Author: Hockey Heathen

Continuing our discussion of the Goalie Stance this post is specific to Key 5 which is how you should position your feet to keep yourself in the absolute best position to maximize your ability to move on the ice to get into position to make saves and frustrate your opponent.

Goalie Stance Key 5

This key to a good Goalie Stance still relates back to the previous discussions about the goalies focus point so I won’t go into them again (Goalie Stance Key 4). But most of the time the goalies feet should also be pointed in the direction of the the focus point. This is especially true when the goalie is set on ready for a shot.  The only time this should change is if the puck is moving to another position on the ice and the goalie has to use his feet to change position.  And as I’ve said before this is critical for a strong Goalie Stance.

This is another component of the term “squared up“, as when your feet are properly positioned, it automatically puts the faces of the leg pads square to the puck. This maximizes the area covered by the leg pads relative to the area available for the shot to get by, and minimizing the chances for opposition scoring.

When set properly in your stance and all the other keys are covered properly, the goalie should be on the inside edges of the skates with most of the weight centering over the balls of the feet. As with the other points we’ve discussed regarding positioning this allows the goalie to have the shortest time to get to a new position based on the actions of your feet.

Moving side to side is a simple matter of lightening the weight over the leading foot by pushing with the trailing foot. If moving to the left, push with the right foot and this will lighten the weight on the left foot allowing it to slide on the edge to your new position. If you have problems getting this type of sliding to work, you can also rotate your foot until the skate blade is vertical, which removes the resistance of the inside edge. To stop moving you simply put more weight on the leading foot inside edge.

Moving forward and backward is also a simple matter of just turning your feet a few degrees, pushing down with leading edges of both feet and shifting your weight just forward of the leading edge of your skates. To move forward, push out with both toes and lean forward so your weight is just over your toes. To stop push down with the trailing edge while shifting your weight just over the trailing edge.

At no time should be be turning your foot sideways to the puck, unless your trying to make a kick save and its the only way you can cover that space. Once you turn a foot sideways to the action, you’ve taken away half of your ability to move quickly using your feet.

The best practice exercise for developing this skill is the goalie five point drill. Take a close look at the positions marked in the picture below.

 

This drill can be done in three different methods. The first goalie starts the goalie one of the posts (position 1 or 5) and on some kind of signal, the goalie moved explosively to the opposite front corner, pauses in a good goalie stance square along the green line, and then slides to the center, pauses and then slides to the next corner, pauses and then explosively moves the the opposite post.  If starting at position 1, move to 4, 3, 2 and 5. The opposite direction should be practiced as well (5, 2, 3, 4, 1)

The second variation on this which also helps, is to start at position 2, slide to 1, then explosively to 5, then slide to 4. This doesn’t help with centering in the crease, but it does help with turning and sliding.

And the last example I’ll give is one for practice only. You’ll need 2 or 3 shooters to help with this one. The shooters position themselves in each faceoff dot and at the top of the crease. Then the goalie starts on one of the posts. When one of the shooters that he can’t see taps his stick on the ice, the goalie explosively moves to face the shooter and as soon as the goalie is set the shooter sends a shot to the goalie. As soon as the puck either hits the goalie or goes by the next shooter taps the ice and the process repeats twice. Then the goalie returns explosively to the opposite post from where he started.  Done right this one will wear a goalie out quickly, but the muscle memory gained is valuable.

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.

We are continuing our discussion of the Goalie Stance and moving on to Key 3 or how you should position your basic Goalie Stick and a few extra points about how you should be holding it.

Key 3

First let’s define a few terms that will be used to make sure we are all on the same page.  The stick is actually got a few parts that are sometimes called different things depending on where you are.  The blade of the stick is the curved part on the bottom end of the stick that normally is in direct contact with the ice. The paddle is the next part up on the stick that continues the width of the blade and rises up along the shaft of the stick until about midway up the length of the stick. Then the shaft continues up until the end or cap of the stick.  Most goalies will also wrap a bunch of tape around the end of the shaft so that there is a big knob on the end.

Almost all the time on the ice and especially in your ready stance you need to keep that blade down on the ice and out in front of your feet. Most importantly the blade should be far enough in front of your feet that the face of the blade should be at least 15 degrees from vertical. This does a couple of things. First it positions the blade in the very edge of the goalies peripheral vision so you know where it is.  Second it also helps you to be ready to absorb the energy of a shot in almost the same way a skater would receive a hard pass and keep the puck on their stick. When in the goalie stance the blade should be centered between your feet as well.

All of this minimizes the distance you’ll move the stick for it to do its job, minimizing space and time to move it. And as always in hockey, keeping space and time to a minimum is probably the most important factor to the game.

Now to get the stick to be handled comfortably in the proper position you need to carefully consider the dimensions of the stick that you use. Sometimes if you are of average size, you can get lucky and just pick a good stick without much effort. But if your not you’ll need to consider some concepts of the stick dimensions.

There are three things to consider. The first isn’t really a dimension, but the pattern of the blade. This is a really personal selection that is really, just a matter of personal preference. The overall length of the stick is one of the critical dimensions. This one is another personal preference. To make this selection in your local hockey shop, stand up straight and hold a variety of sticks vertically in front of you. Note where the cap of the stick is in front of you.  It should range between being even with your chin to your eyebrows when your standing with the stick straight up and down right in front of you with the tip on the ground. This dimension has more to do with what you can do with the stick rather than the helping your goalie stance. The shorter stick will allow for more precise stick handling at the expense of the amount of power you can exert. The longer sticks allow you to have a leverage advantage to impart more power to the puck with less precision.

And finally, you need to consider the length of the paddle of your stick. This is most important for a strong and comfortable goalie stance. It helps make sure that you keep the stick on the ice, your hand at the top of the paddle and that your Blocker is in the correct position when you are in your goalie stance.  Back in the day, you either had to just deal with what you could get or had to make modifications to your stick, especially if you were a short guy. A lot of guys would cut a small part of the paddle off of the stick so they could position their hands further down on the shaft. Or if you were a tall guy, you’d have to have your hand off of the paddle which makes it hard to have a repeatable form. To address this some goalies would wrap an extra amount of tape where they wanted their hand to ride on the shaft. Now you should be able to take the time to get the feel for a particular length of paddle when trying on a new stick by either add or subtract to the paddle length to get a stick that helps you get in the right position. It has to be comfortable and maintaining the proper positioning of the blade in front of you with the proper minimum 15 degree angle from vertical.

Finally a lot of goalies will make a knob on the cap of their stick with a bunch of tape. There are a couple of reasons to do this. Most importantly it gives your hand a hard stop that you can use to know when you’ve thrown your stick out as far as you safely can without loosing your grip. The other is that this knob helps keep the handle end of the stick off the ice if you do loose your stick. This allows you to grip the stick with your gloved hand a little better because of the Blocker keeping you from easily picking it up.

Keeping all this together will help your game significantly as the stick is pretty important part of your game.

In the next post we’ll talk about Key 4, the overall positioning of your legs.