Sundays Coaches Corner: May 15

If you happened to be out and about Sunday night and missed Coaches Corner then you didn't see Don's rant on the importance of warming up your own teams goaltender.

Before puck drop for Game 1 of Vancouver vs San Jose, Luongo was hit in the head by teammate Raffie Torres. Whether or not, who knows if this may have had an affect on Luongo.

We have all seen it before where a goaltender is focused and relaxed and then takes a puck in the head and immediately their mood changes to a tight and tense state. For a goaltender that knows how to "Click the Switch" or "Change Channels" to a different frame of mind this then shouldn't be the case.

On the other hand, the whole concept of warming up your goaltender is to do just that - keep them warmed up. Every goaltender is different in their own. Some like to simulate game specifics in warm-up and put emphasize on every shot that they face in the net. Some prefer to allow the puck to just hit them. I would highly suggest that goaltenders treat their warm-up for what it is, a warm-up. For the one's that over energize their physical ability, and more importantly their mental thought process, they are usually draining their positive energy. This can easily be detrimental to a goaltender, and can cause a weak performance, even before the game begins.

Areas that goaltenders should be taking into importance when going through their 15 minutes on the ice in pre-game are:

• Position Specific Movements
• Understanding and developing a comfort for the ice surface and arena
• Movement coordination with ice landmarks
  
• Visually tracking the puck throughout the save process
• Developing a rhythm for responding to a players release
  
• Taking time to stretch and relax
• Monitoring and conserving their energy

The area of a goaltenders on-ice pre-game routine is rarely explored, by goaltenders and coaches. For coaches: Take some time during the season to understand your goaltenders and how they would like to go through warm-up, and take into consideration if there are any preferences that they have. For goaltenders: Again, treat your pre-game on ice for what it is - simply a warm-up. Don't overdue or over-think anything. Keeping a simple frame of mind heading into the game is at up-most importance. For players: Your goaltender simply wants to be relaxed in net, before and during the game. Help them do this, and keep pucks away from their head!

For more on the Coaches Corner episode from May 15 Click Here.

Sundays Coaches Corner: May 15