On Ice Warm Up Drill with Jake Oettinger and Goalie coach Jeff Reese to Loosen up the Hips
- Start morning skate warm-ups with hip mobility drills using pad saves and lateral edge pushes before moving to shot-based sequences.
- Jeff Reese developed this hip warm-up drill while working with Ben Bishop, and Oettinger adopted it when he joined Dallas.
- Back-and-forth lateral pushes in the drill serve a specific purpose: feeling the edges of the ice, not just making saves.
- Follow the hip drill with a corner-based glove and blocker warm-up using three shooters at circle angles for hand-eye activation.
- NHL morning skates typically begin with static shots from distance to warm up eyes and hands before adding movement drills.
Most morning skates in the NHL begin with the goalies warming up their eyes and their hands with static shots from distance. The Dallas Stars add a little movement to warm up their hips.
After beginning with puck handling and passes behind the net to get used to the boards and bounces on the road, the Stars went to this simple drill featuring pad saves and back-and-forth pushes, which early season Vezina Trophy candidate Jake Oettinger likes for his hips.
“(Goalie coach Jeff Reese) did that with Ben Bishop actually, so when I got here it was already like a thing and I just started to like it,” Oettinger explained. “It loosens your hips up a little bit, so it’s more of a hip warm up and then the back and forth is just to feel the edges.”
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