By Steve McKichan /
Competitiveness is one of the most oft used terms to evaluate how seriously an athlete wants to win or improve. As it relates to goaltending it is where the definition of potential should be found.
We are all aware of well-schooled, well-taught, privately coached and highly touted goaltenders who have the “whole package,” except for this lucrative missing potion; competitiveness.
These polished performers can execute powerful backside recoveries, can perform heroics in a given drill at the local goalie clinic, and can look absolutely stunning in a camp video analysis session. Fast forward five years—where are they?
We also see hundreds of lesser light athletes make it and make it big in the show leaving former childhood teammates lamenting that, “I was better than Ben was in Bantam”.
You can’t pay for it. You can’t truly learn it. You can’t receive it from parent pressure. No one can inoculate you with the competitiveness vaccine. However, you may get it from maturity in combination with well-timed positive peer pressure or successful mentoring from someone who oozes with it. If your maturity curve and your path crossing with the right mentor don’t intersect, you will be stalled and stonewalled.
How can you define competitiveness? How can you measure how competitive you are or you aren’t?
I think real life examples can define competitiveness and perhaps you can introspectively recognize where you are on the competitiveness scale.
I have coached Ed Belfour for over five years and besides knowing him as a close friend, I know him as perhaps the greatest goaltender in the history of the NHL when it comes to the topic at hand—competitiveness. I could write a full, heavy, epic novel on the examples I have seen first hand, not counting examples that his college coaches and his first NHL goalie coach, Vladislav Tretiak could relate.
Consider the time he arrived at my first summer elite camp already possessing a Stanley Cup ring, a Calder Trophy, a Vezina Trophy, and sure fire Hall of Fame credentials. He insisted to be scheduled to participate in our 45-minute ranked run with well-conditioned teenage prospects all over 20 years his junior. After I hesitatingly agreed, I watched in a combination of awe and horror. (The horror at seeing my potential NHL job lost because he may have twisted his ankle)
The awe stemmed from the fact that he came from behind to win the run at the line after trailing by a full lap and by watching him beat students who ran on their local school track teams.
I walked over to him, hunched over, vomiting on the track. He finally straightened up and looked like he may need me to get the paddles out to start his heart again.
“There was no way that kid was going to beat me today,” said Belfour.
Coming from a goalie who has already done it all in the big leagues, this is the epitome of what we are talking about. Consider the term competitiveness defined. |