Fabulous Finn 'tenders

Halfway through the opening round of the playoffs and a look at the goaltending stats is quite revealing and startling to Canadian hockey fans.
Among those who have played at least two games, there is not a Canadian-born goalie in the top-ten in Goals Against Average. Read that again.....amazing.

Here they are with their country of origin;

  1. Pekka Rinne, Finland 1.35
  2. Brian Boucher, USA 1.98
  3. Annti Niemi, Finland 2.01
  4. Tuuka Rask, Finland 2.01
  5. Craig Anderson, USA 2.11
  6. Evgeni Nabokov, Russia 2.12
  7. Semyon Varlamov, Russia 2.12
  8. Ryan Miller, USA 2.36
  9. Jonathan Quick, USA 2.45
  10. Jimmy Howard, USA 2.78
  11. Martin Brodeur, Canada 2.98
  12. MA Fleury, Canada 3.01
  13. Roberto Luongo, Canada 3.20
  14. Ilya Bryzgalov, Russia 3.26
  15. Jose Theodore, Canada 3.70
  16. Jaro Halak, Czech 4.07
  17. Brian Elliott, Canada 4.14

Wow, five Americans, three Finns and two Russians in the top ten with the Finns being 3 of the top 4. Team Canada's Olympic trio, Brodeur, Luongo and Fleury are all hovering around a 3.00 GAA.

When we look at Save Percentage Leaders, the first Canadian doesn't appear until 13th place with Marty Brodeur at .886. Including Pascal Leclaire and Andrew Raycroft (both under 60 minutes played), Canadian goaltenders hold down the bottom seven positions in the entire league.

The totals for each country are; (W-L, GAA, SPct)

  1. Finland 5-4, 1.79, .939
  2. USA 10-8, 2.32, .929
  3. Russia 6-3, 2.57, .912
  4. Canada 6-10, 3.40, 876

Is this an anomally, or a trend? There may very well be only two Canadian born goalies remaining after the first round.

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