What's wrong with these goalies???

I often ask that question these days when I see goalies play both here in Europe or North America. Why? Simply because there seem to be a couple of bad trends going around and really hurting goalies performance. So what are these trends?

Blocking vs. controlling the puck

Mainly seems to be caused by this school of goaltending where coaches force their goalies to play with their hands tight / close to the body in butterfly so that they leave no holes. This often causes goalies balance to be too far back and they lock themselves to the position and make it harder for them to react to anything that happens after initial shot or pass if they have misread the play. They also give way too much net for the shooter as having hands too far back reduces the coverage a lot compared to having them out front properly. Look at this video where Nikke Bäckström is working with proper save technique and catching pucks in front & controlling them: Link to video

Overuse of paddle down

This also seems to be more and more a trend that has been learned since kids have started to play goal. I guess it is very effective at young age and then it becomes hard to get rid of it once it has been used constantly at young. It’s amazing to see how many pro goalies abuse their game by overusing paddle down & also really hurt themselves by doing it A) Too early and for B) Too long. They open way too much of the net on the blocker side, tie themselves to the ice and have hard time to follow plays etc. Don’t get me wrong, paddle down is a good move when used in correct situations with correct timing. There are certain close plays, wraparounds etc where this move is very effective, but you use it at right time and quickly.
There are trends in hockey always and some of them come and go. I hope these 2 trends will go away sometime soon.

Finnish goalies to North American schools?

We have been talking about this type of organized program for a couple of years and now the plans are starting to come together slow but sure. All this is based on those numerous calls and questions we have been getting from goalies in Finland and also various teams and schools in North America. Our goal is to have the program ready to be announced early 2010 and then have the first goalies to move to North America the following year.

Program will be fairly simple and consists the following services:
• Advisory and consultancy services for candidates
• Creation of proper CV’s and introductory videos
• Introductions and recommendations to interested teams / schools
• North American showcase camp starting summer 2011
• Training & coaching advisory to prepare the candidates for the game in North America

Overall Finland has some great goalie coaching available and most of the good level Finnish junior goalies have gone through good fundamental training and have capabilities to play at real high level. That’s why Finnish junior goalies are also interesting to North American junior teams and schools, but the number of them playing on the other side of the pond is still way too low considering the amount of potential we have. Goaliepro’s program is going to be designed to aid in filling this void.

Personally I believe that it is a very good path for these young men to go after their hockey and career dreams through U.S. college hockey system. There’s nothing better getting a great education for free while also playing hockey at a very high level. Once these players have graduated from their schools (usually 4 year programs) they can go after their professional hockey careers, but if that doesn’t work they also have good degrees already and are ready to approach other professional / business careers.

For college, these kids need to graduate from Finnish high school first (ylioppilas) and pass U.S. language (TOEFL) as well as SAT tests. We will also advice on the TOEFL and SAT tests / process once our program starts. Every student needs to clear also the scrutiny of NCAA clearing house both academically as well as with their amateur status. So remember that you can’t dream of college hockey if you have signed a professional contract or if you have been participating at professional game, even as a backup for one game.

There will be a lot of opportunities for the kids also to play junior hockey at U.S. before being eligible for college hockey. We have several junior teams already asking about possibilities to get Finnish goalies on their roster. This option can be a good one to get visibility as the colleges scout the best junior leagues in U.S. all the time.

As part of preparations we have started to collect data on potential Finnish junior goalies. As the next step we are also contacting junior teams and colleges at U.S. to find out which ones are interested in our prospect information once the program starts.

Stay tuned, we will be live with this program early 2010.

Busy summer for goalies!

This summer has been real busy and I have to admit that I have not had enough time to keep this blog updated, but here’s a brief try to do something about it.

First of all we have been working with a group of very talented goalies and done several new things, developed new methods etc over the summer months. Now we have last 2 weeks of our EuroPro workouts at hand and after that those goalies will join their teams and I will continue workouts with Nikke Bäckström for a bit longer before he is off to Minnesota again.

Here’s a short write-up about the goalies in our workouts. On top of that we have had KooKoo’s Antti Härmä with us for most of the workouts.

Here’s some photos from our summer workouts

Also new photos of the masks delivered to our goalies just this week

Out of our goalies Bernd Brückler has already joined his KHL team Torpedo. What a great improvement by Brucks. His lateral movement, balance and hand positioning was greatly enhanced this summer. I really hope we will have a chance to continue to work together and follow-up with his improvement. Here’s a brief video showing some of the development.

Ari Sulander has been working hard and does not look like he is already 40 years old. We are still modernizing his style and enhancing it. Sulo has also lost some weight and is way ahead of last season in physical tests and also in his technical development.

Lukas Flueler has been working with his personal trainer at Switzerland and will join us next week for our Finnish goalie camp week.

Nikke Bäckström has recovered from his hip operation faster than expected and was back on the ice just 9 weeks after the operation. He is well on his way to be in good shape for the NHL opening game.

Jan Ropponen has had an agenda to correct his movements that have been too rushed and unbalanced. We have also been correcting his lateral movement speed by combining different parts of the technique and executing movements simultaneously. Nice improvement in July after working hard on the issues in may and June.

Antti Härmä has been working with our other coach Ale Jääskeläinen hard every week. His movements are much smoother and faster and Ale has also helped Härski a lot with his hand positioning.

Look for additional videos and photos soon from our camp week.

Goalie Community TV launched

http://www.goaliepro.com/fi/yhteiso/CommunityTV/



Check out the new Goaliepro Community TV. This is a place where goalies can upload their own videos and have other forum members comment them as well as get help & opinions from Goaliepro's coaches. Discussions usually take place at GP's forum where we have launched English section (moderated by CubanPuckstopper). Cuban can also help on registration process and other issues concerning usage of the GP Goalie forum.

Link to Goaliepro's English discussions: http://www.goaliepro.com/foorumi/viewforum.php?f=9

The skill (& art) of playing & making saves down on ice…

I have been getting a lot of requests on articles and questions about the topic of playing down, how much should goalie play down, when to play down etc… What I mean in this by playing down is the difference between making the actual save standing up or making the save with 1 or both knees down on the ice. First of all the issue is not whether you should make saves standing up or playing down on the ice! The issue is about timing, reading the play right and what has the goalie down before going down. I could also add that it is also vital how the goalie goes down and he moves / operates while down on the ice.

Naturally this is a large topic and too much to handle in a small blog article, so I will add a full resource to Goaliepro library on this topic sometime in a future.

Modern hockey has been getting faster and faster over the years. As a result the way goalies play the game has changed too. All goalies on top level like NHL and European pro leagues make +90% of their saves with 1 or both knees on the ice today. This is a statistical fact and I have been following this trend since 2002 on NHL, Finnish Elite League and World Championship levels. This has been done by recording minimum 10 games on each level and listing all saves. Since 2002 the number of saves done while playing down has actually been slightly increasing.

Another fact that we should also take into consideration when discussing about this topic is where do the shots come from. My stats clearly show that the % of saves made down from ice will go up significantly when shots are coming from close distance and from so called scoring sectors.

So when does / should the goalie make saves standing up? There are a few situations where stand-up saves are a natural choice. One of them is long distance shots where goalie has no need to go down when puck can be handled and controlled well standing up. The other this type of situation is shots from narrow angles where goalie has to cover the entire height of the net & this can be done without exposing any other areas open for scoring.

This leads us to the point itself in this article. Modern goalie makes most of the saves with 1 or both knees on the ice, BUT:

1. Timing is everything! If goalie goes down prematurely he often takes himself out of the play and gets scored too much or at least raises the opponents probability to score a great deal. This is an issue where goalie really needs help from qualified goalie coach as it is hard to fix timing on your own. If your timing is not correct it does not matter how good is your technique, how fast and wide is your butterfly etc…

2. Second important piece of this puzzle is goalies ability to move on his skates. This is something goalie must practice more than anything else from the day 1 of his hockey career. Skating ability should be so good that goalie can follow plays at increasing speed as he moves up on the level of play and always maintain readiness for making saves while stay at optimal position. Key for the readiness is balance and proper body position that allows moves to any direction in minimal time and maximum speed.

3. Third piece is goalies ability to read the game / plays. Even if the goalie is the greatest skater it does not matter if he can’t read the plays right. Without good reading ability goalie will not be able to time his movements and go down at proper time either.

Personally I work with these issues always when I am on the ice with my own goalies and goalies I work regularly with. It does not really matter whether I am working with experienced NHL goalie like Nikke Bäckström (Minnesota Wild), seasoned pro like Ari Sulander (ZSC Lions) or young up and coming talent like Lukas Flueler (ZSC Lions), timing, skating/moving and reading the plays are always on our training agenda. Goalie coach has great responsibility in the development of his goalies in these areas and making sure the combination / big picture works.

Goaltenders require specific attention during the off-season too!

I am actually surprised how often I see high caliber teams up to professional level giving very little or no special focus / training to their goalies during the off-season. Even when these teams have goalie coaches in their staff! Sometimes I have even witnessed goalie coaches just hanging with the rest of the coaching staff and let their goalies do all the same workouts as the rest of the team does. I don’t mean that all their training needs to be goalie specific, but c’mon, goalies have different needs from the rest of the team.

If you are a competitive goalie age 12/13 or older you should get specific goalie related dryland training during the off-season! Here’s why:

· Physical needs are different for goalies

· Goalie conditioning has different demands than other players

· Off-season is good time to work on goalie specific balance and agility

· Goalies need to have their off-season programs proportioned different from forwards and defense

So how do you do this? It all goes back to the game analysis that every goalie coach must do and understand thoroughly. Coach must continuously analyze the game and improve his analysis. With this analysis coach must compare how his goalies are doing both physically (conditioning, speed, strength, flexibility etc) and hockey skills wise. With this analysis coach should build an individual program for each goalie.

How do I do this myself? Let’s take a look at this a bit. First of all I am lucky that I have been able to work with top level pro and Junior A goalies for so many years. This means that I have goalies that are always available and willing to work + most of the resources I need. With my oldest goalie, Ari Sulander of ZSC Lions, I have gone to extreme for some years now. He does not work out with the team during the off-season before the team hits ice early August. For Ari I design every single workout session based on the test results and our own analysis that we do together with him.

As a general rule most of the junior teams age 13-17 should get by with 2-3 goalie specific dryland workouts per week and they can do the rest of the training with the team and/or using the training programs given by the team. How ever that specific training is very important part of goalies weekly training and should address their special needs.

It is also good to point out that goalies strength needs are different from the other players and once the team is doing weights your goalies should have somewhat different programs with focus first on legs and lower body followed by strong core/midsection and then thirdly shoulders. Of course goalies can do some bench presses for general conditioning/strength, but that is really not what they need in their game.

So make sure you really understand what your goalies need and build the summer programs accordingly!

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.