Hockey Goalie Resource

I don’t know about you, but I would prefer to have a shooter deke me on a breakaway rather than shoot. A way for the hockey goalie to dictate what the shooter does on the breakaway is to adjust how far you come out when they come in. If you want the shooter to deke you want to come out pretty far so that they don’t have anything to shoot at and have to deke. If they decide to shoot anyway you should have your angles covered and it should be very difficult for the shooter to snipe on you. If you would prefer to have the shooter take a shot rather than deke, you might not want to come out as far.

I remember when I had coaches who would tell me to take a look at the shooter’s eyes when they come in on a breakaway and you can tell where they’re going to shoot. This is such ridiculous advice and if you have ever received the same advice you probably need a new coach or you need to educate your current coach. I’m not really going to get into why its so ridiculous, because I’m pretty sure you can figure it out. Anyways, there is a way for the hockey goalie to read what a shooter is going to do on a breakaway, its definitely not fool-proof (especially when you start facing advanced shooters) but it can be helpful. The key to reading the shooter is seeing where the shooter is holding his or her stick. If their stick is out in front of them it usually means they are going to deke, its pretty hard to get off a good shot if you are holding the puck in front of you, so if you see that the shooter pulls the puck back to the side of their body it is likely that they are planning to shoot. Remember though, this depends on the level that you are playing at…once you start facing better shooters they can be much trickier with the puck and they can snap shots off quicker with out having to pull the puck all the way to the side of their body so be careful with this.

When I was younger and was obsessed with making it to the next level, I read something out of a book that said that the great Russian hockey goalie Tretiak would constantly be bouncing a racquetball whenever he was walking outside in order to keep his reflexes and his hand eye coordination sharp. I thought this was a great idea and decided to do the same. For a while I carried a racquetball around in my pocket, but it was a little big, so eventually I bought one of those cheap little bouncy balls. It was perfect because it fit into my pocket and it was also very small so you had to focus more on catching it. It might sound like a stupid little tip, but I really think it helped…give it a shot and you might notice improvements in your own hand eye coordination.