Pro-Reads: Mike Condon – Winter Classic Save
With Mike Condon
It was "the" save of the Winter Classic and Mike Condon has a lot to share about reads in what looked like a desperate situation.
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It was the save of the 2016 Winter Classic as Mike Condon turned what looked like a hopeless situation on the penalty kill into a truly classic save in front of friends and family in Boston. There was a lot more to it than just throwing out a glove in prayer. It took a bit of luck and a fantastic read and track by the then-Montreal Canadien goaltender to make this fantastic save.
The Scenario
There’s a good chance you’ve seen this save on highlight reels since it first happened in 2016 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, not far from where Mike Condon grew up in Holliston, Massachusetts. With the Canadiens up 3-0 and on the penalty kill in the dying seconds of the second period a small miscommunication in puckhandling between Condon and P.K. Subban (more on this later from Condon himself in his ProRead) led to a point blank scoring opportunity.
Condon found himself facing down Torey Krug, a left-handed shooter who had options and traffic in front that made it almost impossible for Condon to see Ryan Spooner creeping in on the back door from the point.
Take a look for yourself what had developed. Consider yourself in Condon’s skates. How can you play this?To be fair, you can see a whole lot more here than Condon did. Consider primary and secondary threats and what might result depending on how you would play it.
The Save
Now that you have seen the scenario, let’s watch the play without Condon’s analysis. What you’ll see looks to most like desperation but as you’ll hear later, a whole lot more went into it. So as you watch this consider which elements make this more calculated than desperate. What happened that allowed him to make this play the way that he did?
The Pro-Read
Now that you have seen this situation in full and had a chance to consider it yourself, let’s watch and listen in as Condon takes us through this entire sequence. So much went into it in just a split second. But that’s the difference between most of us and an NHL goaltender, in this case, one that happens to be an Ivy League graduate who as his career began was doing his Princeton University homework on the busses of the ECHL.
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- Condon breaks down his penalty kill save at the 2016 Winter Classic, where a puck-handling miscommunication with P.K. Subban left him facing a point-blank two-option threat from Torey Krug with Ryan Spooner back-dooring.
- Condon identified both the primary threat (Krug) and the secondary threat (Spooner on the back door) in a split second, making the save a calculated read rather than a desperate reaction.
- A puck-handling breakdown between goalie and defenseman on the penalty kill can instantly create a multi-threat scoring chance — Condon's experience shows how tracking the play early is the only way to recover.
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