A couple of weeks ago MTN was evaluating goalies at the Beardy's Blackhawks Midget "AAA" Spring Camp. We were doing written evaluations on all 12 goalies in attendance. As part of our evaluation process we take as many opportunities to watch the goaltenders as possible both before, during and after the scrimmages and goaltender sessions. While there were some very strong goaltenders we noticed a few disturbing trends, the first of which was the lack of puck tracking skills for some of the goaltenders. It seemed some of the goalies were losing track of the puck especially with regards to when a shot missed the net or after a save was made. Just to clarify, a lot of these shots did not have heavy traffic in front. So, after seeing this problem occuring a little too often with a few of the goalies we started to wonder,
why is puck tracking a dying art?
Although, there are usually a number of issues stemming back to practice habits and structures there was one major problem occuring during the on-ice warmups...
The goaltenders, when watching them closely, seemed to be looking past the puck when making saves. We have all seen it(even at the NHL level), the goalie is in the net taking shot after shot but only looking straight ahead no matter where the shot was heading. The goaltender did not have visual attachment with the puck which includes the movement of the eyes, then head, then shoulders and then the rest of the body. These goaltenders were not using the
EYES LEAD THE HEAD, THE HEAD LEADS THE SHOULDERS and THE SHOULDERS LEAD THE REST OF THE BODY mentality.
Even if the goaltender is doing a rapid fire drill in warmups or the dreaded semi-circle shooting, it is important to watch the body all the way into the body and then off the body before moving to the next puck.
**Make sure to watch the pucks that are shot along the ice very closely as they can be the hardest to track. Watch the puck all the way to the boot of the pads and off.** If your teammates are idiots and just shoot as soon as the last puck was fired then do not worry if they score. It is better to be in control and focusing on strong habits, visual or otherwise, right from the get go.
To conclude, in a game there is only one puck. Why go rushing around trying to stop everything like a goalie on the fritz if it will lead to loss of puck tracking in the game? Make sure your warmups prepare you to be your best which does not necessarily mean wasting all of your energy to stop pucks out of control or like a robot with no neck mobility.