James Reimer Pro-Read: Facing Top Players and Keys to Reading Backhands
With James Reimer
Reimer's 6th ProRead is his first from the 2021 season
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It took a while, but after running through all five Pro Reads with James Reimer recorded before he’d played his first game for the Carolina Hurricanes, InGoal Magazine was finally able to sit down for a video session featuring highlights from his current team.
Our breakdowns with the affable Reimer will still include his former team, the Florida Panthers, except now he’s making saves against them. But we’ll start with a sequence against the Stanley Cup-champion Tampa Bay Lightning, a team Reimer knows well from his time in Florida.
The Sequence
Part of playing the Lightning, Reimer said, is knowing who is on the ice at all times. In this case that includes talented forward Brayden Point, and even though this starts as a rather innocuous looking 5-on-5 situation in the Carolina end, Reimer knows you can’t relax too much when Point has the puck, even is his passing options don’t include a Steven Stamkos or Nikita Kucherov.
As Point cuts across the middle and turns toward the net on his backhand in the freeze frame below, Reimer has already scanned for other threats. Which ones stand out to you?
Does anything in your read change as Point gets into the slot below?
THE SAVE
Now let’s take a look at the entire sequence in real time and see if what you expected might happen based on the reads above matches what did happen after Point cut into the slot:
Watch James Reimer break down the full video for you
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- Reimer breaks down his save on Brayden Point, who cut across the middle and turned toward the net on his backhand in a 5-on-5 situation for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
- Reimer locked onto Point as the primary threat surprisingly early in the sequence — before Point had fully committed to cutting into the slot — allowing him to track the play as a potential 1-on-1.
- Reimer explains what makes backhand shots especially difficult to stop, offering technique insight from his own real-time decision-making on the save.
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