Specialized training for goaltenders has replaced the days of volunteer
parent/coaches shooting pucks and telling kids to watch their angles.

By Glen Andresen

In baseball, it’s the pitcher. In football, it’s the quarterback. In hockey, the X-factor, the hero or the goat, the player that will carry the team is the goaltender. It’s the position that holds the most pressure and requires an enormous amount of skill and poise to go along with a thick layer of skin and a short memory.

If an NHL or college coach was fined ten cents for every time he mentioned how important goaltending is to his team’s chances, we’d have enough money to build ten more Xcel Energy Centers in Minnesota. That’s how important the position is. Yet, when it comes to coaching youth netminders, it’s the position that is often worked on the least amount of time.

Shouldn’t goaltenders be given more instruction than “watch your angles” followed by slap shot after slap shot? Why is it that goaltenders, the loneliest people in sports, get such little attention from their coaches? It seems that when it comes to training goalies, they are often neglected.

“When we talk about ‘neglected,’ it’s assumed that there’s somebody out there that can help, and head coaches are basically bypassing help,” said Robb Stauber, a former Hobey Baker-winning goaltender and current goaltending coach for the Minnesota Gophers men’s hockey team. “I think we’re assuming a lot when we’re saying that there are people out there who can help. It’s a very small number who have played the position and are successful and can truly teach.

“Are coaches really neglecting them or is it just the nature of the beast? I think it’s more the nature of the beast.”

Stauber is co-founder of Goalcrease Inc., a training school solely focused on the development of goaltenders and specifically, the fundamentals involved in the position.

“You never get away from fundamentals,” says Stauber. “Fundamentals are not easily recognized. The position has changed over time, and that’s why goalies who get training today are so much better. Day in and day out, a coach has to focus on the fundamentals behind every move that a goalie makes.”

Steve Carroll agrees. Carroll backstopped Mankato State to four consecutive NCAA National Tournaments and was named the Most Valuable Player of the Mavericks team that won the 1980 Division II National Championship. Carroll also runs his own goaltending school and serves as an assistant coach for the Gustavus Adolphus College women’s hockey team.

“What we work on with kids an awful lot is the skating techniques,” explained Carroll. “I think for the kids, stopping the puck is the easy part. I think what happens [in practice] when they’re just facing a bunch of shots is they lose some of the technical and fundamental skills they need to be successful.”

Kellen Briggs, the goaltender for the Golden Gophers, works with Stauber on a daily basis in practice. He was able to shed some light on exactly what Stauber and Carroll mean when they talk about fundamentals.

“I think you start learning the fundamentals at the first goalie camp you go to,” said Briggs. “You get out there and play, and you go over things like stickhandling and skating. Once you master that, you start getting into full butterfly and half butterfly and stuff like that.”

Unless a youngster who straps on the pads has a Stauber or Carroll to guide him or her with hands-on instruction every day, it can be a challenge to know what to do to get better. On the flip side, a coach who is unfamiliar with the position may not feel qualified to give advice on a position he or she never played. Rather than just putting the goalies between the pipes and telling them to wait for shots, Stauber suggests making them a forward, at least for skating drills.

“The biggest thing any youth coach can do is to get goalies to become better on their feet,” he said. “That’s about as simple as making them do skating drills just like the forwards and defensemen. Don’t let [goalies] off the hook.

“It’s extremely important that they are able to move. At some point in the season or the summer, they’ll have to find coaching. If they can skate when they search out help, they can be helped. If they can’t skate, it’s tough.”

A goaltender can always improve on skating. But even a goaltender with quick feet will have to deal with the mental battles that come along with the responsibility. Every goalie gets scored on, but some deal with it differently. Any coach can tell a netminder to forget about a goal and worry about the next one. However, any goalie knows that putting a missed save in the past is not as easy as forgetting to take the garbage out.

“What we talk to them about is enjoying the challenge of being a goalie,” Carroll said about dealing with confidence problems. “Make [the other team] earn whatever they’re going to get on you. Battle to the end. Even when you think you’re beat, don’t be afraid to throw your stick back or your leg back. That’s what made Dominik Hasek so great. He never gave up.”

Stauber also pointed to fundamentals as the cause of a lot of confidence issues.
“Confidence is different from fundamentals, but the two go hand in hand,” he said. “If you’re not taking care of the fundamentals, you’re not going to be very good and you’re going to be second-guessing yourself. And you should, and you’re going to have confidence problems. If you take care of your daily work, you should be fairly confident.”

As a goalie gets older and continues to improve, he or she should remember that there are always techniques to work on to improve the fundamentals. Briggs began the season as one of the top-rated college goaltenders in the country, but he and Stauber continue to work on new things every day in practice.

“Lately, I’ve been working on recoveries, making the first save and putting myself in position to give yourself a chance to make the next save,” said Briggs. “You can’t control every rebound. If one gets away from you, you try to be efficient and get your body in front of the puck.”

Even Stauber continues to learn the position that he has made a living teaching.
“As a former goalie that played for a long time, I know much more now than I did at the peak of my career. But if I didn’t do it every day, I wouldn’t know any more than when I was 30.”

Goalies over the years have changed significantly. The stand-up targets with the small brown pads and plastic face masks have given way to butterfly keepers with multi-colored pads and heavily decorated masks who now have long overdue training available to help that volunteer parent/coach who shoots pucks and tells them to “watch their angles.”

It’s long been said that the goal pipe is a goaltender’s best friend. However, those who have had professional instruction from guys like Carroll and Stauber might argue otherwise. MHJ

Glen Andresen is the publications manager for the Minnesota Wild.