Kachinas goalies, goalie parents and coaches,
This is the goalie director Hiroki Wakabayashi.
Hope you all have a great start of the hockey season.
After missing the first week of the training due to my camp in MN, I’m back in AZ and just finished the first week of goalie training. Thanks to the effort of the goalies and cooperation from all the coaching staff, the goalie training had a great start.
Here I’d like to share some info with all of you to explain how I try to develop a great goaltending development program here and also give you some secrets that only goalie coaches would usually know or see.
Pegs in!
If anyone asks me “What is the first thing you can do in order to develop goalies?”, my answer is,,, “Pegs in!“
Goalies can push off the post and slide towards the post properly ONLY WHEN THE PEGS ARE IN.
Goaltending without pegs in is like driving a car without good control of the gas pedal and the brake pedal.
Put it simply, you’d hurt goalies’ development over the years by leaving the nets without pegs.
It takes only 60 seconds to get them all pegs in wherever you move the nets around.
Coaches should help out the pegs for younger goalies and older goalies should be able to do it by themselves.
Drawing the goal crease when the nets are in non-crease areas is another important element and I’ll talk about it later.
So let’s get all the practices started with the pegs in from now on!
