Pro-Tips: Rob Tallas on the importance of incorporating angles into warm up
- Warm up goalies from the face-off dots, not the middle of the slot, to mirror where real game shots originate.
- Repetitive angle work builds unconscious familiarity with positioning — more effective than rope drills alone for developing angle play.
- Progress warm-ups from static angle shots to dynamic pushes from the top of the crease, squaring up on shots from the same dot.
- Rob Tallas used this angle-first approach with NHL goalies Roberto Luongo and James Reimer, and it applies equally to youth hockey warm-ups.
- Coaches and parents can implement this immediately: simply move shooters to the face-off dots during any pre-practice or pre-game warm-up.
If there’s one thing we love here at InGoal, it’s Pro Tips that apply just as well right down to pee wee, and that’s exactly what we got when we asked Florida Panthers goaltending coach Rob Tallas why he always seemed to use shots from an angle, starting with warm ups.
You may not have even noticed it in the handful of Pro Drills and Pro Tips we’ve already run with Tallas, whether it was using screens with Roberto Luongo to work on patience off the release in Florida, running major junior goalies through “The Greenfield Drill” at NET360, or warm ups with Luongo and James Reimer, but shots typically come from the face-off dots.
We asked Tallas about it during our week on the ice with him, Loungo and Reimer at the Panthers practice facility a couple summer ago, and his answer is one goalies, coaches and parents can probably put to good use right down to youth hockey warm ups.
Part of it is that’s where most shots come from — open looks from the middle slot are rare in the NHL, so why spend a lot of time on them — but there was more to it.
“We always warm up on angles,” Tallas said, adding he hears it a lot from younger goalies and coaches. “How do I get better at my angles?’ And you do the ropes and use all these other things, but just put them on angles, make them become so familiar with angles.”
You can hear Tallas talk about it while Reimer warms up with straight shots from the dot (along with a little bonus footage of Luongo working through his first warm up shots of the day):
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