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Personally I think the rise of tandems is a talent issue. There are lots of good goalies in the league right now but not a lot of great ones and I don't think teams want to be trotting out "good" goalies for 50-60 games. Just entering an era where j don't think you'll see a lot of great goalies like Kipper, Roy, Brodeur etc. Edit: also to expand because I think there are more good goalie then before I think teams are having to find ways to get them invovled. I think something the expansion draft has shown you is most teams in the NHL now go 2-3 goalies deep in terms of good or decent options and that just wasn't the case 15 years ago or so. The old model of riding 1 guy and just letting your next guy rise up behind him seems to be dead and teams want to try and get more young goalies invovled earlier on.

I get where you are going but your example isn't a great one. In baseball there is actually no definitive data on the subject, and in fact there are as many studies that say there is no impact between how many innings you throw and arm injuries. Bascially for every study or analytics that says it will lead to injury there is one that says there isn't and in fact some have argued that the rise in arm injuries is actually due to too many young pictchers being kept on innings limits and not building up muscle base. It's, very much an inexact science which is why there is so much debate around it. I think its impossible to apply analytics or data to injuries. No 2 players in any sport or any situation are alike, be it their gene pool, training regiment, game situations etc they ae never alike. So for me to try and draw a link that playing X amount of games will lead to this certain type of injury is a falasy. Goalies specifically, both Demko and Gilles played in the NCAA system where typically the starter plays less than 40 games and both got hurt. yet then you have guys come out of the CHL system who typically will start more than 40 and sometimes 50 games a year and they arn't having the same issues. I have no doubt, and fully agree, that data and studies will continue to help us understand injuries but I think drawing a conclusive link to games played = certain injury risk will likely never be fully supported. Too many external variables you cannot control.