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Jeremy Swayman hasn’t look out of play since turning pro this season, in part because he spent a lot of time learning the importance of his place on the ice in college.
The 22-year-old Alaska native won his second straight start with the Boston Bruins on Thursday, following up an impressive 40-save debut in a win over the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday with 31 saves in a win over the Washington Capitals to improve his save percentage to .947 before finally losing 3-2 to the Flyers on Saturday. Add in an 8-1-0 record and .933 save percentage in his first taste of the AHL this season, and the University of Maine graduate has won 10 of his first 12 games as a professional goalie.
The InGoal audience will already be familiar with Swayman from his appearance on the podcast last summer alongside Alfie Michaud, his goalie coach at Maine. Premium members also remember Swayman for sharing the barre ballet routine that helped accelerate his path to winning the Mike Richter Award as the top goalie in the NCAA last season.
With Swayman in the NHL spotlight in Boston, we figured it was a good time to share one of his on-ice development keys at Maine: How Michaud used strings, a set of moveable posts and the concepts of Box Control to teach Swayman to stop reaching and start controlling his net. Michaud was kind enough to share videos of some of the drills that Swayman credits.
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That last quote is gold. It’s a big moment when a goalie realizes how much more in control they are when their feet are set to make a save. Great article guys!
The poles that are shown in the videos are a good visual tool for the goalie to know what is behind them. Does this come as a set? If not, how tall should they be? Should it simply be as tall as the goal post?
Thanks for letting me know.
Actually they don’t even need to be as tall as the goal post – because placed in front of the goaltender they will cover to the top of the posts, from the puck’s perspective which is the key thing. We haven’t seen them sold – each coach we have been on the ice with has made their own from various things – a hand tamper for soil was one (https://amzn.to/3eokvCN) which is good because they are heavy on the bottom and won’t fall as easily when hit by shots but we made ours with some PVC pipe quite cheaply.