Pro Tips: Chris Driedger Practice Advice, Part 2
- Focus on getting your feet square during goalie-unfriendly drills to reduce goals against and stay mentally engaged.
- Avoid the toxic cycle of frustration in practice — getting rattled leads to barely trying, which ingrained bad habits.
- Find one technical focus point to extract value from any drill, even when the drill isn't designed with the goalie in mind.
- Driedger credits this mindset shift — finding peace with bad drills — as a key factor in his development from ECHL to NHL.
- Mental attitude in practice directly affects performance in games; staying composed under unfair conditions is a trainable skill.
Photo: Jaylynn Nash/Icon Sportswire
Last time we checked in with Chris Driedger, the Florida Panthers goalie shared some great advice about the importance of creating good battle habits in practice, not only because it can lead to Save of the Year moments like his reach back paddle stop a couple of weeks ago, but also because it will inspire teammates to battle hard for you in return come game time.
All that said, Driedger also recognizes a lot of team practice drills aren’t goalie friendly, and it can be tough to adopt that battle mentality through wave after wave of chances the goalie has little chance of stopping. In fact, it can become counterproductive at some point the same way playing shinny all summer can if too much repetition of bad habits becomes ingrained.
Driedger lives it, even now in the NHL, and knows how frustrating those types of drills can be.
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