Don't cut padding, Price says

[Habsfan84]

The NHL has disqualified nothing from its list of maybes in a bid to increase offence - not larger nets, not considered rule changes, and not its most popular idea, shrunken goaltenders.
But the way Canadiens goalie Carey Price sees it, any move to further downsize rule-abiding NHL netminders will compromise their safety in a game populated by the strongest, fittest, hardest-shooting and most technologically armed players in hockey history.
"I don't wear huge equipment," Price said yesterday, receiving new pads and gloves approved for use with the felt-pen initialled K of NHL goaltending consultant Kay Whitmore, a former goalie and the league's netminding-gear policeman.

"Jaro and I get hit a lot as it is already," added Price, a 6-foot-3, 225-pounder, of fellow Canadiens goalie Jaroslav Halak. "If they cut back even more padding, we'll start getting hurt more. You'll see a lot of goalies getting beaned all the time.
"Everything I wear now pretty much just covers me. I'm a pretty big dude and I need big equipment."
NHL general managers, meeting last month, targeted goalies' chest protectors and pants, having already shaved as much as 15 per cent off pads and gloves following the 2004-05 lockout.
The league seems prepared to work with the players' association and equipment manufacturers to once and for all deal with the issue.
But any legislating of equipment size based on a goalie's body mass, "sizing little guys vs. big guys, will be opening a human-rights can of worms," said a major industry supplier.
"Carey's pads are (the legal maximum) 38 inches long and 11 inches wide and he wears an XL chest protector," said Jorg Achenbach, pro services rep for Vaughn Custom Sports.
"Then you have a guy like (5-foot-10) Chris Osgood. Do you tell him he can only wear a 33-inch pad? Or a guy like (6-foot-1, 165-pound) Marty Biron. Can he only wear medium?
"The minute you do that, they'll never draft another goalie who's under 6-foot-2."
Achenbach remembers putting Price's chest protector on Whitmore's Toronto desk, its rib protection fanned out, "and thinking: 'holy (expletive), this will never pass.' But when it was put on the body, Whit realized it was fine and signed off on it.
"(The league) sets the rules and my company tries to work within that. But my biggest concern is to protect the goalies. We'll fight to the end to have rib or calf protection for Carey. He needs it, it's that simple."