Canucks Goalie Coach Ian Clark and Thatcher Demko Share Drills for Lateral Recoveries
- Use the same butterfly recovery technique for all push distances — only adjust the amount of power applied, not the mechanics.
- Ian Clark categorizes lateral recovery drills into short, medium, and long pushes to build 'lateral touch' in his goalies.
- Over-pushing creates lateral overflow, so goalies must develop finesse and touch alongside explosiveness in recovery situations.
- Clark changes drill difficulty by altering the shot location, forcing Demko to calibrate each push distance in real time.
- Save selection may change on longer pushes — extension is sometimes required — but the recovery movement pattern remains consistent.
All butterfly recoveries are not the same, even if the technique at the foundation of then should be, so Vancouver Canucks goaltending coach Ian Clark has a series of what he calls short, medium and long drills designed to help his goalies develop “Lateral Touch.”
“I’m a huge advocate of doing drills that involve different length of lateral movement,” Clark explained. “Obviously there’s times where a goalie has to be explosive to cover significant lateral distance and there’s times when a very small amount of lateral distance will help a goalie occupy the necessary space without downstream problems because you’ve over-pushed and have lateral overflow. I’m a big teacher of what I call lateral touch. You need to be powerful and explosive, but you also have to have some finesse and some touch in your game, so I have a variety of drills that involve short, medium and long moves.”
InGoal was on hand to capture one of those drills recently with Canucks No. 1 Thatcher Demko, and both he and Clark walked us through some of the keys. In this instance, they were working on finding that lateral touch in butterfly recovery situations:
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