Bad / wrong trends in goaltending

[Jukka Ropponen]

http://goalieblog-jukka.blogspot.com/20 ... alies.html

Some thoughts at the english blog. What do you think?

Jukka

[Cubanpuckstopper]

To continue your assessment of "in the position too long" and "must be done quickly", let me relate it to a conversation from last year.

A recent issue of Goalie's World discussed Carey Price's stance, in which Price's stick is offset to the gloveside to provide complete ice level coverage.

I inquired if the elbow farther to the right of the center of the stick would cause instability on a rockered heel, and if a squared heel would prove more stable.

The response from Gilles Mofffet turned into a discussion of paddle down.

He stated that a rounded heel was preferred for rapidly moving to a paddle down position.

That paddle down is a part of "modern goaltending". In tight it is highly effective.

That the paddle down needs to be a dynamic move, similar to a glove or blocker save, and not be used where it had the appearance of an awkward stance. The dynamic movement would be a more effective way to recover to a proper stance, and that the longer a goalie was in the paddle down the more likely they were to dip the shoulder and set themseles off balance, the most common cause of the off balancing was following the puck with the paddle.


EDIT : 23/10/09

I discussed this last night with a shooter, who responded

How often does the paddle down suprise the shooter ?

How often does a shooter have to change his shot because of a paddle down?

In shootouts there have been goalies who use a barrel or paddle poke check. That appears to be a dynamic variation of a standard paddle down. Although shootouts occur at mostly the professional level, one would have to believe that the shootout will work its way down to most age/levels of hockey.

[RichMan]

I think Moffet is right with the paddle down. A rounded heel would encourage a softer and quicker transition.

In the argument of Price's stick being offset...it might be due to the length of paddle he uses. Maybe his shoulder joint won't allow for a relaxed close position. Maybe he feels that he needs to compensate on the low glove side.

After all, what is the longest extension on a goalie? His stick. It sure saved my butt quite a few times when i was clearly out of position and beat

[pmgaff]

Where do kids pick up that paddle down save, anyway?

I just got an eye-opener with our 11-yr-old goalie. The team has been together for about a month and I was really enjoying the time with him. He's smallish but pretty quick, very coachable, and has some really nice save movements. (He's obviously had some coaching before.)

We do a lot of game situations and small games and such, in practice, so imagine my surprise when in our first game, he throws a paddle-down move on a long dump-in, fails to cover it (because he couldn't tell that his brand new, stiff, too-big catcher had NOT covered it), and leaves the puck tee'd up in front of an empty net. Out of the blue... Never did it before in practice... And then did it 4 more times in the game, resulting in one more goal and a total of 5 coach's heart attacks.




Too much TV, I guess...

[Cubanpuckstopper]

Where do kids pick up that paddle down save, anyway?

Too much TV, I guess...

Gaffer,

I've seen perfectly good young goalies do this when there is a lack of confidence or case of nerves in game situations. Just a thought.

[Jukka Ropponen]

One of the main reasons is that PD is effective with young kids before the shots get better and harder. Once you learn a habit at young age it is tough to get rid of it. That's the main reason for the trend. Also a lot of coaches are teaching it for young kids since those coaches are focused on results for that season instead of looking at kids development in longer terms/view.

Jukka

[pmgaff]

Gaffer,

I've seen perfectly good young goalies do this when there is a lack of confidence or case of nerves in game situations. Just a thought.

This is exactly the way it looked and felt to me.

He's been doing a little better the past couple of weeks but his stick usage is pretty weak and you can see where he might have wanted to find something different.

I've got the other coaches involved and every regroup drill or any drill that requires a dump-in has that dump going right on goal. Even the half ice games have an added rule that if I'm dumping it in, the players are to allow it to go through to the goalie. You can almost see the sweat breaking out on his brow.

I'm totally on board with Jukka's point, too.

My first impression is that this sounds like a coach who is more interested in winning games than in developing hockey players. Standing still at the top of the crease on a breakaway may be effective at the younger levels but what's the poor kid gonna do next year or the year after that?

http://www.goaliestore.com/board/doctor-ice/87697-how-far-should-young-goalie-come-out-his-crease-break-away-2.html#post1468427

[TartanBill]

Some might like it on dumps because the puck tends to die on paddle. Teach them to use the glove on backside of the blade technique to stop and control the puck.

Kids generally lack the strength to move the puck effectively with a goalie stick. If they learn to stop, set and get out of the way, they will be more effective than most more mature amateur goalies who seem to give it away 50% of the time.

[MTNGoalie]

While trying to encourage our full time instructors to do some writing for MTN Goaltending one of our most experienced students/instructors wrote a strong blog entry about the problems of paddle down usage. Let us know what you think.

http://mtngoaltending.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/beware-the-paddle-down/

[Cubanpuckstopper]

Nicely done article.

When Goalies' World did their Carey Price issue I had a conversation about paddle down with Gilles Moffet.

He says the paddle down needs to be a dynamic move. I agree.

My biggest grief over the paddle down is that has evolved into pseudo stance. As such any element of surprise is taken away and a goalie in a paddle down stance has given a good shooter huge visual cues.