Team USA’s Connor Hellebuyck and Team Canada’s Jordan Binnington couldn’t be more opposite. Hellebuyck is calm, quiet and efficient in net and lets the play come to him. Binnington is aggressive, excitable and hypermobile, often moving twice the distance Hellebuyck would on the same play.
Fundamental Goaltending Style Differences
Hellebuyck plays the game from the goal line out, meaning he covers less distance around the crease, allowing him to stay calm and compact and be in his ready stance more often. This makes him look like he’s almost bored in the net, sitting in a rocking chair, waiting for the puck to hit him.
Binnington plays the game in the white ice above the top of his crease. Challenging shooters to beat him with shots and using backward momentum to help him cover the greater distance he needs to cross the ice on passes. Compared to Hellebuyck, he is explosive and sometimes erratic. It allows him to make big saves in tight on cross-ice passes and rebounds, but that can sometimes mean he isn’t ready for shots and leaves him vulnerable off the rush.
Hellebuyck’s Calmness vs. Binnington’s Aggression
Hellebuyck’s calm style is most evident in scrambles. On this play, at the end of Team Canada’s power play, he stays on the goal line and makes small lateral adjustments to fill the net. He doesn’t have to move much because he doesn’t overreact to the angle change in front and doesn’t open up holes, staying in his butterfly and shifting his weight to stay centred.
Contrast that with how Binnington flies around (and outside of) the crease on this play. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, because the puck moves across the ice earlier in the sequence, and he has to deal with a screen on the pass to the flank, but the way he charges out toward the one-timer means that the rest of the sequence becomes chaotic, and he loses his stick and gets beat five-hole for a goal.
Playing Off the Rush
Off the rush, Hellebuyck has a similar approach to in-zone chances. He starts deeper than most goalies, usually somewhere just inside the top of the crease and focuses his movement on lateral shuffles as the angle changes. This approach allows him to stay still, set and ready for more time on these plays, which means he can be more direct and simple in his saves. On this play, his feet barely move until the shot is taken, and he makes a routine blocker save.
Dylan Larkin’s goal for Team USA is an almost identical play as the save above, although Larkin shoots the puck a little bit earlier. Binnington is out early on the play with his heels almost a foot above the top of the crease, aggressively challenging Larkin. By being out so aggressively, Binnington has more distance to travel on a potential pass to the player driving the net. Because of this, he has to back up to build momentum.
Related: How Jets’ Hellebuyck Makes Shooters Lose Hope
The replay shows that he never finds stillness on this play. His feet move until his body starts compressing down into his stance. When a goalie is moving, they’re not as balanced, and it makes them more vulnerable to pucks getting by them. Pay close attention to his feet – those small, quick movements make it particularly difficult to stay balanced. It also means his first movement on the shot release is to set his feet, giving him less time to react directly to the shot.
This goal from a bad angle against Finland shows a similar issue. Binnington tries to gain depth unnecessarily, and because of that, his feet don’t stop moving to get set to make the save. Again, as the shot is released, his first movement is to set his feet instead of reacting towards the puck to make the save.
Lateral Movement
Binnington excels in his explosive lateral movement. On plays like breakaways or backdoor passes with speed, he can get over quickly and powerfully to make a sliding save. Throughout this tournament, he has made big saves like these two in overtime against Sweden. The problem with his aggressive approach and the need for momentum to get across on these plays is that he has to get excellent reads and even cheat to get over. So, if a shooter reads it, he can be susceptible to shots if he guesses pass.
Hellebuyck likes to stay deeper on these types of plays, which means less distance to move across the ice to make saves, but it can also mean filling the net less on redirections. This goal against Finland is likely stopped by Binnington as he would be out at the top of the crease, filling more of the net.
On turnovers that cause unexpected scoring chances, Hellebuyck’s game stays pretty much the same. Simple, controlled and set. He sets his feet early, doesn’t generally back up much and forces the shooter to make a great play to beat him. This save is so simple that he’s still in great position for the rebound and can keep the puck out while Canada digs away at it in his pads.
Binnington likes to get out and challenge, playing these like a traditional breakaway, using his aggressiveness to force the shooter to try to go around him and then sliding with them when they make their move. This is a good save, and he doesn’t give the shooter very much at all. The shooter then takes the puck further away from the middle of the ice, but you can see the contrast in styles – where Binnington ends up compared to Hellebuyck.
Hellebuyck’s Vulnerability
Where Binnington’s explosive movement is a strength, Hellebuyck is not as quick in his lateral movement, which is why he builds his game by playing deeper in the crease to avoid the necessity of too much movement. By being set, Hellebuyck can be vulnerable to quick angle changes, especially when a shooter has a lot of speed.
On this goal, Connor McDavid changes the angle so quickly and has so much speed that the puck hits the middle of the net before Hellebuyck can move laterally and get in the way. One thing Canada has in players like McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon is their speed, which allows them to generate open scoring chances, change angles and shoot quickly.
Goalies can’t score, and they can’t make anything happen. The position is all about reacting to what the game throws at them. The contrast between these two styles is what will make this an excellent finale to the 4 Nations Face-Off. Hellebuyck can be susceptible to quick angle-change plays on great scoring chances, and Binnington can make a big save but can get beat off the rush and on saveable shots because his extra movement (compared to Hellebuyck) means he’s not always set. What this means is that Canada will likely need to generate more dangerous scoring chances than Team USA to win the tournament title.
