SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Tonight, Canada will play the United States in the final of the 4 Nations Face-Off. The tournament is a replacement for this year's All-Star game and features NHL players from Canada, Finland, Sweden and the U.S. Now, if you're a fan of hockey, then you know about the dominance that Canada has had both in the NHL and globally, but some fans say that is shifting because of one position - the goalie. Just 26% of goalies in the NHL these days are Canadian. In 1994, it was 73%, according to The Athletic.
Dan Robson is a writer for The Athletic, and he says there is a lot at stake in tonight's rivalry, especially for Canada, who, he writes, is starting to lose its edge in the net. He's here now, speaking to us from the TD Garden in Boston, where the championship will be played tonight. Thanks for coming on the show.
DAN ROBSON: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: So I wanted to dig into the goalies, but let's start with this final and all of the tension and drama going into it. How big of a deal has this tournament and this championship become?
ROBSON: Well, you know, I think it kind of took everyone by surprise from the start. I don't think anyone really knew what to make of it, but it's taken on a life of its own. And I think this final in terms of the buzz - certainly in Canada, where I'm from - it's up there at the Olympic level.
DETROW: Well, let's shift gears, then. If there's any one position on the ice that can set the tone of a game and pull a team over the line, it's the goalie. Canada, for so long, has been the goalie country. What has been going on? Why have - has that edge gone away?
ROBSON: You know, it's a position that Canada particularly sort of reigned supreme in. There was this French-Canadian style of goaltending, the butterfly style, that rose up to the '90s, and goaltenders like Patrick Roy, who are sort of, you know, viewed as the greatest of all time, kind of established it, and everyone kind of followed that mold. But what we've seen in the last 15 years or so was a rise of particularly European goalies but increasingly American goalies. So we tried to look into that, and really it comes down to - it looks like a systemic problem within the Canadian system, whereas other systems in Europe and in Russia and America - they've been able to find a way to really, you know, fine-tune that position and gain great success through it.
DETROW: First, I just have to - as somebody who grew up a Devils fan, we can't talk about great Canadian - French-Canadian goalies and not mention Martin Brodeur in passing here, so I've checked that very important box. But what - is it something in the broader youth development system? Is it the way that goalies are trained? Like, what's changed?
ROBSON: It really comes down to a rigid system, from the experts that we spoke to, and we went - sort of looked back at what was different about the Canadian system and the U.S. system. And this happens in other sports as well, but the competitiveness of minor hockey in Canada is through the roof. And what happens there, experts argue, is that we almost stunt the ability for young players to develop properly.
The goaltending position is something that you excel at later in your career as, obviously, like, the best athletes kind of become that position. We've seen that with goaltenders that we see now, who are much more athletic and capable of reacting. And in Canada, what we have is a very prescriptive model, where that position is so focused at a young age on, you know, being on a top team and playing well at that age that it's not giving room for the growth that excelling in athleticism requires because it's such an ingrained system.
DETROW: Is there one set idea of this is what we could do to start to turn this around, or is it still an ongoing conversation?
ROBSON: It's an ongoing conversation. I mean, I think when we look at what Sweden did in the past - I mean, Sweden looked at the goaltending position as a smaller nation and as a position that they might be able to find some advantages in because they didn't have the population. And they looked to sort of say, we can - you know, there's an area where we can - might - we might be able to find some advancements, and they did excel greatly. And I think that what Canada's doing is looking at that and realizing that they had much more structure in their system to be able to sort of implement a top-down approach.
DETROW: Yeah.
ROBSON: And in Canada, there's sort of a commerce of goaltending coaches and all kinds of experts in this position, where there isn't sort of a cohesive way to implement a system. So it's going to be really difficult to shift, and I don't think it's going to be something that can happen overnight. I think we're going to continue to see a decline in top Canadian goaltenders for years to come - or several years to come - until, fundamentally, there's a change in how we produce goaltenders in Canada.
DETROW: That's Dan Robson, a writer with The Athletic. Thanks so much.
ROBSON: Thanks very much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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