InGoal Magazine December 2011 : Page 41
InGoalMag.com his skates longer and not go down as much, thinking they will have a better chance to stop the high shots as a result. And this is coming from the person who admits knowing nothing about goaltending. The results can be devastating to the goalie’s overall development and cause more problems. Sometimes the solutions can be simple, and the coaches that take the time to understand and get to the root of the problem to help their goaltender will also enhance the overall performance of their team. Tracking drills are an easy remedy for many goalie issues during a season. Every goalie has the ability to track the puck, but from time to time during a long season they will encounter mental fatigue, distractions, and pressure. They all result in a stress level that can cause a goaltender to stray from something as simple as tracking the puck. And when they don’t bother to track the puck they often drop automatically into a butterfly. It happens more than most realize. Early signs of a goalie stuck in this rut include a tendency to drop to the ice more than normal and in instances they don’t know where the puck is going to hit them. There is no eye movement on the puck itself and they have no idea where the rebound is. And there often is a delay finding a loose puck after it hits them. The importance of tracking begins early in a goalie’s overall development and continues right up until he stops playing the game. It needs constant nurturing and can continually be enhanced even at the professional level. Tracking in the early years Tracking is a fundamental often left out of practice routines because of the assumption that anyone wanting to be a goalie can track a puck. But it is easy to test your goalie’s tracking ability and distances in the early stages of the practice. If you want to see if your goaltender is reading and tracking the puck, line up players for perimeter shots somewhere outside the circle during warm up. Tell the goalie that as each shot comes, they must read and track the puck. If the puck is high, they should remain on their skates, and if the puck is low along the ice, they should go down and direct it to the corner or absorb the puck. You will quickly see if the goalie is actually tracking the puck or just dropping to block it every time. In the first stage it should be very easy for the goalie to remain up on high shots and go down on the lower shots. Now move the players closer to the goalie. The closer you get to the net, the more difficult it will be for the goalie to maintain his level of accuracy and control of the puck. The ability to track – and therefore react – to pucks off sticks is a skill that most of the world’s top goaltenders have developed, and one of the best of all time used to like to work on it regularly. Dominik Hasek’s ability to read plays and follow the puck allowed him to play longer than most – and there were reports in November of yet another possible comeback for the 47-year-old Czech legend. According to his former Buffalo Sabres goalie coach, Mitch Korn, Hasek used to like to do a drill where he had teammates line up “really close” and asked them to hammer the puck as hard they could at him. Amazingly, Hasek could read each one – high, low, left, right – from a very short distance, almost like he was seeing it in slow motion. It’s something he credits to tracking, a skill that started at a young age, but one that didn’t dissipate, allowing him to play to an old one. Tracking the puck
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