Ice Hockey Goaltending 102: First day between the pipes.
Jun 05 '04 (Updated Dec 13 '05)
The Bottom Line Get out there and play!
Welcome to the long anticipated second installment in my goaltending series commemorating review #125. Well, maybe you didn’t long anticipate it, but I did. I promised a follow up with no idea what I would write, so boy did I anticipate this! Originally, I figured I would write about positioning, techniques and the such. But then I realized, that 102 is still a survey level course for people who aren’t playing goalie as a career choice.
So, assuming that you’ve read Ice Hockey Goaltending 101: You think you want to be a goalie, eh? you’ve already decided to make the mental, physical and financial commitments. Now it’s time to strap on the pads and hit the ice for the first time. It kinda makes your palms sweat a little just thinking about it, doesn’t it?
▪ My first day
I planned and schemed and rearranged my schedule for weeks in anticipation of my first moments on the ice. It turned out that getting a spot at the local pick up game wasn’t exactly easy. You had to call at 6 a.m. the day of the skate to get in. I missed my chance a couple times.
Finally I got on the list, but that long awaited first drop-in skate simply didn’t happen. I grabbed my bag from the trunk and reached for my sticks . . . only to find that I didn’t bring my sticks. My second attempt went a little bit better - it wasn’t much better.
I arrived a full forty minutes early to make certain that I had time to dress. As I was sitting in the locker room a guy in his fifties sat down and mentioned that he hadn’t played for a year. I had played a bit of pond hockey as a kid, but this goalie thing was brand new. Heck, I hadn’t even been on skates for years. I chuckled nervously, “I haven’t played . . . ever.”
His eyebrows rose a little in surprise as he must have surmised that a thirty-ish looking guy starting to play goalie might have a few screws missing. This was a fairly accurate assessment it turns out. His look of worry quickly faded to a smile. “I hope you’re flexible.”
Hmm, flexible, I hadn’t thought about that. I dressed a little quicker hoping for fifteen full minutes of stretching even though I had a sneaking suspicion it was too late to keep me from tearing a groin muscle or something similarly painful.
After dressing and loosening up my joints as much as possible (which wasn’t much at all), I stepped onto the ice. The nervous energy that had been building for several weeks came to a crescendo here. As soon the Zamboni door closed and as my blades hit the ice, I knew something was wrong. I hadn’t ice skated for years, but I knew that skates were supposed to offer some level of control. Ack! They didn’t sharpen my skates when I bought them online!
The second attempt at playing goalie for the first time wasn’t looking too hopeful as I clawed my way off the ice and rushed to the locker room to remove my pads and skates. At least there was a pro shop at the rink where I could get a quick edge. I grabbed my wallet (not having yet learned that you never bring your wallet into the locker room) and ran upstairs looking like the incredible hulk, wearing my chest protector and hockey pants with no leg pads on.
Great! The pro shop was closed. Someone mentioned that there was an automatic sharpener down at the far rink. I ran back down the stairs to other end of the huge complex, frightening some figure skaters as I tore by in my socks. I got to the machine only to find that I needed $4 in singles. The smallest bill in my wallet was a ten-spot, sigh. The front desk was all the way back upstairs on the other side of this three-rink monstrosity. I was going to be exhausted before I even got my skates sharpened!
Eventually I managed to get an edge on my skates (it is the only time I ever used one of those automatic machines, but it wasn’t as horrible a sharpening as I expected). I got my skates and pads back on and made my way back to the ice. The drop in session had started twenty minutes earlier by this time. Warm ups were long over and the guys were glad to see the idiot goalie (me) had finally gotten his stuff together.
The other goalie was in a wheelchair (I kid you not!). I made my way to my net thinking, Well, at least I stand a chance of being the better goalie here today. I got situated in net just in time for . . . a breakaway. Great, I haven’t warmed up, any stretching I might have accomplished probably wore off and now this!
The shooter came in waiting for me to challenge him. I stood back too deep and never did. He stopped in front of me as I dropped into the butterfly far too soon. He dangled the puck in front of me, drawing it just out of my reach every time I tried to poke check it. I swear he toyed with me for at least twelve minutes before lobbing the biscuit over my shoulder and into the net. It occurs to me now that the defensemen must have been mad at my late arrival. Twelve minutes does seem a little excessive amount of time for a shooter to have unmolested in front of the net.
I was determined to have a record setting save percentage nonetheless. I calculated in my head, 1 goal against, 1 shot, .000 save percent, I can do better.. It wasn’t long before the numbers were too difficult for mental calculations. After about 20 goals went in, I lost track of goals. On the positive side, the shot count was in the ballpark of 100 when I lost track of it later. Breakaways and odd man rushes were in double digits as well. It was a baptism by fire. I honestly doubt that I’ve seen that many shots in forty-five minutes since. It was the last time that I tried to count shots at a drop-in game. Oh yeah, Kyle, the goalie in the wheelchair, he schooled me that day.
Back in the locker room, I was exhausted and drank the 1000 milliliters of water that I had been too busy to pick up while I was on the ice. One of the younger guys who had scored a month’s worth of goals on me looked quizzically at my leg pads then asked, “do you always wear your pads like that?”
It was a hard answer to come by. I was pretty sure that when I put them on in the living room that one time they were on the same way as today, but did two attempts count as always? Better to sidestep this one with a question I thought. Cleverly, I turned the question back on him, “Why do ask?”
“You have them on the wrong legs.”
I looked down again, pretty sure he was wrong. But before I could answer it made perfect sense to me. He was correct. They were on the wrong legs, sigh.
▪ Pre-Rink Preparation
Let’s start with a little preparation before you get on the ice. The two things that I learned are to make sure your gear is ready and don’t wait until 10 minutes before the game to start stretching. (I felt like a bus ran me over the day after my first game).
Gear
It’s a good idea to get dressed head to toe once before you get to the rink. You’ll want to make sure that you have all the gear you need, it fits properly together and you know how to put it all on.
Learn from my mistake. Hopefully, your pads have a knee cradle. Mine didn’t and it made it a great deal less obvious which side of the pad was the inside and outside. Take it from me, it isn’t great having a forward telling you how to dress. They aren’t usually too well schooled in things goalie related.
If you got your skates online you will almost certainly need to get them sharpened. I just bought my wife a pair of skates and was disappointed that my request that the retailer sharpen them before shipping them was completely ignored. So even if the online retailer says they will sharpen your skates, double check. Factory edges sometimes look like a sharpened skate, but will make you look pretty funny when you hit the ice with them and flail about like a newborn calf on an acid trip.
When you pack your goalie bag it is good to develop a system. Have a place for everything. I know it sounds anal, but someday it will keep you from forgetting something. I pack my bag in the same order and put everything in the same place ever since I forgot my jock one time. That’s one item you don’t want to play without . . . or borrow.
Stretching
Apparently I’m no expert at this either. I took a week off from hockey altogether with a number of projects around the house and out of town guests keeping me busy. I played my weekly league game on Thursday night, fared well and had no pain. Friday morning I played again and should have left after the first session. Unfortunately I let the skaters talk me into another hour and knew I was in trouble as soon as I got out of my car afterwards.
I can hardly breath without intense back pain right now. If I twist a little trying to get comfortable, it often results in searing pain that makes me burst into a sudden bout of Tourettes Syndrome like behavior (facial tics, grunts, growling and involuntary swearing). Another few days of this, I might have to head to the hospital to make sure that I haven’t broken my back. Hopefully the pain will subside before then. I hate hospitals and I’m guessing that I don’t like broken backs either.
So, given my lack of reasonable success, I’m going to advise you to stretch a few areas, but also to get a book that will inform you of how exactly to do that. Besides, it’s pretty hard to describe stretches without the benefit of pictures. I attempted to draw a dozen complete diagrams for this article using only the keys on my computer but my first attempt looked decidedly like a chipmunk with a machine gun so I gave up that plan.
I would advise you to start a stretching regime a week or two before you get on the ice. You will want to be as limber as possible to avoid injury. Even with stretching a while before you start playing, there will be sore muscles that you weren’t aware you even had.
There are a few key spots to stretch. I would suggest the groin as one of the top priorities. A groin tear is not only a very painful, long-term injury, but it is a fairly common one in hockey – especially in goaltending. The hamstrings and quads in your legs are going to get worked pretty hard as well. I would spend a reasonable amount of time on them.
Of course the back and abs get a pretty intense workout. I have always had some discomfort in my back if I take more than a few days off playing. (This time is by far the worst).
Arms aren’t too bad generally. However, the shoulders can get a little sore and if you are doing a lot of stick work there can be a bit of stiffness as the result. I would spend some time on shoulders and a little on arms.
In all, the more stretching you do, the less likely you are to be sitting on the couch with several carefully arranged pillows propping you up as you write an epinion on how to not get hurt playing your first day in net.
▪ At the rink
Remember, leave your wallet in the car or at home. If you need money to buy a drink or something, take only that amount into the locker room. Most hockey players don’t rifle through other player’s bags in my experience. But locker rooms are something of a misnomer in hockey. I haven’t seen one yet that actually has lockers in it. These become prime targets for kids who want a few bucks. I know at least a dozen players who learned the hard way that the locker rooms are not a good place to bring money.
I normally give myself about thirty minutes to dress and stretch before a drop-in these days. For a game I will get there a little earlier. For your first time on the ice, I would suggest giving yourself about 40 minutes to get ready. It takes a little practice putting on all the gear. While you are the hero to the shooters, their level of respect rapidly declines if you miss half of the drop-in putting on your gear.
Take your time getting dressed. The first time that I showed up late to play I dressed in a hurry. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself for getting completely ready in time for the warm ups even though I only had about 12 minutes to get dressed. I picked up my stick, turned around, stepped over my bag and noticed my jock sitting in the bottom of it still.
After a few moments of pondering how women can change a bra without taking of their shirt, I concluded they are just smarter than men are. I would need to get undressed to put my jock on. I opened the door, broke the news to my teammates on the bench and proceeded to take off my skates, leg pads and hockey pants. That little mistake set me back about fifteen minutes.
▪ Expectations
It’s good to have high expectations of yourself for the first game. But don’t put them so high that you can only leave upset about your lackluster performance. Skaters who know the game and play defense better than I ever will, have put on the goalie pads for the first time and looked like intoxicated flounders on a hot beach. Goalie is a demanding position. The learning curve is high.
The pace of the first game is frantic, even punishing. You will feel like everyone is flying around you while you wallow in the mud. Don’t get too caught up in that. Things only begin to make sense after a few hours on the ice. After a few months you might sometimes even feel the opposite, seeing other players moving pretty slowly while you are a ball of lightning.
Ben Franklin wrote, “A pessimist is never disappointed.” A healthy dose of pessimism might not be a bad thing to pack for your first time on the ice. Don’t get me wrong, as a goalie you have to have the right attitude. Confidence is important. You also need to want the shot. I am always at my best when my mindset is, “Bring the lumber boys! Come on and shoot one. I dare you!” Conversely, my game suffers every time that I start thinking, “Don’t shoot. We have the lead!” More that one shutout has evaporated in the last minutes the victim of that mindset.
So what was my point about pessimism? Well, you need to have the realization that you will have a net chock full of pucks at the end of your first day. By all means get out there, attack the chances, play each shot with confidence. The ones that crossed the goal line are behind you (literally and chronologically). Judge your performance not by the ones that you in, but by the good plays that you make. Go home remembering that one that you gloved or that fantastic Dominik Hasek moment you had (well, you thought you had one, but trust me, it looked funny from my point of view).
▪ Set Goals for Yourself
I set the goal of a .950 save percent and less than 3 goals against for my first game. Looking back it was arrogant, ignorant and just plain silly. I went in with a truckload of confidence and a thimble full of brains that day. If I got to keep every puck they shot past me, I would have left with a broken back from trying to carry them and retired after putting a sizable dent in the Czech Republic’s hockey puck sales.
A more reasonable approach would be to set your goals at a challenging, yet attainable level. You have less control over your save percent and goals against as a new goalie in a pick-up game than you would like to think. There are variables like this: There’s an ex-NHL player who shows up once in a while and schools everyone at the novice skate . . . all the guys playing on the dark team went out drinking together and are so hung over they are skating at half speed . . . everyone just bought new $150 sticks so they want to shoot rather than risk breaking them playing defense . . .
The point is that in a pick-up game you never have the cohesion of an organized team. Players often have their own agendas. Most of them will be interested in working on their offensive skills, not helping you out as a goalie. In the average drop-in I see three to five breakaways, and half a dozen odd man rushes. In a game I might get a combined total of three on a bad night.
Don’t go to your first drop in with goals like I set for myself that first time. When I started skating out of net, I set my sites a bit lower. I used to make up my own version of the Gordie Howe Hat Trick. (Gordie’s version is a goal, an assist and a fight in one game). Mine would be something like a good poke check, a blocked shot and a shot on net. This is the sort of goal that you should set for a first game in net as well.
Realistic items might be - stopping a dump in behind the net and teeing up for one of your players, a two-pad slide save, a glove save, a stick save, a good pass, or stopping one breakaway. You have an idea of your skills and skating background, but a goal might be as simple as to skate backwards from the circles to the goal line during play or not falling down in warm-ups. The main thing is to keep these expectations realistically attainable, yet challenging.
▪ Final Thoughts
Hopefully you got a chuckle out of some of my first attempts to play. The point is, that your first day probably won’t have near the mishap and adventure that mine did. Even so, the first times on the ice are amazing. The biggest thing to overcome is any performance anxiety that you have. Just get out there and play. Don’t worry about the stats or about how you look, or who is laughing at you.
Skill comes with practice. Once you get goaltending in your blood it won’t be hard to make yourself play more. In fact, it might be hard to go to work because it interferes with your ice time. The first three or four times out, you shouldn’t waste any energy beating yourself up about any part of your game.
The only real coaching advice that I will offer for the first times (beyond the mental aspect) is to keep your stick on the ice. It’s an easy bad habit to pick up and hard to break. If your sick isn’t on the ice, it won’t do you much good. Trust me on this, in four hours of pickup you will have at least one shot that you never saw bounce off your stick if you keep it on the ice.
That pretty much wraps up Goaltending 102. The next installment will commemorate review number 150 for me. Look for it in a few weeks. Until then, have fun on the ice, keep your head up and your stick down and knock over a center ice man for me.
Here is part 3 in the series: Goaltending 201: The Fine Art of Cheating
A couple of my other reviews that you might find helpful:
Fitting Goalie Gear
Ice Hockey Goaltending 101: You think you want to be a goalie, eh?
Battram Custom Goalie Equipment
© 2005 Scott Noble – All rights reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.
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