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...