Short side high shots?  Like picking cherries for a stand-up goalie.  Low corner shots?  Unstoppable at times.

The butterfly is an effective goaltending technique, but scores of goalies these days believe that a good butterfly is a substitute for any sort of understanding of the game. 

The butterfly school of goaltending’s taken decent athletes with a tremendous understanding of the game and has replaced them with highly-tuned physical specimens who don’t understand the nuances of the position.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 03/15/07 at 02:50 PM ET

Seems to me like there needs to be some sort of hybrid compromise.  Doesn’t Marty Brodeur play a kind of hybrid style?  I seem to remember reading that somewhere (I don’t see nearly enough Eastern games to judge for myself.)

Posted by Doogie2K from Calgary on 03/15/07 at 04:52 PM ET

Brodeur, Kiprusoff, and these days (oddly enough), Hasek are the best hybrid goalies in the league.  They’re willing to pad-stack and stand up on shots when necessary, but they all have strong butterflies as well.

Kipper’s got some pluses and minuses in that technically speaking, he and Roberto Luongo are probably the best goaltenders in the NHL—Luongo has mastered the butterfly and combines that with his size to dominate, while Kiprusoff’s work with David Marcoux has taught him to basically learn a hybrid discipline that’s textbook-perfect.

Brodeur and Hasek rely more on improvisation than technique, and while that may result in the occasional soft goal, in my opinion it also gives them the ability to make saves that a goaltender who’s working by the book can’t come up with.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 03/15/07 at 11:58 PM ET