What's the current state of American goaltending?

As USA Hockey tries to take over more creases it's working toward a larger goal in 2030.

One of the subtle storylines heading into the Eastern Conference Final centers around New York Rangers backup goalie Jonathan Quick and his quest for back-to-back championships.

Quick won the Stanley Cup as a backup with the Vegas Golden Knights last June, despite only appearing in 10 regular season games with Vegas after a double trade (from Los Angeles to Columbus and then Columbus to Vegas) and not playing a minute in the playoffs.

This season Quick played a larger role with the Rangers in the regular season, appearing in 27 regular season games, but if the Rangers win the Stanley Cup it’ll be with Igor Shesterkin in the crease.

A Rangers title would represent the fourth of Quick’s career. It would also make it a full decade since an American last won an NHL title as a starting goalie, dating back to Quick’s 2014 championship with the Los Angeles Kings.

Since that title, the starting goalie for each of the past nine champions has been a Canadian or a Russian. In fact, the last American not named Jonathan Quick to even start a game in the Stanley Cup final came back in 2015 when Ben Bishop played through an injured groin muscle against the Chicago Blackhawks.

We often hear about how American goaltending is getting better, how it’s elevated now on the highest stage. But it’s been a long time since Americans have actually tended net with the Stanley Cup on the line.

That’s a streak that could change this spring. Jake Oettinger and the Dallas Stars are favorites to advance out of the Western Conference, but for USA Hockey, the hope is that Oettinger’s potential appearance is more of the norm than a cameo.

When it comes to developing goalies, USA Hockey looks at minutes played at the highest level as the bar for success.

In 2017, USA Hockey launched a “51 in 30” initiative, with the goal of having 51 percent of minutes in the NHL and top women’s league (now the PWHL) taken by American goalies by 2030.

It’s a lofty goal and six years out of the target year, USA Hockey is closing in on halfway to the desired percentage.

During the 2023-24 NHL regular season 98 goalies played at least one NHL game, 20 of them were Americans.

That group of 20 Americans combined for 35,065 minutes of game play. In total there were just over 157,562 minutes played by all goalies in the NHL this season.

So American men, accounted for roughly 22 percent of all the NHL minutes this season.

In the PWHL there were four American goalies to make an appearance in the regular season accounting for 2,997 minutes of the 8,719 total minutes played by all goalies — roughly 34 percent.

Combined Americans accounted for 38,062 minutes of the 166,281 available, close to a 22 percent overall clip across the top men’s and women’s professional leagues in North America.

For further context, in the AHL, 127 goalies appeared in at least one regular season game accounting for 143,219 total minutes.

Of those 127 goalies, 38 are Americans accounting for 34,767 minutes. A rate of just over 24 percent.

To help grow those minutes, USA Hockey has made goalie development a larger point of emphasis, focusing on more regional camps for the position and trying to break the current trend of cookie cutter goalies.

Steve Thompson is the manager of goaltending for USA Hockey. He and I spoke this past weekend at the 2024 National Goaltending Camp about the state of the American goaltender.

“We all remember the French Canadian revolution, then transitioning to the Finnish invasion and the Russians and Swedes, it seems like every country has really had the time where they’ve gotten a lot of clout about about goaltending,” Thompson said. “And it feels like this is now the time for USA Hockey and American goalies to take over.”

So how would Thompson define the American goaltender right now?

“Melting pot, and that’s by design,” Thompson said. “I really dream that no one knows they are an American goalie because of the way they play. We all figure out how to stop pucks differently here. And I think it just represent our country at large. We are all driven and motivated go get the job done, but we’re not going to be cookie cutter. Our personalities are going to shine through our game and we’re going to be unique in that process.”

Thompson points to the NHL playoff success of Oettinger, Jeremy Swayman, and Joseph Woll. All three went through USA Hockey development at or around the same time, all three have different styles of stopping the puck.

To help the next generation of goalies find their unique style, Thompson has been working on instructing goalie coaches within USA Hockey to become more focused in presenting problems as opposed to solutions.

“We have to get out of the mentality of providing the solution for them all the time,” Thompson said. “The goal is to create challenges and not give them the answer … with more coaching education we’ve done, we’ve gotten better at letting practice do the teaching instead of the adult doing the teaching.

“Sometimes we get goalies who come to us who have been so used to doing just what they are told, making the save they were told to make and not the one they came to, and they look lost,” Thompson added. “After an adjustment, the kids typically start coming to the challenge-based teaching quickly, they want to be able to learn and solve problems themselves and we are hopeful that we will see more Americans succeed because of the problem solving that’s being created for them.”

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I’ll have some more things from the National Goaltending camp later this week at Shap Shots, including a story on Gwyneth Philips and the upcoming PWHL Draft, a chat about the RVH, and some insights on why Trey Augustine is such a great prospect.

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