Martin Brodeur is undisputedly one the greatest goaltenders of all time, winning three Stanley Cups with the New Jersey Devils over 22 NHL seasons and entering the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018.
The 51-year-old has remained involved in the game post-retirement, joining the Devils as executive vice president of business development and transitioning to vice president of hockey operations in late-2022.
The hockey legend still has a lot to say about the game, and he made interesting comments regarding the state of the goaltending position earlier this week, and how much it's changed since he was still playing.
“I think we baby our goalies,” Brodeur told The Athletic's Pierre LeBrun ahead of a Devils win against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday. “I see it. I'm part of it. It's like, my goalie coach will say, ‘He's played five games the past eight days …' I'm like, ‘So?'”
Brodeur believes goaltenders in today's NHL are overprotected, and that the workload has changed significantly since he played.
“The sport has changed, but the position has changed a lot, just because of the workload that these guys are having. It’s so volatile, that position. One year, you can be the top goalie. The second year, it’s like you don’t even belong in the league. It’s weird how really volatile the position has become,” the Hall of Famer continued.
“Right now, around the league, there’s probably five guys that you could bank on — maybe up to eight guys. Back then, it was 30 guys. So it’s different. Like I said, I think it’s the workload, I think it’s the skill of the players. You know, for years it was, ‘The goalies are too good.’ You’ve got to find ways to score goals. Now it’s like, you have to find goalies to stop these guys.”
Does Martin Brodeur have a point?
Brodeur was between the pipes for at least 70 games in 12 of his 22 seasons. That's just unheard of in today's game, with most teams employing a “1A/1B” approach.
“It's the system of 1A and 1B that's going to create that,” Brodeur said about the unpredictability of the position in 2024. “Because it's always going to be, ‘We can't play back-to-back [games].' You're so scared the No. 1 gets hurt. And so you baby that guy for the longest time. So, these guys are playing 55 games. They should be playing 65-to-70 games like we did.”
Goaltenders are certainly treated differently than they were in Brodeur's heyday, and he admits that the average goalie today is much better than a couple of decades ago. But the four-time Vezina Trophy winner still believes top goalies should play more, with the “1A” being leaned on much more heavily than the “1B.”
Today, some teams have tandems that split games for the entire season. The Boston Bruins are an excellent example, riding Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman — with no clear cut No. 1 — to one of the best regular-seasons in NHL history in 2022-23.
In Newark, Martin Brodeur's Devils are working with two relatively new goalies after acquiring Jake Allen from the Montreal Canadiens and Kaapo Kahkonen from the San Jose Sharks at the deadline.
As of Thursday, the squad is five points out of a wild card berth in the Eastern Conference with just nine games left. Every contest will be critical down the stretch, starting with a tilt against the Buffalo Sabres in Western New York on Friday night.
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