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Goalie Issue 2024
The Hockey News has been providing the most comprehensive coverage of the world of hockey since 1947. In each issue, you'll find news, features and opinions about the NHL and leagues across North America and the world.
HAMMER TIME
EVER SINCE HE WAS a kid, Hampton Slukynsky has been nicknamed ‘Hammer.’ When Slukynsky started playing goaltender around age seven or eight, his mother would stick a foam hammer to the glass behind his crease, and that practice has continued throughout the netminder’s developing career – depending on how the local rink crew felt about it. “She still does it,” Slukynsky said. “Some rinks in the USHL didn’t allow it, but she’d always put it up to take a picture until someone took it down.” In Fargo, where Slukynsky helped the Force win a championship last year, the folks at the arena were more than happy to see the hammer posted up whenever the kid was in the crease. Indeed, despite being a rookie, Slukynsky led the USHL with a 1.86 goals-against…
GOALIES GET THIRSTY, TOO
OVER THE FIRST WEEKEND of 1985, Scott Gordon launched perhaps the most consequential goaltending revolution this side of Jacques Plante’s first mask. And all because his Boston College athletic trainer prescribed an incidental New Year’s resolution. These days, Gordon still takes magnesium to prevent cramping. Back then, he adhered to a then-uncontested myth that any liquid provided hydration. By indulging in diet soda between on-ice sessions, he parched his system and invited discomfort by game-time. “Nothing was stopping it,” he said. Coming off college hockey’s multi-week mid-season break for term finals and holiday respites, he only felt more out of synch when trying to restore his rhythm. And over a three-game homestand at the end of the 1984 calendar year, BC went 2-0-1 but surrendered 16 goals. When the Eagles went to Wisconsin…
PADDED PUZZLE
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE starting goalie? In the first season of the NHL’s salary-cap era in 2005-06, three goalies started 70-plus games – Martin Brodeur, Miikka Kiprusoff and Roberto Luongo – and there were eight others who started at least 60 games. Last season, only three goalies started at least 60 games – Juuse Saros, Alexandar Georgiev and Connor Hellebuyck. Over the past 20 years, the workhorse starting goalie whom fantasy managers could rely upon has slowly gone the way of the dodo. There’s no denying the trend: No. 1 goalies are starting fewer games than ever before, and more teams now prefer to run a 1A-1B tandem. It’s a tactic that has proven to be successful, with the latest example being the Boston Bruins’ duo of Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman,…
PUCK CULTURE
HOCKEY CARDS OF SIX GREAT GOALTENDING ‘LASTS’ 1. LAST GOALIE TO PLAY WITHOUT A MASK Andy Brown (1977) Jacques Plante was the first goalie to wear a mask regularly in the NHL, beginning when he donned one in a game in 1959. Fifteen years later, every goalie in the league was wearing a mask – except the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Andy Brown. Brown’s last NHL game was April 7, 1974, a 6-3 loss to the Atlanta Flames. He went on to play three more seasons in the WHA with the Indianapolis Racers – all without a mask – before retiring in 1977. Brown had only one hockey card during his career, in the 1974-75 O-Pee-Chee WHA set. 2. LAST GOALIE TO WEAR A FIBERGLASS MASK Sam St-Laurent (1991) The fiberglass goalie mask introduced by Plante was a…
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