My first ever session with a goalie coach - feedback wanted :)

Who's the goalie coach? I looked up the rink from the name in the background and it says it's in the UK, so you're a Brit?

I'd figure if you're learning from guys in the UK, they're ex professional players that played pro up in Britain or Europe who have retired and moved to the UK which would make me hope they're giving you good pointers.

I'll tell you right off the bat, first 4 seconds in, your push from your left post to your right is off. I cant pin down what it is, but when you come to a stop on the right post it seems like you're either cheating on the drill or not coming in on that right post hard enough. Your stop isn't very smooth and while you're looking at the guy with the puck, your body is kind of prepping for the shooter it looks like which to me is bad for the drill. Its going to make you lazy and teach you improper technique for when you play which will give you problems if you continue to cheat when you practice. Again, it's just the feeling I get from what I see, I'm not there so I cant give a perfect assessment but from watching a little more of your videos I do feel like you are cheating on some drills at points (Ill try and list more as I type this out and re-watch your video) which isn't good and it annoys me that the guys running the drills are allowing you to do that. You're paying them good money, they should be stopping the drill when you're cheating and make sure you don't cheat so you get your technique down properly.

K I got it in this clip, I think it shows perfectly for me why I get the sense youre cheating and the reason for the feeling you have poor post-to-post movement. To start, you push off and turn both your feet in the direction you want to go. I'd stop the drill right there and get you to fix this if I was coaching you because this is poor form. Here is Carrey Price doing a T push from 13 seconds to 15 seconds just slow it down and watch that stop and go stop and go and watch his form. See how his foot he pushes off with stays square and he just leads with his perpendicular foot until he wants to stop then does a hard forward c cut with both feet? That's what you want to do from post to post as well. You don't want to try and get both feet pointed in the direction you are going. The puck is behind you being passed behind the net but you want to stay square to the front of the net in case the puck comes out quickly and a shot gets taken. You don't want to have to turn 90 degrees towards the post then 90 degrees towards the shooter when the puck comes out front, thats just wasted energy and time and can create problems for your play the higher you start to climb in play.

I'd also like it if you hugged the post a little more than standing at it in a normal challenging the shooter goalie stance. Personally, and I think it's the norm, but myself, I like to have my post leg up tight to the post, perpendicular to the ice so you have pretty much a 90 degree angle between your leg and the ice, and your leg is snug against the post running parallel with it. Again, you can look at that carrey price video and see him hug the post and how he does it. Now he's 6'2-6'3? So he can drop down like he does in the video and still cover 90% of the net and really make it hard to hit that top corner, which is ideal for a goalie because you can see his back leg is also taking away the far lower part of the net and it has him set up nicely to slide across in the butterfly if a pass across the net is attempted and sets him up perfectly to stop any shot attempt from the other side while taking away the bottom part of the net almost entirely the entire time which is the main idea behind the butterfly. But I digress, my point here is I think you should be hugging the post with your post leg like Carrey does. You want to stay hard on that post and as snug to it as possible to take away any gaps between you and that post so no shooter can sneak on in there on you. You look like a big guy, so you can probably use the same positioning carrey does in the video, but if you arent tall enough theres a stand up variation to it, you just kind of lose the back leg being on the ground and have to adapt a little better to a pass across which a poke check can be good for, break up the pass before it makes it to the intended recipient however you have to be careful about where youre playing the puck to in such a situation so that you dont put it onto some other opponents stick and possibly taking yourself out of the play... But again, I digress. To be perfectly honest, your shuffling is decent, your butterfly and rebound control is impressive for only having played a year but what I would personally want you to work on if I was your goalie coach is the basics, T pushing, shuffling, hugging the post. Im not saying the coaches you have in this video are bad or incompetent but it looks like you were a beginner, passed with like a 60% grade and then were moved on to intermediate level training without fully having a strong grasp of the basics which I feel is going to set you up for 'failure' the longer it goes on. You gotta do your best to not cheat on drills and you gotta make sure you have the basics down pat. A solid foundation of the basics will set you up to be a much better goalie the further you progress but I do think you need to get back to basics and just focus on getting them down pat and I'd start with your T pushes and post-to-post play.

Like Im stop and go watching your video, and at 1:00~ the guy shows you coming off the post and challenging and looks like he knows what hes doing so I dont know what hes saying to you and if hes explaining well enough but I feel like hes either ignoring some aspects of your play which need inprovement to advance to the higher level techniques or he is just talking fluff to you and not actually concerned about you becoming the best goalie you can be. Im not saying hes a bad goalie but he may be a bad coach. but again, I have NO clue what hes saying, I wish I had his audio so I could better understand what is going on. I mean the other explanation could be hes just focusing on your rebound control or your butterfly or whatever right now and thats why he ignores the other factors but I just cant fathom having a student and not making sure their shuffling, gliding, pushing, up-downs and buttefly/stance form was all perfect before introducing a puck and having them do drills at the pace youre going at. I mean your Buttefly is pretty solid I do agree with one of the other posters here and think you could probably sit up a bit more in it but you arent sitting on your calves like a lot of lazy goalies do (I was a big offender of this way back when) so thats good. Actually, one thing Im just noticing is you like to get up with your right leg it looks like. Thats something youll want to work on that ties in with shuffling/gliding/pushing etc out of the butterfly. You want to follow the puck and push off with the back leg or your leg furthest from the puck towards the puck, keeping your leg closes to the puck on the ground to quickly re-establish your butterfly coming across. Exactly what this kid is showing. Theres no puck to show how he follows but you see how he goes down, gets his leg opposite to the direction he wants to go up, turns his body to face the imaginary puck or shooter and then pushes off? I think thats something you could work on after you get your basics down but again, I feel like you should be brought back to basics and just firm up your ability to do them better so you can move on to movement like the one shown in that video.

I'm going to stop here for now, I think Ive written a lot. If you want to ask any specific questions feel free to respond here or shoot me a pm. If not, hope I helped in some way and if you dont like what I said then fuck it, Im just some dude on the internet anyway.

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