STOCKHOLM – Goalies, as well as fans of the masked men, had to love the fact there were three shutouts on Day One of the 2012 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship.

Stockholm’s Globen Arena witnessed Germany’s Dennis Endras blanking Italy 3-0, and the Czech Republic’s Jakub Kovar beating Denmark 2-0. At Helsinki’s Hartwall Arena, it was Finland’s Kari Lehtonen delighting the hometown crowd with a 1-0 win over Belarus.

That’s three out of six opening-day games where one side registered nada on the scoreboard.

If this torrid pace holds true for the rest of the tournament, we could be looking at a remarkable bumper crop of shutouts – at least in the context of recent years.

Since 2007, the first year in which there were no longer ties at the IIHF World Championship (and consequently, no more 0-0 deadlocks), there have been an average of 9.6 shutouts per tournament. Here is the breakdown:

2007: 11
2008: 8
2009: 10
2010: 10
2011: 9

The surplus of shutouts on Day One increases the possibility we could go even higher into double digits in 2012. Another factor is that this year’s World Championship will consist of 64 games instead of just 56, as was the case in previous tournaments.

Ultimately, it’ll come down to a combination of the brilliance of the netminders and the ineptitude of the shooters. And that’ll be a “group effort.” How so?

Ever-increasing parity in international hockey reduces the likelihood that any single goalie or team will be able to rack up goose egg after goose egg. (We definitely won’t see a repeat of the most lopsided shutout in top-level World Championship history, Canada’s 47-0 romp over Denmark in 1949.)

When you consult the IIHF Record Book, none of the goalies who are listed in the “Most Shutouts, One WM” category played in the modern era, with the exception of Czechoslovakia’s Jiri Kralik, who had four in 1982. The single-tournament champ is Great Britain’s Jimmy Foster, with eight in 1937, and that was at a time when World Championship games consisted of three 15-minute periods.

Nonetheless, it’s looking good for the goaltending brotherhood so far in 2012.

In case you’re curious, the last 0-0 tie in World Championship history occurred between Finland and Latvia on May 9, 2005 in Innsbruck, Austria. The goalies were Niklas Bäckström and Arturs Irbe.

LUCAS AYKROYD