I always look forward to the front end of the hockey season. I’m fortunate in that I have the opportunity to speak to many hockey coaches from Northern Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula during the Level II and III Coaching Clinics. If you don’t know, we coaches get as revved up for the new hockey season as the players, and this is evident at the coaching clinics. Parents and players should remember that these ladies and gentlemen, who make up the backbone of our hockey associations coaching staffs, are, for the most part…volunteers. These folks not only put in the many hours of time at the rinks with the players and teams… but spend hours of their own time away from the rink with practice preparation, coaching clinics, coaches meetings, scheduling meetings and more! I personally would like to say thanks! Thank you for your attention during the clinics and for your questions and concerns with regard to our young goaltenders. As a reminder, all of us here at BTP are available to take your questions throughout the year… just drop us a line and we’ll do our best to assist you in a timely manner! Now for this months article.
There are two areas that I want to address and they’re both somewhat related. I was spending my Saturday night (October 20th) watching “Hockey Night in Canada’s Hotstove” segment. This particular night had Sean Burke and Scott Mellanby sitting with Ron MacLean at the round table. One part of the discussion focused on goaltending and Sean Burke started talking about a goaltenders confidence. I thought that it was great to be hearing this on television. They could have gone further, but there was something about a hockey game that hey had to get back to! So I’d like to pick up where the wise Sean Burke left off.
A strong and confident goalie is often the un-official leadership on a hockey team. Sure the team will have the designated “C” and “A’s,” but, when it comes right down to it, the team looks to their number one goalie. Have you ever watched a team with two regular goalies and noticed that the team seems to play much better in front of the one goalie compared to the other? This is not uncommon! Players take more risks, play more aggressively, and take more personal responsibility for their performance when they have confidence with their goalie. When there is a lack of confidence with a goaltender, a team has a collective tendency to “play not to loose!” This unbalanced confidence in a teams goaltending is usually normal. Lucky is the team/coach that has two goalies that invoke such a collective team confidence! The question is how to work towards this objective.
My first point here is for both player and coach. In order to have confidence in a player, there has to exist a certain amount of respect… and of course, I hope that we agree on the point that respect is a commodity that is earned, and not automatic. If a goalie wants to earn the respect of the members of the team, that goalie needs to work hard. I’m not talking about just keeping the puck out of the net! When a goalie is on the ice, we’re talking about skating the drills hard, encouraging the other players when they can hardly breathe themselves… it’s about trying to be the first player to the other end during the conditioning practice. It’s about working on the areas that are difficult and not mastered vs. working on a skill that is already solid. For the coaches, it’s about not allowing your goalies to be exempt from conditioning drills, expecting nothing less from your goalies than what you expect from your forwards and defense. It’s about telling your goalies at the front of the season what you expect to see and hear from them and what it’s going to take to, “get the start!” Finally, it’s about evaluating the team’s collective performance in front of your goalies. You may not agree with the answer you come up with, or it may not be the politically correct one, however, if you’re a coach and not a puppet, you’ll make the right decision in selecting your “number one” and your back-up. The sooner that this decision is made, the better... you’ll find that you’ll have the confidence of the rest of the bench as well. Now for my readers from the, “equal playing time” world of youth ice hockey…
This is a different world, parents and board members in the stands with stopwatches and roster sheets. Did I say a different world!? NOT! What I stated above with regard to what our goalies and coaches need to do goes double in this world. If you’re a goalie who plays in this type of league, you’ve got to work three times as hard to earn the respect and confidence of your team mates. The reason is that they know that you’re going to play every other game unless the other goalie is hurt. You sure don’t want to be the goalie that the team plays the, “safe” game in front of… do you?
Keeping the respect and confidence is an aspect of a goalies work ethic. Working as hard as you can during practice both on and off the ice is what I call your physical work ethic. Your physical work ethic is only one half of keeping your teams respect and confidence. Your mental work ethic is what usually gets a goalie in trouble with the respect and confidence during game play.
Everybody is going to have a bad day now and again… what we want to see is a lot of distance between bad days. How well you handle yourself on one of these “bad days” is what I want to focus on. Let me draw up a bad day here…
First 20 seconds of the first period brings you an odd man rush, the puck carrier swings wide towards the right corner and fires a shot at you from just above the goal line and it gets by you on the short side! How do you respond to this!? Goalie?! Coach?! I know what the majority of the guys on the bench are thinking based on how the goalie and coach react to this. The answer… keep it to yourself… you can be mad as heck, mad at yourself, mad at whoever fed the pass into the middle of the ice without looking or made a line change at the wrong time…. What ever the reason… it’s ok to be mad as heck… it’s not ok to show it or say it… not during the game. Try and focus that energy on the next shot, save, and getting the win! Getting mad to the point where everybody sees that you’re mad takes your head out of the game… too many on ice reactions like these lead to the collective loss of team confidence and respect. Remember, the respect and confidence are like your fingers and thumb on your hand… without them, you can’t hold on to anything!
The second subject I want to address is for the goalie who wants to be the number one starter… the “go to guy in net!”
Many coaches are reluctant to pick a starter out, for what ever their reason… they think that it’s too early in the season, or they’re waiting to see “which one,” whatever the reason… it’s difficult to get butter if you don’t churn the cream! So what do we do in this situation!? Hey there, I’ve already given you the answers… churn the cream!
You don’t get something for nothing… you should know this by now! You have to show the coaching staff, everyday, that you want the start! You do this by working hard, earning your team mates respect and confidence, (sound familiar) and doing this every day both on and off the ice. If you’re on the bench during the game, be positive, be involved, just don’t sit there, have the coach give you something to do, score rebounds, stat face offs… do something besides sitting there. The bottom line here is that the sooner that you start showing the hockey world you’re in that you want to be the starter, the sooner it will happen! Good luck, work hard, and Happy Thanksgiving!
