Once upon a time, specifically following a loss to the U.S at the inaugural hockey World Cup in 1996 and a medal-less performance at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, Canada had the equivalent of a government inquiry about hockey.
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Cue the Royal Commission on goaltending for Canada
- February 22, 2010 5:16 PM |
- By Erin Valois
Story provided by
By Jeremy Sandler, National Post
Once upon a time, specifically following a loss to the U.S at the inaugural hockey World Cup in 1996 and a medal-less performance at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, Canada had the equivalent of a government inquiry about hockey.
Its mandate was to find out how the country stopped developing skill players and fix that problem.
Well, just over a decade later, five Canadians are among the NHL's top-10 scorers, four of the top seven goal scorers are from Canada and yet there may be a new issue that could doom the effort to win Olympic gold on home ice:
Goaltending.
Anyone who talked to U.S. (and Toronto Maple Leafs) coach Ron Wilson about Olympic hockey in the lead up to the 2010 Winter Games got the same message replayed ad nauseum.
Wilson's paraphrased message was "anyone who knows anything about hockey knows the men's Olympic hockey tournament is first and foremost about goaltending."
By that measure, Canada's sixth-place standing following the preliminary rounds in Vancouver should have been entirely expected, because Canada's goaltending is just not that good.
Martin Brodeur, Roberto Luongo and Marc-Andre Fleury are all solid NHL goalies - the first two with some stellar years behind them and Fleury the owner of a Stanley Cup ring won just last spring.
But based on this year's NHL statistics, none of them should be considered elite performers.
(As a point of clarification, this is by no means an attack on Team Canada general manager Steve Yzerman, coach Mike Babcock or any of Hockey Canada's other decision makers. They picked the best goalies they could, they just do not have the bumperest of crops form which to pick.)
Brodeur and Luongo rank ninth and tenth in goals-against average with marks of 2.32 and 2.35, respectively, behind three Finns, two Russians, two Americans and a Frenchman.
In save percentage - widely regarded by most hockey types as the most important statistic for goalies - Canada falls even further behind without even a single goalie in the top 10.
Luongo's .919 mark ties him with Jonas Hiller for 12th overall in the NHL and Brodeur is tied for 16th at .915.
Hiller of course is the Anaheim goalie whose work in net for Switzerland pushed Canada to a shootout before the host nation escaped with a 3-2 win.
Meanwhile the first-place Americans boast Ryan Miller, whose .930 save percentage with Buffalo is second only to Czech netminder Tomas Vokoun's .931 mark for Florida.
Finland's Tuukka Rask and Russia's Evgeni Nabokov are tied for third at .928, with Rask not even close to starting behind Miikka Kipprusoff (sixth at .925) and Nabokov sharing time with Ilya Bryzgalov, whose .920 mark puts him alongside second-place Sweden's Henrik Lundqvist of the New York Rangers.
Finally, there is Slovakian Jaroslav Halak sitting eighth in the NHL at .923 in his day job splitting time in Montreal's net with Carey Price.
It is also worth noting that while Luongo plays behind a high-powered Vancouver team that includes Daniel and Henrik Sedin up front and Brodeur has the shutdown system of renowned defensive coach Jacques Lemaire helping him out, Vokoun, Miller, Kiprusoff and Halak -- when he plays -- are the undisputed backbones of their teams.
None of this suggests Canada does not have a good team or even one that is incapable of winning the gold.
It is just that in a tournament of best-on-best, Canada's top options in net are simply behind most elite hockey nations.
About the Author
- Bruce Arthur Bruce Arthur is the National Post's national sports columnist. A Vancouver native, he has been with the Post since 2001, and a columnist since 2005. He is covering his second Olympics, after the 2008 Games in Beijing. He expects these Games to be slightly less propagandistic, and for China to win slightly fewer medals.
- Joe O'Connor Joe O'Connor is a roving sports feature writer with an open-ended beat. He joined the National Post in 2002, and has spent the past seven years bouncing from sport to sport, offering fresh perspectives and delivering unique stories wherever he goes. Whether it has been getting Don Cherry to open up about his love life; George Chuvalo to talk about heartbreaking loss; or racing down the side of a mountain with former Crazy Canuck, Dave Irwin, the veteran Postie chases a story wherever it leads. Before joining the newspaper he was a two-time silver medalist at the National Magazine Awards. Vancouver will be his first Olympics.
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