Dan Blackburn's new glove style
 

For those of you who still follow hockey - Dan Blackburn has made his return to the nets and is sporting a new two blocker combo. He had surgery to repair damaged nerves in his shoulder and all but one has healed, this nerve controls his muscle that raises and turns to open up the arm, ie - to perform a glove save high which is a very frequent save. It's basically a pro blocker with a JR trapper as the palm, you can make out the top of the pocket on the bottom of his left blocker.

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com...rn_vkax101.jpg

Looks pretty neat. I'd like to see him in action with it.

Interesting, though doubt his rebound control would be that great with that thing on..Is he playing in Europe?

He's not playing in Euriope, he just signed with the Victoria Salmon Kings of the ECHL.

Would that new glove/blocker be legal in the NHL?

Isn't everything, considering they are allowed to wear goal pads the size of queen beds?

Cool looking. I wonder why nobody thought of that sooner, to put another blocker pad on the back of the catching glove. Well, that's a former New York Ranger for you!

-Mikey

Actually someone sort of did do this already. Bill Durnan of the Montreal Candiens used two identical gloves. Both had a blocker on the backhand and a trapper underneath. When Gordie Howe would come down the wing and switch hands before shooting so would Durnan. He always wanted to keep his trapper to the far side of the net and let his blocker cover the shortside.


As for the legality of the glove? Who knows...with the chuckleheads running the NHL now they would probably never allow it. It may turn out to be a special case though. I think there was something like that with Zedno Chara and his sticks?

And for rebounds and such. If you look at the pics Blackburn has completely changed his stance to adjust to this. He is now more vertical and his gloves are more forward.

This topic has been a big debate on the goalie boards today. A few people have pointed out how this could be an advantage to Blackburn.

1) If you have seen a box lacrosse goalie it seems that they keep both elbows high to fill up more space and to be visually deceptive. The aerial angle in lacrosse is different than hockey however because of release points.

2) How often to you see clean goals on breakaways where there is a shot over the goalie's blocker? In my opinion it is a rare event because the way the blocker elbow is placed there is a tougher corner to hit. Why not show this high net coverage to the shooter by using the second blocker?

3) On longer shots you would still have time to use your trapper side of the glove.

4) On shots with little reaction time you could make a better stacked coverage build with two blockers.

5) Smothering pucks wouldn't change and in fact you would have better protection against slashes to the back of your hand.

6) On hard shot you could still control rebounds with your double blocker like you would if the puck was shot to your blocker side by deflecting the puck into the corner.

Some good points I think. But will this give him an advantage over other goalies? Something like this would be huge for a pro goalie to adjust their game to.