Quoting: OldNYIfan
Great signing for the Canadiens. He and Devon Levi could have similar career arcs. Wolf, Cossa, Askarov, Wallstedt -- we could be seeing the dawn of another generation of great young goalies.
I'm still waiting to see if there's going to be changes in the technique or team defense. Otherwise, I'm looking at goaltenders with the size advantage being a factor again moving forward.
Scoring is trending upward, but nobody has been brave enough to adopt new defensive strategies yet and goaltending tends to be the last thing to adapt.
It's down to a science of angles and economy of movement based on years of offensive patterns. Goaltenders become cookie-cutter copies in technique and positioning as a result. When everything is the same, the one that covers more net will stop more pucks.
The goal line top corner shot is one example where goaltenders are struggling to adapt. Before that it was a similar angle exploiting lower areas on the post that weren't sealed. The current teaching is to use the form which seals the most space and force the shooter to make an accurate shot. So every goaltender has the exact same weakness/hole, but that hole is smaller for larger goaltenders.
That's just one example.
Is Askarov (or someone similar) going to be able to use reflexes and/or unconventional forms to change the game? Or is team defense going to have to change in order to account for weaknesses such as that?
I'm looking forward to Dobes and have been for a while. Hopefully getting some time to develop will have him prepared to step in at the right time when we are looking to contend again.