Our Kids Play Goalie - Goalie Development and Training Secrets with Retired NHLer Steve Valiquette

Lee MJ Elias [0:07 - 0:49]: Hello, hockey friends and families around the world and welcome to another episode of our kids play goalie. I'm Lee Elias with Mike Benelli. We've got a special guest today. He played for the New York Rangers. He's a goaltending consultant and is a current studio analyst for MSG Networks in New York. He's also the president and chief executive officer for clear site analytics, which we'll call CSA on the show today just to keep it going. They're also changing the game with cutting edge team and player based performance data built around the quality of scoring chances, thus proving that our kids play goalie is a show for everyone and not just goaltenders. So everyone listen up today. You're going to like this one. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Steve Eliquette to the show today. Steve, welcome to our kids play goalie. 

Steve Valiquette [0:49 - 0:52]: Thank you very much. Lee, Mike, great to see you guys and I'm happy to get started. 

Lee MJ Elias [0:53 - 1:17]: Well, we're happy to have you. I did that. A little bit of price is right, but come on down. Yeah, you're the next contestant on our kids play goalie, Steve. Listen, we're going to be talking a lot today about how analytics impact the game today, so I want to jump right into stats with you. So the opening question is how has statistical analysis changed the game and how have you seen it evolve over the years? 

Steve Valiquette [1:17 - 1:50]: Five years ago, there were 40% fewer east to west passes in the game. And yeah, that's when you see scoring starting to trend in ways that analytics have influenced the way players play. That would be the key stat. 40% more east to west scoring chances in the NHL today than five years ago. There are many more points, but I think that one's key because it really does talk to and speak to the importance of movement and how much goalies need to spend, how much time they need to spend working on their skating every day. 

Mike Bonelli [1:51 - 2:39]: I think, you know, real quickly, I know when I had gone to one of your CSA presentations that did probably a little bit before the pandemic and it was unbelievable. Like in person, lot of energy, great people there. I think one of the main stats that I took from it, from a coach was the whole royal road theory and just the articulation of. And I use that every day with my little guys, like every kid I work with because it's a very understandable piece of this, of this area of the ice where if it could pass from one place to the other, their goal scoring can go up or at least goal opportunities, right? So maybe so can you just expand on that from a goaltender's perspective? How now the goalie game's changing in the crease because of the awareness of the offense. 

Lee MJ Elias [2:39 - 2:42]: Well, wait, what's the royal road? You can't drop something like that. 

Steve Valiquette [2:47 - 4:35]: It was twelve years ago that I was working for the New York Islanders, and the data that I was receiving on the goalies, I knew it needed an upgrade. So there was an opportunity there for me to start a company. And two years later, in 2014, we started tracking scoring chances. There are typically during an 82 game NHL hockey season for 32 teams now 75,000 shots that get taken during the NHL season. We have 34 points of data for every shot that either hits the net or the post. So the data that we're bringing in, it's an enormous amount. And we have ten NHL client teams that work with us, gambling firms that subscribe to us, NHL players that work with us on private contracts. And I think you're going to find this interesting because I had a Zoom conversation with one of. I can't name the players, but one of my NHL clients, it's a shooter. And we were talking about the Royal Road. The Royal Road started with a concept that I believed was necessary to track as a very important event. It's an imaginary line that starts in the middle of the net, and it goes all the way to the top of the circles. It stops there. Imagine it's a marker. And anytime that marker has an eraser that goes through the line, whether the carry happens with a player carrying the puck across that imaginary line or a pass that goes across that imaginary line, you're asking the goaltender for the first time to really open up his legs. Because when the puck stays on one side of the ice, the goalie never really physically has to open up. Goalies should allow the play to come to them. Defenses are set up in ways to protect that imaginary line because they have to realize the puck will end up in the net once every three times. That happens during a game. 

Mike Bonelli [4:35 - 4:36]: Wow. 

Steve Valiquette [4:36 - 6:06]: So I'm talking to this NHL player yesterday, and he had a lot of success two years ago on breakaways. He didn't have any success last year on breakaways. We watched his twelve breakaways from last season versus his 14 breakaways from two seasons ago. He was crossing that imaginary line on his breakaways and having a ton of success. And last year scored once, only once, and didn't cross that imaginary line at all. For some reason, he got it in his head that he was going to stay on one side of the ice. And really do the goalie a favor because now the goaltender is, in theory, protecting half of six by four. And I'm explaining to this player that whether now if you're in a shootout, and that's why Artemi Panarin has a lot of success in shootouts because he crosses the royal road twice. Whereas in gameplay last season he went zero for 13 on breakaways because he didn't cross the imaginary line in game situation when somebody's back checking hard on him. So that's the best way to get an idea of how important it is. I think it's really important for defensemen, coaches that are coaching defensemen to make the job easier on the goaltender by understanding that that line really matters. The way that I explain it to defensemen to help my goalie is that I like them to imagine that's their net. Imagine visualize that's your net. If it goes through your net, goes into your net, it will end up in your goalie's net. So that's the way I kind of break it down for young kids. 

Lee MJ Elias [6:06 - 6:11]: Mike, we just got a show worth of gold right there. Thank you, Steve. 

Mike Bonelli [6:12 - 7:14]: You know, it's amazing because it's such a simple concept for the kids to understand, because that road is there, and you can create a lot of games in practice that replicate the royal road. Right? You can replicate a lot of east to west movement in the puck. And I think, you know, one of the things that we need to do better as coaches and, Steve, maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, the practice planning and how you can help non goalie coaches, coach goalies, is that we can't just have all our drills come from out of the corner, get a pass and a straight line on net, and just rip the puck on the goalie. Now, every goalie probably likes that. Like, okay, I just. I just have to move a foot out and the puck hits me. So I think just about, you know, what can we do as coaches to help our goaltenders? Not put them in a situation where they're getting hurt or really beating them up in practice. But what can we do in our practices to allow them to understand and actually work on that skill of moving across the net and tracking pucks? Because now we're getting smarter at moving the puck across the railroad. 

Steve Valiquette [7:14 - 12:07]: So for folks, I think they need to know first that let's just remove the word analytics. Look, if I could rebrand and rename our company, I would change it from Clearsight analytics to Clearsight hockey. And the reason why I would do that is because all that we're doing during a game is what anybody can do. We're just capturing the events in the game. We have labeled them. We have a strict criteria for them. I have twelve trackers tracking every game in the NHL every night. We do it live. We're not using AI. AI does not work. That's another conversation. We have two guys that are quality controlling and sometimes it even comes to me, you know, Valley, we need to call on this shot. This is a bizarre one. It's a broken play, goes across the royal road. You know, the 1 second barrier is eclipsed. Sometimes it gets wacky. My point is, is that how does any coach know how much time they should spend on two on ones, three on twos breakaways, clear view shots. How would you know unless you track your games? Eight year old hockey is different than 18 year old hockey. But I can tell you one thing, we have done full seasons in the NCAA with the Quinnipiac Bobcats, USHL with the Chicago Steel U 16 with the North Jersey Avalanche, the NHL, the American Hockey League. You know what's funny? Hockey's hockey at all. At all of those levels. I just named one breakaway goes in every three times. Screened. Deflection goes in one every three times. You're going to laugh when you see the data come over and you're like, oh, my God, hockey's hockey. I get it. The only way that it wouldn't be that way in the NCAA is if I put Henrik Lundquist in the net at Quinnipiac because nobody would score on the breakaway. So one out of three wouldn't work. I'll give you an example of the way I use it in practice. I have my goalie practices. I don't know if you guys know how much time I'm on the ice, but 20 hours a week all summer long. So I'm on the ice as much as I'm in the broadcast studio or in my office in sales. I love the game and the reason why I got into this is because I love player development. It happened to me. So I have a strong belief and we can improve. So I'm on the ice a few years ago with a local goalie from Greenwich. His name is Strauss Mann. He's playing for the Brunswick prep school hockey club. He went through mid fair field. So these are programs that people are listening to that are familiar with. Strauss goes on to play for the US Olympic team. He played against Canada, had a big win a couple of years ago when the NHL players didn't go. He is now playing in the DEL in Germany. He's been under contract with San Jose, with the Montreal Canadiens. He's had a long track record. The reason why I tell you all this is because when he was a sophomore, he couldn't get on the ice at Brunswick when he was a junior, got a few games, but really took over his senior year. He was a really intelligent player that watched a lot of hockey. That's important to me. If you're going to be a hockey player, you got to watch a lot of hockey because that's how you improve. You improve by watching. So one day we're on the ice, we're doing a drill, and the player is coming out of the corner. I'm playing defense, but it's like fake defense, and I give the puck away. And that's a way that I like to try and make the drill feel game like. I make it feel like the goaltender is engaged and he gets into mental state of flow because it's something that he believes happens a lot in games. So we're doing this exercise, and Strauss says to me, valley, I love your drill. I just don't think it happens often enough for us to be practicing it. You know, my back comes up because I'm a coach and this is early 2014, before I really tracked a full season, and I was like, you cocky, you know, I didn't like it. I didn't like the fact he was calling out my drill. There was lots of glitter in that drill. It looked good. It was fancy. I liked it. If you were a parent and you're watching this drill, you're like, oh, Steve's drills are great, but go back to what he said. I don't feel like this happens a lot. Listen to your athletes. I marked that one down at the end of the year, I looked at exactly the skating sequence from out of the corner that I was replicating in this practice drill. He was right. Never happened. Never happened. Didn't happen often enough for us to be working on it, that's for sure. The point is, at your level right now, for anybody interested in getting into hockey, a great first practice into that is chart your scoring chances. Chart your scoring chances. Location. Was there a screen or not? Was the puck deflected? Was there pre shot movement? Did the puck go across the royal road? I just told you, it goes from the middle of the net all the way to the top of the circle. It's easy. You just come up with your own framework, and then you can say to your coaching staff. Hey, look, we've got to work on two on ones. We've given up twelve in our last three games, and they're going in one every three times. You know, that, to me is hockey information. Forget about the math behind it. We don't have to get into expected goals and these things like, that's for the NHL guys. They can do that, but this is hockey information. 

Mike Bonelli [12:07 - 13:14]: Yeah, I think. I think one of the things you say, too, is that, you know, and just in describing the way you design your practices for your goal tenders to be game like, like that. We do this all the time as, as coaches, and we take away the only time we have. We're so limited in time we have with the kids at the youth level that we're doing a lot of things that might look good. Like the parents might say, oh, that looks okay. Looks. Looks like they're really working hard. But really, is it, you know, transferable to a game? I see it every day. One of my biggest pet peeves now is watching hours and hours and hours of coaches work on regroup drills. You know, d to d up to the winger, back, d to d, up to the winger. And I've. Yet I've never, I haven't seen a game all year where a kid got stuck on the red line, moved the puck back to the d, d to d and up the ice. It just doesn't happen. So now, again, that might be the level of players I'm watching, but so to your point, cater to what actually happens in the game. So if you're. If you're getting the puck and you got to rip the puck in, you know, opposite side on the d and make those d turn and chase pucks because you don't know how to regroup because you don't do it, then be really good at that. Like, learn that skill. 

Steve Valiquette [13:14 - 13:25]: Mike, Mike. 85% of the game, this is proven, is spent on the boards. The puck is on the boards. Players need to know how to get the puck off the wall and get it in the offensive zone. 

Mike Bonelli [13:25 - 13:25]: Right. 

Steve Valiquette [13:25 - 13:26]: And we don't do that. Right? We don't. 

Mike Bonelli [13:26 - 13:28]: We don't do those battle drills. 

Steve Valiquette [13:28 - 13:35]: That's what gets me fresh. I'm like, guys, you're not. You're working in the middle of the ice. Let's go. Come on. You're there 15% of the time. Knock it off. 

Lee MJ Elias [13:35 - 15:44]: So I like to get creative with our teams. I'm blessed this year. I've got to just. Great coaching staff on a squirt team, tenu team, right. And one of the things that I love about them is there's a lot of planning that goes into practice for every player. And I'm a big believer, and I want to get your take on this, Steve, if, if this is a data driven type of thought process, because I think at the younger levels, a lot of coaches, well, we don't have analytics, we don't have stats. And, and look, you may not, but you can watch the game and pick up on things. So we'll get to our meeting each week, and again, this is a tenu team and it'll be like, okay, these are the ten things I think we need to work on, right? And I go, well, we're not going to work on all ten things in one practice, so throw that out. What are the top three priorities and what is the data or what are we seeing that's making those the top priorities? And one of them that we're seeing is, okay, our f three is not high, all right, and that our goaltender is having issues in certain odd man rush situations. So in analyzing what we see at the games, we prioritized a what we want to work on created now drills that work on both of the things I just talked about. Right. So now the goaltender is engaged, the defense is engaged, and the fours are engaged in a drill that are going to help us. Now, Mike, to your point, there's got to be a why for these kids behind the drill. So what we did was we brought out a bunch of hula hoops and we put them on our sticks and we forced the kids into certain situations that replicated the game. Because if you don't do that, just going to come right down the middle or they're going to, they're going to take advantage of that. So it was fun because the hula hoops were out there, every player was engaged. It was based on, we'll just say data, right, things that we saw and we didn't go, well, we're getting one breakaway a game. Our goalie needs to work on breakaways 100 times. No, we worked on the things that we're seeing. So I think, Steve, the question again to you at a youth level, whether it's in a notebook or not, pay attention to what's happening, right. What's happening over and over and over again. And then find creative ways to work on it and also make sure to break it down. So if you're not getting the puck across the world road, you might need to break it down to, hey, we're not good at passing and we need to work on passing. Right. 

Steve Valiquette [15:44 - 16:02]: So you just said it. Right. Lee. Lee, the first 15 minutes of my practice, I've got an hour with a goalie. It's fundamentals, strictly fundamentals. And if that goalie is not a pro, then guess what? It's more like 30 minutes of fundamentals. 

Lee MJ Elias [16:03 - 16:03]: Right. 

Steve Valiquette [16:03 - 16:27]: And then 15 minutes for now, minutes 30 through 45, you're kind of working him through three drills, not 33 specific drills, newer stuff, stuff that you feel they're ready for. And then in the final 15, you take everything you built fundamentally and those new soft skills that you've learned, and you put that into an intensive game. 

Lee MJ Elias [16:27 - 16:27]: Right. 

Steve Valiquette [16:27 - 18:00]: Reason why this is the most important part of your practice. Number one, you've built there. So you've made progress. Your athletes are ready for it. You have to now train the mental part of the game. We always talk about how important it is to be mentally tough. The game's 99% mental. Oh, yeah? Who's working on it? I can tell you how you work on it, though. You have to put players in a position that they are competing with. Posture, engagement, following rebounds, chasing down pucks. The goaltender knows the next shot is imminent. Everything feels like a game, and you know what happens? Everybody turns on. They get into the zone, they get into flow state, and now we're competing. And on that competition, there has to be an outcome. You have to have something at stake, or nobody gets engaged. What we do, what I came up with while I had two years in Russia, so one of the things that we used as a punishment, but I understood their, their mode of operation was really just to get engagement. So when we do a competition, I like to create something on the ice that's going to be a best four out of seven. And it might be a drill with four different shots, but those are the ones that we've worked up to in the practice. So we're now putting it into game environment. And on those four shots, I'll say something like, you've got to score one goal on these four if the goal is ready for it, meaning, you know, age wise, appropriate, we'll play the rebounds. If he's not, we want to get that soft skill first. No rebounds, but he graduates by beating them for the next practice into using rebounds. There's always ways to progressively make things harder. 

Lee MJ Elias [18:00 - 18:00]: Yeah. 

Steve Valiquette [18:00 - 20:02]: The most important thing I can tell you guys is that the data that I know about, for instance, breakaways go in one every three times. A royal road pass goes in one every three times. Like I said, a screen deflection goes in one every three times. That might be a great competition. If I've got an AHL goalie on the ice with me and two AHL shooters, they'll come off the rush, make a pass across the ice, one timer, puck goes in the corner, continuous on the puck, other guy gets the dot, player in the corner collects the puck, fires it across the ice. That's a second railroad play. Then they both come to the net. I throw a puck in from the blue line with my defenseman. Now we got a screen deflection. There should be one goal every three shots, right? So that's a pretty. I know those are three grade a chances that we just talked about. But you know what you wouldn't believe? You can ask any of the guys that skates with me. Every game goes seven. That's when you know you've nailed it. If it goes to last shot, that's when you know your skill within the framework of the forwards you have on the ice. The d that are sifting the pucks in, the goalie that's engaged. If they can go to game seven, think about how valuable that is mentally. They're getting used to playing under conditions. And what we do at the end is losers roll over twice. There's something at stake. That's what I got from Russia. We did it in Russia. You know, it's that we call it a sugar cookie. You just roll over in the snow and it's like, you know, nobody wants to roll over. There's something at stake. Guys are pumped. And that's why. That's why I love what I do. Because for 5 hours a day, I'm back in the room, I'm on the ice, and I all the. You wouldn't believe some of the saves, some of the goals, and it's high level, and I just love it. It's electric. And that's why. That's why so many goalies have gone division one out of the Bridgeport Wonderland device. You know that. It wasn't like that before I started. We every year got guys committing. We just had another one for army University of Michigan. It's nonstop Cornell. So, you know, it's. It gets me excited because it really makes me feel like I'm going through the experience again. What happened to me? 

Lee MJ Elias [20:02 - 20:05]: Right. Well, you're having an impact, too. Go ahead, Mike. Sorry. 

Mike Bonelli [20:05 - 20:32]: No, I was going to say. So the two things you're hitting on, I think, are some things we talk about all the time, you know, in our goaltending conversations. Well, in any practice, you know, create competition. You know, create, create that desire to, you know, just go out there and battle and then, because that's not a bad thing. I think a lot of times people, people misread that competition in a winner and a loser in a drill or a practice could be a negative thing. 

Steve Valiquette [20:32 - 20:48]: Mike. It has to be. Mike, I'm going to interrupt you for 1 second, because this is, this is what it's like, too. I'm on the ice with a goalie this summer, right? And he says to me, after he loses, he's like, damn, I was thinking about the score. Doesn't that happen in a game every year? 

Mike Bonelli [20:48 - 20:49]: He's a great kid. 

Steve Valiquette [20:49 - 21:16]: And I was like, nate, I know where you're going here. And listen, I just came off the pickleball court. One thing I have a hard time with pickleball is keeping score because I'm used to playing goalie, where I never look at the score clock. Never look at the clock. I don't want to know the score. I play the same way every minute of every game, and that's the way I played. There were times from youth all the way into pro where I'd come out of the game, like periods. Two, I got a luck with one or two, you know, but that's a good sign. 

Lee MJ Elias [21:16 - 21:17]: Yeah. 

Steve Valiquette [21:17 - 21:39]: No. And you learn through the practice experience as an athlete. All right. Where did my attention wane a little bit? You can assess that after your practice. Why? Because the goalie was turned on, the shooters were turned on, everybody was mentally engaged, and you created an environment as a coach, that's your only job. Create a game environment. If you're not doing that, you really shouldn't be in coaching. 

Lee MJ Elias [21:39 - 21:54]: I. You know what, man? I love that you said that. And I think that it's important to note that that can be created at every level, right? Has to be created. Because I think that there are coaches out there, and God bless all the coaches that are volunteers. I'm not poo pooing on that at all. 

Steve Valiquette [21:54 - 21:56]: No, but if you're not meant to be a coach, don't coach. 

Lee MJ Elias [21:57 - 23:05]: Hey, look, I like that style. I know Mike does, too. But it's the creativity in it in the sense of like, look, there's no shortage of finding drills nowadays, right? But it's about finding the right things for your team and looking at it. Practice to practice and making sure that you're creating those game environments like you're talking about. Steve, I also want to bring up, too, I love that you're talking about mental fitness. And mental health and mental competitiveness, because that's a big thing that we do on this show and that you need to learn how to build those in, or probably more important, recognize those little aspects of the game as well. You know, we talk about the infinite game and like you said, not worrying about the score, that the infinite game goes beyond that. It's about getting excellence in every second of anything that you're doing. And when you culminate that, you're going to get excellence. But, and this is the thing I think people miss. It takes practice, a lot of practice to do that. Whenever you. You don't just get it right. It doesn't just turn on one day when you. When you achieve it a little bit, you have to maintain it. If you get out of practice, it'll stop. It's just like anything else in the game. And we need to be spending more time on that as a community. 

Steve Valiquette [23:05 - 23:09]: The problem is a lot of the athletes don't know that they're supposed to be paying attention to it. 

Lee MJ Elias [23:09 - 23:12]: Right, right. Totally agree with you. 

Steve Valiquette [23:12 - 23:20]: If you can't get them there, then they can't start to assess. And that's the important thing. It has to be the spoken word in the room. 

Lee MJ Elias [23:20 - 23:20]: Right? 

Steve Valiquette [23:20 - 23:35]: Has to be out there. Guys, I want. I want you to know you're not out there just to get a physical workout. We're not here for a cardio program. I know that's going to be a piece. There's going to be a physical piece, there's going to be a technical piece, but there must be a mental piece here. 

Lee MJ Elias [23:35 - 23:36]: Right, right. 

Steve Valiquette [23:36 - 25:14]: And they. You have to talk about it because the athlete, when they're more aware their intentions, they change. They become more intent on everything they do. Right. Like, look, I. You guys are familiar with Patrick Sharp. He shot for me for a very long time. I've. I got a lot of great NHL guys that come through, but I remember one day, and specifically we're at the Wonderland device and the rebound comes out and his posture comes up out of his skates and then he comes back down and he misses the net, you know, and I was like, hey, sharpie, listen, man, you've got to keep your posture there. I actually came up with this rule. You guys will laugh about this when I call it a rebound posture violation. So if the guy comes out of posture and then decides to get back into posture and start playing again, I just pulled the whistle. I was like, no, your rebound's done. That's a dead play because you didn't. You didn't stay engaged. You mentally gotta get sharper out here. And I'm all over my shooters. I drive the shooters hard because the harder I drive them, the better the goalie becomes. It's a part of his development. And that's why if you have drills in your practice where the goalie will turn off mentally and just say, well, this will never happen in a game and not try, guess what you get? You get a shooter trying on a goal, trying to score on a goalie that's not engaged and doesn't care. And then the shooter stopped caring. Guess what? Just get off the ice. You might as well. You're just wasting everybody's time. Now back to Patrick Sharp. He said to me, he goes on the ice, he's like, no, man. I didn't come out of posture. And I was like, oh, yeah, you did. And I pointed to the GoPro that I had hanging behind the glass. Come in the video room. Sharpie, sure enough, he comes in, he'd be laughing that I was telling this story. I haven't told this story in the longest time. So he comes in, I set up the video for him. I was like, what do you call that? Sharpie's like, oh, my God. I didn't know. 

Lee MJ Elias [25:14 - 25:15]: I didn't know. 

Steve Valiquette [25:15 - 25:28]: I didn't know. I was like, sharpie, man, you're in the NHL. Like, yeah, he was in Chicago. He goes, you know what? That's a bad habit. From just after the shot on gold during a practice, skating to the back of the line and not staying engaged. 

Lee MJ Elias [25:28 - 25:29]: Right? 

Mike Bonelli [25:29 - 25:48]: So let, let's stay, let's stay on that thought process because this is in the back of my head, because you mentioned it earlier about letting goalies track pucks. So what can a goalie do now? I'm a goalie, right? I want to, I got to advocate for myself, for my knucklehead coach who is killing me right now. I'm getting shots in the corner, shots off the back of my leg. Guys are shooting and curling where you're. 

Steve Valiquette [25:48 - 25:53]: Going here, Mike, but it's a, it's a dead end. You can finish your question. I think I know where you're going, buddy. 

Mike Bonelli [25:54 - 26:59]: So what do we do? So how are we, how are we going to that coach? Like, how are we advocating for ourselves as goaltenders and going in and saying, listen, I need to, I need to have gain because it's good. Because you just said it. Not only do, if I create practices that allow goalies to track and finish a play that I did, I start to create forwards that track and finish a play. And I think, you know, I advised, I had an advisory practice I went to, and the coach kept telling me, my kids won't go drive to the net. They won't drive to the end and score. Yelling and screaming. I'm watching game video hours and hours, screaming and yelling, go to the net, go to the net. And I watch this practice, and every drill was shooting from the top of the circle and going to the line, right? And I'm like, well, you have 20 weeks of teaching kids to just curl off. So if you want to be good at looping and shooting, like Dave Smith would say at RPI, right? If you want to be a great loop and shooter, then do a lot of loop and shoot drills. And I think, you know, so maybe. Is there any. Is there anything a goalie can do or a goalie tandem can do to approach their coaches and talk about, you know, how important it is to be in a game like situation? 

Steve Valiquette [27:00 - 28:50]: So, Jim Schoenfeld is one of my greatest mentors. He has been so good to me in my years in hockey, going back to when he was our general manager with, with the Hartford Wolf pack in the AHL. Really put his neck out to get me called up to the NHL to be with the Rangers, and he would laugh if I was telling this story. So he always came to me after practice. What kind of practice was it, Valley? He appreciated my feedback. So he had one drill where the guys would come out of the corner, they would come around the top of the circle, and he called it a six shooter. Shot, shot, shot, shot, shot. Go around the other circle. Six more shots, right? And both ends would be going at the same time. Everyone's busy, everybody's moving, and after practice, Shoney asked me, so, Valley, anything. Any feedback on practice? Like, yeah, Shoney. I gotta be honest, man. I really don't like the six shooter. What do you mean you don't like the six shooter? I'm like, I don't like the six shooter because Shoney, I go down on the first one, and the next one's hitting me in the head. The next one's hitting the balls. Like, what am I doing? Like, I can't even make a save. I only have time to get up, and he goes, all right, fine. He skates away. Next day after practice. Hey, Valley, how was practice today? Do you want some milk and cookies? You know, drills. All right, Valley. And I was like, shoney? That's not what I meant. Shoney, you know, and he was just giving me the gears the rest of the year. And I'm like, I guess I didn't, I guess I didn't get through to him. But I think you have to look at it, Mike. How about this one? Look at it differently. Right. So you're a goalie. You might be in a bad situation where you can't speak up. And guess what? 90% chance that's very likely the case. You. Oftentimes I, am I going to John Torturella and ask him to change the drill? No, I'm not. But what you can do, I'm going to give you my pickleball approach this morning. Okay, guys, into pickleball at all, Lee, big time. Yeah. Okay. So I like it because when I'm in the kitchen, I'm like a goalie again. I'm moving around. I love it. 

Lee MJ Elias [28:50 - 28:50]: Yeah. 

Steve Valiquette [28:50 - 29:21]: So I, we have a neighborhood where it's, it's Laurel beach. It's in Milford, Connecticut. It's 200 households of, like, old folks that have been here for ages. There's a lot of history here. We just had our 125th anniversary. It's a beach community. It's a lot of fun. We have six pickleball courts, we've got tennis courts, but we have a pickleball thread that, like, we're up every morning. I was on the pickleball court from seven to nine this morning, but the crowd this morning, I hope they're not watching. It was all older ladies. 

Lee MJ Elias [29:22 - 29:22]: I hope they're watching. 

Steve Valiquette [29:22 - 30:42]: Maybe it's a very surprise me, right? Spider man@the.net. but what can I get out of that training? The old ladies, they're unreal at dinking. They're like dink masters. So you have to change your mindset. I remember when I was a goalie saying to myself, you know what? This practice isn't built for me because what I'm going to do, I'm going to beat every pass. I'm going to set my feet, I'm going to be square no matter what happens. And if I get beat, it's not because I'm cheating. So you set a little bit of restriction with yourself. So, for instance, when I'm playing with the ladies this morning, I'm not going out there to be a spike master. I'm going there to really work on my dink game. And I would say something myself like, no unforced errors this game. No unforced errors. Not happening. I'm going to have two, I have set two bars for myself in this game. I'm going to work on my dinks. And I am not going to have any unforced errors. So you can do that as a goalie. I had to do it. You have to learn if you want to be a professional athlete. Not everything's for you, okay? That's the way it is. Your environment might be really bad, but you have to find ways to get better, even under the worst conditions. I lived in Russia for two years. Do you want me to tell you about what that was like? We started the practice with five on Os. Okay? So, like, don't come crying to me. You don't like the coach's drill? I'm not getting better. Yeah, you've got to change your mindset, and that's another way that you can mentally get a lot tougher. 

Lee MJ Elias [30:42 - 30:48]: So, Steve, two things. One is, I own a pickleball company, so you're going to get a free paddle. I'm dead serious. 

Steve Valiquette [30:48 - 30:51]: Yeah, we're going to be athletics because that's what I'm using right now. 

Lee MJ Elias [30:51 - 31:09]: I'm going to. It's 20 by 44. Pickleball. I'm going to send you one just for fun. You don't have to switch. We've got another show for that. We'll invite you on to the second thing you brought up. And what you just said is not for the audience. Not limited to goaltenders. 

Steve Valiquette [31:09 - 31:09]: No. 

Lee MJ Elias [31:09 - 31:22]: I encourage everybody. Players listening, parents listening. We talked about this on the show a lot. Mike, what can you take out of a good and positive or a negative situation? There's always something to be taken out of. 

Steve Valiquette [31:22 - 31:28]: You have a plan, rightly. Like, you've got to talk to yourself before it begins. Go in there with a plan. Don't go in there winging it. 

Lee MJ Elias [31:28 - 31:28]: Right? 

Steve Valiquette [31:29 - 31:30]: Have a plan. 

Lee MJ Elias [31:30 - 31:41]: Right. Every situation is an opportunity, even the bad ones. And I think you're right about flipping the mindset, and I wouldn't want to start a practice with a five on. Oh, that's a little bit much. But I'm sure you found something out of that, right? 

Steve Valiquette [31:41 - 32:07]: That's not even an exaggeration. Our coach was Sergei Nimchinov, won the 94 cup with the Rangers, and he's a guy that's north American, you know, played a ton over here, but, yeah, he still went back to his roots. When we were in Russia, I was playing for the Red army, and you know what? Guess what? I got out of that. Beat every pass. Beat every pass. I could still beat the pass, right? You know, it might not be the most realistic thing, but guess what? I'm beating the pass. I'm going to set my feet, and I know that's going to carry over to my game. 

Lee MJ Elias [32:07 - 32:13]: Yeah. And you found it when I just saw a KHL team wrestling a bear the other day. So they go pretty crazy over there. 

Steve Valiquette [32:14 - 32:14]: Stuffed animal. 

Lee MJ Elias [32:14 - 33:30]: I look pretty real to me. No, but. But I love where we're going with this, Steve, because it's so true. And again, so much of this applies to youth hockey. Right? And the other follow up I wanted to say is I always tell my players, let's discover the why behind the drill. We're doing a fundamental passing drill, but why are we doing this drill? And I ask them that. I'm a big believer, even at young ages, great questions demand great answers. Right. If you just tell them to do the drill, they'll do it. But if they don't understand the why, they're just doing it. Now. When we explain the why, and I'm definitely going to borrow a lot of the stuff we said today, and they can apply it in their mind to a game. And it gets competitive, man. It changes the practice. Not only that, coaches listening. You got to understand this, too. You will feel so much better after a practice that's competitive than if they just do the drills you're telling them to do. It's never about you. First off, I remember yesterday we said a great practice, man. The feeling you get when you leave a great practice is like winning a game. Right? And it's like you. You want to strive to create that every practice, and it's not always going to happen. You're definitely going to have some l's along the way, but if you strive for that, things will get better. And I love that. You know, you have this data driven approach. You have this creative approach. You have a mental fitness approach. You combine those three things together, you're going to get good practices most of the time. 

Steve Valiquette [33:31 - 36:56]: Yeah. No, you're going to. Hey, look, I love doing this because I started doing it in 2004, like I said earlier, because it happened to me. And what I meant by that was that I was struggling in the minors, okay? And it's funny because last night I had a call with Calgary Flames goalie coach Jason Lebarber was my partner for the Hartford Wolfpack, and the goalie coach I spoke to last night was Mackenzie Skapsky, who was also played some games for the Rangers Hartford Wolfpack. They're both goalie coaches now for the Calgary Flames. So I talk. What's kind of fascinating day to day with my life in hockey is that I talk to the highest level. I could be dragging a net on the ice at 630 in the morning. I could be on tv at 10:00 at night. Benoit, everybody I hope knows Ben Waller that watches and listens. He's the goalie coach that I'm referring to. When I was playing for Hartford in 2004, we had a strike. We had a lockout. Benoit Aller did not have to be with us during that lockout under contract. He did not have to be in Hartford. He was a New York Ranger coach. But he chose to be with us. Jason Lebarber and I, the entire lockout, 30 minutes before every practice, 45 minutes after every practice, LaBarbera and I got to work with Ben Waller. It's not a surprise to either of us that we both ended up in the NHL a year later as we were both middling AHL don't really get it type of guys, but I can tell you that year was serendipitous in a lot of ways. Number one, I had great coaching and I experienced it. And that's why I started a hockey camp that summer. My first year hockey school and clinic coaching was 2004 2005. That summer, after that season, number two, I hired a sports psychologist. That year I was 27 years old. I was stuck in the minors. I had to figure out how to get out of my own way. Hired a sports psychologist. That changed everything for me mentally. I was coming to the rink with a plan. I had a great attitude. I knew I was getting the coaching that I needed, so I had the player development side. I found a way not to get frustrated if it wasn't going well for me. I really found a second gear of my compete level. I found a way to get out of my way. If you don't figure that out, you're going to keep bumping your head up against the same obstacles. I think the next thing that happened that was really important to me was I started taking classes at school again. I was really engaged in my education. I was reading a lot. I was really getting into self development. But all of those things, I would include this. Ben Waller gave me ten vhs tapes of Sean Burke and he said, big man, if you can learn how to play like this guy, you're going to play in the NHL. That's verbatim what he said to me when we were in Hartford. So what I did was I had to up my education. Not just in the classroom, but I had to up my hockey IQ. And you know what I did? This was when apple just started getting popular. I used to go to the west Farms mall in Hartford. They had a genius bar. I was taking all of my lessons to learn how to convert a VHS into a DVD which would then get into my computer so I could edit on final cut. So I spent hours at this. My roommate, Jeff Hamilton, who runs CJR, he used to be all over me, teasing me, going to the genius bargain valley like all over me. But I knew like I had to figure this out. So what did I do? I took these Sean Burke videos. And that was when he played for the old Phoenix Coyotes. 

Lee MJ Elias [36:56 - 36:56]: Yeah. 

Steve Valiquette [36:56 - 37:27]: Allaire had coached him. And now you know what I did? Okay, when the puck comes over the blue line, all right, that's when Berkey gets to his post. All right? That's when he shoulder checks. Okay? Post a post. There. Got it. Depth. Oh wow. He stays that deep there. Interesting. I wonder if I could pull that off. I'm going to try that tomorrow in practice. Guys, I stole Sean Burke's game and ended up in the NHL a year later. Like, but this is a. Sean Burke was. Do you guys remember? He was a Pearson award winner. He was a Vezna trophy finalist. Like killing it those years in Arizona, now Phoenix. 

Mike Bonelli [37:27 - 37:32]: But you not a bad, not a bad guy to, right. So I guess what my question is. 

Steve Valiquette [37:32 - 37:35]: The point, edit the game, get into it and put it on your computer. 

Mike Bonelli [37:36 - 37:48]: So think about how. So one of my, one of my questions was going to be, you know, just when you came into the NHL, I mean, it really was a, you know, kind of this shift to the, to the, the taller, bigger goaltender. 

Steve Valiquette [37:48 - 37:49]: Right. 

Mike Bonelli [37:49 - 38:01]: I mean, and all of a sudden now everybody, you know, the size of a goaltender matters. And I think it, it more as far as a coach goes and a recruiter, they look for that first. Like it's just an easy thing to say. Oh, monster of a guy. 

Steve Valiquette [38:02 - 38:14]: Well, hey, Mike, Mike, I would have liked that. Back when I was at the NHL draft, I was in the 8th round. You don't want to know why? I was too tall, Mike. There was a bias against my height. They said Valakat has a seven hole, not a five hole. 

Mike Bonelli [38:14 - 38:52]: Yeah, you couldn't move, right? I mean, too big a guy. So, so talk about, you know, how, you know, us as youth coaches can work with those goaltenders that look like they're big and lanky and like when they're young, like they're like. Imagine you see it all the time, right? The difference between a twelve year old and a 14 year old and all of these different sizes. And really the hardest part for us is to evaluate that player when they're going through these crazy growth spurts, because, you know, usually those players aren't maturing until, you know, 18 and 19 years old, and their size is. They're not done growing. So how do we work with those goaltenders and making sure that they can reach their potential when we see them at a very early age? 

Steve Valiquette [38:52 - 39:35]: All right, so this will. This will make sense. Okay? It'll make sense because I'm saying it making sense now. It should make sense, guys. All right, so we have goalies that are 8910, eleven and twelve that are small, but they're playing in the adult space. The hockey net is the same for an 8910, 1112 year old as it is for an NHL goalie. That's why I don't start working with goalies myself until age 14, because it's the first time an adult sized body has grown into the space, the hockey net. Now I'm teaching the goalies for the very first time how to receive the puck. Lee, your son's a goalie and you said he's ten. 

Lee MJ Elias [39:35 - 39:35]: Yeah. 

Steve Valiquette [39:35 - 39:38]: So he's reaching for everything. 

Lee MJ Elias [39:38 - 39:39]: We talked about it. 

Steve Valiquette [39:39 - 39:41]: Full extension. He's a little kid. 

Lee MJ Elias [39:41 - 40:02]: Yeah. In fact, Steve did tell you. I've had to tell him before, you know, especially on some cross ice moves. You know, he's like, but I made the right move. I said, yeah, but you're not 6ft tall. You know, your leg is just not big enough. But I said, you, you did make the right play, but you have to understand that, buddy, that you're not the size you're going to be anyway. I'm with you on this. 

Steve Valiquette [40:02 - 42:26]: No, you got it right. So what I like to try and explain to goalies, when I first start working them, working with them at age 14, is that we have to learn how to receive the puck now. You have no idea how to track it. You've always reflex stopped it or anticipation stopped it. You found ways to be athletic. Don't let go of those. You're still going to need them. They're a part of what we're baking into the pie here. But you must learn how to receive the puck because now your biggest receiving surface is your upper body. And we have to find ways to develop the feet and movement, skating wise, for the young goalie, so that when they do have the adult sized body, they can still have the movement to get them there, because you need to achieve positioning. Positioning, above all else stops the puck. You need that because if you're not there, 100 shots out of 100 are going to end up in the back of the net. So how do you develop a young goalie? You must work on skating and positioning when they're young. The tracking, the word tracking means when the puck is coming low blocker. My head is coming down to the puck and if it's coming at my ear, my face, actually, if the puck is face off, dots down towards the net, it's getting close. I need to keep my, my head silent here through the release and lift my shoulder up to make a save. You will learn those adult style moves when you get to adult size. But don't think you're going to be able to do it when you're 8910, 1112. You can't, you're not big enough. So that, to me is the, it's the hard part. The second part that's hard is you guys might laugh at me here, but I'm dead serious. It's keeping your eyes open. Okay? And I'm serious. This is, this is very serious talk right now. I'm telling you right now, the biggest issue I have working with fourteen s and fifteen s is the shots hurt now. And a lot of them are flinching. A big time flinch before the puck has even been shot. Now, the way that I coach that out of these kids, you're going to laugh again. Maybe. But I take a iPad, I velcro it to the ceiling in my office. I put a upper body on the kids with a helmet, lay them on a yoga mat, and I drop pox on their face and they have to keep their eyes open because the flinching, it doesn't matter how good your technique is or how good your positioning is, if you flinch it all, you can't track. 

Lee MJ Elias [42:26 - 42:27]: Yeah. 

Steve Valiquette [42:27 - 42:53]: Best goalies. I'm telling you right now, Strauss, man, the first time I did this with him, I'm dropping the puck from the ceiling. His eyes are like, you look like Charles Manson, you know, and the weakest goalies are. You wouldn't believe it. You think I'm dropping an atom bomb on them? They're just all over the place. And it's really important that when you're teaching goalies to receive the puck, pay attention to their eyes. They have to make sure, you have to make sure as a coach they're not shuttering their eyes, you know? 

Mike Bonelli [42:53 - 42:55]: So, you know, Mike, are you telling. 

Lee MJ Elias [42:55 - 43:00]: Me my, down in Florida right now, have you seen the, the lightning ads down in Florida? 

Steve Valiquette [43:00 - 43:01]: No. 

Lee MJ Elias [43:01 - 43:07]: It is, it's, the background is all lightning and it's only Vasileski's. From eyes up. 

Steve Valiquette [43:07 - 43:07]: What? 

Lee MJ Elias [43:07 - 43:10]: With his eyes super wide open? 

Steve Valiquette [43:10 - 43:10]: Yeah. 

Lee MJ Elias [43:10 - 43:16]: I will send this to you because now, did you just give us the answer to why goaltenders have their eyes kind of like this during games? 

Steve Valiquette [43:16 - 45:55]: Yeah. You have to. So, Lee, I'll tell you what. The first two goalies I worked with at Quinnipiac, that was my first job out of hockey. Eric Hartzell got him signed with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Michael Garteg got him signed with the Vancouver Canucks. I was thrilled. I was able to work with free agent goalies, guys that are already division one, and I'm helping them get contracts. And that was cool. I did my first one in this office right here. Loved it and got such a buzz off it. And I remember with Gartag, we were working on this one save, and this is an important save, again, from the face off dots in the zone down towards the net. You can't chase the shot that's coming at your ear with your catching glove because it actually just loses the race. You don't have enough time, especially when you get to the NHL. You play it at a high pace. College, same thing. Junior hockey, USHL, same thing. So I was. I was explaining to Michael Gartag, who was older school, like, lean away, make a save to go at it. And I can't do this because I got these mic things over here, but actually, I'm going to explain something to you. You're going to like this, and I'll get back to the guard type thing. So when I retired, I had one save that I wasn't 100% sure about how to coach. And that was the shot at the year that I was just describing. So I'm working with a bunch of coaches. Nobody can really give me an answer if a low blocker save is going to be faster, to be executed with the knee down on the ice or off the ice. I couldn't believe that I was asking questions like this after playing, but it was unbelievable to me what I didn't know about what I just did, but I was trying to figure it out, and I finally stumble across a biomechanics coach, and I was driving over the Tappan Zee bridge, and I'll never forget it. He calls and he said, you know, nice to meet you, this and that. We get past the pleasantries and he says, so what are your questions? And I was like, look, the shot at the ear. I remember playing my best and feeling like I get a piece with my shoulder and everything, but sometimes I'd go after it with my glove. And I delayed. I always felt like I got stuck on that one, especially from the slot. And he was like, okay, so we're talking about a shot that's, you know, face off, dots or hash marks down. I was like, yeah. He said, okay, so put your back up against your chair. You're driving, right? And I said, yeah. He said, look at the road ahead of you and try and get that elbow up and touch the roof of your cardinal touch the ceiling in the inside of the car. I was like, I can't. I get stuck at 90. I couldn't get it up. And he goes, now look down the hood and see the road coming underneath your vehicle. And now do it. And when you do it, your elbow goes all the way up. He explained to me that it was the ligaments and the vertebrae in the neck, and it's much more science behind it than that. But that's how you can make that save. It's the only state save that you don't want to track your head into the save. You want to keep it silent all the way through the release so you can have that range on your, what we call a chicken wing save. 

Lee MJ Elias [45:55 - 45:56]: Yeah. 

Steve Valiquette [45:56 - 46:39]: Now you're not going to really. You could teach it to a ten year old. You won't use it as much because they're not big enough, and that's the point. So you're adding these elements, these wrinkles, to making saves when they get bigger. Michael Gartig, now he can't get the save right. He's struggling, and we're in practice, and it's a couple weeks, and I'm like, guys, you got to get the save, because I know you can get away with what you're doing right now at Quinnipiac, but you're not playing pro. I'm just telling you right now, we got to get this going. Now, he was flinching the eyes a little bit, little shy on the puck, didn't like it. So finally he has this breakthrough, and he is just crunching these pocs. I just almost dropped my mic. So he's making all these saves, and I said, carts, what did you say to yourself? He's like, don't be a wimp. Don't be a wimp. 

Mike Bonelli [46:42 - 46:51]: So you're saying. So you're saying ripping black pucks over an eight year old's shoulder from. From junior players isn't a good. No, it's not good. 

Steve Valiquette [46:51 - 47:01]: It's not good. It is not good age group. At that age, we don't want puck shy goalies when they're teenagers when it matters. Right, right. 

Mike Bonelli [47:01 - 47:05]: Don't scare the crap out of them when they're eight, maybe loud in the track. 

Steve Valiquette [47:07 - 47:07]: No. 

Mike Bonelli [47:07 - 48:05]: Yeah, well, you know, that's okay, but we have plenty of goalies. Come on. No, but I mean, but those are. Those are the kind of things I think that, like, our audience, right, loves to hear just about the nuances of the game, because most of us, as coaches of a team, don't even have time to look at that. Like, we don't have the time to say, hey, I'm gonna design drills in my practice that are gonna allow this player to kind of get over the hump of being not in a good technical spot. So again, other than obviously watching video, watching themselves, how does a goaltender at that 14, let's just say 14 to 18, they don't have access to you. They don't have access to, like, a full time goalie coach. You know, what can they do with their own resources, video and just technique to work on finding the things that aren't working in their game and improving them? 

Steve Valiquette [48:06 - 51:46]: I would start with the Hockey magazine in goal. It's an online subscription, and it's got amazing pro reads. It's called in Goal magazine, the podcast as well. It's hosted by Kevin Woodley. David Hutchinson is the co host, and Darren Millard, who is the tv broadcaster for the Vegas Golden Knights. It's an amazing resource for becoming a student of the game. So that would be point number one. If you want to make it in this game, there is a lot of information out there for you and encourage your athletes to become a student of the game. My wife was a tennis player in college. My young guy's a tennis player, doesn't like hockey. My oldest guy is a flame throwing pitcher. He loves baseball. I didn't make him play hockey. I tried. I tried both of them. But they love what they love, and you will never stop playing the sport that you love. I loved hockey so much, so deeply, that even when the worst times came, I never quit. Why? Because it was my decision. It was my choice. My parents never made me play. My dad didn't play. My mom didn't play. But I love the game. So it's really important that you take that love for what you're doing and become a student of it, because the more time you invest in it, the more confidence you gain, and then the less likely that you'll ever quit. Because if it's not your child's decision when they face adversity for the first time, it might be 14, it might be 17. They will quit because guess what? It wasn't their choice in the first place. So that's number one. That would be my speech for rule number one. Become a student of the game. You've got plenty of resources to do it. Number two, you need to understand what hard work is. And don't think just because you're having a workout out there and you're going up and down a few times and you come off with a sweat, that's a workout. Every kid, and I mean every kid that I've ever coached doesn't know how to compete. And I didn't know this when I first started coaching, but you can teach compete. You can teach it. That's on you as a coach. You can teach compete. Do you want to know how I could teach compete? If my goalie doesn't go for it because his rebound off his blocker goes to the weak side of the ice, and maybe he doesn't think he has a chance to go get that puck and he just waves his stick at it. You know that one in practice, that one drives me bananas. Okay, so on that first day, I'll say to the kid, say, hey, like, I'll use a name. Mikey Roberts. He's playing at Dartmouth. Great kid, but he was. And Stephen Peck, University of Michigan. Like, the list is really long, I could say, of really elite goalies that once upon a time were a little soft when they were younger, but you have to call him out on that, and this is the way you do it. If he does that little stick waving thing or doesn't freeze a puck, that he should, doesn't follow the rebound full speed, or let's a puck in from the perimeter because he wasn't paying attention during practice, guess what that is. Down and back, redline back. There has to be a repercussion. If there isn't anything at stake, they're not going to do any learning. Those guys that I just met, they all did. The down and backs didn't freeze a puck. We've got three moves after a save, guys. You either freeze it full speed. That's a skill, too. Follow it on your feet or slide over because it's a tight play. If you don't have one of those three responses, you just broke down the chain of command. And guess what? Down and back red line. No, no, no. Redline. And they won't. They learn. They learn. And now they're out there competing. And then that final 15 minutes that I talked about, that's so important. It becomes the most valuable part of their week because you earn your confidence in practice. 

Lee MJ Elias [51:47 - 52:01]: Steve, I want to say, too, that I love what you just said because I think there's a lot of coaches out there that fear, that type of discipline, and I think that the truth is kids crave that type of discipline. 

Steve Valiquette [52:01 - 52:02]: You just said it. You took the words, right. 

Lee MJ Elias [52:03 - 52:05]: Yeah, rave. Crave it. 

Steve Valiquette [52:05 - 52:24]: Guess what? If you're not calling me to that, I don't even want you to be my coach, Wiley, because I want to play college. I want to play division one. Hold me there. You know, and that's important. The kids should, the kids should write emails before the season to their coach and say, guess what? I just want you to know, I might be twelve right now, but I want to play d one one day. 

Lee MJ Elias [52:24 - 52:25]: Yeah, I love that. 

Steve Valiquette [52:25 - 52:44]: I want you to hold me to that standard. If I'm five minutes late for practice, I want my coach to come up to me and say, you know what, mountain climber Herbie right there, you know, you want to play college, don't you? Well, I'm going to hold you that standard. And that's something that really is what every athlete craves. Hockey players crave structure, right, Lee? 

Lee MJ Elias [52:44 - 52:46]: Yeah, they crave it. 

Steve Valiquette [52:46 - 54:11]: Last thing I was going to say on my third point there, before I forget and lose track here, is you also have to understand, the athlete has to understand they can't get frustrated when they don't get it the first time, right. Because development stops dead in its tracks. If you get frustrated during your training, there's no room for it. It's like I'll say to my goalies, I had 416 year olds that I started with this summer for the first time. Didn't know them at all. And three of them really popped and one didn't. And the one guy that didn't pop, he just couldn't stop getting frustrated. Look, you know, you're just stopping development right there. You might as well just, again get off the ice, because am I going to sit here and watch you have a hissy fit for the next 20 minutes? Are you that spoiled? Nobody's ever told you no or you get everything you want the first time. It's not how sports works, but that's how you also frame it with your kids. Go to the dry erase board and write, why do we play hockey? And put a circle around it and then a tentacle off that. We learn inclusiveness, we learn respect. We learn punctuality. We learn. You could have the whole room engage in that conversation I do it every summer with my guys because I want them to know that, guys, we're spitting out better people here. And there's an education when you work with me. But, yeah, we're going to work hard. We're not going to get frustrated when we get challenged and we're going to be coachable. If you do those three things, you're going to leave a better person. Well, after hockey, all of these things are why we play sports, why we play hockey well. 

Lee MJ Elias [54:11 - 54:56]: We always say on the show, too, great people become great hockey players, and you've got to focus on both. And to your point, man, like, look, amazing things will start to happen if you coach competitiveness and you bring in discipline. The times I have done it just, just this week, you know, we were doing something where if you miss the net on a shot, we talked about shooting with a purpose, and if you missed the net, you just. Three push ups. Right? So they're all doing it. And they started coming up to me, the kids started coming up to me. It's like, well, I hit the post. Is that, do I have to do it? Well, I missed that. I'm going to do them right now. Like, they're accountable. They're craving it. They're craving. And the other thing that we uncovered, Steve, is some of the kids were a little shy with their shot, and so we went up to them. You know, they're. They're just shooting low right in the middle of the net. 

Steve Valiquette [54:56 - 54:57]: They're not going for it. 

Lee MJ Elias [54:57 - 55:14]: Right. And so we had this great conversation with them. And this is why I love how what you said uncovers these things. I said to them and the other coaches, I want you to shoot as hard as you can, and I want you to pick one of these corners or try and score. And if you miss, do the push ups. But I want you to try. It's not a punishment. Right. 

Steve Valiquette [55:15 - 55:23]: Lee, put game pressure on yourself. It can't feel foreign to you when you go to the game. It has to feel the same way your practice did. That's the easiest message you can have to. 

Lee MJ Elias [55:24 - 55:56]: And I love, again, it applies to every player and every goalie and coaches. We got to say this, too real quick, Steve. Like, the amount of times I'll have a coach come in, we're going to work on this today, then we never work on it again. And I say we should be looking at practices almost a month at a time. And it's okay to do the same drill, three, four, five practices. As long as there's progression like you don't want it to be monotonous, but if you're working on a skill, man, work on the skill and make sure that they're working on it a few times a week. You can't just do passing once. And the two is going to be great. 

Steve Valiquette [55:56 - 56:04]: Those 1st 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the quality of the goalies that I'm working with, they'll sit here right now and tell you we're doing the same thing every day for those first. 

Lee MJ Elias [56:04 - 56:05]: Right. 

Steve Valiquette [56:05 - 56:25]: Want to know why? How about me? When I'm starting to work as a broadcaster, and I see Henrik on the ice with Allaire, and I go out after for dinner, and I was like, hey, Hank, you're doing the same. This is in 2018. I'm like, hank, you're doing the same drills we did in zero seven. What are you doing? He's like, what do you mean by like? Don't you get kind of bored of them? He's like, no, you've got to become a master of the fundamentals. 

Lee MJ Elias [56:25 - 56:26]: Totally agree. 

Steve Valiquette [56:26 - 56:28]: You know? And I'm like, yeah, that's why Hank was great. 

Lee MJ Elias [56:28 - 56:29]: Yeah. 

Steve Valiquette [56:29 - 56:31]: You know, he did the same drills. 

Lee MJ Elias [56:31 - 56:35]: Every day, music every day. Yeah, everything was the same. 

Steve Valiquette [56:35 - 56:46]: You know, what are we talking about? You know, you don't have to add glitter and light shows to your drills. These kids need to understand the fundamentals are what gives you the confidence to play well and execute in a. 

Mike Bonelli [56:46 - 56:46]: In. 

Steve Valiquette [56:46 - 57:12]: In a game. You know, there's one book I read above all that really helped me put the framework of my business together. And the business meaning, like, let's put kids to division one. That's the business I'm in. I just want everybody that I work with to go d one, and for them, it's d three. But I want kids to be, like, as high, just reach their potential. That's all. Right. And the talent code, it's written by Dan Coyle. If you haven't read it before, have you guys read it? 

Lee MJ Elias [57:12 - 57:14]: I have not. I'm going to, now that you mention it. 

Steve Valiquette [57:14 - 58:19]: No, no. And here's the thing, Lee. This book came out in zero nine, and for the first time, I was still playing. For the first time, I really understood practice after I read this book, because it talked about what was happening to my brain. So your brain has neurocircuits in it that wrap with gray muscle matter, and that's called myelin. In myelin, the more you train something with focused intention, it wraps thicker around those neurocircuits, so they fire quicker, so when you're doing something over and over again. Low blocker, low blocker, low blocker, full intention low blocker, follow my rebound. You're doing it over and over again. Whether you realize it or not. Your brain now is moving on broadband where it was once dial up, and now you're firing out there. So I understood from that point forward that I'm not just on the ice physically getting stronger, technically getting better, but I'm getting a mental response that goes from eyes to brain to hand, like, and it's. And it's firing because of the level of intent in every single rep. 

Lee MJ Elias [58:19 - 58:53]: I love this dude. And again, I like the words relentless pursuit for greatness, for competition, whatever, you know? And it never stops and never, it never ends. And my last question for you, we have to ask this. You mentioned Henry Lundquist. You mentioned several really great goaltenders and athletes across the show. We'd be remiss if we didn't ask. You've seen a lot of these guys at the highest levels. What are some of the separators? What makes them great? You know, what are the. What's the secret sauce that you see? We may have discussed it in the show already, but I wanted to ask. 

Steve Valiquette [58:54 - 1:00:38]: I have. I have the answer for you in a story. When I retired, it was 2012, and that first summer, my best friend, Steve Montador, who later passed away, rest in peace to Steve. He's my best friend since we are teenagers. He, with Andy O'Brien, was running a camp. It was one week before the NHL season began, and it was in Vail, Colorado. And Andy O'Brien is Sid Crosby's trainer in this camp. It was every year they would have a draft the night before the camp, okay? It was undercover. Nobody even knows this thing exists. Okay? So don't repeat this story. All right, guys, so the draft. We have team Crosby versus team Tavares at the time. We have Stamkos in the room, Patrick Kane. We have Nathan McKinnon. We have every star from every team in this camp. 16 guys, okay? Eight on each squad. And the goalies are Roberto Luongo and John Sebastian Jaguer. Okay? Like I'm telling you, and I'm the goalie coach, and it's my first time, I'm not. I don't deserve to be there because I'm the best goalie coach in the world and just know the guy that started the camp. So I'm out there in the tracksuit and it dawns on me in about a couple minutes where I'm seeing the high level of these guys. And I'm like, oh, my God, the stars have a different relationship with practice. It just came over me, and now we're doing this drill where it's, again, Jagarran and that Longo and the other net, it's on the circle, on the face off circle, and they call it the, you know, the Foxes den. I think it was foxhole. Foxhole. So coaches like putting pucks in, and it's Tavares versus crosby. And you know what it was that I saw that day? It was the highest level of skill going up against the highest level of compete that I've ever seen. 

Lee MJ Elias [1:00:38 - 1:00:38]: Yeah. 

Steve Valiquette [1:00:38 - 1:01:04]: And although I played in the NHL and I saw it at the highest level, seeing stars on stars is another level I'd never seen before, and I was just taken back. And so I did that camp for five years because I got so much out of just being at dinner with them, going to lunch, telling stories, telling them about the royal road. You know, Sid was really cool the second year. He took his glove off and shook my head and said, hey, I didn't win the scoring championship without knowing that that line existed. 

Lee MJ Elias [1:01:04 - 1:01:05]: Wow. 

Steve Valiquette [1:01:05 - 1:02:08]: I had all these really cool interactions with these guys, and so I don't respect anybody more than I respect, like, Sidney Crosby, Henrik Lundquist. Like, you should have seen Hank practice, you guys. Do you know what it's like with Hank practicing? Okay, the night before we play at Madison Square Garden, he gets first star. The next day, we're on the ice at 10:00 at the training center. And after practice, because we've already been on the ice for 30 minutes, there was a night, you know, the night before we played after practice, Hank is taking breakaway after breakaway after breakaway, and here I am leaning up against the boards, taking a squirt of water, being like, Hank, stop being such an a hole. Just get off the ice, man. Like, I'm done, you know, I'm tapped out right now. But he never stopped. And you have to get past the nice clothes and the hair and everything and realize that there was a badass under there. And he. Nobody competed as hard as him. But the reason why the greats are great is, guess what? They compete harder than you. So learn how to compete, and you can, if you hold yourself to that standard with the help of your coach. 

Lee MJ Elias [1:02:08 - 1:02:38]: Well, I'll say right now, I'm ready to run through a brick wall. I was inspired, motivational as hell. And I do want to say, for those of you listening to this and not watching this, this man behind him, has mes and goalie helmets. And you've been pretty relentless in your career, too, both in the NHL and post career. I mean, I've always enjoyed, you know, watching obviously on the broadcast, but the way you speak, the way you bring, the approach, I mean, you bring it every time you're on the air. And I love that about you, man. I can't thank you enough for being here today, guys. 

Steve Valiquette [1:02:38 - 1:02:41]: My pleasure. It's really fun talking hockey. We'll have to do it again. 

Lee MJ Elias [1:02:41 - 1:03:39]: Oh, we can do it again if you want. For right now, that's going to do it for this episode of our kids play goalie for Steve Eliquette. Mike Benelli, I'm Leah Elias. Remember, goaltenders, players, skaters, coaches, parents, whoever's listening. If you have a question, there's a little link accompanying this episode in the description. Tap it. You'll text right to us. We will get it. You can give us episode ideas. You can send over a message of I want to hear your thoughts on this or you can email us teamsplayhockey.com. but that's going to do it for this episode. We'll see you on the next one. Skate hard. Have fun. Enjoy your day, everybody. We hope you enjoyed this edition of our kids play hockey. Make sure to like and subscribe right now if you found value wherever you're listening, whether it's a podcast network, a social media network, or our website, ourkidsplayhockey.com. also, make sure to check out our children's book when hockey stops@whenhockeystops.com. it's a book that helps children deal with adversity in the game and in life. We're very proud of it. But thanks so much for listening to this edition of our kids play hockey and we'll see you on the next episode.