Following on my previous post on Canadian goaltenders in the NHL, this plot shows the change in the number of skaters and goaltenders from their peak during the NHL/WHA era. Were it not for the WHA talent dilution, we'd have a roughly flat curve through the 1970s. Skaters are flat, while the decline in Canadian goaltenders looks to be a post-1993 trend:
Here are the same trends among Americans – they hit their goalie peak in the early-to-mid 1990s and haven't developed proportionally more goaltenders. That's a different trend from skaters, where the USHL has dramatically increased the number of US-born players in the NHL in the last decade:
It's well-known that European skaters hit their peak about a decade ago – but the number of goaltenders has continued to increase:
So we have only two groups that have dropped from their post-WHA peaks – European skaters and Canadian goaltenders.
