Hey Guys,
Today I want to share another drill from our goalie development camp earlier this summer. We dedicated some time to working on shots from odd angles. These are situations that come up in games, but they may not see much of them in practice.
As always, the goal is to work with the goalie to develop a strategy for each situation that everybody can be comfortable with. I mention this because the VH this goalie uses on these shots is not usually a strategy I would steer someone towards, but it works for him and he’s very comfortable with it. As long as it’s working, we’ll stick with it.
Believe me, I’m usually more of an overlap or RVH guy, so I was really trying to find holes with these shots, but he locked it down. (My lack of skill as a shooter didn’t hurt him here either).
As a coach, I love having the goalie’s input into how they like to play a shot. From there, we can have a constructive discussion on how they see the situation and what my observations are to hopefully arrive at a solution we can both be comfortable with. That allows us to really focus on repetition and mastery in our practice time.
Ultimately, there are as many styles as there are goalies. Trying to make every kid play the same is trying to jam a square peg (the goalie) into a round hole (our idealistic image of what we think every goalie should look like). The fundamentals will continue to be 90% of what makes up a goalie’s game, but there’s a lot of room in that 10% for a goalie to express their own style in a way that makes them feel the most comfortable.
Andrew
Andrew Corchis Goaltending 