Pro Drills with Seattle Kraken Prospects
- Keeping the post skate connected during warm-up drills forces goalies to track the puck with their eyes before moving, reinforcing proper tracking habits from the first shot of the day.
- Coachella Valley Firebirds goalie coach Colin Zulianello designed this drill to improve hand range of motion by requiring full rotation from a post-facing stance into a square, save-ready position.
- Adding a movement element — even a simple post hinge — to hand warm-ups is an increasing trend across NHL and AHL goalie coaching staffs, seen with the Oilers, Blues, and now the Kraken organization.
- Prospects Victor Östman and Ales Stezka performed the drill from their feet before progressing, connecting skating warm-ups directly into technical post-play and tracking work.
- The drill simulates a realistic game scenario where a goalie must rotate from a post-sealed position and locate a shot, making it more game-specific than traditional static warm-up shots.
IIt’s common for goalies at the highest levels to warm up with some static shots, often working through glove and blocker saves standing up and then from, or transitioning down to, their knees. Increasingly, however, we’ve seen goalie coaches right up to the NHL try to add some type of movement element to these simple hand warms ups.
InGoal has shared countless examples over the years, including Stuart Skinner and the Edmonton Oilers working through a series of simple pushes before those initial shots from earlier this season, or the St. Louis Blues imitating a face-off play as part of their hand warm up from three years ago. So, when we saw the Coachella Valley Firebirds goalies hinging off their posts as part of their first shots of the day recently, we had to share it.
After going through their skating warm-ups — and we already shared Victor Östman’s edge work routine as part of that from the same day — the goalies took turns working off their posts into the middle before taking a shot to that side from goalie coach Colin Zulianello.
It started with Östman and Ales Stezka working from their feet:
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