Toe to Toe – Size Matters?

Two combatants from Cogeco’s Sports Firing line Frank “The Toe” Caruso (left), and Chris Dawson (right) now take their arguments to the web with a new BayToday.ca weekly sports opinion feature called, “Toe to Toe.” Photo by Lee Anne Dawson.

The New NHL season approaches and along with it come a new season full of rule changes. Goalies now are restricted to where they can venture outside their crease plus they’ve been forced to decrease the size of their equipment by more than 10 percent. That size reduction includes gloves and blockers which goaltenders are having the toughest time adjusting to. Do you think that the NHL went overboard on the size restrictions by even reducing the size of catchers and blockers?

Chris:

Oh, boy I could go on for six pages on this one. I agree with dropping the size down on goalie pads, pants and shoulder pads, that’s very reasonable. But to change the glove size to me is like major league baseball telling outfielders that they must reduce the size of their gloves to the size of a shortstops mitt!

“NHL goalies appear to be fine with the pad reduction but some are having to re-invent themselves because their gloves are now the size they used in bantam. My prediction is because of the smaller catchers, you’re going to see more hand injuries because more pucks will be hitting goalies in the palm instead of the webbing of the glove.

“But you know what Frank, and I can’t wait to hear you carve the goalies, but I know that goalies are resilient and the NHL goalie fraternity will learn to adapt whether it’s fair or not.

“However, I do think the league has done too much to target the goalie because the major reason why goal scoring is down isn’t equipment size, it’s more about how much better goaltenders have become since the goal scoring crazy 1980’s.”

Frank:

”First of all, it’s really hard for me to believe that you’re on the goalies side like usual, that’s the first thing. The second thing is this Chris, the league has to change. The hockey players, do you think they like the fact that the new rule changes regarding hooking and you get called for that? I think the goalies have to modify the blocker and the catcher and I’ll tell you why. The blocker and the catcher are not items of protection and trapping it’s become extra pads because they are so big. There’s no reason for those catchers to be so big, I think the NHL is doing a good thing, I think the goalies better start adapting to that thing and that’s just how the new NHL is going to go.”

Toe to Toe can be seen every Friday on BayToday.ca