Too tall goalie stick = problem!

This is clearly an issue these days. Every day when I visit various rinks I see kids with way too tall sticks that seem to fit them well when kids are in a traditional stance, but as soon as they go down to make a save in a butterfly position the stick is forcing their hands to incorrect position.

This is mainly a results of too tall paddle/grip height. In the past sticks were always measured to fit goalies stance. This was OK when most of the saves were made standing up, but NOT TODAY. In modern hockey +90% of the saves are being made with 1 or both knees on the ice. Therefor you should also start measuring the stick to fit the most commonly used save position.

Too tall stick pushes your blocker way too high and leaves vulnerable hole under the arm. Lot of goalies compensate this by bringing the arm tight to the body and pushing the stick blade further out. This way the goalie puts himself into a position were it is almost impossible to control the puck properly.

Ask your goalie coach to help, find a stick that fits your save making position and feel natural for you.

Modern goaltending, coaching, trends etc…

I have been publishing my goalie blog in Finnish over a year now and figured out that it is also time to start publishing more in English as well. As folks have noticed we have been very focused on business in Finland at Goaliepro and therefore all the efforts have been on keeping the Finnish website www.goaliepro.com/fi updated at all times. Unfortunately this has meant that www.goaliepro.com/en has not seen any recent updates. This is natural since Goaliepro’s business is mainly in Finland with some consulting in Switzerland and Russia at the moment.

To correct the situation we have decided with Goaliepro’s webmaster Juha Halmesvaara to convert the English site to resource library only and remove the other information from there. Changes will be done during the spring. After that we will start translating the Finnish resources more regularly to English and maintain all the business, camp, equipment etc information only on the Finnish site.

This Blog also plays a role on these changes as I intend to maintain both Finnish and English blogs from now on. Here I will address issues related to goaltending, coaching goalies etc…