Goalie Tip #328: Your post is not lonely

I got my ass kicked today, as I expected. In my last lesson, I had the same problem I had the week before; dropping my blocker. I expressed frustration at this and my coach suggested going back to the training center for the next lesson, so I could face the puck machine. This would give me tons of shots to the same spot, and he thinks I just need repetition to get the correct move ingrained in my muscles.

I had a feeling this was going to be tough, and it was. The machine is a big rectangular thing on wheels, with a chute in front that can be moved up or down, which kind of reminded me of the cannon on the front of a tank. I guess I'm not the only one- when the kid was loading the long cylinder sticking out the top with pucks, my coach told him "you have to yell 'fire in the hole!' when you do that". There's a speed adjustment on it, thankfully, and he set it to a slow speed to get me warmed up. It was actually pretty cool. What was even cooler though, is that my coach decided to give me the "deluxe treatment" today- he set up the video camera and dvd recorder so I could see for myself what he was talking about. That was pretty cool. And I spotted it instantly- but when I went back out again I just did the same thing again. I'm super frustrated about it but he assured me it's one of those things that I just have to keep at and it will "click". And then we'll move on to the next thing... ha ha ha. Great.

But, I never leave a lesson without some pearls of wisdom, so I offer you today's advice. We were doing a regular drill with me starting on one post, then coming out to center to take a shot. At one point he tapped at my glove while I was on the post and asked me what I was doing with it. I explained I was covering the gap between the post and my bent knee. He said that was good, but my glove in that position wasn't doing anything for me. "All you're doing is giving the post a nice embrace." He also pointed out that I was leaving the back of my hand exposed, and with not much padding on it, that's a bad idea. He re-arranged my glove to show me how it should be, and explained why it should be that way. "Your post is not lonely, you don't need to give it a hug", he added.

As luck would have it, the third shot after that went off my glove and dinged off the post. I got up and skated back to the net and said "That's why I give my post some love". My coach agreed and said that yes, that was the proper time to give it a good tap, and talk to it a little. Gotta love goalie logic.