Retired goaltender Martin Brodeur joined Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman to discuss what he likes and what he’d like to change about the game he just left.
The 42-year-old pointed to the speed of the game and the resulting hits as something that he dislikes.
“It’s too tough of a game, too dangerous of a game. I think it goes… all the speed that they wanted to bring into the game, it kind of makes it up on those tough hits and it’s hard for the players to police themselves. First of all because fighting is going away from the game,” said Brodeur. “You have a lot of guys that are taking liberties and some guys they don’t, but because the game is so fast, they don’t have time to react to a lot of things.
“The dangerous part of the game, the accidents, some of the head injuries needs to get cleaned out.
Brodeur didn’t know exactly how the league needs to go about changing the game, but did have a couple of suggestions.
“The trapezoid has to go. I think the goalies have to help their players a little bit more, but a lot of the hits come because there’s no interference,” Brodeur said. “Put in the interference on the table for the players to use to help each other.
“In the neutral zone I understand the guy skating 100 miles an hour with the puck nobody should touch him, but when you see your guys getting lined up, you should be able to hook that guy a little bit to make him realize ‘hey, you got to stop buddy, you can’t hit him’. But if he does that, the guy gets a penalty. Interference needs to get back in the game.”
Since stepping away from the game, Brodeur has joined the St. Louis Blues as a senior advisor to general manager Doug Armstrong.
Brodeur was in Philadelphia on Saturday night scouting the Flyers and Leafs as part of his new role and spoke with NHL.com’s Adam Kimelman about his new vantage point.
“I think it’s a lot easier to judge people from up here,” Brodeur said. “That’s where I’m trying to find the way of doing it, the right way of doing it, to give the best input I can knowing that two weeks ago, three weeks ago I was the one down there.
“Hockey’s hockey. Right here I think it exposes it a little bit, but it’s all productive.”
Armstrong says the two are learning from one another.
“What I’m trying to gain from him is his knowledge of the Eastern Conference, gain his knowledge on how he sees the game,” Armstrong said. “There’s as much teaching as learning from both of us now. That’s what makes it a really exciting relationship.
“With us we’re just trying to tell him what we look for in players, what we want to do at the trade deadline, how our philosophy of evaluating players is, what we look for. And then I get his input on how he looks at things and how he looks at players.”