247 Parents: How Do You Track Shots On Goal For Your Son Or Daughter?

If you're hearing this, they took the option to leave it in. So I I thank you for that. The parent segment with David Hutchison is a staple of the podcast nowadays. Oh, what do you what do you oh.

Not just with me. It's everybody. Speaking

of hazardous, let's talk about being a goalie parent.

Good point. There you go. What's your take this week?

Well, I mean, look guys, everybody can chime in here. But, as you know, I lurk in some of these Facebook parent groups and I accept questions from parents, parents@InGoalmag.com. If you'd like to send in a question. And, and I tend to answer some of the questions on the Facebook group. Don't usually point out who I am or where I'm from, but just give my thoughts.

Anonymous. And

well, it's not so anonymous, but I'm not just, you know, pounding my chest saying, hi, it's David from InGoal Magazine. Anonymous D. I'm just another goalie parent. And sometimes you see questions that spark a lot of emotion in this week. I wouldn't say this is emotion, but I could see excitement amongst parents as somebody asked the question, how do you all track the shots in your goalie's game?

And I pictured as soon as I saw that the parents standing on the glass in the corner watching their kid play with an app or with a piece of paper or whatever and there were a ton of answers in there. So I thought I'd get in. But before I do, what are you what are you guys thinking? I don't I'm gonna be Can't use my answer.

Can I be can I

be honest? My first response Yeah. That you said, like, popped into my head Yeah. Was like, y'all are really doing this?

You count the shots in your men's league game.

This is true. No. I just I just I

just complain when they're blatantly wrong.

Well, yeah. Hey. And and to me, that isn't even really my answer yet guys, but that's part of it. Because soon as you train goalies to count shots and worry about it, like Woody, they end up spending half the game looking at the scoreboard getting angry. I've done it too.

Let's face it. Getting angry that I didn't get credit for that one or there were three shots there and they only gave me one and it distracts you from the game. But that's not really my answer.

Know what screws me up? When they count shots

is is I start working on my save percentage. I'm like, oh, this is gonna hurt. Oh, you start calculating. Yeah. This is this is gonna hurt.

Well, I'm up to 12. I can let the next one

in and I'm okay. Exactly.

A 100% we've all done that. I gotta say my favorite one was I knew I was playing against far too young in age. It was three on three a few years ago when at the end of the game and we gotten absolutely pumped. It was the game where I actually asked the referee if he knew what the defibrillator was. And the guy at the other end actually came up to me and said, how'd you think I played?

What? And I'm like, dude dude, I'm just, like, hanging in there. He's like, oh, it's okay. It's okay. My dad's upstairs in the bar, and he's videoing the whole thing and counting the shots, so I'll look at it later.

And I'm like, I'm too old for this, I

have seen parents use, you know, those clickers, like Yep. Like bars or clubs will use to keep track of your headcount going into whatever event. I I I've seen that where they keep track and you don't have to have a running list or you're you're not looking down and losing track of the game. So that that's an interesting one.

No. It is for sure. Look, I I get it because I've done it. I've used paper, spreadsheets, different apps, and I've been the guy in the corner counting the shots. And one of the reasons I think all of us want to count the shots is well, there's a couple of reasons.

One, we wanna do something to help. Our kid maybe is on a team without a goalie coach. They don't have any support. They're nothing's being reported. And so it's at least something you can do.

Hey, here's where you were after the game. Some parents go so far as to track where the shots were taken from or so on. But I I actually I'm not a big fan of it. Having looked back now of ten plus years as a goalie parent, I I'm not a fan of it. And if I were answering it straight up, I'd say the best, method of doing it, Brian Daccord has an app, Stop It Goal Tendings Game Day.

It does give you a much better picture of the quality of the shots and and the sort of stuff that you hear Kevin talking about with NHL goaltenders. You can track a little bit about that. But even then, even then, I really only use it every now and then and only retrospectively. I I pick and I choose because sometimes, you know, your your son or your daughter comes home and they're really down because they gave up six, seven, eight, nine goals, whatever it might be. And stop it if you really know that they had a great game.

It's a good way of going back and saying, yeah, but here was the shot quality, here's how many the app thinks you should have let in and you actually did really, really well and that's got a place. But day to day guys, I'm not a big fan of it. I'm looking back and here's why. All the mental training experts say to us, focus on the process, don't focus on the results. And at the end of the day, save percentage and goals against average are results.

They're not they're not anything to do with the process. And you know, I even hate those stats on their own as it is guys, but there's their results just as much as goals are. And I know a lot of us are really excited when our kid has a 90% save percentage and we want to tell them that. But I would ask, do you happily report to your kid when their save percentage is 60 or 70 in a game? Or do you just think that they're not going to recognize that you chose not to bring it up that day?

It's it's it's just to me, I don't think it's a good way to go. And frankly, those save percentages at the minor hockey level, I think they mean next to nothing. You've got a three and a half foot goaltender defending the same net that NHL goaltenders are are defending. You've got shooters who develop at a different rate than goaltenders who dominate the game like you don't see in the National Hockey League. And, and I don't know that they'll say percentage even mean much anyway.

But but here's what I would say. I know you want to help. I know you want to be be there for your kid. So learn a little bit about the game. Maybe you're just doing it by talking to your son or your daughter after their their sessions with a goalie coach or their practices or you're reading InGoal Magazine together and focus on the process after a game with them.

So maybe ask a question like, what did you learn today? Was that fun out there? What was fun? What did you think you did really well? Give me a highlight from your game and let's talk about it.

Those are process things. Did you do something in the game today that you learned in a practice recently or you learned from your goalie coach? Or maybe if you've learned enough from reading InGoal or listening to the podcast, you can say to your son or daughter, tell them about a highlight you saw. So, hey, that was awesome on the power play in the second period. I saw you skated across to the guy on the backdoor instead of sliding.

Or I loved how you were really patient on this particular shot or you look super focused in your warm up. Those sort of things that lend themselves to having a better game down the road, I think are so much more important than than focusing on the shots. So celebrate the process, guys. Don't count the shots. Don't count the save percentage.

I don't think they mean much. I know you're trying to help. If you don't agree with me and you wanna let me know, parents@InGoalmag.com. And if you agree with me, let me know too because I'd love to hear a little bit more. What do you think, boys?

When do shots start to matter? Like, when should you sort of buy into that? At what at what level?

None. But you look

at the shot clock

all the time. Honestly, sure. They're there all the time and we have them, but it's also absurd. Like, honestly, what what does a 90% save percentage mean if your team gave up 57 shots and you know 25 of them were grade a's? It's absurd.

It has to be about shot quality and you don't even get that frankly with a lot of the public stats at the National Hockey League level. So why do it? You've got to focus on the process. And for me, with a son playing major junior hockey, trying to find his way in that league for the first time, I I still have to remind him of that. And I don't tell him how to play because he's got a goalie coach and we stay away from that.

But if he's feeling down because he only came out with an eight fifty that night, you can talk about, yeah, but let's evaluate the situation that you were facing there. And it's not to make excuses because there's other nights, frankly, when maybe it should have been a nine twenty if we wanna go with standard stats, but it was a pretty easy night and maybe there was a lapse in judgment in a few places. But but those numbers, you you gotta put them into context for a goaltender. They just don't mean anything on their own.

I was about to accuse Hutch of being way too fluffy and, you know, peace, love, and he's on the Island over there where they were Birkenstocks. But, I'm kinda with him, like and the thing is the thing that jumped to my mind is I do like, I do a ton of radio now in Canada, different stations, different markets, talking about goaltending, and they'll ask me about a goalie save percentage, and I'm not even I don't know. I don't know. I don't look at it. I don't even look like, for the longest time, I have eliminated goals against average from my stories, and sometimes my editors at nhl.com reinsert them because it's a team stat.

Increasing So is save percentage.

Recognizing that save percentage is the same. I don't even look at the who's got a nine twenty two. I look at adjusted numbers. I wanna see what it is relative to the shot quality face. And so I guess my answer then to parents would be if you feel like you absolutely need to know because you just can't help it and you have to and you wanna share that information, then I would invest in, you know, Stop It Tap.

So that at least you can add some context. It's not gonna be perfect. It's not gonna be clear side analytics, but at least add some context to the quality of chances they're facing so that you can adjust that, say, percentage relative to that. And even then, the Hutch's point, like, this reminds me actually to bring it back to the Canucks, Daren, a conversation with Casey De Smith at the beginning of the season. His save percentage drops in the NHL.

Like, we're, like, what, four years removed from the average save percentage or five years removed from the average save percentage of the NHL being nine fifteen, and now it's right around 900. And yet we still judge goalies as good or bad as to whether they're you know, if you're, like, at an eight ninety nine, oh, you're sub 900. You're not you're not good. Sub nine hundred five years ago wasn't good. Sub 900 now is right around league average.

I wouldn't mind being average NHL goalie.

Yeah. Exactly. And so, you know, some of the historical, like, the men you know, use a baseball term, the Mendoza line is shifting on an annual basis even at the highest level of the sport. How the hell are we supposed to know what's good and what the averages are in minor hockey where none of that is tracked? It it it is largely it's largely irrelevant.

And if I was gonna do it, I would wanna do it with as much context as possible. And so, yeah, I would probably invest in an app that allows me to do that. This this is not a shameless plug for for the Stop It app.

No.

You know, that's the one that does it.

And what's worse that I hear some of your colleagues using in in media, Woody, is they'll pull out a save percentage for a game.

Like, maybe maybe you

could argue over a season. Would all even out in terms of the games that

are in hard trend in the last two years. Oh,

it's because everybody thinks maybe I can analyze goal 10. Oh, he only put up an eight fifty yesterday.

In a single game.

Stupid. Yeah. So stupid.

Well, again, we we we we can I that's what I love about clear side? I can go pop in the next morning and look and be like, yeah. He gave up four in the ex like, there's been a couple where the expected are, like, six. Yeah. Demko Demko had a game this season early in Philadelphia where they lost two nothing.

He was brilliant. Everybody recognized it. Nobody was blaming him. But the Flyers generated seven goals worth of offense. Or Casey DeSmith.

You know, again, to go back to that example, he gives up eight in a ten seven loss. And, yeah, you gotta stop the odd high danger chance for sure. He was did not have a great night, but there were five on threes in there. And and what is judged as a bad of course, we're gonna judge eight goals against as a bad goaltending performance. Didn't give up a single bad goal in there.

Like, there wasn't a weak goal in the bunch. Like so if you don't have that context, it's really hard to stay away from the narrative driven conversations.

That that's a good example too. Right? What it because even if you don't wanna get into the was that a hard shot or not a hard shot and how do we evaluate it with save percentage? Five on five and five on three are not the same, but those shots count exactly the same in your save percentage and quite frankly same with three on three overtime.

Oh, three on three don't now we're talk this is a whole another rant I'm gonna have to go on. Like, three on three overtime, save percentage and what that should not be a part of an NHL Insanity. Percentages. Yeah. It's a total it's a different sport.

It's a different game. It's a totally different game. It's like two on o's and two on ones and yeah. No. I'm.

And from one eight to the next

And the five on three is even crazier, frankly. But

Yeah. But part of but a little more part of the game. That's why we do lean a little bit on five on five save percentage as well. Like, that that's the stat people look for when they're trying to evaluate goaltending. But, again, at the minor hockey league level, nobody's doing that.

Like It's nuts.

Nobody's add nobody's adding that context. So maybe you are doing a disservice by by tracking the shots and and trying to trying to measure based on standards of the best league without adding the context that the best league has available.

Yeah. And again, I'll just say it again. I understand why parents want to do it because I've done it myself and you're trying to help and that's awesome. But maybe, maybe even if you're gonna keep doing it, next game, look for two really good things your kid does in the game that you wanna highlight. And I don't mean the unbelievable backdoor glove save.

Of course, we all celebrate those things. But let's look for a few process driven things in a game that you can really pat them on the back for.

And next time you see a media person cite the individual save percentage from that game, just remind yourself that person probably doesn't understand the position and they're trying to be cool or sound smarter than they actually are. Because it's ridiculous doing a save percentage for an individual game. That's the process. I wanna represent the American listeners. Process and the process.

Oh, jeez.

It's said different. I don't I don't know I don't know why it's said different.

Tomato, tomato. I know.