As an ex-goaltender this is painful to watch. In Toskala’s defence these are very tough shots to stop, but I gotta say, he should have got in front of it and not tried to catch. Doctrine says, take it in the chest and then sweep it off to your D with the stick.
Oh well. I bet he never makes this mistake again!
Another view:
As a person who could two sh*ts about hockey (I’d rather watch pro bass fishing..it’s *less* violent!) and as a result. someone’s who’s COMPLETELY ignorant of the strategery thereof, wouldn’t he’ve been better off to just FALL on it? It wasn’t coming in that fast, and it was…well, it seemed like a mistake borne of the thought pattern, “Oh, this’ll be easy as……oh CRAP!!!”
No Paul, you can’t just fall on it. You have to STOP it, THEN fall on it. However if a goaltender falls on a puck play is stopped. If he falls on a puck to stop play with no other players around him, then he is subject to a delay-of-game penalty. His team was on the power play, meaning that the opposition was under a penalty. The goaltender’s responsibility in that situation is to keep the puck in play so that his team can keep the pressure on at the other end.
Pucks tend to lie flat on the ice, but occasionally do bounce. This puck was not flat when it was shot, so it had a loopy, bouncy trajectory. Those are always the hardest to stop. He tried to catch it, but in the end just redirected it into his own net. Like I said in the post, he should have stopped it with his legs or chest, then passed it off to a teammate. When I was playing (back in the Late Cretaceous Period) the doctrine in goaltending was to stay on your feet, and only go down if need be. As such I would have skated further out and likely taken it in the leg pads before passing it. Nowadays the prevailing theory is to play low, so he was close to the net and on his knees.
Either way, I’m sure that they’ll be tossing long bouncy shots at him in Practice for the next few weeks. 😉