Kukla's Korner

23 Intently Staring Goalies

Entries with the tag: NHL

Sean Burke—Coaching from Experience

I have in my possession a close-up photo I took of Sean Burke in a Hartford Whalers mask. Nope, he didn’t suddenly spring up from the seafoam—which would be a neat trick in Arizona—and become the hottest goalie coach in the NHL.

 

If someone has asked me back then if I thought Sean Burke was going to become a premier goalie coach, I wouldn’t have considered it. Burke was better than a good goalie, but he also had a rep for having a bit of a temper on-ice. He’s hit the league with a splash, fresh from the Canadian National Team, and looked like the goalie of the future for the New Jersey Devils.

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 Tags: goalie, NHL, Phoenix+Coyotes, Sean+Burke,

Why Luongo, without your no-trade clause, you’re beautiful!

Roberto Luongo is in the market, and some have already decided that he’s going to the Maple Leafs. Or maybe he’s going to the Oilers, or maybe the Lightning. I could keep going, but there’s the rest of the league to list, and that would take awhile.

For a number of fans, writers, and analysts who are looking in from the outside of the Stanley Cup playoffs, this is the best recreation available. There’s a lot of “could we? should we? would we?” running loose across the ink and phosphors. It’s cheap, it’s fun, and hey, you  don’t have to cut the check!

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 Tags: Goalie, NHL, Roberto+Luongo,

No Ma’am, we’re Goalies

It isn’t then end of the first round, but we can see it from here, and Braden Holtby continues on his mission, and he continues to get attention from the press.

Why? With the “don’t worry, we’ll score more” battle of attrition between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and almost daily wait for the” who, what and why” suspension announcement from Brendan Shanahan, it’s one of the classic sports stories—new and relatively unknown kid makes good, and makes it in a pressure filled and glaringly lit venue.

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 Tags: Braden+Holtby, goalies, goaltender, NHL,

Who is that Masked Man—callups and signings

We’re seeing more than the usual share of backups and a mix of kids ad oldsters from the AHL as the season winds down. Some teams are slotted in and want to give their #1 a rest. And some, well because they don’t have a choice.

The Washington Capitals fall into the latter category, and the big arrow stops on… Dany Sabourin!

 

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 Tags: Anton+Khudobin, Dany+Sabourin, goalies, NHL, Viktor+Fasth,

More Three-Dot Madness!  Goalie Signings and Random Reappearances

We’re coming up on the end of the season, and some of the teams you wouldn’t have suspected are continuing to make goalie changes and additions, well, because they really don’t have many options:

In the “Where is he now?  He’s on the Island!” category, the New York Islanders have signed John Grahame to an end of the season contract. With Nabokov’s injury, the Islanders, who as you remember, started out this season with three goaltenders in tow, are down to one, AL Montoya, and their AHL call-up, Kevin Poulin. The Islanders’ AHL team, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, are currently in first place in the Northeast division of the AHL. Signing Grahame appears to be partly giving the Islanders some depth at goal, and an attempt to not mess up the Tigers chances.

 

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 Tags: Brian+Elliott, Goalies, Jaroslav+Halak, John+Grahame, NHL, Shawn+Hunwick,

Brodeur Pere et Fils

There’s been a lot going on around Martin Brodeur. He’s been struggling back from a cold start this season, with the annual discussions as to whether he should finally hang them up.

Brodeur has turned it around, and was back to his winning ways. Then came the phone call—his father, Denis Brodeur had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

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 Tags: Denis+Brodeur, Goalie, Martin+Brodeur, NHL,

On the trading room floor

I was listening to the post-post game show on WGN radio this past Friday night, when a caller asked about trades. The show’s host Judd Sirott, said that everyone is looking to get a Center or a Defenseman.

Well, yeah, except when they’re looking for a goaltender. And as the trading deadline approaches we’ll start seeing teams trying to get that second goalie who can spell their star, or who will be looking for some fresh talent to try out in goal as the season slams head-first into the playoffs.

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 Tags: goalies, goaltenders, NHL, trades,

Fire Up the Goalie Time Machine: 100 Years Ago

It’s "Black Friday" in the US, Grey Cup Weekend in Canada, and the inner harbour in Victoria will soon be decorated in full holiday mufti. Way back when, (okay, 1925) the Victoria Cougars won the Stanley Cup, and if you ever attended a game in the old Memorial Arena, they had the banner to make sure you knew.

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 Tags: Clint+Benedict, goaltender, LeSueur, NHA, NHL,

Protecting goalies now to pay more later?

First, I’d like to apologize to the Edmonton and Dallas goalies. I obviously jinxed the bunch of them last week. Temporality doesn’t imply causality, but whoa….

Speaking of temporality, the cause d’jour is now whether the NHL should better protect their goalies. Actually, that’s protecting their goalies from hits by other players. That’s a different issue from protecting goalies from pucks hitting them in under protected or inappropriately re-engineered on-the-fly equipment. That should be looked at, and I hope once the GMs finish up with the player hits, they’ll take another look at how they can reduce other goaltender injuries.

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 Tags: goalies, goaltending, NHL, NHL+rule+book,

Don’t leave that goalie on the shelf!

Tim Thomas is on the cover of this month’s Improper Bostonian. Trim Thomas’ story, and how he ended up playing for too long in the minors and in Europe, make an interesting point about how goalies are selected and developed (or ignored) in the NHL:

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 Tags: goalies, goaltending, NHL, Tim+Thomas,

Elliote Friedman re: what can we do to make goalie masks safer

It looks like it wasn’t just George Malik (and thank you George, for the drill-down on my post!) and myself who were thinking that someone or someones need to take a better look at how to deal with the current state of goalie masks. Elliote Friedman explores this in his CBC/HNIC column:

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 Tags: goalies, masks, NHL,

Who left the wake-up call for November 1st?

Seems like the goaltending issues are hitting early and hard this season. We have goalies who made late entrances, some whose teams wished they had made late entrances, and some who are coming and going so quickly that the pre-game notes are getting eraser marks.

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 Tags: Blue+Jackets, Bryzgalov, Canucks, Flyers, goalies, Luongo, Mason, NHL, Schneider,

Toronto—Is Reimer the Real Deal?

We’ve headed to the portion of the preseason where the teams have sent down the kids to the OHL, and the "professional tryouts" are starting to look worried. Time to look in on some training camps and see how the goaltending situation is working out.

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 Tags: goalies, goaltending, Gustavsson, Leafs, NHL, Reimer, Toronto+Maple+Leafs,

     

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