely not settle this, but I put this out
| there. The goal differential was strongly in the Oilers
| favour.[0] So leaving Fuhr to his business looked to work.
|
| Comparing to the Habs[1], the Oilers had a full goal + on any
| other team. Plus the Oilers were averaging 5 goals a night
| with some 8-0 and 7-1 out there. Likely still could have won
| some of those games without a goalie.
|
| alkonaut - This is really cool. I was a bit struck seeing
| this on HN and from an Atlantic article and Dryden writing
| the article.
|
| [0]: https://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/EDM/1985.html
| [1]: https://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/MTL/1985.html
| soperj wrote:
| Fuhr was one of the greatest goalies of all time. I was
| saying it not as a slight to Fuhr, I'm saying that it's
| representative of the actual stats of the time. Look at Ron
| Hextall, 3 seasons with a better than .900 sv%, 2 of which
| were in the late 90s at the end of his career. Look at Don
| Beaupre, 17 seasons in the league, and not one over a .900
| sv%. You don't get 17 seasons in the league, most as a
| starter, if you're not above avg.
| animal531 wrote:
| A long time ago in cricket there were no limit on bat sizes. So
| the entrepreneurial minded players started using bats that were
| wider than the combined width of the stumps.
|
| Eventually laws were introduced to set limits.
| fc373745 wrote:
| Why not make the goal bigger? Bigger to the point where we can
| see double digit scoring?
|
| One thing that turned me off from watching Soccer one year was
| the amount of 1-1 games that led to PKs, and after just doing a
| little bit of research, Hockey has the longest overtime games by
| far, and occurs more often by far.
|
| > The average NHL team has gone to overtime in about 23.1 percent
| of its games over the past three seasons. The Flyers have done so
| in about 31.1 percent of their games
|
| It's not enjoyable for the casual viewer. Betting on sports which
| have O/U of 0.5, 1, 1.5 is ridiculous tbh.
| dionidium wrote:
| Speaking of betting, overtime is also frustrating, because it
| turns a bet based on slight edges over 60 minutes of play into
| a ridiculous prop bet. You can bet strictly on regulation time,
| but the bookie I use doesn't offer a push, so it's not an
| attractive bet.
| jp57 wrote:
| Part of the reason for so many overtimes is the ridiculous
| point system for overtime games: For a game that ends in
| regulation, one team gets 2 points and the other gets 0. For
| game that goes to overtime each team gets at least 1 point, and
| the winner gets two. This situation reduces the incentive to
| play aggressively and take chances to win when a game is tied
| late in the 3rd period.
|
| For comparison, before the addition of shootouts to resolve
| games still tied after overtime, each game was worth exactly
| two points: both went to the winner, or they were split in the
| case of a tie.
|
| Now there is the weird situation that teams are not competing
| for a fixed number of standings points. Instead rather a new
| point gets created whenever a game goes to overtime. This makes
| a huge incentive not to try to break ties in regulation.
| flurdy wrote:
| That is why football/soccer introduced 3 points for a win to
| combat the 1980s trend of playing for a draw. Made enough of
| a difference.
| tempestn wrote:
| For me this brings to mind Formula 1 racing. Each year teams pore
| through the rules looking for any possible advantage they can
| gain within their strict letter. And each year the FIA looks at
| which teams managed to do this a little too well, and tweaks the
| rules the following season to prevent whatever they did. They
| also plan ahead, making significant changes to car design
| parameters every few years, in order to correct shortcomings in
| the state or trajectory of the sport. It isn't always executed
| perfectly, but the attempt is made and is certainly impactful.
|
| I don't see any reason the NHL couldn't do the same. Goalie pads
| too long? Set a max length above the knee. Torso pads billowing
| too much? Specify a maximum difference between torso
| circumference with and without pads. Or find some other way to
| measurably define the problem and then regulate against it. Any
| issue severe enough to be a problem can be specifically defined
| and therefore corrected.
|
| And if necessary, you can make larger changes as well, like F1 is
| doing with ground effects this year to allow cars to follow more
| closely without sacrificing so much downforce. For example (not
| saying this would be a good change, just an example of the sort
| of large change that's possible) the pad shape could be redefined
| with a bulge at the top so that they wouldn't lie completely flat
| on the ice.
|
| These problems are solvable; it just requires a willingness to
| continually tweak the minutia of the rules when things aren't
| going as desired.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| F1 isn't an example of success to emulate. The over-regulation
| of the sport is widely hated by fans. The situation they have
| now is a negative feedback loop of excessive regulation
| requiring the implementation of an ever increasing amount of
| further regulation. Small teams used to be able to innovate,
| but the regulations have pushed the barrier to innovation so
| high that you need hundreds of millions of dollars, and even
| then, if you didn't manage to hire Adrian Newey or James
| Allison, then you have to cheat to be anywhere near the front
| of the pack. You'll never see another Ross Brawn in F1 again.
| The new status quo is a few rich teams at the front, a couple
| of permanent midfield teams, and 4-5 teams teetering on the
| verge of bankruptcy. I would hope that no other sport ever
| chooses this path.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Wouldn't Formula 1 be more interesting if everyone had to race
| with the same car? Then it would just be about driver skill?
| Otherwise all of the rules are just too easy to game for a
| season and dominate.
| jacurtis wrote:
| > Wouldn't Formula 1 be more interesting if everyone had to
| race with the same car?
|
| This already exists. Formula 2 is essentially Formula 1
| racing, but everyone races the same car with the same specs.
| IndyCar is another example of Formula style racing where
| everyone races the same vehicle.
|
| But Formula 1 is fascinating because it pushes the
| technological envelope of what is possible. The engineers
| back at car-manufacturer headquarters are the athletes
| participating on the team. The main driver of course is
| important, but there are plenty of examples of amazing
| drivers in less desirable cars that lose repeatedly. Because
| the engineering is part of the sport. Formula 1 drivers have
| quit teams over engineering decisions. Formula 1 is so
| interesting because the cars just keep pushing the
| engineering envelope of what is possible with 4 wheels.
|
| This is similar to the old Ford vs Ferrari days at Le Mans,
| where car manufacturers had to build cars that were capable
| of racing at high speeds for 24 hours straight. Of course the
| driver is important. But more important than the driver is
| the car. The car must be able to last, and especially back in
| the 60s, cars really couldn't do that.
|
| Much of the technology that is developed at those races
| trickled down into what we drive today and have built more
| reliable cars. Technology like fuel injection that we take
| for granted in cars today came from these races.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| That sport is called already exists, it's called IndyCar.
| Viewership and revenue statistics would suggest that it's
| probably not more interesting.
| frockington1 wrote:
| As one of the 10 people who watched Indycar, simliar things
| still happen. Teams are limited in the number of wind
| tunnel trials they can do each year, so one team bought a
| mountain with a road that tunnels the wind in order to
| skirt regulations. Its called the Laurel Hill Tunnel if you
| want to read more
| masklinn wrote:
| > Teams are limited in the number of wind tunnel trials
| they can do each year
|
| I don't understand, what's the purpose of wind tunnel
| trials when you're not designing the car?
| jacurtis wrote:
| I think they can do some minor body adjustments to fins
| and things. But the core car and powertrain is the same.
|
| In a sport where everyone drives the same car, marginal
| gains (1% more performance) can be what wins a race.
| acover wrote:
| There are leagues that do this, they aren't as popular as
| formula 1. Even still, the best teams can afford to buy 3
| engines and keep the one that's 10% better.
| kaoD wrote:
| F1 is a team sport, car engineering is part of the
| competition.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| F1 is as much about the engineering challenge of having the
| teams competing to build the fastest circuit racing car in
| the world as it is about the drivers driving it. If you
| remove the engineering challenge, you no longer have F1.
| (Kind of literally, as the Formula in Formula 1 refers to the
| regulations teams need to follow in their construction of the
| vehicle.)
|
| There are plenty of other major racing series around the
| world that use standardized vehicles. The reason F1 is
| special is the engineering, plain and simple. The
| aerodynamics involved, the engine efficiencies... Mercedes'
| ICU (traditional fuel part of the power unit) has achieved a
| thermal efficiency of over 50%. That is astounding. You just
| don't get these sort of advances with a spec series; there's
| no motivation for it.
|
| If you combat the imbalance in team success at all, you do it
| by inserting negative feedback loops and spending limits.
| Making total available budget be not the #1 determining
| factor is an obvious choice. Some caps are in the works
| currently. And for negative feedback loops, these are things
| like -- the higher your finishing position for the season,
| the less wind tunnel time you have available to use in the
| offseason. Something like that, things that make it so if you
| win, it's a little bit harder to keep winning the next time.
|
| You definitely don't turn it into a spec series, because then
| you have killed the sport.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| Just make the cars and the tires less wide and you'll have
| a competitive F1 series with overtaking at every corner.
|
| Like what Fangio had to drive.
| tempestn wrote:
| It can become boring when one team is very dominant, as has
| been the case for a number of years now. Absent that though,
| differences between the cars can make the sport _more_
| interesting. The engineering competition is a part of it. As
| are the adaptations the drivers and teams need to make to
| take into account their cars ' relative strengths and
| weaknesses compared to others. Plus, if the disadvantage
| isn't too great, it can be fun to cheer for an underdog who
| overcomes a disadvantageous car and still manages to win.
|
| Spec racing certainly has its place, and it is indeed also
| nice to see drivers pitted against each other on skill (and
| luck) alone. But that's never been Formula 1.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Wouldn't Formula 1 be more interesting if everyone had to
| race with the same car?
|
| It would be a different sport. Not necessarily worse or
| better, just different. The engineering constrains and
| challenges are, et this moment, part of the point.
|
| Formula E is closer to what you're talking about, i believe
| only the power train is customisable.
| hervature wrote:
| Unlike Formula 1, millions of kids play the game and want to
| play it like the pros. Constantly changing the rules is
| feasible for the NHL. Goalies probably get new equipment every
| year anyway. But you can't expect goalies in the recreational
| setting to do that. Probably the only people who would like
| that are the pad manufacturers. You're also forgetting that the
| main aspect of goalie pads is protection and there's a natural
| increase in protection as shooting power increases with stick
| technology. That being said, the hockey world needs to rip the
| bandaid off and simply make the goalie pads 6 inches narrower
| (3 off each) if they want more goals.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| Bro, kids aren't going to be less enthused about playing
| hockey because their goalie's pads are slightly different
| than what they see on TV.
| distortedsignal wrote:
| You're right, they're not. But if the league they play in
| says that their pads have to change, and the goalies are
| staring down a $200 investment in pads (this isn't totally
| unreasonable) there could be a lot of folks who can't swing
| that kind of cash just to have their kids play in a youth
| league, or adults who play in a beer league.
|
| Hockey is already expensive - for goalies especially. More
| rule changes = more $$$ spent, and not always for great
| reasons.
| hervature wrote:
| Right, but why would the league institute this change?
| Because kids want to play in the NHL. Yes, kids aren't
| going to care if the goalie pads are slightly different,
| but it's the same enthusiasm for the NHL that puts
| pressure on the leagues to conform to the NHL. Have you
| ever seen a league play in a non NHL sized arena in North
| America? Sure is funny that huge infrastructure changes
| happened even though smaller cheaper rinks were viable
| for a long time.
|
| Where I'm from in northern Ontario, a hockey centric
| place in the world, more kids played in recreational
| leagues than at the local barn rinks. Sure, playing
| shinny is really fun, but at the end of the day, kids
| want to play hockey as seen on TV. Whenever I went to the
| barn rink with my goalie equipment, people loved it
| because it was one of the few times they actually could
| shoot on a goalie. Playing posts or with a fake goalie is
| just as challenging (given I wasn't very good) but it's
| not the same as the real thing.
| jacurtis wrote:
| Formula 1 is funny because in some ways it is like a sport of
| lawyers and engineers. Engineers try to push the envelope and
| lawyers dive through the minutiae of the regulations to try to
| find loopholes and justifications for the car changes.
|
| The league even has these little arbitrated court cases where
| the teams defend themselves against the regulations, while the
| league or other teams fight in opposition. If a loophole is
| discovered, then it is either patched in the regulations the
| next year, or it becomes adopted by every other team
| immediately.
| runnr_az wrote:
| Of course, this was predicted by Adam and his Package:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpe7R_KgdVo
| justinlink wrote:
| I find it interesting the author didn't mention field hockey. My
| daughter is a goalkeeper for her youth club. The goalkeepers wear
| very similar pads, and face shots at similar speeds with the same
| safety concerns. (I wouldn't want to be hit with a puck or a
| field hockey ball).
|
| The cage is much larger in field hockey:
| https://i2.wp.com/hockeyanswered.com/wp-content/uploads/2019...
|
| The save percentages are about 70% vs the 90%+ in ice hockey, but
| the game scores tend to be similar to ice hockey.
|
| If the goalkeeper is getting bigger because of the gear, even
| adding a few more inches onto the net to maintain the desired
| scoring percentage makes sense at least at the professional
| level.
| keiferski wrote:
| This is written by Ken Dryden, a well-known retired goalie. Very
| cool. Essentially he is just arguing that because of the size of
| goalie pads, the most successful strategy has become _cause chaos
| around the net and then try and push the puck in while the goalie
| is distracted._ He's right, I think, in that it does slow down
| the inherently high-speed nature of the sport.
|
| _So for shooters and coaches, that is the strategy. Rush the net
| with multiple offensive players, multiple defensive players will
| go with them, multiple arms, legs, and bodies will jostle in
| front of the goalie, and the remaining shooters, distant from the
| net, will fire away hoping to thread the needle, hoping the
| goalie doesn't see the needle being threaded, because if he does,
| he'll stop it. The situation for the shooter is much like that of
| a golfer whose ball has landed deep in the woods. He's been told
| many times that a tree is more air than leaves and branches, but
| with several layers of trees in front of him, somehow his ball
| will hit a leaf or branch before it gets to the green. Somehow,
| the shooter's shot will not make it to the net. So he will try
| again. Because what else can he do?_
|
| I played hockey for about a decade growing up, alternating
| between goalie and defense. One "unofficial" solution I had to
| this problem was to make it extremely unpleasant for other
| players to be around the net.
|
| In hockey, you have a lot of leeway in terms of physicality and
| you can push, shove, lock the stick of your opponent, and do a
| number of other things that are completely penalized in
| basketball or soccer. The result was that opposing players became
| hesitant to get too close to the net, thus solving the problem
| somewhat.
|
| If a player was on a breakaway, I'd also try to do stuff like
| this (as the goalie), which of course makes opponents stay far
| away from you.
|
| https://youtu.be/W5u0khFnHUg
|
| A possible solution could be to expand the goalie-only area
| around the net. That would, in theory, force opponents to focus
| more on shooting and not on piling around the goalie.
| hourislate wrote:
| _If a player was on a breakaway, I'd also try to do stuff like
| this (as the goalie), which of course makes opponents stay far
| away from you.
|
| https://youtu.be/W5u0khFnHUg_
|
| Yeah, nothing like trying to end a players career. Should have
| been suspended for the season and fined.
| jacurtis wrote:
| This game was back in 2007. This was near the end of the
| "ruthless NHL era", when the NHL was trying to brand itself
| as the hard-hitting, brutal sport of hockey. So this type of
| stuff was accepted, and even quietly encouraged.
|
| Now in the past couple years the NHL has cracked down
| significantly on player safety. This type of thing would
| probably lead to a suspension if it had happened during the
| current season. Players are getting suspended for a lot less
| right now.
|
| One thing that the league looks at is whether the headshot
| was avoidable and predictable. This is a weird shot, because
| the forward was looking at the goalie, which means that its
| both avoidable and predictable (meaning the player could
| expect to be hit and should prepare for it). But because it
| was a goalie coming at him, the player probably never
| expected that the goalie would actually make contact with
| him. This makes it far less predictable, and therefore less
| avoidable.
|
| Usually the goalies come up really far during these types of
| breakaways to create more favorable angles to protect the
| net. The player was most likely expecting the goalie to stop
| at some point and start backing up, and he was probably
| waiting for that to happen so he could deke (move around the
| goalie while he's immobilized from stopping) and get an easy
| open net score. So they essentially played a game of chicken,
| but the goalie never disengaged. This is very unexpected. To
| me the goalie should be suspended for this. Virtually no
| forward in the league would have expected the goalie to do
| that and the way the goalie hit him, it was clear that it
| could have been dangerous.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Expectations are a weird way to make rules. I bet Gaborik
| didn't try playing chicken with Hasek again, right?
| disgrunt wrote:
| The hit was dangerous, but there's nothing in the rulebook
| (to my knowledge) that says a goalie can't hit another
| player.
| tolbish wrote:
| That was a clean move. Hasek had no way of knowing Gaborik
| would not be looking where he was going.
| disgrunt wrote:
| Hasek absolutely could see Gaborik had his head down. But
| you're not supposed to have your head down. Nowadays this
| would likely be seen as a hit to the head and possibly
| suspension worthy.
| tolbish wrote:
| How was Hasek supposed to know Gaborik would not look up?
| This was not a blind-side hit.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| I didn't see who the author was until the end, so I spent the
| article thinking "Wow, this is someone who's spent way too much
| time thinking about goaltending." And then I saw it was Ken
| Dryden, and it all made sense.
|
| His book about being in the NFL, "The Game", is good.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I thought the same thing. I was like, "Wow this must be a
| superfan, who knows all the inner workings of the players
| union and how the goalies practice".
|
| Then at the end with the author's bio I almost wanted to go
| read the whole article again, realizing this is one of the
| best goalies to play in the NHL.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| There's a little box inside penalty box in soccer where the
| goalkeeper has by the rules relative freedom to do whatever he
| wants for his own safety in soccer as well. Also similarly to
| crowding the goalie in hockey, own players sometimes build
| another wall to keep the view of the ball from goalkeeper.
| Haven't watched NHL for a decade but it seems all the sports
| constantly evolve to take maximums from situations.
| klingon78 wrote:
| The goal in football/soccer is a bit larger than in hockey.
|
| If you're going to bring that up, we could talk about the
| hows and whys of the NBA not allowing goaltending.
|
| Have you ever noticed that one player just can't jump up and
| sit in the goal for the whole of the game?
|
| It's rather small, so the game then would be about who could
| remove the man from the area above the basket.
|
| Perhaps we could just make the goalie have to stay away from
| the crease in the NHL and wear something similar to that
| which everyone else wears? (Unfortunately, there are a number
| of good reasons things are the way they are[1].)
|
| [1]- https://hockeyanswered.com/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-
| goalie...
| smcl wrote:
| I have never heard of these rules regarding the six-yard box
| in football. As far as I am aware it is only for positioning
| your goal kicks and something to do with indirect free kicks
| (a rare occurrence) where they can't be inside that box. I'm
| sure the keeper _does_ mess around with people in that area,
| but I don 't think it's their right as codified in any rules
| of the game
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Yeah, I was mistaken, these are not real rules as written
| down. But you can often hear commentators talking about it
| and keepers are being trained to protect themselves in that
| area. They recently changed the rule that you can touch the
| keeper in that area (eg. during the corners etc). Around
| 2006, before it was not allowed. Any body contact, but
| keepers knowing it was not allowed for the attackers to
| have proper body contact with them and they kinda hacked
| the rule often and were fishing them or looking for the
| contact.
| smcl wrote:
| This may be particular to non-British football coverage,
| because this is all entirely alien to me and I've never
| heard this ever. It would make sense though, when I
| played I would _definitely_ fuck around with the keeper
| during set pieces in the box, and they 'd either fight
| back or a burly defender would be dispatched to keep me
| busy :-D
| [deleted]
| ajuc wrote:
| > a little box inside penalty box in soccer where the
| goalkeeper has by the rules
|
| It's not an official rule, but it is the common
| interpretation, to the point of players relying on this in
| competitive matches.
|
| Another change that makes it easier for goalkeepers to defend
| in soccer was calling offside when a player is in offside
| position and doesn't receive the ball, just obstructs the
| visibility or messes with defenders and somebody else (not in
| offside position) score thanks to that.
|
| It's a little inconsistent and I don't like it, but it
| doesn't seem to help the defenders and goalies too much.
|
| Despite the rule changes in soccer goalies seem to be losing
| the arms race - there's more and more goals a game and last
| few years the meta moved to very high pressing and constant
| offence. Which I very much like - makes for a more
| entertaining games.
|
| As for hockey I would like them to split the goal into 2
| halves and put them 1 meter apart :)
| smcl wrote:
| > there's more and more goals a game
|
| So it sucks to be a goalkeeper and I sympathise with anyone
| tasked with organising the defence when faced with this
| trend. But for us fans this is quite good news :-)
| praptak wrote:
| > A possible solution could be to expand the goalie-only area
| around the net. That would, in theory, force opponents to focus
| more on shooting and not on piling around the goalie.
|
| The point of the article is that the goalies are too big and
| therefore you _have_ to crowd the net to even get a chance of
| scoring. Banning the crowding does not solve the root cause.
| The result (if the article is correct) would be a game with
| much fewer goals, probably boring.
| pcl wrote:
| > a game with much fewer goals, probably boring.
|
| Also, 0-0 ties and 1-0 wins don't really provide much
| information. These sports are typically played in the
| contexts of seasons, where teams are trying to win a
| championship. Very low scores don't really meaningfully
| establish which teams are better than others. 0-0 and 1-1
| ties are obviously not really disclosing much, but winning
| 1-0 is really too low-granularity to mean all that much also.
|
| Basketball is a bit ridiculous in the other direction, of
| course, but I assume that scores in the high single digits to
| low double digits should be the target, if we are to actually
| use them to figure out how to rank teams.
|
| Hurling (teams typically score 10-30 points in a game) and
| baseball (5-20) seem like they're in the right range. Soccer
| / football (0-10, but often on the bottom end of that) seems
| way too low.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Also, 0-0 ties and 1-0 wins don't really provide much
| information.
|
| This doesn't seem to have caused any problems for soccer.
| lax0 wrote:
| Maybe shots on goal is important
| rectang wrote:
| More like, the very real problems it causes haven't
| caused its popularity to tank.
|
| One major issue is that because goals are so scarce and
| penalty kicks are so high-percentage, there is an extreme
| incentive to dive.
| rectang wrote:
| This is one reason I loved MISL, the Major Indoor Soccer
| League, back around 1980 -- scores in the high single
| digits were common.
|
| https://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/features/major-indoor-
| soccer-...
|
| > _Played on artificial turf in ice hockey arenas with
| teams of six, 12ft-by-6ft nets, a hi-vis orange ball and
| rebounds off the hockey boards, this was the
| Americanisation of football taken to its logical
| conclusion. Games would produce 10 to 20 goals; one 1980
| match saw a record 165 shots on target. The American
| obsession with stats was also catered for: players were
| precisely graded with points for goals and assists. It
| worked. Supporters weaned on the all-action scoring of
| basketball preferred it to the 'boring' one-nils of the
| NASL, and flocked to watch._
| rectang wrote:
| Here's MISL star Steve Zungul scoring a hat trick in 37
| seconds off the game clock:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xpG4pYbT9A&t=2200s
| tomlor wrote:
| Interestingly, the NHL record is even faster.
|
| 21 seconds.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nhl/2020/03/23/bill
| -mo...
| rectang wrote:
| In standard football/soccer, it's 1 minute 29 seconds.
|
| https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2017/06/13/six-of-the-fastest-
| hat...
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Low single digits make scoring memorable and tension high.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Disagree. I've tried to watch soccer, but the pace kills
| it for me. <3 goals (total, not per side) in 90
| minutes?[1] No thanks. High single digit would be a
| noticeable improvement, IMO.
|
| US NCAA basketball is, IMO, one of the most exciting
| sports for viewing. Scores in the 70 point range[2] (per
| side, 30-35 baskets at 2 or 3 per) in about 2 hours (40
| min clock ends up close to 120 min actual game length).
|
| 1 - FIFA World Cup matches haven't averaged more than 3
| goals per match since 1958.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/269031/goals-scored-
| per-...
|
| 2 - https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2013/01/1
| 4/colle...
| bscphil wrote:
| > US NCAA basketball is, IMO, one of the most exciting
| sports for viewing.
|
| This is such an interesting perspective to me, because I
| get nothing out of basketball (although watching it in
| person with people is okay). It's just so repetitive, the
| same things happen over and over the whole time. Scoring
| is so constant that none of the goals seem particularly
| special or spectacular.
|
| I feel like both American football and Australian
| football hit a kind of sweet spot, where there are a lot
| of _different kinds_ of athleticism on display, different
| sorts of positions in which different things can happen,
| and scoring isn 't rare enough to make ordinary gameplay
| boring (soccer) but it's still infrequent enough that
| each one feels like something it makes sense to stand up
| and cheer for. With American football in particular, you
| can really say that two games are very rarely alike,
| whereas both soccer and basketball have a kind of "seen
| one, seen them all" vibe to them, with some _very rare_
| special games that elevate above that, obviously.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The repetitive comment is funny to me because I think the
| same about soccer - ball gets kicked to one end, goal is
| missed, ball gets kicked to the other end, repeat ad
| nauseam. Which probably ties nicely to the sibling
| comment about knowing the intricacies of game play - I'm
| sure there's more the soccer than what I just described,
| but it's lost on me because I have no background in the
| sport.
|
| As for American football - I used to be a huge fan of
| NCAA and NFL games, even though I never played myself. Of
| the core American professional sports, it's the only I
| used to watch regularly. My son played into high school.
| I happily helped coach his youth teams. But, with the
| discovery of CTE, I've gone right off watching it.
| Knowing that the players literally concussing themselves
| stupid took the fun out of it.
| bscphil wrote:
| > The repetitive comment is funny to me because I think
| the same about soccer - ball gets kicked to one end, goal
| is missed, ball gets kicked to the other end, repeat ad
| nauseam.
|
| I agree - it's just that basketball is basically the same
| for me. The only difference is that with basketball, they
| score about 25% of the time (or whatever). But the scores
| are all kind of the same, with a rare spectacular three
| pointer. Whereas in American football the teams kind of
| "feel each other out" and change strategies over time,
| have different formations, and so on, to the casual
| observer basketball is just a bunch of guys running
| towards defenders, hoping to spot a weakness, and either
| succeeding or failing, over and over. And when they
| succeed it doesn't matter that much, it's 2 points in a
| game where the teams will score a combined 200!
|
| I've attended two NCAA basketball games, SEC and Big 10
| respectively. In both cases when our (the home) team
| scored, we didn't stand up and cheer, we clapped. I felt
| like I was watching golf!
|
| > Knowing that the players literally concussing
| themselves stupid took the fun out of it.
|
| You're absolutely right about this, I was praising
| football on the abstract level but actually haven't
| watched it in years. I've sort of gotten myself into
| watching the occasional Australian football game for
| exactly that reason; it has some of the same appeal to me
| without the physicality that creates so many injuries.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _I 've attended two NCAA basketball games, SEC and Big
| 10..._
|
| Wrong conferences. ;)
|
| ACC games are bonkers.
| AshleyGrant wrote:
| What NCCAB games are you watching that last 60 minutes
| real-time? Every basketball game I watch, men's or
| women's lasts right at 2 hours, unless there's overtime.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Huh, so they are. Feels shorter to me when watching.
| Edited the post. Either way, I still prefer NCAA
| basketball to FIFA WC soccer.
| amalcon wrote:
| Honestly, I think of soccer/football as being kind of
| like baseball. It looks really boring _if you don 't know
| what to watch for_, but becomes interesting if you do.
|
| E.g. when one of your strikers is about to make a shot on
| goal, opposing strikers will likely move in anticipation
| that the goaltender might recover the ball and set up
| their own attack. Your defenders will need to move in
| response to this; if they mistake the play being set up,
| this can be a significant disadvantage. However, unless
| _you_ recognize the play being set up, you don 't see any
| of this and it just looks like a failed goal attempt.
|
| Disclaimer: I don't actually know much about
| soccer/football, and am paraphrasing an explanation from
| memory.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _It looks really boring if you don 't know what to watch
| for, but becomes interesting if you do._
|
| That's entirely possible. I played very little soccer (or
| any team ball sports) as a youth. By high school I had
| moved on to rowing and mountain biking.
| trey-jones wrote:
| I'm biased in favor of soccer, as that was the game that
| I grew up playing, but I think it's a different beast
| entirely from a hypothetical hockey game with low scoring
| because most shots just bounce off the goalie.
|
| The goalkeeper in soccer (as the article points out) has
| a much larger space to guard, and this provides
| opportunity showcasing ability. Both for the shooter and
| the keeper, as well as other defenders who can make
| impressive saves without the use of hands.
|
| Fans like showcases of ability. There are boring soccer
| games, just as there are boring hockey games and boring
| basketball games. But to me, a well-played soccer game is
| exciting almost all of the time. A goal _can_ be scored
| from essentially anywhere on the pitch (much like
| basketball) and there are an enormous number of possible
| strategies to make this happen.
|
| This article seems to indicate that there is only one
| viable strategy just at the minute, and that's
| detrimental to the game. I don't really care much about
| hockey, and I'm not well educated on it, but I bought the
| argument.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| eru wrote:
| > The result (if the article is correct) would be a game with
| much fewer goals, probably boring.
|
| Maybe boring, but maybe not. Football does really well at
| attracting attention globally, and they only have a handful
| of goals in a match at most. Sometimes even zero.
|
| (Germany scoring seven goals against Brazil in the World Cup
| a while ago was big news.)
| bartread wrote:
| > Maybe boring, but maybe not.
|
| A lot of this is about audience perception, and
| considerations of what makes a good spectator sport in
| different cultures.
|
| More than perhaps anywhere else, sport in North America
| often tends to be about the spectators. Think NASCAR where
| you can generally see the whole track and there is a lot of
| overtaking, and a lot of crashes, or basketball which is a
| high speed, high scoring game played on a smallish court
| that, again, maximises action. There's a noticeable
| emphasis on creating the most exciting and intense
| spectacle for the audience. I think the same is true of
| contemporary ice hockey, which is like a ludicrously amped
| up version of regular hockey: the high scores are all part
| of that.
|
| I'm not an avid follower of any of these sports but, as a
| casual viewer, I find I'm much happier to sit down and
| watch them than some of the original sports on which
| they're based because they're very accessible and high on
| action and entertainment value.
|
| The one sport where this really comes unstuck for me is
| American football: the stop/start structure built into the
| game just drives me up the wall, and I find myself
| significantly preferring the (by comparison) rarely
| interrupted action and flow of rugby. That's not a critique
| of American Football at all - it's obviously a deeply
| tactical and nuanced sport: this is just my personal
| preference for a longer arc of play, on average. And, by
| the way, I'm talking specifically about rugby union: I've
| never followed rugby league.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > There's a noticeable emphasis on creating the most
| exciting and intense spectacle for the audience.
|
| Honestly, and I say that as someone who loves basket ball
| and often stays up during the night to see the NBA
| playoffs, basketball is often far from the level of
| tension and excitement you can get in (European)
| football. In football, most of the time a single goal is
| a game changer even when you have some margin (let say
| 2-0 and the opponent team is now 2-1,they have regained
| the momentum now and the match is totally different). In
| terms of adrenaline, the entire football game is like the
| fourth quarter of the seventh game and every single goal
| feels like a buzzer beater!
|
| The scarcity of goals is invaluable.
| Retric wrote:
| I think it depends on how invested you are to the game.
| When you don't care about the teams, low scoring games
| lack the tension you're talking about
|
| Tennis is at the extreme end of high scoring and even
| watching matches you don't care about between average
| players can be entertaining though not memorable. Longer
| term it's only the truly exceptional games of any sport
| you're going to remember anyway.
| Someone wrote:
| "low scoring games lack the tension you're talking about"
|
| I think that's cultural/an acquired taste.
|
| One could argue the outcome of high-scoring games is more
| predictable, making them less tense.
|
| If, say, on average party A scores a point every minute
| and party B scores one every 40 seconds, party B will win
| almost every one hour game against party A (the expected
| outcome is 90-60), and each individual score is only
| marginally important. So, why would a spectator be
| enthousiast about a (missed) score after 20 seconds of
| play?
|
| If, on other hand, party A scores a goal every 30 minutes
| and party B one every 20 minutes, party A has a much
| higher chance of beating party B in a one hour game, and
| each missed opportunity becomes a potential game changer.
|
| In soccer, some of the most tense games end in 0-0, 1-0,
| or 0-1 (especially at major tournaments, where, often
| [1], each result counts)
|
| [1] for one where that wasn't the case, watch West-
| Germany against Austria
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gijon).
| kd5bjo wrote:
| In this regard, the most notable feature of tennis is
| that every match is a mini-tournament. It doesn't matter
| whether you lose the game 40-0 or after the 5th deuce
| point, you still just have to make up one game.
| Similarly, the score of the first set doesn't matter;
| only who wins. This periodic levelling of the score seems
| to make it more engaging somehow.
| Retric wrote:
| Personally, regardless of sport I only feel tension when
| I care about the winner. The game could be tied with
| seconds left to score and it's no more intense than a
| pickup game between friends.
| golemiprague wrote:
| In football you are always invested in some way, even if
| it is not your team you develop preferences, at least
| among the major teams that people watch even if it is not
| their specific team.
|
| Regarding the issue itself, can't they just reduce the
| size of the protection? For an untrained eye it looks
| like the protection the goalies are wearing is very
| unoptimised and take much more space than required. I am
| sure with modern materials they can find something that
| will wrap closer to the body and still protect them
| rather than turning them into a transformer equivalent of
| a concrete wall
| alistairSH wrote:
| I much prefer NCAA basketball to the NBA. Perhaps it's
| the greater variation in team skill (with a bit more
| variety in playing style), the occasional Cinderella
| story, or maybe just the marketing around March Madness.
| keiferski wrote:
| I'm not a huge basketball fan, but there seems to be a
| lot less ego in the NCAA too. It's mostly about the game,
| not LeBron/Wade/well-known celebrity players.
| vondur wrote:
| It seems that there is more of an emphasis on defense in
| the NCAA vs the NBA. Makes for a more interesting game.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Basketball captures the tension and momentum in a
| livelier way. A team coming back from being down 15 is so
| much more exciting because it requires a sequence of
| offensive plays and defensive stops. You can feel the
| momentum shift as the team who was up suddenly can't buy
| a basket.
|
| The problem with basketball is last two minutes. What
| should be the most exciting part of the game becomes a
| drag with timeouts and intentional fouling.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Agreed on the last 2 minutes of play.
|
| The fouling is usually by the team trying to mount a
| last-moment come-back (stop the leading teams momentum,
| hope they miss the free-throws, and then get possession
| and shot to close the gap). Making penalties more costly
| would prevent this and likely just allow the leading team
| t to win. Though maybe they generally do anyways, so no
| real loss? I'd have to look at past game stats.
|
| TOs - We could probably do without them in the last
| moments. That would shift focus from the coach to the
| team captain to coordinate play. Less set plays, more
| fluid teamwork. Possibly a net gain for the viewer with
| no real impact on the teams?
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| They should adopt for regular games what they've been
| doing for the all-star game the past two years, no clock
| in the fourth quarter, it's a race to 24 points past the
| highest score when the quarter begins.
| filesystem wrote:
| I was initially a fan of the elam ending, in theory.
| After watching the all-start game endings, I am staunchly
| opposed to it. The lack of a clock removes most of the
| tension in the end of a close game. Thinking further, it
| also removes the entire concept of the last shot / buzzer
| beater, one of the cornerstones of excitement in
| competitive basketball. When a shot goes up as the clock
| expires in a game that is within 1 or 2 points, you have
| the suspense and excitement of knowing that if the
| shooter hits that shot, his team wins. If he misses, his
| team loses. With the Elam ending, there is less
| excitement because the consequence for missing is that
| the game just continues & the other team now has a chance
| to score and possibly win.
| Retric wrote:
| Sometimes 0-0 is fine, but what if say 1/2 or more games
| where 0-0. That's hardly fun.
|
| You need to design a sport so scoring is expected every
| game even if it's rare within each game. A slightly larger
| net say 1 foot wider and 6 inches taller with an expanded
| goalie only area say extra 2 foot radius is a reasonable
| option. Tweak thing so the most common score it's say 1-2
| or 2-3 and you're fine.
| tzs wrote:
| Someone once claimed that the reason soccer is not big in
| the US is that we can't get excited about any sport where
| a team can legitimately be said to have built an
| insurmountable 1-0 lead.
|
| There's a simple change that I'd like to see tried in
| soccer that might up the action a bit in the second half
| enough to get more people in the US interested, without
| changing it so much that the rest of the world would lose
| interest.
|
| Simply move the penalty shootout tie-break from after the
| second period to the break between periods. The penalty
| shootout would still only count if the game is tied at
| the end of the second period, but now the teams would go
| into the second period knowing who wins if it comes to
| tie-breaks.
|
| In the second period there will always be one team in a
| "must score" situation, which should cause that team to
| play more aggressively. That might boost the action
| enough to get people in the US to watch.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| > Someone once claimed that the reason soccer is not big
| in the US is that we can't get excited about any sport
| where a team can legitimately be said to have built an
| insurmountable 1-0 lead.
|
| This doesn't apply to soccer at all though. Even a 2-0
| lead is often list in a few minutes. What makes soccer
| exciting isn't the scoring, but that you are always just
| second away from a goal that could change the game.
| That's why you'll hardly ever see in soccer that the
| audience leaves the stadium before the end of the game
| like you are in baseball all the time.
| me_me_me wrote:
| > (Germany scoring seven goals against Brazil in the World
| Cup a while ago was big news.)
|
| Those type of events are outliers and not worth using
|
| > Football does really well at attracting attention
| globally
|
| That's only because everyone else is watching it. I got
| tired of following football around 14, its inherently
| repetitive and boring (unless you play it yourself) not to
| mention the extent of match fixing.
| eru wrote:
| > Those type of events are outliers and not worth using
|
| Yes, that was exactly my point. A score of 7 is
| considered an extreme outlier. That tells you that normal
| scores are much lower.
|
| > That's only because everyone else is watching it. I got
| tired of following football around 14, its inherently
| repetitive and boring (unless you play it yourself) not
| to mention the extent of match fixing.
|
| I don't watch any sports myself, but I don't think the
| people who do so are all deluded.
|
| Yes, there's a social aspect to it, but that's not the
| only thing.
| 101008 wrote:
| > I got tired of following football around 14, its
| inherently repetitive and boring (unless you play it
| yourself).
|
| > Those type of events are outliers and not worth using.
| vmladenov wrote:
| That match was legitimately unsportsmanlike play from
| Germany. To thoroughly annihilate the host team like that
| when it's elimination and point differential no longer
| matters; they should have eased off at 4-0 and played a
| defensive game.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Interesting. I feel completely the opposite. Pulling your
| punches in a competition that matters is one of the
| greatest insults I can think of.
| eru wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, aversion to 'running up the
| score' might be an American thing.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_up_the_score
|
| > Running up the score occurs when a competitor continues
| to play in such a way as to score additional points after
| the outcome of the game is no longer in significant
| question and the team is all but assured of winning. In
| the United States and Canada, it is considered poor
| sportsmanship to run up the score in most circumstances
|
| > The term and the concept are not common elsewhere in
| the world.
|
| > In professional soccer, the concept of "running up the
| score" is mostly unheard of;
|
| Pulling your punches in the football world cup would
| indeed have been seen as the ultimate insult.
| bscphil wrote:
| I wonder if this could have something to do with the
| popularity (well, the existence) of American Football.
| It's a very physical contact sport. Obviously, when a
| team is losing badly and the other is continuing to run
| up the score, emotions can run wild, and so there's a
| stronger possibility of unnecessary injuries. Maybe it's
| felt to be better to just "take a knee and run out the
| clock", where possible.
|
| If you compare with baseball, I don't know that I've ever
| heard of a strong aversion to running up the score. Maybe
| you're not exactly sending out your substitute batter in
| the top of the ninth when you're up 10, but I've never
| seen a team give up and not put in a reasonable effort.
|
| Wildly disparate scores seem pretty common in basketball
| as well. Even in college (American) football, scores of
| like 70-0 are not that uncommon. You only really quit
| trying in football when you can run out the clock, or you
| pull your starting players to prevent injuries.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even in American football, there aren't really a lot of
| benchwarmers who are just there as backup. The backup
| quarterback obviously and teams do indeed sometimes put
| the backup in during the fourth quarter if they have a
| big lead. Though I doubt that would happen often in a
| playoff game. (And, yes, teams will manage the clock
| towards the end of the game but that's far more about
| playing it safe than having an aversion to running up the
| score.)
| bscphil wrote:
| You're right, perhaps I should have been even more
| assertive that "not running up the score" isn't _that_
| big a thing even in American sports.
|
| I think a _clear_ case of this though is when a team has
| the ball with the lead and less than 2 minutes to go, and
| the other team has no timeouts, it 's customary to just
| take a knee ("victory formation") rather than going on a
| drive and trying to score again.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's not about not running up the score though. That's
| about doing the absolutely safest thing to run out the
| clock. Teams will do that even if they have a small lead
| because it's _almost_ foolproof. (I 'm sure some
| quarterback has fumbled though.)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Watch cricket instead. If one team has an unassailable
| lead the match is over.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_cricket#Play,
| https://cricketershub.com/how-to-win-cricket-match/, http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoring_(cricket)#Winning_scor.
| ..
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I actually heard the exact opposite argument being made
| that it was not sportsman like by Germany to allow Brazil
| that one goal against them, since it looked like they
| stopped caring or allowed it out of pitty
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is not unsportsmanlike to play to the best of your
| ability, especially not during a world cup.
|
| However, it may not have been the best strategy. It was a
| semifinal, the final was next. If you are dominating, it
| makes sense to calm down a bit to avoid wearing out your
| players and limit the risk of injury. Germany still won
| the cup, so we can't really criticize.
| Lapsa wrote:
| BRA71L!!!
| ghaff wrote:
| You do see teams come back from unlikely deficits in
| sports every now and then. Not common of course but it
| does happen. And it tends to happen when the leading team
| decides to obviously just play defensively.
| Humdeee wrote:
| It would be considered far more insulting if Germany took
| their foot off the pedal and eased off offensively. The
| media would have a (bigger) field day with that. As well,
| this is professional sports, not gym class.
|
| Even in international hockey: Canada, USA, Russia will
| thump teams 20-0 sometimes. There is no way any member of
| any team, coaching staff or otherwise, to ease off.
| kd5bjo wrote:
| It's not uncommon for coaches to put the second- or
| third-tier players in when it's going to be a blowout,
| though: It preserves the starters for the next match and
| gives the others in-game experience, both of which are
| good for the team's development.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| I think it's more unsportsmanlike to not play to the best
| of one's ability, especially in an international event
| like this.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Funny you say that. My SO grew up playing and still does. I
| never really thought much of it until we'd watch some games
| together. I find myself enjoying the play in the field more
| than I do when either team scores.
| frobozz wrote:
| In most sports, when a goal is scored, the game stops for
| some kind of reset.
|
| Surely a game with more goals is therefore more boring,
| because it has more time with everyone dawdling back to the
| centre line and the referee holding the ball/puck/whatever.
| mysterydip wrote:
| In hockey, play also stops when the goalie catches the
| puck.
| Macha wrote:
| In many games when a goal is not scored in certain ways
| (saves, balls going out of play, some sports even have time
| limits), play also stops.
| bluntfang wrote:
| >If a player was on a breakaway, I'd also try to do stuff like
| this (as the goalie), which of course makes opponents stay far
| away from you.
|
| I played soccer as a goalie at a high level in my youth, and
| this was my strategy on breakaways as well, completely legal
| move as long as I tackled the ball and not the player. I was a
| very intimating and athletic goalie at 6'5" ~220. Players did
| not like to be near me.
| hbosch wrote:
| >A possible solution could be to expand the goalie-only area
| around the net. That would, in theory, force opponents to focus
| more on shooting and not on piling around the goalie.
|
| Pandora's box is already open. Bigger net, more space, smaller
| pads, etc. won't get players to necessarily focus more on skill
| shots... it will likely make the chaotic approach today more
| successful.
| jacurtis wrote:
| Yeah i do agree that pandora's box might already be open. I
| am an avid hockey fan and there has been a huge shift towards
| "trick" shots in the past few years to get around these
| goalies.
|
| It is becoming increasingly rare to see "normal" goals
| anymore in NHL hockey. Goalies are simply too good that
| normal goals won't go in. So if a defensemen wants to
| slapshot the puck, his forwards (who are down in front of the
| net) need to "screen" the goalie so the goalie can't see the
| puck. The forward then needs to try to dodge the puck at the
| last second before the goalie can react.
|
| We also are seeing probably half or so of NHL goals come from
| deflections to pinball the puck around so the goalie can't
| even track the puck. It is amazing how good NHL forwards are
| getting now at deflecting. We routinely see triple
| deflections now.
|
| The rest of the goals are just from diving the net. With 6-8
| players in front of the net (3 attacking forwards, and 5
| defending forwards+defensemen) just slapping at the puck in
| the chaos as it bounces around, it eventually goes in.
|
| So I have long since believed that they should widen the net
| (just by 4-6 inches). But I do think that the NHL players
| have just gotten so good at creatively combatting the goalie,
| that widening the net might end up with too many goals in
| games. There is a fine balance between not enough scoring
| like in Soccer (Football outside USA) and with too much
| scoring (like in Basketball). American Football does a good
| job balancing the scoring. Most games have 3-4 touchdowns
| between both teams, plus a handful of other scoring
| opportunities like field goals and conversions. It keeps the
| touchdowns exciting (players even dance in the endzone on
| live TV), while still moving the game along with smaller
| scoring opportunities throughout the game.
| caddemon wrote:
| I also think American Football (and baseball) does a good
| job of having quantifiable action outside of scoring plays.
| Every play has a clear result, often with obvious valence.
| So even though it doesn't count directly towards the final
| score, you can build up tension and excitement for example
| just on 3rd down conversion attempts.
|
| An experienced viewer might be able to pick out this sort
| of mini battle during other sports, and there are also more
| nuanced battles in football that a random viewer may not
| pick up on. But for somebody casual, or even just listening
| on the radio or checking for updates on an app, there is a
| lot more "result" happening on a football field.
|
| Plus the pauses help, when somebody gets the better of
| their opponent in a traditional goal-based sport you
| usually know mere moments later whether it had an impact on
| the game. A 3rd down conversion on the other hand can have
| minutes of game time (let alone real time) before one knows
| whether it led to a score. And even if it didn't, there is
| at least a clear impact on time of possession.
|
| So I think perception of too little vs too much scoring can
| be helped by this dynamic, where real scores still feel
| very impactful but there are "fake" scores one can also
| root for on a shorter timescale.
| garmaine wrote:
| > In hockey, you have a lot of leeway in terms of physicality
| and you can push, shove, lock the stick of your opponent, and
| do a number of other things that are completely penalized in
| basketball or soccer. The result was that opposing players
| became hesitant to get too close to the net, thus solving the
| problem somewhat.
|
| Also the goalie is given waaay more leeway. The goalie can get
| away with things that would definitely result in the penalty
| box for anyone else. I don't know whether is is by convention,
| or because penalizing the goalie is such a heavy disadvantage
| that it isn't done lightly.
| [deleted]
| miskin wrote:
| When a goalkeeper is given a penalty, one field player is
| going to the penalty box instead of the goalie.
| Delk wrote:
| I was about to comment on that, too, but I then came to
| think GP might have meant game misconducts (in case of
| getting actually physically violent) which would usually be
| a greater loss in case of a primary goalie than in the case
| of a random skater.
|
| Still there's probably plenty of area where the penalty
| could be a two-minute minor (served by another player
| instead of the goalie), and where goalies are still
| permitted to defend their crease with means that would be
| considered roughing or something similar if done by
| skaters.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Same in football (soccer) as well. The goalkeeper is
| protected and can simultaneously get away with more contact.
|
| Historically its because goalkeepers have been vulnerable
| when in the air and outfield players leading with their feet
| when reaching for a contested ball.
| remarkEon wrote:
| I think it's also kind of an unwritten rule. Been watching
| hockey for 25 years now and it's rare to see the goalie go to
| the box, but when they do it's for a particularly egregious
| slashing penalty (usually to the ... swimsuit area). I agree
| with the general point of the article though, which I thought
| was well written. Hockey, especially over I'd say the last
| 5-6 years or so has gotten a lot more "run and gun" than
| before that imo.
| miskin wrote:
| I'm not sure how referees are handling this in Canada or
| the USA, but in Europe, if the goalie hits any other player
| with blocker to head area, it is the game penalty for him.
| If the goalie starts a fistfight (without gloves), it is
| also the game penalty.
| garmaine wrote:
| A lot of fighting is legal or results in a minimal slap
| on the wrist in the NHL. Different culture.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Where in Europe are you? I've been trying to find more
| hockey to watch that's not US based. In the NHL it's
| extraordinarily rare for a goalie to get into a fight
| (also fighting in hockey should definitely not be banned
| ... it's part of the art and culture of the sport).
| Delk wrote:
| I haven't been following hockey in a couple of decades
| but fighting used to be much _less_ common in European
| leagues AFAIK than it is (or was) in the NHL. Goalies
| getting involved would have been even rarer. But if
| fights do occur, they are (or at least used to be)
| penalised more strictly, in line with fighting not being
| considered a part of the game the way it is in North
| America.
| miskin wrote:
| I'm in Slovakia. I think problem with watching hockey in
| TV is not only about quality of players, but also
| production of the broadcasting. Here NHL shines and it is
| big difference. When I was on live match, it was quite
| watchable (even Slovak league ;), but in TV it lacks the
| action that is provided by good broadcast production - a
| lot of cameras, cuts, etc.
|
| Also around here it is quite uncommon for goalies to
| fight, but especially goalies coming from Canada tended
| to "payback" in some brawls around crease with blocker
| and paid dearly for it, as they had to leave the crease
| during important play-off game afterwards.
| jug wrote:
| Yeah, these are common strategies for I think basically as long
| as I've watched ice hockey.
|
| Have guy parked in front of the goalie. Keep other players in
| the attacking zone. Shoot from the blue line. Hope for the puck
| to hit players/blades along the way in the commotion that will
| change the direction so late that the goalie doesn't have time
| to react, but even if not, at least players will block the
| goalies vision.
|
| Your idea to make it unpleasant to be parked in front of the
| goalie is also a common "solution" but that's why they place
| the big players there. :D Some are basically meant for this one
| position. I now recall "Demolition Man" Tomas Holmstrom back in
| the day. He even built special protection for the job, like a
| special back plate for the constant crosscheckings.
|
| Yes, even if not for this reason, I think the goalie area
| should be expanded a bit. It always felt too small, like they
| could seriously disrupt the goalies job before even breaking
| rules.
| playingchanges wrote:
| Man that clip is so old time hockey I love it. Best part is the
| ref giving him the attaboy after. I remember thinking that
| Hasek wearing the cage instead of a modern goalie mask was so
| cool as a kid.
| newsclues wrote:
| Bigger nets, and limit goal pad sizes
| pbrb wrote:
| Interesting because they actually decreased net size like 7
| or 8 yrs ago.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Good comment. Expanding the crease is an interesting idea but
| I'm not a fan of it for one reason: it would likely lead hockey
| down the path of baseball, where so much of the game is
| "reviewed". Inevitably if we expand the crease size more
| players are going to inadvertently cross through it because,
| well, skating on ice is a little chaotic. Which to me has
| always been the point (and the fun) of the game.
|
| Edit: LOL just watched that video. I remember watching that
| game as a kid.
| keiferski wrote:
| Maybe you could have a two-zone area.
|
| The outer part is _if you step into this and don't
| immediately step out within 2 seconds, it's a penalty_ while
| the inner part is _immediate penalty._
| m8s wrote:
| To be honest, the less the referees are involved, the
| better.
|
| There's a much simpler answer: increase the size of the
| net. Hockey sticks are pretty incredible these days, and
| the torque generated from flexing the stick is pretty
| unbelievable. Playing in net in hockey is mostly about
| setting up at the right angles and blocking the highest
| percentage of the net that you can, combined with
| athleticism and instinct.
|
| But a bigger goal would lead to more goals, if that's the
| end goal for the NHL.
| keiferski wrote:
| I don't think the goal is necessarily to have more goals,
| but to reduce the pile up of players around the net.
|
| Maybe it's my goalie experience speaking, but the
| highlight of hockey to me was always the direct
| confrontation between a shooter and the goalie. The more
| chaotic the goals, the less interesting the sport is.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I think like the article says, the way you reduce the
| pileup around the goalie is to _make it possible to score
| from places other than the pileup around the goalie._
|
| Just as the viability of 3-point shooters opened up the
| floor in the NBA, making it viable to score from the blue
| line in the NHL would open the ice as well.
|
| When I was a kid in the 80s players would score from the
| blue line all of the time.
|
| They were still relatively low percentage shots but a guy
| _could_ absolutely score with a slapper from the blue
| line. Enough that you had to respect the threat. Not
| unheard of for a d-man to score 20 or 30 in a year.
|
| As a fan that was fun too! Not as fun as a magical "sexy"
| Gretzky goal. But you could hear the anticipation in the
| building when the puck went back to some guy who had a
| cannon from the blue line. Al Iafrate, etc.
|
| Today, if a defensemen actually scored from the blue
| line, the team would probably immediately release the
| goalie and fire the goaltending coach lol. Only reason to
| shoot from long range is so you can get the puck into the
| scrum in the slot and hope some something happens from
| there.
| miskin wrote:
| Goals from blue line are not that uncommon even in NHL
| [1]. Also, hockey is played on many different levels than
| NHL and trust me, if I got one USD for each goal I got
| from blue line, I'm doing just fine :)
|
| [1] https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/video/chara-levels-
| slapshot-blu...
| remarkEon wrote:
| Inclined to agree. The goals I remember from watching
| hockey in my youth are the really sexy ones. A risky pass
| and a breakaway, or some slick skating at the blue line
| to put some defenders off balance. Also, "just make the
| goal bigger" sounds a lot like "change the rules so more
| runs are scored" in baseball. You lose an element of the
| game you can't get back when you do that. Maybe that's a
| little "old man yells at cloud" but whatever.
| miskin wrote:
| I'm a hockey goalie, too. I think we have to think about
| non-NHL goalies too. Not every adult is 2m high and if we
| make net size bigger we will effectively make the game
| unplayable for "average" goalies. When a shooter shoots
| on you from 3-4 meters, there is not enough time to react
| too much and you play mostly angles and block. I can
| imagine that kids playing in a much larger net would lead
| to a very different game where shooting is much more
| beneficial than any other option. Yes, NHL is what most
| people watch on TV, but there are millions of people
| playing the game that would have it ruined.
| [deleted]
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| There's nothing preventing them from having different
| sized nets for different levels. Basketball 3-pt lines
| are different dimensions per level, for instance.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Which is different from soccer. One thing I really like
| about soccer is the human error element. They don't use
| video replays at the highest levels of the game because
| the game should be exactly the same whether it's a bunch
| of kids playing with the only ball in their neighborhood
| or the World Cup finale.
| Someone wrote:
| They _didn't_ use video replays at the highest levels of
| the game.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_assistant_referee
| amalcon wrote:
| Basically every pro sport had that philosophy, until they
| didn't. Eventually, some highly publicized incorrect call
| (with video evidence, because it was televised) leads to
| refs using video replay.
| ajuc wrote:
| Kids are playing soccer with all kinds of weird goal
| sizes, the standard one at the schools I've seen was
| about 50% the size of the "real" ones. Nobody really
| talks about it because it doesn't matter as long as it's
| the same size for both sides.
|
| Kids are also often playing with 1 goal and 1 goalkeeper
| and 2 teams trying to score (you have to move past half
| the pitch after regaining possession before shooting)-
| that way on 1 field you can have 2 games going on at once
| and only 1 person has to be the goalie in each of these
| games.
|
| And we've played soccer on random backyards - you just
| put 2 backpacks as the goalposts and you're ready to go.
| I think the focus on rules and dimensions is very
| american, kids just want to dribble and shoot, the score
| and the minute details aren't important :).
|
| As for replay they were introduced in high-level football
| last few years. It's called VAR and most fans hate it
| because it spoils the celebrations after a goal is scored
| and you have to wait to know if it's really a goal or
| not.
| veggieburglar wrote:
| Not only that, but VAR has consistently produced some
| shocking and unexplainable decisions. They haven't quite
| gotten the implementation correct. Offside calls are
| improved, dangerous tackle/red card reviews are improved
| (for the most part, there are still some unexplainable
| decisions), but handball calls are still shambolic. It's
| still a human referee up there in the VAR booth and they
| don't have to explain their decision making at all.
| That's my opinion, at least- I mostly watch the Premier
| League.
| ajuc wrote:
| Premier league has one of the worst VAR I've seen in top
| 5 leagues. I think Bundesliga does it the best (but still
| not perfect).
|
| > handball calls are still shambolic.
|
| that's because handball calls are interpretation of
| intent and slow motion won't help you with that.
|
| So then they changed the rules to ignore the intent and
| it became a valid strategy for a striker to try to shoot
| the ball at a defender arm for penalty.
| ajuc wrote:
| Average top-level soccer game ends something like 2-1
| nowadays (maybe 3-1? it's certainly going up with time).
|
| Average semi-professional game ends something like 6-3.
|
| Average kids on the backyard soccer game ends 10-5 or
| something like that :)
|
| Compared to "real" players kids suck as goalkeepers but
| so what? They are still having fun. The score doesn't
| matter that much at that level anyway.
|
| Kids also usually play on smaller fields with smaller
| goals but it's not mainly because of scoring chance -
| it's because schools don't have the space and kids don't
| have the stamina to run for 90 minutes on a full sized
| football pitch.
|
| I don't think anybody minds weird scores in lower level
| games.
| watwut wrote:
| > Average kids on the backyard soccer game ends 10-5 or
| something like that :)
|
| He is not talking about backyard kids. He is talking
| about teenagers and adults playing hockey in hobbyist
| amateur teams. These typically tend to be much better
| players then kids in backyard.
| ajuc wrote:
| These are results of last few matches at regional level
| that reserve team from my city has played: 5-1, 3-0, 3-4,
| 11-1, 5-0, 8-0, 14-0
|
| These are semi-professional adults playing on full sized
| football field with regular sized goals for full 90
| minutes.
|
| It's not unheard of to score or lose 20 goals at that
| level :)
| watwut wrote:
| I dont see how that is argument for anything. The bigger
| net would change it to 40 or something. The complain is
| not about how many goals happen, but about how the game
| plays.
|
| Also, I am still not talking about "reserve team". I am
| talking about hobbyists who want to have some fun while
| exercising and socializing, who maybe used to play in
| some team as kids but dropped out never being close to be
| stars.
|
| Some adults don't just watch sports, they do actively
| play them.
| miskin wrote:
| Problem is that if the net is too big, it will be
| different game. I was maybe too generic with "kids".
| Youngsters (cca 10 years and more) are playing in
| official nets on full size field, so if they were bigger
| they couldn't catch almost anything that goes directly
| into any of the corner, or they would have to be away
| from net extra few meters. This would change game
| drastically. Especially with young players I think it is
| much more important to build up chance, pass and "play",
| not only shoot slapshots from blue line. Also, in non-pro
| games, there are plenty of goals. There is no need to
| have much more. If you play on amateur level, like I do
| now, you would see that there is usually problem to find
| enough goalies (for many reasons) and with bigger net it
| would be even worse, because if you are under 190cm you
| would be there for laughs.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > Youngsters (cca 10 years and more) are playing in
| official nets on full size field, so if they were bigger
| they couldn't catch almost anything that goes directly
| into any of the corner, or they would have to be away
| from net extra few meters.
|
| Keep in mind that the number of kids who can pick a
| corner and kick a ball into it consistently is pretty
| small too.
|
| The skill level of the goalie and the skill level of the
| kickers will actually likely balance out.
| azernik wrote:
| The original article proposed different sized goals for
| different leagues.
| miskin wrote:
| Sure, it may be solution, but there is a lot of muscle
| memory that is bound to size of goals. If you have
| goalkeeper in junior league it would be very complicated
| to pull him up as backup to senior game. Or from lower
| league to upper one. All the angles and distances would
| need to be re-trained when switching leagues. I cannot
| imagine that, really.
|
| I think it would be easier to somehow limit area blocked
| by goalie equipment together - so if the goalie is very
| tall, pads would need to be either narrower or not that
| high to keep some max blocking area. And this is only IF
| we really need to do some change at all.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Expanding the crease is an interesting idea but I'm
| not a fan of it for one reason: it would likely lead
| hockey down the path of baseball, where so much of
| the game is "reviewed".
|
| We don't have to imagine what this would be like. The NHL
| tried this in the 90s and the result was exactly what you're
| talking about, and it was absolutely horrible, for the
| reasons you say. You are completely correct.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| The Buffalo natives on this forum are all too aware of
| this.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The NHL has done that: made pads smaller.
|
| 2line pass is now a 3line pass rule.
|
| they moved the goal line back for to increase playmaking
| space.
|
| There's no more ties; which means fewer matches where only
| 2 points are awarded.
| hervature wrote:
| Technically, it is still a two line pass, simply the
| center line doesn't exist for the purposes of the rule.
| Semantically no difference.
| lc9er wrote:
| Don't forget the trapezoid rule. On one hand, it
| discouraged the insufferable Devils play style. But it
| also stymied the usefulness of a puck-handling goalie.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Yeah, not many goalie assists these days ha ha ha.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| The result was that opposing players became hesitant
| to get too close to the net, thus solving the problem
| somewhat.
|
| Hahaha this was my solution too in floor/street hockey. I was
| not the best goalie in terms of sheer athleticism, to put it
| extremely mildly.
|
| So I took advantage of my size and the goalie equipment and got
| good at throwing my body into scrums around the net. I didn't
| even hit opposing players per se. But if there was a loose
| puck/ball I took advantage of the fact that I could make a
| beeline for it and if there happened to be an opposing player
| in my way... well, unfortunate for them! A
| possible solution could be to expand the goalie-only
| area around the net. That would, in theory, force
| opponents to focus more on shooting and not on piling
| around the goalie.
|
| This is a very surprising conclusion given that they tried this
| already in the 90s and it was a total disaster. Culminating in
| the infamous Cup-winning goal (against Hasek, from your clip
| above) no less.
|
| https://bleacherreport.com/articles/343121-one-final-thought...
|
| It was a boon for the goalies, not the scorers, and it turned
| every goal into a controversial mess. As a fan you couldn't
| even celebrate a goal -- you had to wait until the refs and/or
| replay decided if it was okay or not minutes later.
|
| Part of the problem is that attacking players can't really
| control their position in a precise way in a scrum, given all
| of the contact and the fact that everybody's, well, wearing ice
| skates. Half of the time the goals were called off for a player
| being in the goalie crease it wasn't their fault.
|
| And then there was Martin Brodeur, who absolutely broke the
| game for about a decade by skating around like an "invulnerable
| third defenseman nobody was allowed to touch." Effective, but
| really contrary to the spirit of the game and about as much fun
| as watching paint dry.
|
| I _really_ cannot think of a solution besides larger nets.
|
| 4-on-4 makes for really exciting hockey but that feels like
| fundamentally changing the sport too much. It would also IMO
| place too much emphasis on penalties. A 5-on-4 advantage for
| two minutes is one thing but 4-on-3 is quite another.
| Refereeing in a mass action sport will always be highly
| imperfect and that would really put the game in the refs'
| hands.
| dmurray wrote:
| Maybe the penalties could still be 5-on-4: the offending
| player gets removed, but can be replaced, and the other team
| gets to bring on an additional skater.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I think it would work but it's such a fundamental change to
| the sport that I can't imagine any established hockey
| league even considering it. Not saying they shouldn't, just
| saying they won't!
|
| The most radical change I can imagine them considering
| would be eliminating offsides.
| dmurray wrote:
| Is it bigger than changing the size of the goal (the
| author's preferred solution?)
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Yes, I think altering the number of players on the ice is
| way more radical than changing the size of the goal by a
| few %... I wouldn't think they are even comparable!
|
| What do you think?
| dmurray wrote:
| I don't watch enough hockey to know, and never played.
| But if the goalie can cover 90% of the small goal, and
| 70% of a goal just a few percent bigger, it makes sense
| to me that could be a bigger change than changing the
| number of players.
| goache wrote:
| I created a blog post a few years back showing goalies aren't big
| enough http://randomlyunique.com/data/2015/goal-goalie-
| girth/index.... :-D
| syntaxing wrote:
| Hah, that was a fun read. I like the other posts too like the
| first post on the site about if your wife loves you more or
| not.
| goache wrote:
| Thanks for this comment - it made my day :-)
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| The author makes 2 basic mistakes
|
| 1. Suggesting that goalies are nearly equally suited on their
| knees as on their skates.
|
| 2. Forgetting the goaltending rule exists in basketball.
| keiferski wrote:
| The article is written by a goalie who has won six Stanley
| cups.
| ctab wrote:
| And that is what makes it so disappointing. Dryden -- who is
| a genius, a brilliant writer, and one of the most
| accomplished NHL goaltenders ever -- is absolutely wrong on
| the point that goaltenders should just stay on their knees
| all game.
|
| NHL shooters have no problem hitting the uppermost part of
| the goal at will, and a goaltender on his knees simply
| doesn't cover enough of that area. This is a 6'5" goalie in
| that position (presumably having dropped down from upright
| after the shot is taken):
| https://www.1stohiobattery.com/columbus-blue-jackets-
| news/20...
|
| If the shooter is 5 or more feet away, and has a couple
| seconds to set up a shot, and the goaltender is on his knees,
| it is virtually an automatic goal. Someone employing the
| strategy Dryden suggests should be the standard would lose
| every game for their team.
|
| This takes away from his other very good commentary about the
| aesthetics of the game changing.
| keiferski wrote:
| Did you even read the article? I don't think so.
|
| He doesn't claim that goalies should always be on their
| knees, but rather than it's common for them to do so,
| exploring the reasons why.
| ctab wrote:
| Of course I read the article. See the paragraph
| beginning: "Really, the biggest reason for a goalie to
| get off his knees is that if he doesn't, people might
| notice.", and the two paragraphs preceding it.
| keiferski wrote:
| In no way does he argue that the goalie should always be
| on his knees. He says it's common for some to be, then
| explores the reasons why that might be the case. That is
| called good, nuanced writing.
|
| It's an article in the The Atlantic, not a formal proof.
| ctab wrote:
| He says he noticed while watching Vasilevskiy that after
| having dropped he did not immediately spring back up as
| his team carried the puck out, but eventually did before
| the other team regained control -- "but he didn't really
| need to", because Dryden, wrongly, thinks that when the
| team returns to the zone Vasilevskiy should face them
| from his knees.
|
| Every NHL goalie plays much of the game on their knees,
| as they should, because they end up there in response to
| low shots and close-approaching shooters. What Dryden is
| wrong to imply is that they should adopt this as their
| default posture.
|
| As I reread I see that even worse, he downplays the
| danger of adopting this position leading to taking a slap
| shot to the helmet, saying a modern goalie mask protects
| the head "as much as a catching glove does the hand".
| Just utterly false. https://www.tsn.ca/nhl-concerned-by-
| rise-in-goalie-concussio...
| rrock wrote:
| I'm sure that Vasilevskiy didn't pop up immediately there
| because he was exhausted. If his team turns it over, he's
| back on his feet in an instant. No way he stays on his
| knees the whole game
| ptcampbell wrote:
| This quote does not support your argument.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| That's why my claim was weaker than ctab's. He suggested
| they are equally suited on their knees.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Also, the stick is very substantial for covering the 5-hole
| already. When a goaltender is on his knees, he isn't going
| to be raising the stick over his head to cover the three
| hole.
| tempestn wrote:
| Also nothing in the article suggested a misunderstanding of
| the goaltending rule.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Here you go:
|
| > Only the ball needs to get to the hoop, and in this NBA
| game, it doesn't matter whether you are 7 feet tall or 8
| feet tall; a ball shot from beyond the 23-foot-9-inch arc
| will loop over the outstretched arm of even the tallest
| player.
|
| That is absolutely untrue. Any player that can dunk can
| goaltend any shot.
| ondrek wrote:
| This also answers why goalies aren't huge fat guys.
|
| As the rules limit how big a goalie's pad can be, a huge guy
| might take up a lot of space, but much of his body will be
| unprotected from 150+ km/h slap shots.
| old_fart_dev wrote:
| Ken Dryden is a legend - he was a _tall_ butterfly goaltender in
| the 70s and is the prototype of professional goaltenders today.
|
| I think it's funny he thinks goalies are too big given he was a
| huge goalie himself. I _do_ think goalies might be too mobile on
| their knees, which Ken alluded to in this article.
|
| Knee stacks and landing pads change the game in the early 2000s.
| Goaltenders now can drop in a butterfly and slide across the
| crease still on their knees, allowing them to cover backside
| plays, passes from behind the net, and wraparounds, which used to
| be bread and butter plays for offenses. Getting rid of the pads
| would force goalies to play the same "drop and pop" style Ken
| did, where goalies need to get to their feet more often to more
| laterally. This would give offenses more incentive to get the
| puck to behind the back line and open up the ice more.
|
| Alternatively to that, goalie skates have also gotten _smaller_ -
| there 's less protective covering on them. This makes it easier
| for goalies to push off with their skates while on their knees,
| since more of the blade of the skate can touch the ice. I can
| image the NHL could declare "for goalie safety" that goalie
| skates must have a certain thickness of protection around the
| skate, which would make sliding less effective.
|
| Of course, amateur goalies (such as myself) should be able to
| keep knee stacks, since they also reduce stress on the hip caused
| by the knees dropping into the ice. ;)
| soperj wrote:
| Ken Dryden was not a butterfly goalie. Almost no one was until
| Patrick Roy popularized it.
| old_fart_dev wrote:
| I feel shame - I confused Ken Dryden with Jacques Plante. In
| my defense, I'm a Bruins fan and we're not big on having
| well-informed opinions. ;)
| jacurtis wrote:
| > I think it's funny he thinks goalies are too big given he was
| a huge goalie himself. I do think goalies might be too mobile
| on their knees, which Ken alluded to in this article.
|
| This is actually what to me is the most enlightening. It is
| almost like a whistleblower coming out to say something is
| wrong. Similarly to how the sport of cycling in the 2000s was
| filled with doping across the board. All the players that
| played back then came out and admitted that they doped because
| everyone else was doping. But now they are retired so they
| didn't mind admitting how they played the game and broke the
| rules.
|
| I think Dryden is basically doing the same thing. Although it
| isn't as scandalous as doping, he is basically saying that as a
| top-tier goalie (among the best of all time) he recognizes that
| he did so well in his career because of his size. He didn't
| have to rely as much on athleticism as the goalies before him.
| So now he is opening up about "the truth".
| siruva07 wrote:
| "Take away the goalie's eyes. If he can see it, he'll stop it."
|
| One heckuva instigator, NY Ranger Sean Avery, figured this out in
| the 2008 playoffs against NJ Devils Martin Brodeur.
|
| video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec_2oKWe2Gw
|
| The day after, the NHL made a rule that makes it illegal for a
| player to stand in front of a goalie and wave his or her stick in
| the goalie's face. Dubbed "The Sean Avery Rule," it results in a
| 2 min unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
|
| And yes, this play still has me riled up! :)
| old_fart_dev wrote:
| The fact Sean did this multiple times makes me smile.
|
| This should be legal in beer league hockey. I spend a good
| amount of time in net with my defense men standing right in
| front of me, facing away from the net - I would love someone to
| come in and fan away all the beer farts from the crease.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Maybe the professionalization of classic games has just gone too
| far?
|
| Perhaps what was fun for kids in the winter wasn't actually
| designed to be taken seriously by grown men/woman, with millions
| of dollars at stake?
|
| I don't know. I still watch F1, so perhaps I'm just off base
| here, but it seems that there is a disconnect between the sport
| and the spectacle.
| soperj wrote:
| I honestly don't know what hockey Dryden is watching here. The
| game has gotten faster, and the players smaller over the last
| decade and a half. Most goals are tip shots, one timers, dekes,
| or power play goals. I agree that the goalie equipment size is
| out of whack, especially compared to what came before, but the
| rest of what he said makes me think he hasn't watched hockey
| since the 90s.
| miskin wrote:
| Goalie equipment rules are the same or more restrictive than in
| the past (pads are more narrow than they were allowed before).
| The difference is that current goalies in NHL are HUGE. When I
| see how tall they are when they are on their knees... OMG, I'm
| that tall when I stand in the crease. Catcher and blocker sizes
| are given and the same for everyone. The difference is with pad
| size where total height is limited by lengths of your bones so
| tall goalies can effectively have much larger pads. So, not
| only they are already big and block a big portion of the net,
| they block even more space because their pads are allowed to be
| much taller and thus blocking even more net.
| soperj wrote:
| yes, the biggest players on the ice these days are the
| goalies. The rest of the narrative about everyone crashing
| the net to get a goal seems false by my eye. The high slot
| tip was popularized in the last decade for instance.
| soperj wrote:
| For comparison sake, lacrosse goalies have bigger equipment,
| and a smaller net, and yet let in way more goals per game than
| any NHL game.
| 0dana wrote:
| Lacrosse has a larger net, and goalies have far less and
| smaller equipment.
| frockington1 wrote:
| There are differences between indoor box hockey up in
| Canada and the open field variety more common in the US
| (both countries play both of course)
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Field hockey is present in the US, but ice hockey is far
| more popular. This article is about the US/Canadian top-
| level ice hockey league... I can't say I've ever heard of
| professional field hockey play in the US, much less a
| nation-wide league.
| soperj wrote:
| They meant box lacrosse.
| soperj wrote:
| I was talking about box lacrosse, not field:
|
| https://laxgoalierat.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/11/BoxLacro...
| jacurtis wrote:
| I am a dumb American. I didn't even know Box Lacrosse was
| a thing. We only have field lacrosse here.
| soperj wrote:
| lol. All of my favourite box lacrosse players had to go
| play box lacrosse in the US to actually make some money.
| You have a National Lacrosse League. Although I just
| checked, and there are a bunch more Canadian teams in
| that league than there used to be. At one point in the
| mid 2000s, 12 of the 14 teams were US based.
| tyingq wrote:
| Try "Ian Laperriere face" on google images for how fast the pucks
| move. I'd be wearing every bit of padding I could.
| m8s wrote:
| Or Sean Walker (of the Los Angeles Kings) from this season.
| It's the worst puck-to-face shot I've seen.
|
| Warning, graphic and not for the faint of heart:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/AugieLens/status/1355249355507163...
| stan_rogers wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember maskless NHL goalies (IIRC, Glenn
| Hall was the last of the breed). It wasn't pretty. And Terry
| Sawchuk's mask when he finally started wearing one, with all
| of the stitches he had gotten, and all of the stitches he
| _would_ have gotten, painted on. And - remember that the
| first masks were basically just a fibreglass face covering
| with nearly zero padding - Jacques Plante spending a
| significant part of the late '60s and early '70s unconscious
| on the ice.... again (he stopped a lot of pucks with his
| face).
| Grustaf wrote:
| Extremely well written piece, but isn't the solution obvious?
| Make the goal larger.
| jgilias wrote:
| Having thought about this a bit, I think the suggestion to
| increase the goal/reduce the goalie would make ice hockey
| considerably less interesting to watch.
|
| It goes something like this. The inherent thrill of watching a
| sports event comes from multiple things: pace of the game, ratio
| between attempts/scores, watching skillful people do tricky
| things, but most importantly - not knowing who is going to win.
| So, it's not very exciting to watch a coin tossing championship,
| because there's no skill involved. But at the same time, it's not
| very exciting to watch something where the nominally stronger
| team wins with near absolute certainty. Like a game with a high
| attempt/score ratio with a single mode of scoring. Basketball
| solved this by introducing another mode of scoring that's also
| inherently more uncertain. So they introduced asymmetry and more
| uncertainty leading to more interesting games, as the certainty
| with which you can say who's going to win is reduced, as that
| depends on wider skill-sets across the team and also more luck.
|
| Now, take a game with a low attempt/score ratio. The uncertainty
| about who's going to win is baked into that ratio. With some
| luck, the nominally weaker team still has a chance of winning the
| nominally stronger team. And this is what makes ice hockey
| interesting in my book. This is how Finland could win the world
| championships without any NHL players last year. Increasing the
| goal would increase the attempt/score ratio, without adding any
| other offsetting asymmetry to the game. This will reduce the
| uncertainty of who's going to win, making the game less
| interesting to watch. For a game with a relatively high
| attempt/score ratio that's also highly dynamic with a lot of
| attempts per game, and has somewhat similar strategies to hockey,
| I invite you to check out Innebandy/Floorball. It's a fun game,
| but not that exciting as a spectator sport. Because the nominally
| stronger team will win any given game with near certainty due to
| the large amount of attempts per game coupled with a high
| attempt/score ratio.
| Pinus wrote:
| Neither following nor playing either sport I'm on thin ice here
| (or maybe that's exactly what I'm not!), but isn't bandy sort of
| like hockey but with soccer-sized goals (and a ball instead of a
| puck)?
| rrock wrote:
| Yes, and is played on a frozen soccer field, 11 on 11. No
| boards, the ball can go out of bounds. Scoring is much higher.
|
| (Others may correct me, I've been to one bandy game my whole
| Life)
| Markoff wrote:
| I've never understood why they don't just hire extremely obese
| goalie (or some former sumo warrior), if you dress him in all
| protective gear therw won't be space for puck to pass, is there
| any NHL regulation about it?
| ajcp wrote:
| Those guys tend to be big and tall. Tall = a lot of space your
| body takes up is above the net.
|
| You'd want a very fat, short guy, right? Well even if he
| manages to be as wide as 80% of that net that leaves a massive
| 20% of unattended space. So now this extremely obese, extremely
| squat goalie needs to move faster than a puck to protect that
| 20%? Not gonna happen.
|
| And that's just hoping he can survive until the 1st
| intermission before you have to drag him off the ice as he's,
| you know, extremely obese.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| There are max size rules for some of the pads, so a really
| large player would have exposed area.
|
| I don't know if you've seen the bruises that pro hockey goalies
| get even when they take a puck through the pads, but I really
| wouldn't want someone with unprotected flesh to have to make a
| decision about allowing a goal or getting hit.
| ooboe wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrgHA56uEDQ
|
| Garbage TV link, but they address your question. One thing they
| get very right is that, in non-game, non-rushed environments,
| even the worst NHL hockey player can pick any corner of the
| net.
| ohashi wrote:
| There is a lot of history and posturing. And it's coming from one
| of the best goalies to ever play the game. But, I still think
| he's wrong.
|
| There has been a slow crackdown on goalie gear size. We have seen
| scoring slightly go up.
|
| But what's not talked about in the article is that the game
| really isn't static. The players have gotten better and better at
| picking up those tiny gaps and holes in the body. They are
| looking at video of movements of goalies, picking apart every
| weakness based on hundreds of hours of film. They offense is more
| equipped than ever to know and understand NHL goalies. We see hot
| rookie goalies like Andrew Hammond or Elvis Merzlikins come out
| with phenomenal numbers and generally fall to earth.
|
| Why? I think a large part is coaching/scouting. There are teams
| dedicated to exposing goalie weaknesses on each team (Video
| Coaches). They can look at everything goalies have done and along
| with other coaching staff adapt strategies to take advantage of
| perceived weaknesses/tendencies/etc. If you actually watch NHL
| games, look at where the players are shooting. You'll often
| notice a pattern, are they going glove or blocker side more? Are
| they going high or right above the pads? Are they trying to make
| cross ice passes near the crease to get goalie moving side to
| side? There is probably a good chance the team thinks it sees a
| certain weakness somewhere in the goalie's play and is trying to
| exploit it.
|
| And then sometimes you just have players say fuck it.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-m8Fd93faw
|
| No weakness in normal hockey? Just pick up the puck like a
| Lacrosse player and dunk it in a tiny hole from behind the net
| (originally called The Michigan, some calling it the Svechnikov
| after the first NHL player to do it).
|
| Dryden wants to talk about how soccer players can bend the ball,
| the newest big move we get to see on rare occasion is the move in
| that video. It starts with one guy doing it at this level
| (Svechnikov - 3 times I think). And now Filip Forsberg has done
| it. Other players have made attempts (Kuznetsov 2018 before
| anyone had ever done it
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGFQkWfkjxk). Nils Hoglander,
| canucks rookie did it three times in Sweden and their fanbase is
| excited to see his first NHL goal in that fashion. I would bet
| money it happens at some point given his history with the move
| and talent.
|
| Point is, players are getting more creative, better with puck
| handling, the game is getting faster, and every little detail is
| being scrutinized deeper and deeper. Hockey has the most parity
| of all the big sports in the US and the most uncertainty. Seeking
| out every edge is what separates the teams with long stretches of
| success and the mediocre teams which sit puzzlingly at the bottom
| year after year despite often drafting immensely talented
| players.
|
| One of my favorite goalie coach quotes, you can't teach size, is
| definitely true. It's an advantage for sure. But is it ruining
| the game? Not even close. Maybe he's watching a different sport
| than the rest of us.
| rrock wrote:
| I had the same reaction. Has he not noticed goalies playing at
| the top of the crease (still)? Goalies play from the standing
| position for as long as the can to leverage their quickness,
| only dropping to the butterfly when the shot is on its way or a
| defensive breakdown demands it. I was really surprised to see
| who wrote it.
| jacurtis wrote:
| When he talked about goalies not ever needing to get off the
| knees, I was wondering what teams he was watching, because it
| wasn't the same teams as me. Goalies only drop to their knees
| when a player shoots. I'd be yelling at the screen if my
| goalie just sat on his knees. I don't know where that claim
| comes from.
| pattle wrote:
| Surely they just need to make the net a bit bigger?
| ajcp wrote:
| And take away play-space? Nah. With todays advanced materials
| they should make goalie padding simply protect the goalie, and
| let the G-man protect the net.
| jgilias wrote:
| I feel like I would like to agree with the article, but I don't.
| It's described in a way that makes one believe that it's
| completely impossible to score a goal in a one-on-one situation,
| as the goalie can just sit on his knees and not move. As is
| evident by any recent shootout one may watch, this is not the
| case.
|
| And regarding the good old times when goalies had to be acrobatic
| to actually make saves. Just yesterday I saw a highlight of
| Korpisalo from Blue Jackets making a crazy reaching stick-save to
| deny an empty-netter.
|
| I think it's fine. I find the game exciting and dynamic enough to
| watch.
| adventured wrote:
| I agree with what you said. Goals per game are comparable to
| where they were at 15-20 years ago, as well as in the 1950s and
| 1960s.
|
| Goals are considerably down from the late 1970s and 1980s.
| Larger goalies are merely properly offsetting the offensive
| gains made from better sticks and the slap shot, which had
| temporarily provided a scoring advantage and boosted goals per
| game.
|
| Rather than it being a problem as implied by the article,
| larger goalies have balanced the game back out and returned it
| to where it was.
| bradfa wrote:
| I played ice hockey goalie growing up, in high school,
| intramurals in college, and then men's league for a while. The
| game definitely changed over the course of me playing it. I
| started playing goalie around 1991 and fondly remember having
| to do "kick save" drills and learning to "T glide". The game
| has changed, no goalies do kick saves anymore, it's just not an
| effective way to stop the puck.
|
| But to say that goalies today aren't acrobatic or fit or
| flexible or amazing athletes is totally wrong. To be able to
| put your body into the butterfly position, to be able to push
| off to move while staying in the butterfly, to be able to slide
| post to post as the puck moves behind the net and keep the
| post-side leg upright: THIS IS EXTREMELY HARD!
|
| Goalies today are basically 6 foot+ tall gymnasts.
|
| My knees, groin, and hips surely can no longer perform the
| kinds of movements which I used to be able to do. I was not
| anywhere near being NHL caliber, so maybe I have a different
| appreciation for watching top level goalies today. But damn,
| these goalies today are seriously impressive in how they can
| move their bodies.
|
| Sure, the equipment regulations might need to change for bantam
| or midget level leagues and up, but the younger kids aren't big
| enough to take advantage of the equipment so any changes the
| NHL wants to implement shouldn't affect the vast majority of
| kids playing the game today until (if) they get to a high level
| of play and high school age or beyond.
|
| I think the NHL should continue to change the rules, not just
| for goalies, but for the whole game. And if things work, then
| other leagues should adopt those rules over time, too.
| docdeek wrote:
| Nice article, though my first thought was a scene from 'The West
| Wing':
|
| Sam: You know what I'd do if I owned a hockey team? I'd hire a
| sumo wrestler. I'd give him a uniform, transportation, 500 bucks
| a week to sit in the goal, eat a ham sandwich and enjoy the game.
| My team would never get scored on.
|
| Josh: Your team would get scored on constantly.
|
| Sam: Maybe, but we'd sell a few tickets.
|
| Josh: Yeah, 'cause sumo wrestling sells out all the time in big
| hockey towns.
|
| Sam: My idea's totally inviable?
|
| Josh: Well, you're a Democrat. It's a pretty big club.
| jgon wrote:
| This article is written by a famous retired goalie and it
| contains a lot of good points in it. Everything the author says
| about the modern method of scoring goals being to "scrum" in
| front of the net is pretty accurate, and it honestly takes away,
| at least in my opinion, a lot of the aesthetic enjoyment that
| hockey used to have. Sure goals may not be going down in number,
| but they're definitely less fun to watch being scored.
|
| But I think that the title, and a large part of the article,
| ignores or at least only pays lip service to the other half of
| the problem, and I think that by focusing solely on goalie
| equipment, we actually limit the probability of the problem
| actually being solved.
|
| And the other half of the problem is that players can shoot way
| too hard now. Its a chicken and egg problem, and I don't know
| which came first, but any attempt to cut down on goalie padding
| is going to have come up against the very real safety concerns
| caused by modern hockey sticks. Anyone who has used one of the
| new $300+ composite sticks can tell you they aren't just for
| showing off your income, these things actually work, and they
| honestly work too well. Goalies have a legitimate point that
| goaltenders of old could wear the equipment they did because
| players were probably shooting 20%+ slower on average. Right now
| every hockey player is walking around with the equivalent of a
| corked bat or an aluminum bat in baseball.
|
| And so I think that any attempt to scale back protective
| equipment to something that doesn't strangle the game is going to
| have to be matched with a similar regulation to go back to plain
| wood sticks or something similar, to prevent any sort of
| composite material voodoo. Matching up a decrease in protective
| bulk, with controls on stick material and I think that you still
| have a faster, more skilled game, but you'll really open up the
| ability to express that skill and still keep goalies "safe" (I
| use quotation marks because they're still crazy people putting
| themselves in front of a rock hard rubber bullet, but hey some
| folks are just different). Just addressing the equipment is going
| to be a non-starter and even if it did get forced through I think
| it might open the game up too much and lead to too much scoring.
| There's definitely a compromise to be struck on both sides here.
| wilsynet wrote:
| Over time, as goalie equipment changed, so did the way that
| goalies covered the net and stopped pucks. The way that a
| goalie plays today is very different than the way Hasek played,
| and the way Hasek played is very different than the way Fuhr
| played and the way Dryden played.
|
| I think the argument is: scale back protective equipment to
| something that doesn't strangle the game, and goalies must play
| a different style in order to stay safe. Which they will.
|
| Having said that, I agree, we should also go back to non-
| composite sticks. The game was no less fun to watch when Mario
| and Wayne were playing the game with wooden sticks.
| pimlottc wrote:
| > Over time, as goalie equipment changed, so did the way that
| goalies covered the net and stopped goals.
|
| Can you go into more detail about this for someone who
| doesn't followed hockey that closely?
| wilsynet wrote:
| Take a look at this page:
| https://www.omha.net/news_article/show/631894-the-
| evolution-...
|
| Under the standup style of the 80s, you see these very
| short and narrrow goalie pads. If a modern goaltender were
| to drop to the butterfly using these pads, they wouldn't
| cover as much of the net, and they'd be risking injury as
| the pads don't extend to cover the top part of the leg.
|
| The size of pads today, not just width but length too,
| allows the goalie to cover large parts of the bottom of the
| net. And also slide to the post and cover a pretty enormous
| area there too.
|
| This video is another good example:
| https://youtu.be/cggFu52LnCE
|
| Goalie pads today really are unusually and unnecessarily
| large. Goalies will tell you they need them for safety, but
| that's only because they have exploited them to their
| fullest advantage.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Very helpful, thanks for the links!
| jlizzle30 wrote:
| Former college hockey goalie here (now a SWE).
|
| Dryden is correct. Hockey goaltending has become incredibly
| technical and an essence of the game has been lost as goalies
| have gained mastery.
|
| This is less about equipment being 'too big' and more about the
| technologic and strategic progression goalies have made. There
| aren't any equipment regulations that can unwind this progress.
|
| While I played, I was vehemently opposed to changing the net-
| size. Now, as an outsider with no horse in the race, I think it's
| the right thing to do.
|
| Every so often at practices, myself and my goaltending partner
| would agree to make 'highlight reel' saves for a drill or two.
| What this meant was abandoning our technique and adopt an
| athletic, intuitive style that resembled something of the past
| (kick saves, stacking the pads, catching the puck dramatically).
| We did this because it was fun; the shooters enjoyed it more too.
| Making the nets bigger would inject these elements back into the
| position.
| ukd1 wrote:
| Shouldn't there be a fixed ratio of goalie surface area to goal
| face? Otherwise, this ends up in a Red Dwarf goalie for the 2224
| World Cup which was a genetically engineered rectangular block of
| muscle the exact size of the goal...
| pubby wrote:
| One suggested improvement is to make the game 4-on-4 instead of
| 5-on-5. Less players on the ice typifies more offense, and less
| bodies covering the net causing chaos.
|
| In some ways the game is already moving towards this, by changing
| overtime and the All-Star Game to be 3-on-3 a few years ago.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| Watching Hockey in the states is very different from Canada. I
| grew up near the Washington Canadian border and so I was able to
| watch all the Hockey games on CBC. I didn't know Hockey wasn't
| regularly aired on TV until I moved. Going to a Hockey game is
| really fun.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| I'm from European country with bad level of hockey and couldn't
| enjoy watching NHL despite dad loving it. For some reason very
| difficult for me to follow the puck. Went to see a local game
| Live, what Canadians would see as total amateur show but it was
| amazing and easy to follow. You could really feel and see the
| shots and appreciate the players strength but skills of skating
| and being elastic/acrobatic at the same time. Still can't get
| excited seeing it from telly for some reason. But live
| experience was awesome!
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The more you watch (and probably play) hockey, the less you
| follow the puck and the more you can infer where it is from
| body positioning. That's why long time fans like your father
| can enjoy televised hockey more, while everyone can enjoy
| live games.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| I actually got the feel, now when I think of it I couldn't
| see the puck flying during the shots. I guess it had
| something to do with my love for soccer where I can see it
| curling into top corner. While I appreciated the art of
| doing the same in hockey, I believe I felt like I couldn't
| take part of the enjoyment of seeing it flying into the
| net.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Oh yeah, that never gets better. Tracking a puck going
| 100mph(160km/hr) on a ~30fps broadcast is basically
| impossible. Even modern HD doesn't help much.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Heh. Brings to mind the Fox Sports 'FoxTrax' [1] which
| placed a glow on the puck. Hockey fans hated it. I'm not
| sure if non-hockey fans cared either way.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoxTrax
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| With the puck tracki technology being reused for advanced
| stats fans, I wonder if they'll try something similar
| except make it optional on web broadcasts or will the
| FoxTrax legacy prevent them from attempting it.
| veggieburglar wrote:
| Oh no, the glowing dot! But remember this was well before
| HDTV. Watching hockey on a grainy old TV was not
| accessible for those who didn't know the game. However, I
| don't think it was successful in bringing in new viewers,
| and people who were already fans hated it because, well,
| it sucked.
| macspoofing wrote:
| I think any sport to a novice will seem inaccessible.
|
| For example, many Americans see soccer as slow and boring and
| are bothered by the low scores and frequent draws. None of
| those things are a detriment for hundreds of millions of
| global soccer fans who see the game as fast and exciting
| (which it is).
|
| All I can tell you is that following the puck is a non-issue
| to hockey fans. As others mentioned, at some point you just
| get a feel for what's going on and you'll have no problem
| figuring out where the puck is and following the action. If
| you want to be into hockey, invest time and join some hockey
| communities to learn the 'meta' of the game, and you'll get
| it.
| [deleted]
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It's a similar experience watching varsity or JV club hockey in
| the states. Very fun.
|
| We definitely don't have the same quantity of beer leagues,
| though. I wish we would.
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