Sorry about this reply, it got out of hand.TheHockeyDJ wrote:Wet Paint, what about just the x's and o's. A goalie has a single job of stopping the puck. But what about the systems the skaters have to learn whether a 2-3 or 1-2-2, then there are special team assignments. That seems like a steeper learning curve to me. Though I understand what you mean about the pressure on goalies.
Just stopping the puck is easy to say but hard to do. At the lower levels it is fairly easy to be a goalie. Most kids succeed. Shooters can't lift the puck and when they do it is a total crap shoot as to where the puck is going to end up. As often as not it misses the net. But as you go up the levels the shooters become smarter, faster and more accurate. A kid in PeeWees who blasts the puck at the net with his new found slap shot is pretty straight forward for your goalie to deal with. He sees the shooter (nobody screens him other than his D who is out of position) sees the big wind up and the slapper and puts his body in the way. He gets into trouble when he is not positioned right. 5 hole open. Glove down, stick lifted and etc so he has to learn that not only does he need to see the shooter but if he wants to have success he needs to be positioned right. He starts to have to think about quite abit of stuff here. The goalie is on a pretty even level with the shooter at this point. The BN level starts the transition. The shooters start to really aim the puck as opposed to shooting it. Plays and systems start to really come into play where goalies are getting screened, pucks tipped, misdirection starts to take place and the shooters start to really have the advantage because they can get a puck going faster than that goalie can move and can constantly place the puck where they want it. Ti make matters worse from the goalie's standpoint the good ones will not always go to the same place when they shoot it. The only chance a goalie has at that level and on up is instincts and experience and training. If you watch good goalies you will see that they start to influence the shooters to get them to take the shots that they want them to take. Holes appear open that aren't. Angles appear to be off and open because the good goalie is centered and squared up on the puck and not the shooter which gives the shooter a totally different picture of what is really going on. If you watch the goalie he has to make saves where he is screened and in traffic and fighting off tips. That is not luck, that ia experience and training, but mostly experience. All of that experience comes at a price. As he comes up through the ranks and is working against the better shooters he has to figure it out. A shooter who is a 12th grader has 2 more years of experience, 2 more years worth of practicing aiming the puck, is stronger so the puck is going faster, has developed a few tricks of his own to deal with a goalie who is trying to get into his head and etc. That 10th grade goalie will be seeing stuff that he has not seen before and all of it can and will score on him, through no fault of his own, it is what it is. Those teams who will be the most important for him to deal with don't have 1 or 2 shooters who can beat him. They will have 2 lines of them and probably 2 or 3 D who are as good too so he will have to focus on the ice when he gets on and will not be able to let down for the rest of the game. That is not easy to do. He will have to pull it back together to get his techniques back in place when he gets scored on badly or not badly. He will have to get them back in place after his team scores. That mental focus needs to be there and has to be constant because when it slips, his glove drops, his angles get off, he misses a shooter who is sliding into the slot to one time it, his 5 hole opens, he goes down into a butterfly when he should stay up, he stays up when he should go down, he kicks a rebound out front rather than kicking it into the corner, he takes his eye off the puck so it hits his glove and drops rather than getting caught, his blocker is not quite positioned right, he over slides a save or under slides it, his elbow goes away from his body, and etc etc. All of those things at the BN level can cause a problem at times but all of those things against East, Edina and etc will prove to be lethal and you will be there listening to loud sirens and hearing the other teams fans screaming. The net is 24 square feet of trouble and agony for a goalie, assuming that he is 6 foot tall and 2 foot wide on average that leaves 50% of the net open. That open net has to be covered by experience, instincts and training. Anybody can beat I-Falls, Hibbing and etc because they don't have more than one shooter (if that) to focus on. The problem is that those are not the teams that Rapids cares about or really need to beat.
The other thing that a goalie needs it lots of practice making saves in a game. How many times have we seen goalies look like they are a very good goalie. They are making saves, have good numbers and look like they are lighting it up. Like I said, I have watched a lot of hockey over the years, it is my hobby, I like hockey. I try to keep up with who is who and how good different people are. I will try to make sure that when I go to a game it is a good one. I really hate spending 5 or 6 bucks for a game that turns out to be a dud and then to wind up missing a good game to boot. To try to make sure that I don't have that happen I look for goalies and for shooters that I like to see. Early on I fell into the trap of looking at a goalie and saying "he only has a 88% so he can't be that good", "that one has a 95% so he must be better". Stuff like that. I noticed though that the differences between shots on goal and scoring opportunities is a huge factor. Lots of goalies will have a 90%+ save ratio when most if not all of their shots come from outside of the box and will fall apart under pressure when their D fails them and they have to stand in there and fight. Most of the time (I think) that a goalie falls apart like that is because he has not been tempered and tested by pressure so he does not know how to react to it. The better goalies that I have seen have all had high shot counts with lots of those intangible "scoring opportunities" factored in and have learned to deal with it.
This past year the Rapids goalie was a 12th grader. He had 2 years of JV and I assume a year or so of BN A or AA experience so he had that tempering and saw those shots. He had plenty of experience with D failing to protect his back door and taking the shooter rather than the pass and etc and learned how to deal with it. I saw him play a few times, watched him play against Hermantown and get beat badly and then bounce back and go late into the 3rd period against his arch-rival East and almost shut them out 2 days later. Being able to forget that game to the point that it did not affect his game against East 2 days later came from experience and training but mostly experience. Had he not been able to block out that game and write it off East would have won that game. He stopped 25+ shots that game if I remember correctly (too lazy to look it up). That is mental toughness gained through tempering and surviving some pretty nasty (I assume) games on the way up. I am not bashing on the 10th graders coming up from BN this year but they do not have the luxury of those 2 years of lessons learned that he had. Those 2 are going to have to learn in a hurry and will have to learn some tough lessons while under a lot of pressure. I am sure that both of the 10th graders will be good down the line. I like the Stakjal (spelled way way wrong so sound it out) kid and think that when he is an 11th and 12th grader he is gonna be one of the better ones in the state. I think that saying that he will be able to back stop Rapids as a 10th grader when they do into the big games and he is facing lots of shots from kids with way more experience than he has might be asking a lot of him.
The flip side of all of that (sorry about the book there) is that if they really turn up the heat and start putting pucks in the net by the bushel basket full your goalies will have the luxury of learning while not under massive amounts of pressure. But then all they needed was 1 goal in the 3rd period too..................
