Dawn of the practice goalie?
- NHL taxi squads (4-6 players including one goalie) gave every team a built-in practice goalie during the COVID-shortened season.
- Carey Price confirmed a third goalie allows starters to skip harmful drills while still doing necessary on-ice work.
- The Maple Leafs, Bruins, and Ducks dressed their third goalie as backup so their No. 1 could take full game nights off.
- Devan Dubnyk became the model for the practice goalie concept, demonstrating its workload-management benefits at scale.
- Avoiding unnecessary practice drills matters for goalies because skater-focused drills can reinforce bad positional habits in netminders.
Photo courtesy of Stars (photo by Jeff Toates)
If NHL teams are ever going to widely adopt the use of a practice goalie to ease the workload on their No. 1, this season could provide the impetus.
To help mitigate the risk of being caught short players because of COVID-19, the league created taxi squads consisting of between 4-6 players per team for this season, including a minimum of one goalie. That group travels and can practice with the main team, meaning there will always be an extra goalie available to let regulars rest for at least parts of practice.
Several teams have already used the extra goaltender to their advantage in a couple of different ways.
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