Last Updated on Thursday, 17 October 2013 11:33
By Kevin Hartzell
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
What about the goalie? Do you think about him/her? As a coach, do you make your goaltender a priority in your daily practice plans? Have you made it your business as a coach to think about how to nurture your netminders and help them be the best they can be? If you hope to win, in the end, you’ll only win with good to great goaltending. Nothing in hockey is ever accomplished without their good play. As a coach, it is important to think about how to make practice equally beneficial for your goaltenders.
I have been fortunate in the past year to witness many practices at many levels of play. I have seen youth, college women, college men, AHL, ECHL, NHL and now European pro, European junior and European youth. Way too often, even at the top pro levels, I have witnessed practices that I suspect not enough focused attention was given by the coaching staff on how to make the practice better for their goaltenders.
Most of us don’t know a lot about the technical aspects of being a goaltender and certainly are not qualified to coach them. That said, there is a lot we can do as coaches in the organizational structure of our practices to make our practices more beneficial for our goaltenders. Here are a few things to think about.
1. Warm-up, visual attachment or what I also call “batting practice.” Let’s start with the concept of batting practice. If you have ever gone early to a Major League Baseball game, you can see the best hitters in the world taking batting practice.
In batting practice, the pitcher is not throwing the ball overly hard and certainly is not trying to fool the hitter. The batting practice pitcher throws the ball into the strike zone for the hitter to see the ball (visual attachment) with the hitter simply working at putting the barrel of the bat on the ball. Simple concept.
Too often, goalies do not get enough of this in practice. In game warm-ups you’ll often see a skater take the goalie at the very beginning and shoot a number of pucks to their glove, then blocker, maybe stick etc., just like batting practice; for visual attachment. Practices often should start with a similar warm-up drill for the goalie or a skating-passing drill for the skaters that ends up with shots being taken from farther out – non scoring areas. This allows the goaltender to actually see the puck and attach his save mechanics to it.
I like to start every practice with two drills that end in “batting practice” for our goaltenders. The drills can be as creative and fast as you want for your skaters; the drills just need to end in shots that the goalie should stop (just like batting practice ends with pitches the hitter should hit). I use the faceoff circles for a visual barrier. No matter how fast and good the drill, the shots will come at the goalie from outside the circles. Shooters can still work on their release and for the most part can still shoot it pretty hard – it’s just coming from “out.” Often we stress keeping these shots low, but if from far enough out, goalies can see it, stop it and all under control while visually attaching to the puck.
2. Shot locations. For any drill and especially non-competitive drills that you have put together, think about where the shot is going to come from for your goaltender and what situation it might be simulating for him in a game. I often see good drills end poorly for the goaltender because each and every shot ends up with a shot right in the middle of the slot … and I see this all the time. Should a drill occasionally end with a shot right from the center slot? Of course the answer is yes. But if this is all a goalie sees or really all a shooter shoots, then neither are benefiting.
Very few shots in a game come uncontested from the center slot. Goalies and shooters alike need to see shots from angles, from deep angles, from just outside the dots, etc. And for the drill to be most effective, the goalie needs to know where these shots will come from. If the drill does not have competition like a 1:1 or 2:1, the goalie still needs to most often be able to read a situation. If the goalie doesn’t understand the purpose of the drill and situation it is simulating, s/he is going to get less out of it and may even develop bad habits.
3. Work-to-rest ratio. Think about this and not just for your skaters when you put your practice plan together. There are way too many drills where the goalie sees one shot after another after another. This hurts not just their habits as far as visual attachment; instead of watching one puck, they are already looking for the next! You can’t be in two places at once!
Besides the detriment to visual attachment, goalies can get very tired. So what does the goalie do? Conserve energy to survive the drill – which really isn’t the way to practice and get better. The goalie will find him/herself thinking about whether they should continue to work hard, getting tired and develop bad habits from being too tired with their technique suffering or just not try too hard at all! This is a tough situation for the coach to put his/her goalies in. The coach is there to make all players better, including his/her goaltenders.
With some thought and input from those around you, all these considerations can be addressed. None of us as coaches ever gets this perfect. We might get it close to right for a day or a week, but the balance in practice between skaters and goalies is a hard one to find. There will be some drills that are better for the goalies than others, but the goalie and these considerations need to be part of every practice plan.
Lastly, think about asking your goalies periodically how practices are for them. Are they challenging? Are they providing the right kind of situations? Do they provide the right work-to-rest ratios, etc.? They most often will tell you if you ask.
