Keepers are finally playing a PK like they are at the advantage to stop the kick. Everyone used to step up with the mentality of 'This is a PK, I will get scored on, no biggy'. Now i see keepers stepping up and saying 'Lets mess with this guys head'. One thing that I have always done, and I saw Friedel do on both of his PK's is take two steps to the side the he thought the kicker would kick to. This forces the kicker to shoot the other (non-prefered) direction. This leads to three things: 1) The kicker is kicking to a place that they havn't practiced their kicks. 2)The keeper is messing with the kickers head, he can go to the side the keeper stepped to still, but he thinks to himself that the keeper is right there. 3) The keeper knows where the kicker is probably going to kick the ball to and can make the dive sooner and just hope. So maybe, just maybe this helped in your analysis of why the PK's were being saved.
The only reason Friedel made those saves is because Keller signaled from the bench which direction to go, plus his gloves were missing so he wore Kellers...no way he makes those without Kellers help.