Continuing our discussion of the Goalie Stance we are moving on to Key 4 or how you should position your legs and especially your knees to keep yourself in the absolute best position to maximize your chances of making a good save and avoiding the dreaded 5 hole goal.
Goalie Stance Key 4
Lets start this by talking about general positioning on the ice relative to the goalies focus point. I’ve talked to a lot of young or new goalies that always thought that the focus point is the player with the puck. This is almost correct. The real focus point should be the puck itself. If the focus is solely on the player that opens up a side of the goal that the player is carrying the puck on which can make it extremely difficult to block, because the goalie has to move more. In the picture, the arrow is pointing to where the puck is and not the player. Unfortunately I didn’t get a wide angle picture that included them both in the picture. Had the puck carrier been in this shot, you’d clearly see that our goalie was lined up directly with the puck and not the player. As I’ve said before this is critical for a strong Goalie Stance.
The next component of this key is where the goalies knees are relative to the focus point. You’ll occasionally hear the talking heads on TV commenting about how the goalie was “squared up“, especially if the goalie is making a lot of good saves. But a whole lot of guys don’t know what that really means. Simply, it means that the goalies feet, knees, hips and shoulders are centered on an imaginary line extending from the puck to the center of the net. And the faces of each of these body parts are all on planes that are perpendicular to this line. That is where the square phrase comes from. Even the blade of the stick should be perpendicular and centered on this line.
When centering over this line, the knees should be bent at close to 90 degrees. And your feet should be about 10 – 20 percent wider than shoulder width. These two concepts help position your legs so they can produce the most controlled and powerful movement possible when you need to change position. Keeping the knees bent properly puts each of your legs in the center of the range of motion that you can exert. This allows the goalie to easily move side to side for horizontal changes in position. Up vertically if a high shot is released, or down to the ice quickly for low shots.
When dropping to the ice for low shots, there are a couple of things that a goalie needs to consider. One is keeping the knees as close together as possible and keeping your feet as far apart as you can while dropping because this goes a long way toward closing down that gaping 5 hole and blocking out each side. Another is not pulling your legs up so fast that your feet leave the ice. That allows for the really low shots to find a way under your pads. I’ve seen so many recreational players drop so fast that their feet come up off the ice and the puck simply slides right under them that it’s kind of ridiculous. Another point when dropping to the ice is to try and keep your toes pointed forward. This helps to keep the pads facing the play and taking up as much room as possible.
There is a whole discussion of what goalies can do when down that I’ll put in another later post.
In the next post we’ll discuss the nuances of what position your feet should be in.