Despite sharing a common end goal of maximizing a hockey goaltender’s potential, no two training programs are the same.
Just take a look at Stop It Goaltending, Massachusetts Crease Goaltending and Janosz School of Goaltending.
SIG, which has six locations throughout Massachusetts, uses a set curriculum of eight lessons: steering, smothers, glove, blocker, crease management, post integration, behind-the-net coverage and desperation. The first four lessons focus on saves, and the second four teach strategies.
The program also uses a "Block Training" system, one block being one full run through all eight lessons. "Picture one block being laid on top of another and being laid on top of another," SIG president Brian Daccord said. "As the building blocks accumulate, the performance of the goaltender also rises. That’s how you get results, by continuing the training and following the system."
Due to netminders having different schedules, SIG offers many different ways to build a block. "During the season, maybe you’re going once a week," Daccord said. "In the summer, you bump up to two times a week. Some of our more experienced clients like Cory Schneider (Marblehead, Mass.), Mike Condon (Needham, Mass.) and Scott Darling do at least two blocks every summer. Goalies that can’t do something on a weekly basis throughout the summer, maybe because they play baseball or they vacation, can do a one-week program. Our once-a-week program for eight weeks is a block. Our two-times-a-week program for eight weeks is two blocks. You can still build your blocks; there are just different ways to do it."
If given a choice, though, Daccord recommends the program that’s spread out over a longer period of time.
"The one-week camps are tremendous experiences for the guys and are great for building knowledge of the position," Daccord asserted. "But there’s not enough time to retrain muscle memory in a week. There’s value, learning new things and meeting other goalies, but I would choose an eight-week program twice a week over a one-week camp."
The goalies also take part in three-and-a-half hour off-ice training sessions. The first hour-and-a-half includes strength and conditioning and speed and agility workouts. Then there’s an hour for yoga, and another hour for vision training. SIG also employs a massage therapist and has a physical therapy unit.
SIG also created the Bridge Program, a 38-week plan that focuses on both studies and athletic training for kids in either their eighth- or ninth-grade year.
"The full season Bantam major year is not a strong year in Massachusetts," Daccord said. "If the goaltender makes the high school or prep school varsity team, he usually becomes the backup goalie. If he doesn’t make the varsity team, he ends up playing JV hockey, which has a considerably lower skill level and isn’t run at the same intensity as the varsity. Since the peak period of trainability is between 13-15 years of age, and that’s where Massachusetts drops the ball, the bridge allows these kids to train every day and do online learning. At the end of it, the goalie gets five years of training in one year."
Meanwhile, at Mass Crease, based in Norwell, Mass., head director Brian Eklund (Braintree, Mass.) trains goalies using a different curriculum. His lessons follow an eight-week progression with the classes divided by experience level — beginner, intermediate and advanced.
"I’m not a firm believer in that age is what separates people," Eklund explained. "Experience level is how much they’ve worked on things and how much goalie coaching they’ve received. We want to keep kids at the same experience level in the same group, whether it’s a seventh-grader being paired with ninth-graders, or even vice versa. One goalie might start off with some younger kids around him just to make sure he’s getting the right type of lessons each time. It’s about building the goalie up, creating a responsibility within the goalie, and also letting him have fun while he’s doing it."
A key aspect of Eklund’s on-ice training is combining the Quebec and Finnish goaltending styles. "Right now, the Finns strive for catching pucks, holding on to pucks, killing plays," Eklund said. "The Finns really strive to have their hands involved in every play that they can be. Quebec style focuses on the butterfly, the butterfly recovery and positional play. We try to integrate the Quebec butterfly and positional play with the Finns’ use of their hands. In my perfect world, a kid would be a combination of the two, but at the same time, each individual kid has individual strengths. One will lean toward positional play and the other one will play toward a reactionary style. We try to find what makes each individual goalie them, and then try to enhance that."
Eklund’s off-ice workouts include "yoga, stretching, range of motion and explosive-power type exercises." One of the more valuable lessons he wants his netminders to learn is how vital the off-ice aspect of the game is to their success. "For a lot of these kids, this is their first foray into doing off-ice stuff," he said. "I want to impart on them how important the off-ice aspect of the game is to the on-ice aspect. You can’t neglect one or the other."
As for what separates his program from the others, Eklund is quick to say "our people." He elaborated, "I always describe goalie coaches like teachers in school. You always had a favorite teacher when you grew up, and the thing with our guys is they’re extremely personable. They want to get to know every kid and the nuances about their game. They’re very versatile in what they do, they have a lot of fun doing it, and, more than anything, it really rubs off on the kids."
Across state lines in New York, Janosz School of Goaltending head instructor Bob Janosz, goalie coach for the American Hockey League’s Rochester Americans, is using his extensive professional hockey coaching background — which also includes assistant goaltending coaching duties with the Florida Panthers and Buffalo Sabres in which he worked with their AHL prospects — to keep his goalie clinic, which includes camps in Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, current.
"Working in pro hockey, I have an advantage of seeing the latest on-ice and off-ice training techniques," he said.
After working alongside seven different goalie coaches, Janosz created his own style of goalie coaching, emphasizing the positives such as edge work, balance, reacting to the puck and vision training. "We want our goalies to skate well, be really patient on their feet, and try to hold their edges as long as possible," he said. "We also are incorporating vision training, which is going to be really beneficial for goalies to start using more in the future to improve their puck tracking and their reaction time."
Continued Janosz: "I’ve seen the Canadian and American styles, and we had four Swedish goalies in our system last year, so I’ve seen the differences from where coaches and goalies are trained in different parts of the world. We try to incorporate the strengths that they have, and the strengths of the coaches that I worked under and learned from, into our goaltenders."
Janosz has programs for beginners, some general programs for more experienced goalies, plus an elite AAA camp. Away from the rink, the kids work on handeye coordination, flexibility and core and leg strength. They also are given a "dynamic warmup" before they step on the ice.
Janosz noted that giving kids individualized attention in a camp setting can sometimes be challenging since "there’s only so much time in the day to be on the ice and parents don’t have unlimited money to pay for camps and lessons." To remedy this dilemma, he shows them drills they can do at home.
He also outlines ways in which the kids can improve with video. "We film the kids, show them the video, and at the end of each day we voice-over the video," Janosz explained. "We can pause it, zoom in, draw arrows or whatever we need to do to show them what they need to be working on, so they have a game plan and something to strive for the next day of camp. This way they’re getting the most out of every single day."
