306 Parents: Debating which on-ice training method is best

Might yell at him. Give him the old stink eye. Like, you little kid. I'm watching you. We've got our parent segment brought to you by Stop It Goaltending U the app.

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Now you're gonna get a little insight into how my brain works, and maybe we can have a little bit of a conversation. This started from a question from a parent who didn't have access to a lot of ice, lives a long distance from any rink, and had some questions about maximizing training over the summer and the best way to go about things. And that immediately got me thinking about some of the things we've heard about Eric Comrie, Connor Hellebuyck, people like that who've gone to public skates to train with their skating on the ice, and then took it another level further and thought, let's just have a a little debate. What if you could only do one thing on the ice for training in the summer? Which would you choose?

Would you choose the skating, like going to a public skate, working on your goalie drills, maybe going to power skating, working with a goalie coach who does goalie skating? So that's one option. Would you do specific goalie training by going to a camp or working one on one with a coach? Or would you just take gameplay, get involved in the summer league or some scrimmages or whatever? So I put that out to a bunch of our readers on social to see what the, response was, and I thought I would ask what the two of you think as well.

What do you think would be the best way if you were only allowed to do one? Because, obviously, people would choose more than one if they had the chance, but I think it's a fun way of looking at priorities.

What are the options?

Daren, what do you think?

One, two.

So you got one on one with a coach. Well, not necessarily one on one, but specific goalie training.

So, like, working with a goalie coach?

Working with a goalie coach in whatever format, games in, again, whatever format you might have them, or power skating slash goalie skating.

Well, I know what would be my third. It would be power skating

that just Which which is is funny because I assumed almost nobody would choose that because it certainly doesn't sound like a lot of fun. No. But a lot of people chose that one. Really? Yeah.

Because I think they were thinking what's the best way to spend your time if you can only do one thing.

K. Yeah. Fun wise, that's three. Practical wise, I would say two. I'll go I'll go goalie coach, one on one training, skating, and then games.

You gotta give a reason for the goalie coach being your number one.

I'm getting better. I'm getting fine tuned, and, I'm using what little time that I'm on the ice in the most pinpoint and specific way possible to get better.

K. What do what do you think? Well, I'm goalie goalie coaching first because I need all the help I can get. I need somebody to be and this is somebody mentioned this in one of the comments, and I thought it was actually quite smart. The reality is that every goalie coach is gonna start with skating drills.

Yeah. I love when somebody gets you with a technicality. That was a great comment.

So so I'm gonna go into the technicality. Chances are the goalie coach is putting me through skating as part of my routine. But I I just think the fact that comes with an extra set of eyes for me, even though that means it's inherently more expensive because the beauty of the skating is you just need to find ice, and you can as we've talked about with Eric Comrie and Conner Hellebuyck, they just went out to public skates and decreased movement patterns without a coach there to tell me how to get better. I know I'd improve just by repetition, but I want somebody after working with NHL guys in the summer, not as a coach, but just as an observer and watching them work with coaches, the fine details, including in their skating that they work on, That's what I want. So I'm kinda tempted to say skating because I want that, but without that extra set of eyes to help me refine it, I don't know if I'd actually get there. So that's why I'm going goalie coach.

We'll go goalie skating second, and we'll go games third because I do love playing games, but I get enough of them in the winter. If I gotta sacrifice one, it's that. Hutch, what's your what's your pick?

Well, just to have a little fun, I'll I'll go off the board from what the two of you have taken, and I'll I'll take gameplay. And, the reason I'll take gameplay, we talk here a lot about the importance of learning how to read the game. And no matter how well you set up a series of goalie drills, no matter how game like you make them, it's still not the same as reading what happens in an actual game. So I think fight and and more and more, we see kids getting less gameplay as the game the game of hockey becomes more commercialized, and it gets more and more expensive for kids to play. I think you end up in leagues where saving money is a thing, and they end up having fewer and fewer games in the season, and then you're splitting with a partner.

You get a lot of kids during the season that might only see fifteen, twenty games. And, and that's not enough to develop your skill as a goaltender learning to read the game. So I would I would put gameplay in there just to to be a little bit different and see what people think about that, but it really, really depends on the individual. As so many commenters have said, as they've replied here, it depends on the age. It depends on your need.

Do you have a goalie coach with your team? Because if you don't, getting that specific stuff in the summer is huge. I'd I'd love the people who've pointed out that you get your skating from a goalie coach. I I actually threw the skating one in there, guys, because I was curious to see how people respond, and I was encouraged by the number of people that chose it. And the reason they chose the skating, of course, is you can't make a save if you can't get in position to make that save.

It's the most fundamental skill, and, and I I thought it was great how many people chose that one.

Hey. So quick shout out to everybody that did respond. We just posted this on social media yesterday. Some great comments as Hutch mentioned. A couple that I like, Justin Morrison 42.

Three on three, the more chaos, the better. So a little bit of a reflection of sort of some of the work that Devin Levi does in a three on three rink in the summer, understanding that the game is increasingly dynamic. And if you can survive that, you can survive anything. Also, shout out to the theater goer one one three seven who appeared to be sending his note based on the translation from Russia. So always nice to have people chiming in from all over the world.

I apologize if it wasn't Russia. I didn't have a chance to sort of check. It doesn't It

was Russian, and and I answered in Russia, Woody.

You did? Incredible. In

Russian. I did.

Yep. Did

this But

of course, I just used Google Translate to do it, but but I still did it.

This is why he had Tretiak on his, or he was talking with us about Tretiak being on his Mount Rushmore. Probably should be.

I did. It would be hard to not have him on there, guys.

So and shout out also to Steve d thirty nine. He said, how about something completely different than like soccer or baseball or something else? Burnout is a real thing. Not every goalie wants to be in your net all year, which takes us back to last week's parent segment. And to crazyyankee61 Sense Arena, best bang for your buck.

You're not gonna get any goalie skating, but you can get a lot of gameplay like situations and no shortage of drills. And thanks to their gap program, the new one that we just reviewed over at InGoal mag.com, you also get coaching.

That's awesome stuff. That's like, the coaching side of it, you you will never run out of. Right? That that's the part that you need to feel you, just to get you inspired a little bit, give you a boost, give you a kick, give you some some guidance.

Yeah. It's the other reason I chose coaching as opposed to goalie skating because I just go out there and not work hard enough without somebody cracking the web. I'm inherently lazy. And and, I mean, a good

point about the skating guys, and, obviously, you can come to a place like InGoal and find lots of great skating drills and lots of great tips around them. But simply going out and skating without some instruction, without some intent to what you're doing, you're not necessarily gonna get better. It's not a question of you do more, you get better. It's not practice makes perfect, but practice makes permanent. So having the guidance of a coach to make sure that that footwork is drilled in in in the best way possible, efficiency of movement, is really important.

So if you can get it through specific work with a coach who can guide that, I think that's great. I mean, Eric Comrie, we bring up all the time as an example of somebody who used what little access to ice he had to get out there in public skates and work on his footwork, but he was guided by coach James Jensen, who was on on the ice with him doing that. So, yep, make sure you follow some good teaching, and, ideally, we do as many of these things as we can. And we also as somebody else pointed out in the comments, and I wanna thank them is give yourself a break. It's, it's okay to take a break.

It's not that we're advocating here that summer must be training, training, training. We're just having a a fun little look at, what if you had to make a decision.