Want better goalies? Be sure to appoint a goalie director

A goalie director helps every goalie in your organization.

Hi gang,

With the start of the youth hockey season just about a month away (I know, I know ... way too early), I wanted to share this column on an outstanding suggestion by Brian Daccord of Stop It Goaltending and the Foundation for Goalie Research and Education. Establishing a "goaltending director" position within your youth hockey organization -- someone who oversees every aspect of the position -- may be one of the best methods of ensuring improvement of every team in the program, top to bottom. Here's why ...

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Want better goalies? Appoint a goalie director

As coaches, my colleagues and I are always telling kids that summer is when they can really make a difference in their game. But they're not the only ones who should be taking advantage of the off-season. This month, I'm imploring parents and officials with youth hockey and select hockey programs to do the same.

Take the quiet summer months to reinvest in your program, and the brave kids who step up to play goalie. Establish a "goaltending director."

Don't delay. Because if you don't create and fill the position during the summer, it will get pushed aside. That's simply unfair to your goalies and their parents. Once September rolls around, board members are going to be up to their eyeballs with issues ranging from team placements and practice times to rink rentals and league schedules.

This is one of the reasons why programs hire goalie outfits like the one I work for – Stop It Goaltending – to provide separate goalie training. But, for reasons I'll get into, that's simply not enough. Programs need a point person to serve as goaltending director.

Now, the standard excuse for not creating this position is this: "We don't have any former goalies among our parents or volunteers." That's simply not good enough. The reality is, you don't need to be an "expert" in goaltending to take on this responsibility. You don't need to have played the position. You simply have to be willing to be an advocate for these kids, and to take the time to learn the basics.

How can I be so sure? I've seen it firsthand. My older brother Sean is an orthopedic surgeon in New Hampshire. He has countless demands on his time, to the point where there literally aren't enough hours to get everything done. Yet, despite that time crunch, he has made himself a very good goaltending coach in girls' lacrosse and field hockey.

Why? Because his daughter Michaela played those sports, and Sean wanted to have a role in helping her teams. Michaela wasn't a goalie, but Sean recognized that the position wasn't getting the attention it deserved. So he went to work, attending clinics, reading how-to books, scouring YouTube for clips on goaltending technique. And he made himself into a fine coach.

We'd sit around his kitchen, chatting about the differences between playing goal in the three sports – field hockey, ice hockey, and lacrosse. My eldest daughter was considering playing lacrosse goalie, and I leaned on Sean's expertise. He never once gave me bad advice.

The flip side is poor coaching. What we goalie coaches also see, time and time again, is goaltenders who perform really well in camps and clinics, and then regress when we don't see them for a while. I've written about it before. I call it the "Auto Body Shop Approach to Goalie Training."

That approach works like this: A goalie starts the season with his team, and for the first month he gets completely barraged with shots. Then the coaching staff realizes that he or she is starting to falter, maybe even acting a little puck shy (d'uh!). So they decide to send their goalie to us. What we get is usually a kid with potential, but often dented and banged up. We fix them, send them back to their team running like new, and the coaching staff promptly runs them into another tree.

It's frustrating beyond belief. Some of these kids excel despite the "coaching" they get with their team, not because of it. The reality is that too many of the kids we coach go back to a team that has no dedicated goalie coaching. And they suffer, or stagnate, as a result. What's the solution?

Stop It owner Brian Daccord established the Foundation of Goaltending Research and Education to broaden the scope of goalie development. FGRE encourages all youth hockey organizations to institute the position of "Director of Goaltending Development." I agree wholeheartedly.

The following is an abridged description of the position and its function, a blueprint that can be tailored to meet the needs of each organization.

Director of Goaltending Development

The director is responsible for the development of all the organization's goaltenders, including oversight of tryouts, placement, coaching, skills, practice and games as well as education. The director reports directly to the organization's president or board. Being a former goaltender and educated in modern goaltending techniques is preferred, but not a prerequisite.

Tryouts

The director should oversee the organization's tryout procedure for goaltenders. This includes providing a clear understanding of opportunities for goaltenders and communication how the tryout process will be conducted.

Placement

The director should oversee team placement of goaltenders. Once a goaltender is placed, the goaltender and parents should be informed of the name and level of the team, how many goaltenders will be on each team, whether the squad emphasizes "play to win" or "equal ice time," how many games and practices will be included, and whether there will be goaltending-specific skill sessions.

Goalie Roster

The director should create a roster of the organization's goaltenders. This roster should include all contact information of the goaltender and parents, enabling the director to directly contact them to distribute information including educational material.

Goalie Coaching

The director should oversee the structure of goalie coaching within the organization. If each team doesn't have a dedicated goalie coach, the director should work with each team's coaching staff to create an "Assistant Coach responsible for Goalies." Each team should have either a goalie coach or assistant coach responsible for the goalies, a copy of the protocol associated with the assistant coach responsible for goalies, a written policy of how ice time will be distributed for the goalies, and a coaching staff that is informed of what training the goaltenders will receive throughout the season.

Goalie Skills

The director should oversee the structure of the organization's goaltending training, presenting training options and working to provide the best training alternatives within the organization's budget. Options include no additional training, providing a goaltending Junior Instructor (current Midget/Junior-level goalie), a goaltending coach (professional) at specified team practices, goaltender-specific skills sessions on the organization's ice time with organization coaches, goaltender-specific skills sessions on the organization's ice time with a contracted goalie development firm, or goaltender-specific training at a professional goaltending training center.

Education

The director is responsible for providing coaches, goalies and parents educational material that might benefit the goalies, including goalie-specific websites, books, magazines, and videos, material on off-ice training, nutrition, and cognitive training, and notifying coaches, goalies and parents on any local workshops or presentations.

Follow Up

The director is responsible for following up with the team's head coach, goalies, and goalie parents to ensure there is either a goalie coach or assistant coach responsible for the goalies, that the protocol for the assistant coach responsible for goalies is being followed, that the policy of distributing ice time is being followed, that there is feedback from everyone involved on the organizations goaltending development training, and providing feedback and suggestions on how the organization can better provide for its goaltenders.

Is this a lot of work? Yup. Is it important? Absolutely. And your goalies are worth it.

For more details on the Foundation of Goaltending Research and Education, visit fgre.org.

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For hockey players, variety is the spice of the off-season

Find something else to do this summer besides hockey!

Hi gang,

Just last night, I was watching a great special on youth sports, and it was driving home the point of how important it is to be a multi-sport athlete. The show featured a number of athletes from a variety of sports, including the NHL's Johnny Gaudreau and Nate McKinnon. And all of them had essentially the same message: Playing many sports makes you a better athlete.

So stop listening to all those money-grabbing "elite" sports programs who insist that you'll "fall behind" if you're not playing hockey 24/7, year round. It's a marketing ploy, plain and simple. Here's my Goalie Guru column on the topic. Let me know what you think! And don't forget to get outside!

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 Variety is the spice of the off-season for hockey players

When my editor suggested a training-related column for our annual training issue, I immediately thought of the myriad workout programs that have been developed in the past dozen years that are designed to make you the best goaltender your God-given talents will allow. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt like going in a different direction. After all, it's the June issue. And June, unless you're playing in the Stanley Cup finals, is not exactly hockey season.

Now, to be completely up front, I'm not opposed to playing year round. There's an old adage in sports that "champions are made in the off-season." There's a great deal of truth to that saying, provided people don't lose proper perspective. It's important to note, the adage doesn't say anything about playing the same sport 52 weeks a year.

Proponents of sports specialization have taken advantage of that adage, twisting its message to imply that a full-year commitment ought to be a requirement for the serious athlete. In doing so, they've duped thousands of parents who feel like they're doing their little hockey player a disservice if they don't provide year-round instruction and training.

(Full disclosure: I, as a coach with a goalie instruction outfit, recognize that I can potentially be seen as "part of the problem." But at Stop It Goaltending, we actively encourage kids to pursue different activities to complement their goalie training. That's a big difference, to my way of thinking.)

This has been a hot topic lately. Houston Texan defensive end J.J. Watt, an all-world talent, recently took to Twitter to voice his concerns about playing a single sport full-time. Watt, who grew up playing hockey (Can you imagine what a power forward that guy would be?!), was remarkably candid in his criticism of specialization. In a Tweet from early March, Watt wrote: "If someone encourages your child to specialize in a single sport, that person generally does not have your child's best interests in mind."

I agree. I also believe there's far more to Watt's simple statement than appears on the surface. There is an entire youth sports industry – and it continues to grow – that is banking on parents believing that the only way their child will reach the pinnacle of their sport is to have little Jane or Johnny play that sport over and over and over again.

Those parents ought to consider this telling statistic: Of all the athletes selected in the 2016 NFL Draft, nearly 90 percent of them were multi-sport athletes in high school, according to TrackingFootball.com, a website that compiles multi-sport participation data on high school and college football players. Watt played four different sports in high school. Arizona Cardinals All-Pro defensive end Calais Campbell told the web-based training site STACK why playing numerous sports helped him become a better football player.

"Playing multiple sports 100 percent made me a better athlete," Campbell said. "When you play different sports, you're forced to do different things. I learned quick-twitch stuff from basketball. Track and field, I learned about my stride, my jumping, my hip thrust. I actually even wrestled for a while, and that helped me learn leverage and momentum. It all transfers over and develops different muscle groups."

My guess is that Campbell also enjoyed switching things up. When I was in high school, I loved the dissimilarities between being a soccer midfielder, where I ran all day between my attacking and defensive responsibilities, being a hockey goaltender, where I was far more confined but had a very important role, and being a third baseman for the baseball team, which I found was the ideal blend of cerebral and physical challenges.

Only in hindsight did I really stop to think how each sport benefited the others. For me, the variety is what I enjoyed most.

I've lost count of the number of parents I've talked to who would bemoan that their sons and daughters weren't all that motivated to play during the summer. These are the same parents who have their kids attending skating clinics (on and off ice), shooting clinics, and stickhandling clinics almost non-stop. I haven't found a polite way to say: "Can't you hear yourself? No wonder your kid wants a break."

Except for the very rare instance, kids crave diversity. Can you imagine a math whiz going to school and taking nothing but algebra, geometry, calculus, trigonometry, etcetera? Really? Of course not. We want our children to be well rounded academically. Well, the same holds true for athletic pursuits. Variety is a good thing, not only from the perspective of development, but also to prevent overuse injuries.

The reality is that sports specialization is nothing new. I remember writing about it as a cub reporter in the spring of 1983. Yup, 34 years ago. Things have only gotten worse since then, and it's all driven by one factor: The Almighty Dollar. There is a ton of money to be made in the sports development landscape.

Those folks aren't going to make much money by telling their kids to "just go ride your mountain bike." But I'm telling you, that's exactly what you, as a parent, ought to do. Let the kids play.

Here's my chief concern. Advances in goalie training have created an entire generation of robotic goaltenders. They're strong and quick and technically proficient, but they're not necessarily better athletes. I compare them to a mountain biker on a familiar slice of technical singletrack trail. When that mountain biker knows every twist, turn, and obstacle on the trail, he can anticipate what's coming and rip a pretty clean line. But put the same cyclist on a trail he's never seen before, and he'll be more tentative, more cautious, slower.

A hockey game is much more like that unknown ribbon of technical singletrack. Out of necessity, many of the drills we develop and employ during goalie clinics and camps mirror the well-known trail. We want to build muscle memory. But coaches also need to recognize when goalies start performing "to the drill," instead of simply reacting. That's why, at Stop It, we always try to end each session with "game time."

The beauty of game time is that it's organic, and unpredictable. Our games are design to make the goalies employ what they've just learned, but also to improvise. That's when you find out who your competitors are. It's also when you discover who the better athletes are.

Over time, I believe kids gradually discover the benefits of being a multi-sport athlete (though they may not understand it in the moment). Their movements become more fluid, more natural. In a very subtle sense, they become more confident, which allows them to be more patient, and let the game come to them.

So get out of the rink. Expand your horizons, and enjoy other sports. Ride your bike, surf, play tennis, soccer, lacrosse, basketball, volleyball, baseball. Anything other than hockey. Have fun. Laugh. You'll be a better goaltender.

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