The audio segment published here takes you directly to the Parent Segment from this episode.

In our Parents Segment, presented by the Stop It Goaltending U app, we talk about why blaming your defence is a poor decision.

It’s something we all do.  It’s not easy to stop – we want our kids to understand that it takes others making mistakes before there  is even a shot on goal. But making excuses and blaming others can lead to a host of other problems  down the road. 

Summary

Today I’m going to give you a very simple bit of advice that is not easy to follow – and might cost me my union card 🙂

Don’t blame the defence

Parents – goalies – please stop blaming the defence after a tough game.

We all do it. Goalies and parents.

After a tough goal or a difficult game we are prone to various complaints….

“Oh Johnny if only you had some defence!”

“Why don’t our forwards ever back check!”

“Sure 8 got by me tonight but come on can I get a little help here?!”

It’s only human nature – we want to minimize the pain of what we’ve been through.  And we know that when someone looks at the score they make assumptions about the goaltending and there’s no Clear Sight Analytics at your kids U13 game to tell the world how tough a nite they had.

So we blame.

We know the other parents, the other fans in the rink love to point out when your goalie has been scored on and we hear the people around us grown or otherwise let their frustrations known when the puck goes in, ignorant of the other five kids out there that have made mistakes that led to the shot on goal in the first place.

So whether under our breath, in the car ride home with our kid or occasionally out load when we’re really frustrated we find others to blame….why didn’t the D lift some sticks in front, if only that kid could skate backwards that forward wouldn’t have had a clear path to the net or whatever.

It’s only natural. As parents as we’ve said before we want our kid to be happy and we hate to see them hurting. So we point out others’ failures to make it clear our kid is not alone in making mistakes out there.

But I’m here to tell you today to not do that. Or at least do it a lot less.

There will be times, Especially when they are younger that you need to explain to your child that they are not the only one who was beaten on a goal. But remember – we want to raise an independent young goaltender. When they go off to play junior hockey in another city they won’t have you to walk them through every difficult performance. We want them to understand the concept that it takes several mistakes before the shot on goal even happens and that they are part of a team. But it’s a skill we want to give them and then we want them to be able to stand on their own.

Do unto others as they say.

You hate hearing people blame the goalie so don’t make things worse by blaming others either.  And we don’t want our child to learn to blame others either.

We still need to own our part of the responsibility

The young goalie who walks from the rink after every game confident nothing is his fault because he had no support out there is not equipped to progress in the game. Like anything in life we need to be able to self-evaluate and understand where we can get better and be able to guide ourselves in taking the steps to improve.  Imagine a co-worker who thinks everything is everyone else’s fault. 

Making up for our teammates mistakes is the job description

If the players in front of you were perfect you would have nothing to do. There would be no shots on goal.

Your job quite simply is to come up with the save when your teammates make a mistake. 

It’s a hard reality that at higher levels in the game a GM will very rarely look at his team giving up a bunch of goals over a long period of time and think “boy my goaltending is great, we really need to find some defence.” Frankly most of them will tell you straight up that they know nothing about goaltending but they know when too many pucks are going in.

I liken it to the old adage that when a team is struggling you can’t change the team so you change the coach.

The next level of that is – you can’t find a bunch of defensemen – but you might be able to find a goalie who can perform and make up for that.

Just like there have been plenty of great coaches fired because they weren’t given the team to win no matter how good a job they do – lots of goalies get changed in junior and pro because even if they are doing a good job – the team needs more.

I’m not trying to be too harsh here – and certainly not suggesting we treat young kids this way – I’m simply pointing out that’s the reality of what you are preparing your child for in the long run. 

So if we can help them to get to the point where they first understand that they are not alone out there when goals happen – but then accept that they still have a role to play on almost all goals – they will grow stronger, they will take more ownership of their game and they will become better goaltenders.

Moreover, I believe that much as Woody always says “tension is the enemy of goaltending” referring to your physical state – I believe this is just as true with your mental game. Learning to accept the situation and play within it – relieves a lot of the mental tension and lets you relax. IT sounds a bit odd but simply knowing…OK, I’m not expecting a lot of help tonight and I know we’re playing a good team…so it is what it is…get to work. Go have fun. 

If you set up a culture of blame your goalie will go out on the ice in a negative mental state. Instead of going out and playing they will be looking at every situation and getting upset…they will see the missed assignments, the turnovers etc. and be blaming before they even get a chance to make a save.

But if they skate out on the ice understanding mistakes happen – more on some teams than others –  but that’s the situation they have – then they can play more freely.

So after the next game please don’t say “Sally you were great out there – if only you had some help.”

Instead try, “I’m really proud of how hard you worked out there and how you battled under some tough circumstances. There were a lot of grade A chances so I know it was a tough game.”

I believe there’s an important difference between those two scenarios. In one case you are shifting blame and responsibility. In the other you are acknowledging it was a difficult night with an objective statement that does not single out anyone else.

“There were a lot of Grade A Chances” acknowledges the situation but does not blame.

We’re here to make up for mistakes and that is never going to change. And your kid will get blamed by others sadly – but if we can avoid the short term fix of blaming others in return then in the long run we will help our goalies make more saves and enjoy the game more.

Want to talk more about this or anything? – [email protected]

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