Pro Tips (and Drills) with Thomas Speer

InGoal Magazine spent a morning with San Jose Sharks goalie coach Thomas Speer and his team at Pacific Coast Goaltending at their recent camp in Seattle for what turned into a three-drill session focused on being able to better manage breakaways and shootouts.

The focus for this three-station session was born out of goalies at the camp struggling during a shootout competition in the second on-ice session the previous afternoon. It started with Speer, who has been with the Sharks for three seasons and recently was part of the American team that won gold at the World Championships for the first time since 1933, walking the kids through his keys to managing breakaways before rotating through three drills, each with a different key and focal point related to the skills required.

You can watch the overview in Part 1, which published last week and included the first of three drills, but the message was clear: breakaways are an important skill.

“Breakaways in a game, that’s winning hockey time,” Speer said. “That’s when you can get that momentum for your team. When you make that save your whole bench is ‘let’s go.’ When you make that save, they say ‘we’ve got a chance, we owe the goalie, we’ve got to go fight for him,’ so we’re going to talk about how we can be better making those saves.”

The first drill we shared focused on timing and matching speed. This second drill is all about getting good rotation and forward hand protection on the lateral push but much like the first one, Speer starts by talking about making that push outside the post and why: