Start and Stop Speed Drills
- Complete your set position on the first shot — Spencer Martin confirms this is the critical factor that sets up a clean recovery to the second shot.
- Use cones aligned with the hash marks to simulate the lateral chaos attackers create below the circles in modern hockey.
- Train fast eye rotation alongside physical movement — Torenius stresses that eyes must lead the body to make the drill effective.
- The drill was designed by Ian Clark and used by Canucks AHL affiliates in Abbotsford to develop goalie-specific start-and-stop quickness.
- Avoid sacrificing form for speed — getting behind and failing to set on shot one compounds the difficulty of recovering for shot two.
The pace and skill of attacking forwards has never been greater in hockey and as we’re seeing through two rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the focus is increasingly on using that speed to create lateral plays – and chaos – directly in front of the net, below the hash marks.
All of which makes this the perfect time to share a two-part drill we saw Vancouver Canucks goaltending development coach Marko Torenius working on with Spencer Martin and Arturs Silovs in AHL Abbotsford late in the season. It’s a drill that Torenius, a Finnish goalie coach who spent eight seasons with SKA St. Petersburg in Russia’s KHL before coming over to North America this season, said he learned from Canucks goalie coach Ian Clark.
“It’s a really good speed drill that stresses your starts and stops and forces you to have fast eyes and good, fast rotations,” Torenius said. “We do it to support our on-ice movements. You have to get your eyes faster, you have to get good stops, you have to get good rotations in close.”
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