Glove/ Blocker Positioning in the Butterfly Slide

Guest Post by Nik Vassilev

As I stated in my previous article, in today’s game a good butterfly slide is a great tool when used correctly. Therefore it is very important that your mechanics in the butterfly slide are very good in order to make your saves easier. Most people today believe that in your butterfly slide, your gloves should be right on top of your pad, and while this is true for some situations, it can lead to goals which would otherwise be easy saves. If you wind up in a situation where you slid, when maybe you should’ve T-Pushed or shuffled over and the player has lots of time to shoot, it is important to lift your glove off your pad in a ready to catch position. Every goalie makes mistakes, but it is the ability to recover from them that separates the average from the good.

The closer in the play/situation, the tighter you want to be. If there is a player at the top of your crease, he shoots it and it goes in between your elbows, then in my books that’s a bad goal. In situations such as this you want to make yourself as big as possible by keeping your gloves close to your body and your elbows tucked in. The chart should be a guideline of where the player is and if he is in there, you want to get as tight and big as possible. You never want a puck to go through you and this applies even more the closer the play is to you, as most good shooters will realize there isn’t a lot of room and this try to shoot five hole or through your elbows. The problem with being so tight is that if the player has a good amount of time to shoot and a decent shot they will put it right over your glove or blocker with a fair amount of ease.

Although I just said to keep your arms in tight, this isn’t the golden rule for all situations where you choose to go into a butterfly slide. In a situation where the shooter is outside of the previous chart and has time to shoot, it would be most effective to slightly raise your glove or blocker (depending which way you are going) about 5-10 inches depending where the player is (the closer in the lower). The reason you want to do this is because you are now in a ready to catch position and if you are playing in a high level league the players will be trying to pick top shelf. Also in your previous position (glove on top of pad), if the puck is going top shelf you will have to raise your glove another 10 to 20 inches, but if it is already raised then you will only have to get it to cover a little bit more area. The key is to find the perfect amount that works best for you and it will make a great difference. It might sound like it won’t make much of a difference, but goaltending is a game of inches and these few inches will help elevate your game.

You might be asking yourself, who is this guy to tell me how to butterfly slide? Well I speak from experience as I used to butterfly slide everywhere in a tight butterfly slide, however recently one of my goalie coaches (Jamie McGuire) taught me to get my gloves off my pad and it has made all the difference. I train with him twice a week (shooters are AAA, College Players) and if I ever have abused a butterfly slide with my gloves up, the results were much better due to the ability to seal the lower part of the net with my pads and the upper with my gloves, thus leaving the shooter with a difficult shot. The timing to both techniques (gloves tight or up and out) is very key to making them work at their most effective level. The best way to make sure that this works almost every time is to locate the puck right away as it is coming off the blade, watch it all the way in!

I love to write these articles, but they are only meant as a guideline or just to give you an idea. I am in no way trying to create a system because in the end it is all about just stopping the puck. This article will hopefully make your butterfly slide saves much easier and more effective. I love to talk goaltending and if you have any comments or suggestion, I’d love to hear them. Hopefully this is some food for thought and will create some discussion with you and your goalie buddies. I will attempt to write these every week, so keep checking the site and thanks for reading!

Examples of Proper Use of Technique

Basically this whole video is an example of if you keep your gloves up in a butterfly slide on a shot from some length away it will make the save much easier.

Improper Use of Technique

0:25 First goal was directly because Conklin didn’t get tight on the shot from in close.
2:30 Conklin has his glove right on his pad, even though the shot is from well out.

Thanks to Performance Goaltending for the awesome videos! Also thanks to Jamie McGuire for the great pictures! Finally thanks to sabesweetie71!