By Steve McKichan /
I like to make the following statement to my summer camp goalies: “Just to be clear, you need to understand that you have chosen an unsafe profession.” I inform them of this basic intuitive fact because although they understand this at some level, they don’t really understand what it means. The average person on the street has this perception that goalies are a little “off” because who in their right mind puts themselves in front of frozen missiles? I will argue that to a degree today’s goalies are much safer but really they still face courage tests as they develop.
Thursdays at our summer camps are termed “Courage Day” and are very popular amongst most students. In a nutshell, Courage Day simply means they will start to see harder shots from distances where they may not have much reaction time. These drills are designed to see if goalies can trust their gear in these blocking situations. As the level of play increases for a young goalie, the percentage of shots where a goalie can actually react to the puck’s trajectory begins to decline. In fact, it is typical at the pro level for goalies to actually only have reactionary opportunities on 20 to 30 per cent of the shots they see.
This other 70 to 80 per cent of shots are where courage is revealed or exposed for being absent.
With the advent of great gear today, courage issues are hidden until later in a little goalie’s development. This is a double-edged sword. A young goalie will infrequently tear up because of a stinger today, but two decades ago when I started camps, tears were common. The gear is so strong today goalies have an imprecise approach to pucks because they won’t pay a pain price.
As a youth, we quickly learned to catch pucks cleanly in the pocket because a shot off the palm or heel of the hand would be similar to a nice whack with a ball peen hammer.
In spite of great gear, pain does begin to enter back into the equation as a goalie travels through their Junior years and beyond. Every practice is a test of courage and truly the practices reveal what a goalie is made of. As a result of the volume and speed of shots in practice, it is here where most pain arrives and is the reason pro goalies commonly have stronger gear built just for practices.
I’m not going to lie. At times, I would have a healthy fear of the puck in a given drill but I never revealed it outwardly. I never flinched or pulled up. I just took it and liked it. If I got caught in a vulnerable spot I fixed my gear in that area for the practical and psychological benefits. I had to trust my gear 100 per cent. It was my living.
A famous man once opined that, “courage is not the absence of fear, rather the ability to push forward in spite of it. ” |