I am writing this week’s article from the front of an unnamed Best Buy somewhere in the Delaware Valley. As I brave the cold weather for the incredible savings I’m about to indulge in, I hope you’re all warm and relatively full of turkey. Okay, so I’m not anywhere near a Best Buy. As insane as I may be, I’ve realized that I’m not quite ready to wait in a line for over 24 hours so I can save $139 on a TV that I don’t need. I am, however, ready to delve into a recap of things I’m thankful …
This week, we’re going to spend a little time talking about a subject near and dear to my heart: the struggling goaltender and the fear of failure after an unsuccessful stretch of games. I’ll use myself as the example and build from there. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve gone from feeling very fluid and natural in net to slow, overly reactive and ultimately ineffective. It’s resulted in some pretty ugly games, none of which I want to remember. On Tuesday, I finally had a game I would consider to be “okay,” in that we won and I stopped …
This week’s installment of Crashing the Crease is about the gear we use as goalies that seems to entitle the public to the criticism and bad goals that everyone loves (the title wasn’t self-referencing, despite what my teammates may say). For those who haven’t put on the pads before or have done so incorrectly, this should serve as a primer on what it is we wear and hopefully provide some insight should you decide to don the gear. I’ll address some of the manufacturers and tweaks guys have made to their gear in a later post. Because goalies are creatures …
Pardon my cliché-ness, but I’m going to start with a quote this week. When a door closes, a window opens. In my mind, this statement embodies the goaltending position. The entire point of the game culminates in beating the goalie, yet 90-plus percent of the time, the goalie prevails at the NHL level. As the art of goaltending has progressed into a science, we’ve seen goalies get better, average save percentages rise and strategies and rules put in place to effectively limit the goalie’s impact. I’d say that a majority of the new rules put in place for this purpose …
The 2012-2013 NHL season had all the earmarks of a solid season for the league as a whole. Last season ended in fantastic fashion for the growth of the game. The LA Kings had sparked some real interest in the game out West, even bringing to light the fact that David Beckham has been a Kings fan before it was cool [again]. People who weren’t Canadian transplants were paying attention to the sport. The East Coast equivalent of L.A. was ready to see a return to the limelight, as the New York Rangers had effectively re-tooled and upgraded their roster. …
About a month ago, we looked at a breakdown of Bryz’s save percentage in two minute buckets. The intent was to measure how “clutch” Bryz was by evaluating his save percentage at key points in the game through the first 41 Flyers’ games. What we saw was, at least at a high level, a stark difference between his performance in wins and losses. Looking back on the previous season, though, there was an improvement in Bryz’s game once he was handed the reins after the Winter Classic. Thus, there was a necessity to complete the analysis and see what the …
This week, we’ve received the news that we’re likely looking at a lockout. This was great for me, as I really love the prospect of prolonged revenue sharing discussions. I like hockey, don’t get me wrong, but I’m also pretty sure that the on-ice action isn’t why we’re all fans. There’s actually very little doubt that an HBO 24/7 series chronicling the boardroom discussions leading to the pending shutdown of NHL hockey would rival the tension and entertainment value of an OT game in the Stanley Cup Finals, and I’m glad the league recognized this fact. Still, even with how …
Goalies, by and large, are fragile. As you look at more elite goalies, you see that they’re able to better overcome this inherent fragility, but even the best out there have developed coping mechanisms for the rigors of the position. “Routines” or “rituals,” as you’ll hear them called, are euphemisms for superstitious routines that let goalies exert a sense of ownership and control over a situation that is essentially dictating their activities. Patrick Roy talked to his posts and skipped over the red and blue lines on the ice. Braden Holtby, the Caps’ rookie netminder, was known for a “one-for-you, …
When I started writing this week’s article, I had initially planned to try and give some insight into the pressures of goaltending and how a massive contract can impact a guy. I kind of veered left, though, as I looked for a way to quantify not just a goalie’s performance, but his overall value to the team. It may seem pretty straightforward, but to fully understand it, I felt that some simple metrics could be combined to give a better total insight. Using www.capgeek.com, I pulled the cap hits for the goalies with the top 25 cap hits for the 2012-2013 …
Last week, Kevin took the time to evaluate Michael Leighton’s year in the AHL and to provide some insight into issues that we may expect to see with him. One of the big issues I saw in watching the videos was what I’m going to call the “killer rebound.” In basic terms, this “killer rebound” is a first save gone wrong. Horribly wrong. The goalie makes the stop and, for a moment, feels a glimmer of satisfaction. His pallor quickly reveals, though, that all is not right with this save. For one reason or another (i.e. a purely blocking save …