I caught a period or so of Thursday night's matchup between the Canadiens and Wild, a game that received a decent amount of attention because (a) it was against two of the top teams to this point in the season and (b) the Koivu brothers had a rare meeting and both are team captains.

But one other thing I noticed was, in what was a real goaltenders' duel, that both backstops, Carey Price and Josh Harding, were former WHL stars.

I grew up in Western Canada, raised on the WHL, so I know the demographics of the region well when it comes to hockey players. In recent decades, the West has been excellent for producing defencemen and hard-nosed checkers, with top goaltenders generally always coming from either Quebec or Ontario.

Patrick Roy's coming of age with the Canadiens in 1986 sparked a major goalie boom in that province, something that's still evident in the league today. Of the 31 Canadian goaltenders to see action in the NHL this season, 11 are Quebecois (35 per cent) and of the 16 goaltenders 29 and up, nearly half are from La Belle Provence.

Those seven members of the "old guard" are pretty highly regarded, too: Martin Brodeur, Roberto Luongo, Jose Theodore, J-S Giguere, Patrick Lalime, Martin Biron and Mathieu Garon. All except Lalime are starters, and all, you can be sure, were inspired by Roy's star turn with their favourite franchise.

Of the 16 oldest Canadian netminders in the league, however, just two were born west of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario: Chris Osgood and Chris Mason.

Like I said, that's not a new trend: The West has never been much of place for good goalies. Ten or 15 years ago, there were always great young French netminders playing for Team Canada at tournaments like the world juniors while the WHL kids generally provided the grit on the blueline and up front.

That's not to say good backstops didn't exist — it's just simply not what the WHL was known for producing. The top western-born goalies, in the 30-some years before the current crop and after the Original Six, included the likes of Andy Moog from B.C., Grant Fuhr, Mike Vernon, Kelly Hrudey and Pete Peeters from Alberta, and Ed Belfour, Ron Hextall and Bill Ranford from Manitoba.

Now?

Among the 15 youngest Canadian goaltenders in the league, everyone 28 and under, six are were born in the West: Jason LaBarbera, Price, Dan Ellis, Cam Ward, Harding and Alex Auld (who was raised in Thunder Bay). Four of those 15 young goaltenders are from Quebec, three from Ontario and two from the Atlantic provinces.

In addition to the presence of Ward, Harding and Price, however, the biggest way you can see the rise of Western Canadians between the pipes is on the world junior team. Prior to the 2008 entry, which had a Quebecker and an Ontarian in Jonathan Bernier and Steve Mason, a Western goaltender was part of the team for five consecutive years, from 2003 to 2007.

For this year's team, three of the four goaltenders that were at Canada's summer development camp qualify: Dustin Tokarski (Saskatchewan), Chet Pickard (Manitoba) and Tyson Sexsmith (Alberta).

If both netminders are from the West this time around, it will mean that over the past seven world junior tournaments, an incredible 10 of the last 14 Canadian goaltenders will have come from the region.

And that's something we'll continue to see in the NHL going forward.

There have been a ton of goaltenders drafted from the WHL in the top few rounds the past four or five years — from Justin Pogge to Leland Irving to Devan Dubnyk to Jeff Glass and Tyler Plante and Price and Sexsmith and Pickard — and the AHL is beginning to fill up with them.

It's a pretty interesting phenomenon, really, and it's not easy to come up with a root cause. What I do know is that the WHL has been by far the lowest scoring junior league in recent years and there's been a big focus on talent in goal as much as beef on the backend. It used to be the case that teams would win the Memorial Cup by running you out of the rink with six- or seven-goal performances, the way the Kamloops Blazers used to, but these days the trap is out in full force.

Consider this: Of the Canadian netminders 28 and under from outside the West, only Marc-Andre Fleury, Pascal Leclaire and Mike Smith are starters, with the rest of the group consisting of Joey MacDonald, Andrew Raycroft, Michael Leighton, Dany Sabourin, Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers and Daniel Lacosta.

My guess is Ward, Harding and Price, three of the league's top young goaltenders, are the start of a trend.