Our Kids Play Goalie: What NHL Goalie Coaches See That Youth Goalies Miss with Steve Briere

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This episode is powered by NHL Sense Arena. Hello, hockey friends and families around the world, and welcome back to another edition of our Kids Play Goalie. As a reminder, if your kid's not a goalie, you should still be listening to this episode because you all need to hear about the goaltenders. I'm Leah Lias. I'm joined by Mike Vinelli, and today's guest has dedicated his life to helping goaltenders reach the highest levels of hockey. After a professional playing career in North America and Europe, he turned his passion for the position into a coaching career that has taken him to the very top of the game. He spent seven seasons as the goaltending coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, three seasons with the Seattle Kraken, and today serves as the goaltending coach for one of college hockey's premier programs, the Wisconsin Badgers. Beyond the bench, he's become one of the most respected voices in goalie development, working with NHL stars like Frederick Anderson and Jack Campbell, while mentoring the next generation of goalies through his camps Academy and Goalie School. Today we're going to ask a simple question. What do NHL goalie coaches see that youth goalies, parents, and coaches often miss? It may surprise you. We're going to welcome in here, Steve Barriere. Thanks for being here. Welcome to Our Kids Play Goalie.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's uh it's great to be here. So I appreciate your time and uh thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

We're gonna go right at it, Steve, because you've coached obviously every level of hockey, you know, youth to pro, currently, you know, college hockey, NHL experience. Um, I'm always looking for like that secret sauce. Like as a goalie coach, as a goalie evaluator, as somebody who looks for goalies every day, um, what when you see a goalie for the first time, what are the things um that you're looking for? Like, what is really at the end of the day, we don't have to do any more on the episode, actually. We can end it right here. Because what is what is what are the things when you look like oh, that kid, that kid's somebody I can make into a goaltender. You know, what are the qualities you're looking for?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

I wish there was just one. I mean, I think the very first thing is focus, you know, because usually you're looking at kids when they're younger, right? And you're saying, hey, does this kid have you know the potential to move in the right direction? So one is focus. You know, when you have these kids that that no, they don't have to focus the whole time, but focus is a big one, right? Pay being in the moment. You know, some kids are you know daydreaming and they're all over the place and stuff. So I think I always start off with focus. If I see that fire in their eyes and that focus to want to stop the puck, that's step number one. Uh, I think step number two then becomes the athleticism, right? Are they an athlete? Do they move like an athlete? Do they try like an athlete? Do they have that hunger to try to stop that puck, right? Um, once you get those things, then it becomes about passion and love and having fun. Um, when they're younger, you know, I would say actually, it's funny I say that when they're younger, but actually in the NHL I talk about this a lot. But fun is the number one thing, right? And and the reason I say that is that anybody in life doesn't matter if you're a goalie or every day, you know, you're building a company or you're whatever it is that you're doing, if you're enjoying it and you love it, you'll work harder at it. And then it doesn't become work, right? It becomes just you want to be good at it. And so once those kind of those pieces fall into place of like the focus and the passion and the drive and the athleticism and enjoying it and having fun with it, then you know, you you get into other things like you know the potential.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

You know, obviously size and agility and and and and physical makeup and things like that. And I think, you know, just to just to kind of follow up a little bit too, if like so what you're what I'm hearing from you, like it's like you know, we see the videos of the kids and there's music going in between shifts, and they're the little eight-year-olds dancing in the creed, yeah, doing fun and looking over and pointing up at like to me, like that's the joy piece of saying, holy crap, I'm gonna be in the net getting shots on me, successful or unsuccessful, there's gonna be I'm the center of attention here, right? I think that you know, so if you could find that kid that finds joy and is having fun and is and is and is not stressed out and is not you know overwhelmed by the experience, like that's a great base to look for, no?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

100%. And that's that's exactly what I'm trying to say. It's like uh it there's no that's why I started off with it's not just one thing, you know, it's it's like uh a mixture of you know, you gotta enjoy it, you gotta have fun, you gotta love it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yeah, um Steve, I'll tell you this too. I remember my son's a goaltender, and he's uh second year 12U. And it's interesting because I remember, you know, he found the position probably the start, the end of his first year of might, I think he really started to discover it. And then by the end of his might days, he was the goaltender. But what I remember distinctly, and there's some people out there that will say I was in denial about this, uh, and I said maybe to a point, but I just remember the smile on his face when he put the pads on. And it was an uncommon smile, right? It wasn't, I hadn't seen it before. And then, Mike, to your point, um, in squirt, not so much now, but in squirt with one of the whistles, be dancing, he'd be moving if his team would score. You, I mean, he was just having a blast. He still is. I just I think he's just a little bit older now and he's a little more in a focused place, but he loves it. He just completely loves it. And look, that's true of the other positions in hockey too. I wanted to ask you this, Steve. So uh it's very interesting timing. Last night I was working with a 13U AA team, okay? Yeah. And I always say that it's an interesting age because you're you really are in the middle and taking that first step into hitting and taking that first step into the next level of hockey. Some people call it serious hockey, and it's like, yeah, it's just the next level of hockey, okay? And what I was telling those kids last night was something you had just said about you gotta have fun, but you gotta know what fun means. Yeah, because I think sometimes young kids mistake fun as showing off to the friends and getting everybody to laugh and kind of giggling, and that can be fun, but I what I told these kids last night, you said, you know what's fun when you get older, guys, is competing. Like you make that aspect of the game fun, and you get to do it with your brothers or your sisters, that becomes fun. And I told this team, again, we're doing some pretty intense physical team building, that I said that one of the things that I want to see, and you mentioned this, is a hunger to compete and get better here. And I said, not everybody will have that. But I said, though, you know, and I'm looking around the room and I can see the kids looking back at me that have it, right? So I I want to kind of say what you said to everyone listening. That does become a separator of sorts. Now, again, youth hockey is all about life lessons and growing. It's this isn't like a I'm not trying to give parents out their FOMO or something like that. It is a separator as you start to get older, that the grind becomes the fun. Yes, and the hunger becomes part of that. And I do agree with you that that is a separator. And amongst the professional collegiate goalies you worked with, I'm guessing that's a common habit that you see with them, aside from skill. There's just a hunger there.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah, for sure. And and the separator becomes smaller and smaller, right? Right. So, I mean, I can tell you right now, there's guys in the NHL that love to be in the NHL because they love the glitz and the glamour of being in the NHL. Right. And there's guys that want to dominate the NHL. Right. Right now, they all have the work ethic and they all have it, but it's a varying degrees of it, right? So it's like when you're a kid, the difference between, you know, kid number 20 on the team and kid number one on the team is a giant difference, right? But in the NHL, it's the same dynamics, it's just that they're at the minuscule, uh, you know, who's that guy who's gonna, you know, eat correctly, who's gonna spend the money to get the nutritional advice and cook for you and and those little tiny separators. Um, but the exact same thing too about fun, you know, like the NHL, Isa, I just did a speech on this the other day about love and community, you know, and how much love and community is really massive, and people don't ever talk about it because when you talk about love and community, you know, oh man, I'm not talking about love. Like, what are we doing here? But everybody in the world needs love and community. So now love and community with having a good time by surrounding yourself with good people, people that are trying to help you to push you in the right direction. We all need it, right? And so, but at the NHL level, the guys are so well, one, they're guarded because everybody wants a piece of them, and then they're everything they do gets amplified to the nth degree on social media, on TV, and everything. So they become more and more recluse and and then having fun kind of disappears too, because you know, am I practicing hard enough? Am I gonna get a start, or am I gonna get the you know, on the power play, or how do I dig out of this, you know, hole, or how do I, and so there's so much constant pressure every day piling on top of them. Part of my job sometimes was to relieve all that pressure, yeah, and to have fun. Um, and so it's an interesting one.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

Yeah, it's funny, it's funny when you l when you watch like NHL and college clips, like the mic'd up videos and the practices and stuff, it always seems like the goalies are the ones having the most fun and then laughing and joking. Like it just, I mean, I don't know, you know, maybe maybe I gotta watch more of them, but it seems to me, and the listeners can you know throw in some clips of of like you know, uh goalies that have lost their minds during games, but like for the most part, like they're the ones in between the whistles, like you know, giving it to the refs and giving it to the players and talking to their teammates and being more active on the bench. I mean, it's a funny, it it's it's a it'd be an interesting uh thing to look at, you know, from the NHL perspective. But you see it every day, like you see these guys and how they conduct themselves and what they're doing to separate, and and even at the NHL level, right? You have the players that are like even at that level, you're like, they're all elite goalies, but yet there's another level of elite goalie. Like there's another level of a player that has like a mission to be the best player ever to play the game, and then there's the player that says, I love the paycheck, I love being on the bench, I just love being an NHL hockey player, I'm happy with it with my lot in life. Can you just what are some things that you think you that translate at the youth level that you can see as far as how a goalie trains and conducts themselves on a day-to-day basis? You know, knowing that most youth goalies don't have their own nutritionist like Lee's son and have their own mental performance coach like Lee's son and have their own, you know, have their own sense of the podcast to listen to, show like you know, access to NHL coaches and and and and and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Mike, you're giving away why we made the podcast now. It was all of this television to me.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

I say it all the time. I'm like, this is I I said, where else can I speak to all these great people?

SPEAKER_01 11:30

I know.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Um they're not gonna listen to me on the street. So I think it's like so what are some of the little things like real translatable things that you see in an NHL elite goalie that could translate down to a 12-year-old?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Well, I I mean, geez, that's a really loaded question. Just stop the puck.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

I don't think I don't think stop the puck. No, I'm just I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

The most annoying thing that I would go through is um, you know, you just said stop the puck, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Yeah, I'm I'm being sarcastic, just so you know too.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

But what I'm saying to you is this I think I heard that every day when I was right, and I'm like, well, do you think I'm not trying to stop the puck? Like, that's what I'm trying to do, right? As uh things have gone on, and as goalie coaching has gotten so much better, and there's so many great goalie coaches out there, and there's so much technical work and studying about the position, we've actually gone back to forgot to stop the puck. Right, you know, we're so worried about this being technically perfect, and you know, all this is the way I like to do things, and this is the way I like move better, and all that's and I'm like, well, you can look as good as you want, and you can feel as comfortable as you want, but if the puck goes in the net, you've you've lost. Like at the end of the day, the joy and the compete and the battle, all of it equals trying to keep the puck out of the net. And I can't tell you how many times I meet kids uh now, even all the way up to college and NHL, that are like, well, I don't really like to do it that way. And I'm like, Well, look, I don't make things up. One of the ways that I go into coaching, every year, every summer, every off season, I pretend I know nothing about goaltending. And I do that on purpose to try to strip away any of my preconceived notions of the way things need to be done and relearn the position again. And I do that religiously every year, as soon as the season ends, I strip it all back and I start from scratch again. That's brilliant. And then I go through, and if I'm gonna meet with you know your son and and I'm gonna work with your son, I'm not gonna give him what I think needs to be done. I'm gonna give him what he needs, what he's telling me he needs to be done. Now, I'm not saying verbally, a lot of times what I'll do is I'll look at a thousand saves and I'll be like, okay, well, here's the reality is you know, you let in 50% of the goals you let in are on pass outs from behind the net. Well, well, yeah, but I like to do it this way on pass outs. Yeah, and I'm like, yeah, well, you could do it that way, but you let in the most goals on pass outs. It's not working, it's not working, you know. So now when I do it that way, then I get the them to they're like, oh yeah, maybe I need to change.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yeah, it's like in it's a little bit of inception. See, let me run this by you, all right? And honestly, I'm saying this not like every day I get to have someone like you on the show to ask questions. And I'm gonna approach this as like, look, I am a dad of a goaltender, I'm also a hockey coach. I was never a goaltender, I am not a full goaltending coach. I've gone to some classes, I would not put myself as as a coach in that realm. Okay, so I'm somewhat learning the position with him. Okay. Um, here's a scenario that happened. I'd like to get your opinion uh on on well, I'm I'm gonna say how I handled this, but I I just in general, because I think a lot of people have this situation, all right? They were in a game last week. Um, lopsided score, we lost. Okay, pretty, pretty lopsided, okay? Yeah um I I I gotta make sure I say this. I'm not counting shots, the shots were on the scoreboard. Um, the effort was there, the the the the want to make the saves was there from a statistical standpoint. Played a pretty okay game in spite of the score. So we're in the car on the way home. And I and I always say the car head's not for coaching, but he brought it, he started talking to me. I always say the rule is if you want to talk about it, you talk, I'm not gonna engage. So he starts talking about the game, saying, Hey, I think I played pretty well today. What did you think? And I said, Yeah, I think you played okay. Um, and then he said, But do you think I played great? I said, I said, Logan, uh, I'm never gonna tell you you played great if the score looks like that. I said, but that has nothing to do with your efforts. And I said, he says, Well, Dad, I was like, no, Logan, I said, the hunger to make these saves, I'm not saying you're always gonna win, I'm not saying you're always gonna make them, but there's gotta be an uncommon drive towards that side of the game. And I said, I'm proud of you, your character showed through, you had a good effort, like you did what you had to do. But I if you want me to call that score great, I'd be lying to you. And he got it, he understood what I was saying. That was the approach I took. I I don't, and you could take this broader. Like, I don't like when parents, when a kid passes the puck in front of our net and they go, great pass. It's like it wasn't a great pass. We don't have to do that. I'm being honest with him. I love your thoughts on parents, how they approach things, not just goaltenders, but situations like this. Right? And I'm gonna say it. He didn't leave that conversation like like upset. He understood what I was saying, and I felt like there was some drive there of like, all right, yeah, maybe I do need to do more next time. I said, You can do what you can do. There's also five players on the ice in front of you that you gotta deal with. What are your thoughts on situations like that?

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Well, if you're giving me PTSD right now, um, you know, I have a 20-year-old son who uh plays division one college hockey, and he was not a goaltender. So we've gone through a lot of these, you know, and I never purposely I never ever coached my son. Um coached for or against him. I would work with him in the summertimes, but what it allowed me to do is to have a more honest conversation with him as a father as opposed to a coach.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

So I should say I'm not his coach, my son. I've this was yeah, I was watching the, I just want to make sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

I'm just telling you the way that that the way I looked at it, right? Yeah, and was I could have a more honest conversation. I only had one rule in life in in hockey was that everything about hockey was relatable to life. And so as a father, I you know, whether he made it in hockey or didn't make it in hockey didn't matter to me. It's did I make a good young man? You know, and so if he had a game and you know, I I I he wasn't a goaltender, but let's just say that you know, he scored a hat trick and but he let in four goals against on his back check on his guy, right? Like it was his guy. I would be honest with him and tell him, Look, I don't really care about the score, I don't really care about that, but the work ethic, you know, you no matter what you do in hockey, you're gonna be a man a lot longer than you are a hockey player, right? And if you don't have work ethic, you're gonna have a hard time in life, right? That example on your back checks there, that is work ethic, and everybody can work hard when it's good, you know. When you scored the three goals, you know, that was work, but that's the easy part. Working when it's hard, not a lot of people can do, and that's a separate between people that are successful in life and hockey and everything. So I I tried to approach everything like that about when I would talk to him about things, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's the same as right now in college, you know, like every level was another battle, right? It was when he was in youth hockey, um, for the most part, he was probably the best player, most teams he was on. And and I did some really controversial stuff, I'll tell you after if you guys want to hear. But um, don't tease the audience like that. When he gets to junior hockey, then it's it was a new battle, right? And then he gets to college hockey, and it's a new battle. So every time there's a constant learning experience along the way, um, and new obstacles he's got to face.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

But I was like just to close this story out, I appreciate you sharing that. Uh, and Mike, I'll throw it to you. Is what I what I told him in the car too, and there's like a nice bow on it, was I was most proud of his character because after the game, in spite of the score, after the handshake, he went to the other team's coaches and said, I really appreciate you being my opponent today. Then he was last out of the locker room because he was cleaning up the locker room. And I said, That's that's the stuff that I'm proud of. I said, I don't, I mean, I want you to win every game, buddy, but I said the score to me is irrelevant to the type of person that you're becoming, right? And I agree with you, Steve, that these car conversations that they don't always have to be about hockey. They can be about life, are invaluable. I I had countless drives with my father when I was playing hockey, where we would just discuss life. And I mean I learned a lot in these car rides, right? Uh, but uh never was the conversation just about, well, you didn't back check and uh that tactically this is why the game went the way it was. It was about life. So I love that you brought that up. Mike, I cut you off. Go ahead, jump in.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

No, no, you didn't cut me off. I just, you know, just on uh so you know what I'm hearing right too is like so all and all aspects of the player's career, right? There's that pyramid and and the and the players, um, and and getting it back to like goaltending, right? Like so that we all know that that you could be the best goaltender as a 12-year-old and the best goaltender as a four-year-old, and maybe you struggle in juniors, but then you get better. But coaches are watching this development, they're what and and they're watching, like I talked to, I do a lot of work with uh like the brick kids, the kids that play like brick hockey, you know, at nine, ten years old. And I'm like, well, not for nothing, but many of you, more than 50% of you, will probably see each other all the time as your career moves up. It's just this is this is facts, right? There's a large majority of those kids that all go to the blue chip invitationals and all go to the CCM invites and all go like they're they're the same kid ultimately, and they all meet each other and they're all great and they're all good. So, can you talk a little bit about like in that process? That's why the separators become so much more important that aren't the technical pieces of being a goaltender. Like, that's where you're talking about the separator of does the player conduct themselves the right way? Does the player have a great work ethic? Is the player out there pick I I watched the practice last night. Of a bunch of junior players. And this is what I talk, you know, when I talk about, you know, how I look for players and what separates them. The only kid that stayed on the ice to help the Zam guy get the pucks up and move the nets was one goaltender. 40 kids on the ice, 40 young men on the ice that jumped the minute the doors opened up, they blew out.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

You couldn't push me off the ice. I wanted to be out there forever.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

But again, one kid that said, Oh my God, like this guy's, like this guy's out here a lot. Like I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go corral the pucks, I'm gonna move the nets over, I'm gonna shake his hand and thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Like to me, when somebody, and we talk about it all the time, right? See, when nobody's watching, what is your character? Who are you? And I think, I mean, as a goaltending coach, can you talk a little bit about how much goes into the recruitment process and the identification process of kids you want to stick around at the college and pro level, not based on their say percentage?

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Well, I'm gonna take it back for a split second. I'm gonna talk about the car ride for one second, and and I'll bring it back to your question and use it. My dad, when I was growing up, knew nothing about hockey. My dad was an electrician for trains, CP rail, and uh knew zero, never played a game of hockey, never not once, nothing. And I was playing triple A at the time. This is like ingrained in my head 40 years later, right? And uh I'm the number one goalie in the league, and by far and ahead of everybody, and uh we have a game one night, and I get spanked, and I play terrible, like I'm awful. And I'm driving home with my dad, and I said, Well, at least I'm still number one in the league for for goalies. And he like slammed the car, pulled over to the side, just screeched the brakes, and again, knows nothing about hockey. The conversation was nothing about hockey, but it was he gave it to me hard, like really hard. And he was like, That is the worst attitude I've ever heard in my life. He's like, You if you're gonna be in this, you have to strive to be the best every single day. No days off, you have to be the best. You have to strive to be the best. Now, the reason I bring that back, bring that story to you is when we're talking about dads in car rides and the lessons you learned, right? Again, my dad knew nothing about hockey, but he understood that if you were going to be in sports, the harsh reality of it is you have to want to be the best. No matter what, you want to be the best. That you know, we can say little like sugarcoat it and say, hey, we want them to have fun and you know, kumbaya and everything. Yeah, that's one level of hockey. If you want to make it to the upper echelons of hockey, you have to have this burning desire to be the best, right now, how you grow that desire to want to be the best, the more fun they have, the harder they work, the more they want to. Some, it's about a taste of success. When you're a kid, for me personally, I can remember playing double A hockey, you win a trophy. The coolest trophy in the world, right? This thing was massive. It was the first time I ever got a trophy that was massive, you know, instead of the little year-end trophy. I thought this thing was the coolest thing ever. You taste that success. You're like, well, maybe I could be the best at AAA. Then you make it to the best at AAA. Then it all becomes about getting drafted or or signed in the the major junior, right? In Canada. That's all you dreamed about. So then the next year that happens, and it's a little bit of success, a little bit more that hey, maybe I can do this. Then, you know, there's a lot of twists and turns in there that happen, right? Injuries, trades, uh get cut, all the above happen. Then you get a full scholarship to college. Holy smokes, you know, a little bit more success. Then you go to college, and well, maybe you know, this is where my you know, I'll just get a job after. And then all of a sudden, you win all American or all conference, and you a little bit more success. You're like, oh, maybe you know what that last guy who did this, he played in the pros. And then you go to the pros. And and so, like that desire for me personally, that was what drove me, right? Right, is I that little taste of success, and like, oh, I can do this, and and then it becomes all out, you'll do whatever it takes, right? Like running the hills in my goalie equipment in the middle of the summer, sideways doing uh side leaps up the mountain, up a mountain hill. There's no mountains in Winnipeg, so up the hill. People thought I was crazy, guaranteed. I'm sweating, I got chest protector on everything. But I knew that I was small and I had to be super fast side to side and be able to get across the ice. And so I had to have really strong legs and calves and toes, which people don't really ever think about when they think about goaltending, but you know, you're pushing off with your toes all the time, right? And so I would do that. Now, nobody told me to do that. Nobody, you know, I thought of it myself. I was like, well, wait, I gotta get strong side to side, I gotta be able to push hard. Well, I'm gonna push up a hill. Well, you gotta feel like your equipment is part of your body. So I would wear my equipment everywhere. I'd wear I'd wear my equipment watching rock'em sockam hockey in the basement on the VHS with my goalie equipment on, so that my equipment felt like I wasn't even wearing equipment. It was just part of it, and then it made me that much better on the ice, right? Like it all of those things were driven by a passion to want to be the best. So they have to have that drive. As we get older, again, we're talking as you get older and as you progress up the ranks, there has to be a time where your desire to be the best takes over, that you're willing to do whatever it is. Whether it's fun, whether it's not fun, you're willing to do it because the trying to be the best. Does that make sense to you guys?

SPEAKER_02 28:12

Yeah, I mean, I would have loved to be that scout driving through Winnipeg and watching this kid, you know, doing lateral, lateral uh, you know, hills and saying, okay, there's a kid with some work ethic. I mean, it's probably a good segue to talk about, you know, the things that players can do uh on their own. Like you didn't have like nobody's coaching you, you're not your your private coaching instructor, and like that desire to do to get better was just there for you, right? The tools were there. You had equipment, you had a hill, you had the basement, you had you know your own brain, right, to say these are the kind of things I'm gonna do to get better. Um, can we just talk a little bit about like so in today's modern game, right? Uh that that and and and uh Lee could give all the all the ad stuff later, but you know, so we use like all this different technology. One of the people that we uh associate with is Sensorina, and I think that's like when you're speaking about this, I'm thinking about the kid that doesn't have to get all his equipment on, doesn't have to drive to the ring, doesn't have to see the private instructor. But what you're doing really is getting reps in, right? You're getting mental, you're feeling it, you're in it, you're like you're basically you're in that, like just like me as a shooter, when I'm shooting uh as a kid in on a on a on a patch of grass, I might as well be in a ring. Like in my brain, I'm in the ring. And I think and then sensorina now is enable us to do that. Because if you talk a little bit about maybe not sensorina per se, but just the ability to use technology and use all the different things that we have around us, doesn't have to be, hey, drive down the rink and get on the ice for two hours.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Yeah, and I mean, listen, I'm a huge I do a presentation about this. You guys can listen to uh I did it at the World Championships in Sweden last year. Um I I would say on the number one list of things that I try to do all the time is innovate, right? And you know, some of the things that we've invented are things like the screen dummies that you see all around the NHL, right? A friend of mine in Sandwich, Massachusetts builds them for me. And uh we came up with that idea like 20 years ago. Now most of the teams in the NHL use them. Um sense arena to me is just another innovation of you know, how can we re-it started with reflexes, right? Right. Just getting the reps in reflexes and movement, and then the technology's gotten so much better that it's more realistic. I remember the very first one came out and I did it, and like the puck gets shot, and you're like, I caught that thing, like it was in my glove, and it would still show that it went in, and you're like, What? And you know, but I think like over time they've gotten so much better, and it's so much more accurate, and the background is so much more uh realistic, and and so like anything, I think innovation is great. I uh tons of vision exercises, uh, vision training programs, sports vision training programs, all of those things I think are amazing. And and I I think about what's next, right? Like I've got an idea for uh if you could measure exactly how much net you're giving up in every single position of the ice and every save selection, you would get away from saying, Well, I think we should do this, or I think I should do that, and parents are wondering, well, should they be doing this or should we this goalie coach said this, this goalie coach. Try to use statistics and technology to take away that and say, Well, look, for your size and your body and your way of playing, this save is probably your best option because you're giving up the less, the least net. This is you know, um, so I'm thinking on that side of things like right now, right? But the one thing that I think my training, I don't necessarily think that it's the way to go. Like when I was doing the hills up, you know, with my goalie quibid on. I I I still believe in it, and and but I'm not saying it's for everybody. The point that everybody needs to understand is it needs to come from the goalie to think of these things, right? So I give this example to kids all the time. You go to math class, you sit there, and the teacher does all these math equations on the boards, they do the you know, quadratic equation and all this kind of stuff, and you sit there and watch the teacher, you leave class and you go, I have no idea what she just said or he just said, right? You go home and you sit down and you actually try to work it out, and next thing you know, you're like, Oh, I got it. Because you had to think about it, you had to figure it out, you know. And and that goes for anything and everything. You know, I just built a box yesterday to hold a TV, for example, okay. And this is for goalie training. My thinking is that I used to do it with mirrors on the ice where the goalies would go down, they could see themselves in the mirror, and then you break a few of those and they're clumsy and hard to get around and everything. So I put a 55-inch TV behind the plexiglass, and then I have a cord to a camera, and the goalies can see themselves on the TV massive, right beside them, and we can go over video, and then we can also take clips from a game. So let's just say that, you know, Lee, your son wants to one day play for the Philadelphia Flyers, and all right, and so what if we took a Philadelphia Flyers game? We put it on there, we break out all the saves, and then we say, okay, well, what are all the pieces that go into the save? Or he did a T-push, he did a shuffle, he he he stick on puck, his hands are out in front of him, he made the save, deflected the rebound into the corner, recovered back to his post. I know that was a mouthful, sorry guys, but um that now we could say to the goal is okay, well, so you got to be able to T push, you gotta be able to shuffle, you gotta be able to have good stick control and rebound control, you got to push back to your post, always back to your post. Okay, now we set up a practice plan according to where you want to get to, right? And so that's the another, you know, technology and idea that I just came up with. But at the end of the day, it has to come from the goalies. So the the drive and the idea sometimes needs to come from the kid thinking, how can I get better? Not a coach telling them you need to go shoot pucks.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

And I think that that but that that also attaches to if the parent can and has the means, right, to get that private coach, you need to recognize that the kid is driving that conversation and what that want. Like it can't be like the kid goes there and just standing there like, oh, yeah, yeah, like I'm burnt out. Like you see the kids, right, that are dead eyes, that are just there because dad makes them go. They have to go there. And I personally think, and I've well, I know for a fact, I've talked to professional goalie coaches, especially in the Northeast, that are like, I don't even want to accept that kid. The money's great, but I don't have I don't want to accept that kid. That kid's gonna fail because he doesn't want to be here. Like, I need players that want to be here. I love Lee says it all the time. Like, I love coaching kids that want to be coached. And I think that is where a goalie coach will say, listen, yes, it's about the money because we have to make a living, but I'll coach this kid no matter what. Like, I'll be involved with this kid's development no matter what, because he's asking and asking and asking and wanting and wanting. And I think that's what inspires all of us uh in the in the instructional side of the world, yeah getting in there and working with kids. Like you're you're talking about like if I can give a kid an opportunity that is doing hills and his equipment on his own because he doesn't have the means, I'll find him the means.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

Yeah. Well, I I want to say it too. Look, I love this phrase we use all the time for parents. You can cultivate it, you cannot create it. All right, this drive comes from the kid. All right, it and it doesn't matter how much drive you have, parents. Like, hey, look, I know plenty of people have their drive, you can cultivate it through the conversations that you have with your kids, like the ones we talked about earlier, to inspire them. You no matter what you do, parents, you will not be able to create that drive. You cultivate it, and there's a huge difference between those two. I think the other thing, too, and Mike, you you know, you're bringing it up. Uh, this is not just limited to hockey, these this drive. It's it's a life thing. Another conversation I had with these 13-year-olds last night, and you gotta remember, when you're 10 to 13, life's life's you gotta put yourself in in their shoes for a minute, kind of meet them where they're at. There's a lot going on at that age. A lot. And one of the things I return to with these kids is I'll ask them, like, how many of you really want to play at a higher level? Like beyond this, right? And most of them will raise their hands. And I say, then the drive has to be there all the time. You I say it just like this: you gotta take the garbage out well, clean your room well, eat well, sleep well, everything you do, school, obviously, right? You gotta bring your hockey mentality, I use it just because they can relate to that, to that. And the more you practice it and everything, the more you're gonna have it in front of you. I I also want to say this, Steve. I love the talk of innovation, all right? And I'll tell you why. I remember being a kid, and and Mike teed this up a minute ago, but I'm gonna I'm gonna tell it as a story today. Um, I started hockey late, I was 12. All right. My gift in hockey was I could skate. I I was a terrific skater very quickly. But man, I could not shoot. I I could pass, couldn't shoot. So I needed to find a way to take shots. Okay, and at that time, this is the 90s, there's no training aids at that time. It's not, you know, roller hockey is your training aid, which was great. But like you said, you walked around on your pads. I wanted to use my game stick and I wanted to shoot with real puck. So my dad and I went to a store, uh, like a hardware store, got a piece of sheet metal, got some WD40, lubed it up, and that was simulating ice, right? And I remember being made fun of for this. Like, what are you trying to change the game? Right now, the the the story here is this. We I was 13, 14 when we did this. Today, happen to own a company that's globally known for creating training aids for shooting and passing outside, all right? And like I said, for the audience listening, you already know. Go to our kidsplayhockey.com forward slash deals. You can see Sensorina, you can see Wraparound, you can see Twig and Biscuits. Steve's a fan of that too. All right. Uh that's the mid-roll for today, all right? I'm more telling the story here. But that innovation, I remember people saying that. And I remember another one, Steve. This uh this one pissed me off. I was a college coach. First job in hockey, college coach, right? And uh uh I go down to the in Naples, Florida, and we're going to the coaches meeting, and I'll never forget this. Uh and I I still don't understand this. The the guy got up to the front of the room running the thing, Mike, you'll appreciate this. And we're talking about drill creation, all right? I'm creating, I love creating drills, I love it. And this guy goes, I know none of us create drills, like like nobody needs to create drills, all the drills are made for it. And I'm sitting there like looking around the room, like, what do you mean nobody creates drills? And it was just like I was demoralized with that at the time because of my age. I didn't realize it was like, no, it's I'm innovating the way we look at things in drills, right? Yeah, so I encourage, I just want to say that because I encourage kids to do that, find new ways of doing things. My son comes up with so many ways to train. I'm not gonna lie to you, not all of them are great, but I encourage him to do it. Like, well, give it a try. You never know what's gonna happen. So I think that's also a bit of a separator. It doesn't mean you have to ignore the decades and centuries of research in any given field. Okay, like you behoove yourself to look at that. But innovation, I am all for that, man. I love that you brought that up. And again, you run up a hill that is innovative. And I, you know what, Mike, you said it, you both coaches driving by seeing it. There might be kids driving by going, What an idiot, he's wearing his gear all the time. Well, look where you're sitting and look where they are. Not that we need to compare. But sorry, I got excited there.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

I I mean, I think in what that guy's saying, probably is that the game's been around for 150 years. Right. Pretty much every idea has been, you know, hammered out. The and every drill's been drawn out, it's just a matter of finding it, right? Sure. But and he probably just worded it wrong. But that that because I've heard that a million times as well. And in the NHL, it's the same, you know. I've coached with a lot of really great coaches and brilliant minds in hockey, and you know, the reality is everybody's drills were pretty much the same. They just switch a few things, so they they and they would say the same thing. They would always say, Well, listen, every give me a drill, you know, and then what their art is, is you could take any drill, all three of us could take the exact same drill and turn it into three different messages, right? And so that's the innovation is the innovation is is the way you communicate that what you're trying to get done, that's the innovation part of it. The actual drill itself, really, you could take any drill and you could correct you could change it to accomplish the goal that you want to do, right? I think that's probably the moral of that story.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

The way he said it was I know none of you are at home just making drills. Like, yeah, it's like okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:31

Yeah, well, it's like it's like it's like I said the coach, you know, it's just like it's like the story of like the the mechanic, right? There's millions of mechanics that know how to fix the plane, but the one mechanic that knows how to turn the right bolt to get you flying is the only one you need. And I think that's where NHL coaches, youth coaches, college coaches, we all have the same playbook, but it's the ones that can know the personnel and the people and the and the and what you're looking at in front of you, and then differentiate it and to Steve's point, using then that drill or using that technique or using that philosophy with the right people at the right time in the right circumstances, and what's set is what sets people apart. Any monkey can take drills and I could be a I could throw a shingle up and be a goalie coach. I could take all of Steve's drills and I can say, I'm gonna, but my my athletes might not look like that.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Lots of people do that, by the way, which is really uh a tough part of the business too, sometimes. But you know, I I think all of those, you know, innovating. I mean, I I even with what I'm doing right now, creating this goalie academy. I mean, it's it's it's innovation, right? Nobody's ever done it like this before. Um, there's there's academies out there, um, there's you know, there's there's goalie training, there's but the way that I'm doing it, you know, you have it's an innovation. I just basically took every dream that I ever had as a goalie. Like, man, I I when I was a kid, you know, protein and all that kind of stuff was just coming onto the market, right? Like all the you know, uh creatine and protein and all the supplements and everything was just getting started. You used to have to go to a vitamin store and buy all the different components of it, mix it up yourself, right? Now you just go and buy a bag and boom, you're done. But I was like, man, it'd be super cool if the kids could wake up in the morning and then they had the whole protein set up, just like the NHL, you know, you just go over, grab whatever you got. So we created that, right? Then what if one of the things I I you know would say that I I get sad about sometimes with hockey is that when people are in places where they don't have a lot of hockey and they don't have the right resources, they have to leave to go find it. Right. Which is a sad fact sometimes of hockey because the reality is, is we all know nine. 99% of people are not going to make it to those upper echelon levels. But people are willing to try to get to those upper echelon levels. And the sacrifice that is taken to do that sometimes means losing family, losing friends, and not getting those social circles. So I wanted to solve that problem. Because I think the kids don't realize it when they're young because they're chasing their dream. And then one day, like Mike, you just said, when your son goes to college and he's done playing hockey, all of a sudden he realizes, oh man, I don't I don't have any friends. Because I had to leave home to go play in wherever. And all my local friends moved on. And now, holy smokes, I got like one friend, you know, or whatever. And so that to me was a really sad thing. So I was trying to fix that. And then it was how cool would it be if you had like a whole hockey dressing room like you have in the background there in your house? So I built a whole dressing room in the garage with ceiling fans from Paul and signs on the walls, and and then painted everything, and each kid has their nameplate on it. And I'm like, make the kids feel welcome and home. And um, so I tried to think of all the things of being a goaltender. Okay, post protectors and pegs, and making sure that we had all of that covered, and then every resource known to man. Um, and so that that's what we're building, that's what we've built. Now, some of that is innovation, right? It's thinking in outside the box, right? Of how can we make these kids, and if we can make them enjoy it so much and love it so much, then we'll get the work ethic out of it, right? And then from then you know, they build from there. But um I think I think that as I as we talk about this, I I think that the it's a process, right? The first process as they're young kids has to be about having fun. Correct. I agree. That's that's number one, right? You know, we we all know the statistics of like how many kids drop out of hockey every year. So the first part is in order to keep them in hockey, they gotta have fun.

SPEAKER_03 46:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Okay, we got that. Now you get into more serious hockey, it's about having fun, but then learning a little bit of discipline about you know, training, right? Then as you get older, it needs to come to thinking. You know, you gotta be able to critically analyze your game and analyze yourself honestly and and find how you're gonna get better, and then it's work ethic, right? What's gonna separate yourself? So, an experiment I do with all the goalies that I I talk to and parents that ask me, you know, hey, my son wants to play division one college hockey. Okay, well, let's look at division one college hockey. Where do all the players come from? Okay, they this let's take every player and let's just mark down the leagues, let's mark down the teams they played for. Okay, so if you're not playing triple A hockey or you're not playing USHL or you're not playing in the Canadian uh major junior, you're already a step behind. Like that, that was their facts, right? It's not uh I'm not making things up, and I'm not, I'm just hey, let's just look at it. Let's look at every college team, let's look at, and I just go through it like that, and I break it all the way down to the very basic nuts and bolts of like how much you gotta skate, how much you gotta move, how much you gotta can you do those things? And then they set their expectations from there, instead of coming in with saying, Hey, my expectation is I want to play Division I college hockey one day. Okay, great. That's a great goal to want to shoot for, right? Now, do you have the tools necessary to accomplish that? Are you on the right path to then get there? Right? And so then they usually end up telling themselves whether it's what they really want or not. Does that make sense to you guys? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

No, I mean this is I mean, this is I I think that that that's a harsh reality, right, for a lot of youth hockey parents and goalies, is to is to is to not is to understand what the path is and and really educate yourself as to, you know, we've had many episodes where I think people go in blind sometimes and they don't do the research and they think, oh, I'm just gonna, like we hear it all the time, like, oh, I'm just gonna, you know, my fallback, I'm just gonna play division three college hockey or something like that. Like, well, I said, I said, it's a little tougher than that. Let's make, let's be the best goalie on your squirt team first. And I think, you know, then we can go from there. Um, you know, one of the things I'd be really interested in, because you know, it is a goalie episode, but I think we I think we all would be in agreement, um, and and the reason we started this segment of the show is um is that goaltenders are such a crucial part of my full team's development and their success. And if you talk about like the modern goalie today, on how like what how they react and their demeanor and their involvement in the team really can help the whole team. Like when you're developing your goalie and you're developing your goalie's ability to uh have great conflict resolution and good communication skills and good body language, you just talk about how, especially at the highest levels, how that helps the whole team and makes every coach's job easier.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

Yeah, I mean, I I talk about this all the time. This is probably one of the major areas. I just spoke in Pittsburgh at the NHL meetings, um, coaches um association meetings, and um, they had me talk to 200 coaches, not goalie coaches, head coaches, and so coaches from all around the world. And I did an experiment and I'll share it, and I shared it with everybody at the at the conference. But I went around every coach and I asked them, what's the first thing you say to your goalie? Without a single split second question, they all answered, I know nothing about goaltending. Okay, so the first thing you did to the very first thing you did is tell your goalie, I don't care about you, you're on your own. See you later. All right, so with that's the very first thing they say to a goalie. So now you're saying to me, Mike, hey, I want the goalie to lead the team and be part of the team, and good body language, and how can he be part of it? Well, the first thing I would say is, coaches, you need to include the goalie. The first thing you told the goalie and the goalie parents is, I know nothing about goaltending, you're on your own, you're gonna you're over here. The second thing they do is, okay, you're gonna go 15 minutes with the goalie coach over here by yourself while the rest of the team is gonna go practice. So again, you're separating the goalie and making them alone. So instead of putting the emphasis on the goalies, that how can they become more part of the team? My first thing is is we got to fix the coaches in making the goalies part of the team because everything you've done is told the goalie you're on your own. And then every other person is telling the goalie you're weird, you're different, and you want puck shot at you. And so everything around goaltending is built for hey, you're on your own. And now we go, then we as a coach, we get mad and we're like, Well, I need the goalie to be part of the team, and I want him to be part of the group, and I want him to be a leader, and I want him to, and they're like, Yeah, but everything you just did is to spell the goalie in a corner by himself, yeah. So that I think the first layer of that is is we need coaches to write from day one. I said, How can you fix that? And it gave everybody the same solution. You could say, I am so excited to have you as our goalie. I'm gonna do everything possible to make you part of the team.

SPEAKER_01 52:01

I I gotta say it, Steve. I gotta say this too. You know, look, this is one of the reasons we made this version of the show, is to educate people about the position and exactly what you're saying. You know, one of the aspects, too, uh, that we should totally say, we said this before, is how many coaches create a practice plan and forget the goalie exists while they're creating this practice plan. And it's like, or or um not as bad, but you'll get done your practice plan, you go, oh, the goalies. Let me make sure the goalies are getting some work in this. It's the most important position on your team. I mean, you you need to be thinking about them as you're making this practice plan. And then I love what you said too about incorporating them, right? Um, I think it's important that drills look like the game, emulate the game for goaltenders. I mean, uh, you know, we had a guest on one time that spoke about how the drills that their coach was doing looked nothing like the game. And it's like it's not a value to them to do that. And then, like you said, just incorporating them within the team environment, um, it is not good enough. I'm gonna agree with you to say I just don't know. I'm gonna say it again. I I my son's a goalie, I'm a head coach. I learn as much about this position as I possibly can, okay, without having played it. And I'm I'm excited about that, Steve. Like, I'm excited to learn more about hockey. And I think that the kids I coach, especially the kids, feel that. Like, oh, coach is excited about me in the net. And then when I work with my my elite goaltenders at the national team level, I ask them questions and they appreciate it. I always, here's one more for you, I'll stop. Especially at that level, I review my practices with my goaltenders before I share them with the skaters. Just to make sure. Like, are do you feel like these are gonna give you the work you need? Is there more you require? And someone goes, Well, you're giving the special treatment. I'm like, Well, no one ever has. Imagine that.

unknown 53:50

Right?

SPEAKER_00 53:52

Yeah, I mean, I'll give you both sides of that. I mean, listen, I've been in a lot of NHL dressing rooms where you know the coaches go through practice, and I would say that I've been very fortunate that most coaches that I work with have been like, hey, Stevie, what do you think? Practice. Uh hey, how can we, you know, incorporate the goalies a little bit here? They've been amazing at that, and and the NHL is really good at that. Now, you get some days where the coach is like, I don't care about the goalies, and that's okay too. Yeah, you know, there's a there's a it's a give and take too, right? Like people that say things that like, oh, nothing's curtailed to the goalie. Well, I can say from being a coach that part of your job as a goalie is to find the good out of that guy's drill. Great point. So if if the drill, for example, I'm just making stuff up. Let's just say that it's uh wakey wakey, you know, four blue lines, the guys are coming in and shooting. And it now they're they're doing the second part is instead of one guy coming down the flank and shooting, he's coming down the flank, passing it across and shooting. Okay, and the goalie's like, well, it's a two-on-o every time. And and I'm like, Well, why don't you just think about only the pass across? Right. Your job is just you're just working on getting across as fast as you can. Yeah, so now you've turned that coach's drill that was not designed for the goalies, he's trying to get the players to score goals, they got to feel good about scoring. Right, right. So they're and then the goalies complain, oh, it's a two-on-o all the time. And I'm like, Yeah, but you're thinking of it of like you're trying to stop the puck. And so you're like, well, this isn't fair. Like, when do I get a two-on-o in a game like this all the time? And you're like, but if you change your mindset of you're just simply trying to get across the net as fast as you can, you now it's a goalie drill, and it's not a it's not a player drill.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

I have I have I I have these debates with like junior goalies all the time where I try, I build a lot of drills where, and I give them plenty of time, there's plenty of direction, there's plenty of uh you know uh supporting information around the drill, but I want my players to shoot, drive to the net, look for rebounds, and then I got goalies all pissed off, like, oh my god, they're always in front of me, they're always driving to the net, they're always trying to get the rebounding, oh yeah, well let's this is you know, if I give you enough time, enough space, enough opportunity to recover, enough opportunity to make a save. Like in my practices, my rules for my goalie is if you save a puck, like I don't ask you to move it. Like it's never move, move, move it, move it. I'll add a new puck to the drill, or I'll add, you know, I just I want you to finish the play. So I think as a coach, you know, it's our obligation too to say, well, if we want goaltenders to know how to track, we want goalies to know how to compete to the end, we want goalies to make sure that they're not just moving pucks, then we gotta we gotta build that into the reps that we give them, right? We can't just say, hey, we're just gonna shoot the puck and skate to the corner if my goalie never has somebody driving at them. But that's my obligation as a head coach, you know, to build the drills around the need of the goaltender, too.

SPEAKER_00 56:55

Well, I think all of those things are great. I just had this conversation, I'm not gonna name any names, but with an NHL goalie coach, just called me this morning before I got on here and he's asking me uh a situation. And here's here's another thing for your listeners to listen to and to think about in your coaches. Have anybody ever recorded, like you said, Lee, you record your practice and you look back over it. Have you ever counted how many times a player has to skate in a practice and shoot a puck? And counted how many times he skates hard and how many times he shoots a puck. Now do the exact same practice and count how many times the goalie had to work his butt off. It's like an exponential difference. So when the coaches are like, oh, just go stand in the net, and you're like, Yeah, but you have 20 guys on the ice, they're all shooting on this one goalie. That's 20 reps in a row. The player shot, the first player shot, stood in the corner for 30 seconds while the rest of the guys shot, and then he does it once. So that guy's in a drill, that guy's gone twice. The goalie's gone 40 times. Right.

SPEAKER_02 58:04

And we're like, oh, the goalie never works, he doesn't follow I literally I'm having flashbacks of the argument I had with my son's uh baseball coach. He was a catcher growing up, and they were all concerned about pitch counts. I'm like, he plays the whole game, he's pitching the ball every time. Like he's pitching the ball, his pitch count is 150. Like, I mean, like, so so the idea like you have to be aware of what the rep is and what the workload is, and then build in, you know, again, God forbid you're a team that has one goalie, right? I mean, in a in a youth hockey practice. I mean, and then you're like treating it like it's two goals. Yeah, you know, my there are reps and there are timing and there are things we have to build in to understand when the goalie needs their their positive, you know, uh reps.

SPEAKER_01 58:50

It's it's funny you're bringing this up again on my 10U team right now. We have we have a player who's pretty new to the position, and um I was I was watching her play and I realized to your point, Steve, like she's never coming out of the net um ever. And I I had to go up to her uh and I I learned this with my own kid when he was younger. I I said to her, Hey, listen, if if you have taken enough shots and you need a second, you can leave the net and go behind the net or just rest for a few minutes and come back. I said, but you know if you need it, right? It's like this isn't an excuse to just stop playing. Yeah, and she says to me, uh really, I didn't know I could do that. Right? And it's like, and again, keep in mind, it's it's we have one goalie on this team, and so there's no there's she's not switching with anybody, you know. And so I had to kind of like I I I I I put it on myself. I just kind of didn't think about it. I'm watching her, and I'm like, oh, she needs a break. And so I went up to her, it's like you can leave the net and come back in, like after you've caught your breath. And it was such a relief because she's like, I gotta take every shot, or coach is gonna be mad at me.

SPEAKER_02 59:52

But I think that's like Steve's point about respecting your goalie. Then if you're a coach, right, and you have that situation, and I have that situation a lot of times, is then you need to design your practices so that your goalies get those rest reps. Like you can't just go shot, shot, shot, shot, shot. Like it's all, it's all shooting, it's all shooting. So you can design your practices where you have a heavy load, a light play, a heavy load, a light play. And I think but that's a conscious decision. Yeah, that's not just how we do building a lesson plan off of the web. It's a conscious decision about your team, your makeup, your goalie, the workload, and then how do you design the best environment for your kids to succeed? And I think that's that's that's where we really falter most of the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:33

I'll bring a different aspect to this because I've I've given the blame to the coaches part of things. On the flip side of things, I just did a lesson on this. I have it on my dry erase board behind me here. I literally just did this lesson with a goalie yesterday, and this goalie plays professional hockey. And I said to him, Everybody in the world needs to surround themselves like Maslow's hierarchy of need, right? You need love and safety and belonging in order to achieve your dreams. You're in a corner over here by yourself. Your job is to become part of the team and to be a leader on the team. So I don't just say, hey, it's the coach's fault, I say it's the goalies as well. Like you're it's a it's both ways. You have to work together. That's why we're a team. Correct. So a couple things I did in the NHL. Um, I did it in Seattle. I have a picture of it here. I'll see if I can find it on my phone while I'm uh talking to you guys. But we were wanting to work on shootouts. Coaches don't want to spend the time on it. Goalies, what they want to do, some players want to stay, some players don't. So I would tell the goalies, we made a trophy. I won't say the name of the trophy, but it was a we made a trophy, and it was a ridiculous thing, but it was massive, it was funny, and the guys loved it. When I brought it in, the guys started dying laughing. So we made this trophy, and I said to the goalie, your job is every day pick one guy on the team and just say, Hey, I'll challenge you for the cup today. And it became a really cool thing because the guys would win it, and then they'd, you know, these guys are millionaires. Like, why would they care about a trophy? But it was the bragging rates in the dressing room of like, yeah, I won, you know, and I get the trophy in my stall, and and you know, it's it's ridiculous, and the guys are all laughing and everything. But what it did is it created a friendship between that goalie and that player, then the next day a different player and a different player and a different player, so that you become friends with everybody on the team because you need, you know, as much as we want to say the goalie is the most important, the reality is the team is the most important. Correct. Goalie is one cog in the wheel. You can't win a game with just a goalie because you got to score a goal, right? To win. And so you need the players. And now you can lose a game because of your goalie for sure. You could, you know, you score 12 goals, you lose 13-12. Well, then maybe you need a new goalie. But the the reality is, is you you need the whole team. So your job is the goalie to bring everybody together. Most of the time, the goalies and the defense talk a lot because they're right beside each other the whole game, they're working together during the game, and the forwards are maybe over here a little bit. So I try to make bridge that gap. So, how can we bridge that gap? And another little exercise for for the for youth kids. I always say, Well, why don't you invite a different kid on the team over to your house and play video games or whatever, hang out? But you're creating these friendships that one will last forever. My my best friends from home in Winnipeg are guys I played with when I was seven, eight, nine, ten years old. Yeah, they didn't go on to play any higher, but they they have played high school hockey in Canada or whatever, or they played some of them, played juniors. They didn't go very that much further, but we're still best friends. Because when you when I was a kid, I'd go play street hockey with them every day. Uh, we go, you know, go to the mall, get your ears pierced, uh, you know, get dye your hair blonde, whatever the case may be. But your job is the goalie is to start to try to cultivate those relationships. Because then when you need it, I'll give you an example of like uh gratitude and paying it forward, is everything is reciprocal. So when you go out and you make that effort to become good friends and you let in a stinker, you know, you let in a goal like I let in when I was nine years old. The guy shot it from the other end of the ice. I put my stick to the side and I took my glove and went to cover it right under my glove, through my legs, in the net, and we lose the tournament. I could still tell you the rink East Selkirk, Manitoba, losing the championship. That was the winning goal. I still remember that 40 years later.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:57

I can't believe they didn't cut you then.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:59

Yeah. But the guys that were on that team are still my best friends to this day. Yeah. It and when you let in those kind of goals, they all come over, hey, it's okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:11

But I think that's I think that's the point of uh for goalies and players, though, right? Is is that you don't that's just team building one-on-one, right? Don't allow these clicks to to form. And I think once you have like commonality in in and and relationships, like by what you're saying, Steve, about you know, deliberately, and sometimes at the youth level, you need to deliberately do those things. You need to deliberately connect kids together because they might not do it organically, but if you can help make that and build that rapport where it's not just the two goalies that are friends, it's the goalie and like the goalies and the defensemen, and the goalies and the forwards, and the forwards and the D. Like finding ways that when you look in a locker room, it's not like these three kids sitting together, these three kids sitting together. And that really uh over the long haul, you know, are gonna help your goaltenders ultimately because they're gonna have some more support in the room. Like they're gonna have more empathy in the room. They're gonna have people that have a an actual relationship with them as a person, and not so much as oh, well, that's the guy that's supposed to be stopping the buck. And I think and and vice versa. We hear all like goal, like you talked to like a if a goalie loses a game 13 to 12. Well, if they win a game 13 to 12, that goalie better have a lot of gratitude for that for those forwards and those players that are bailing them out. But I think you can build that in, you can build that that kind of culture into your team.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:31

Yeah, but when we bring it back to what we talked about at the beginning, right? It's we're trying to teach these kids life lessons. What is probably the most important thing in life? Networking. Right? Like I mean, honestly. Better network where you're gay. Yeah, like where are we in life without networking, right? And you know, look at we're all on this podcast because of networking, you know. My my relationship with with uh with Paul and the relationship with you guys and the relationship and going out and cultivating those relationships. That's life, right? I mean, we're if we're relating it back to you know, youth kids, right? You're talking about our kids in hockey, our goalies in hockey, like youth hockey. If you're teaching life lessons, networking is the most important thing you're gonna do in your life when you're finding a job, you're finding a wife, you're you know what I mean, like you're finding advice on how to you know rewire something, anything. You need network of people around you. Well, if you're gonna be a good goalie, you're gonna need a network around you. And it's it's either when you're in the NHL, it's network of nutritionists and uh therapists and and physical therapists and mental therapists and all that other mumbo jumbo. And then when you're a kid, it's about friendships and relationships and surrounding yourself with good people that are gonna help you to excel to where you want to get to. So um it's it all of these things, that's why they call it a team. It's not one way or the other, it's not just the coach, it's the goalies, and they need to see it another way, they need to be willing to flex the other way sometimes. And I find that there's so much of like, oh, I go to my private goalie coach and I go to this uh coach and I go to that coach, and then when I go on the ice, I go to the end of the ice by myself. And when I go, when a coach says I know nothing about goaltending, so he doesn't even pay attention to me. All of these things are going this way, but the goalie has to make the effort to come this way, and the coaches need to make the effort to come this way, and then that's when you create the best teams, right? And it's probably when you have the most success in life as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:41

Uh Steve, I hate to do this, but we're we're a time here, and if we're not careful, this is gonna become a three-part series. Um what we will do is have you back on again in the future. This has been an incredible uh conversation, and to your point, we'll give a shout out to Paul Cohen, the networker that got us together here, another another uh professional goaltender uh who I always like to brag scored a goal in the AHL. He likes to be very humble about that. But his networking is what uh what brought us together to get today. But um, Steve's gonna join us on an episode of the Ride to the Rank Parents. Uh, if you got through this one, make sure you share that one with your kids because we're gonna discuss some of the things we discussed on the show today. But Steve, thanks so much for all the time today. This has been a fantastic episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:22

No problem. Thank you guys. And sorry if I got long-winded in some answers. I uh I've spent my entire life from 49 years old in hockey, and uh I'm very proud of that. And it's my passion, it's what I I study, think about, care about. If you looked at my office, everything is about you know goaltending, and so I uh appreciate the opportunity to share some of the things I've learned over the years.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:49

Well, you're gonna get more opportunities, so be ready for that. All right, I'm gonna tell that. And then for the audience listening, remember, look, if you've got a question for Steve or us or anything about goaltending, email us, team at our kidsplayhockey.com, right? We can continue this conversation. I think as we say on the shows, the conversations are the key to why this show exists, right? We're trying to create those conversations, the networking that Steve talked about, and uh obviously with our audience size, you've made that happen. Remember, audience, also, our kidsplayhockey.com forward slash deals. You can see some of these innovations that we talked about today. Uh, you can see some of the things that we we discussed on the show, and we'll make sure to link all of Steve's stuff in the show notes so you guys can check out what he's doing with his both ending schools, uh his mentorship. Uh really uh you're a gift of the game. You put your whole life into the game, you're a gift of the game, and we're lucky to have you here for it. So that's gonna do it for this edition of Our Kids Play Goalie. We'll see you in the next one, everybody. Take care, have fun, enjoy your day. 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, our kidsplayhockey.com. Also, make sure to check out our children's book, When Hockey Stops, at when hockey stops.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.