354 Parents: Summer Rest

Stop It Goaltending U the app parent segment. Before we get to Hutch, the folks over at Stop It Goaltending U doing some great work.

Do you wanna have twenty five years of NHL goalie experience? Goalie coaching experience even at your fingertips? You wanna tap into the goalie parenting expertise that helped Joey Daccord reach the NHL? That's what you get with a subscription to the Stop It Goaltending U app. All the knowledge from Brian Daccord has been an NHL goalie coach, scout, and director, as well as the insights and expertise from his staff at Stop It, which includes a long list of veteran NCAA coaches, all delivered in easy to digest chunks, including five short daily primers, weekly style analysis, breakdown videos, and drills that you can take onto the ice with your team and coach.

Plus, you get a subscription to InGoal Magazine included. So check it out on the App Store or Google Play and get the best of both worlds with a subscription to Stop It Goaltending U, the app, and a subscription to InGoal Magazine. Hutch.

Let's talk about summer, and let's start with something that's gonna feel, I don't know, for some people, counterintuitive. Your goalie probably doesn't need to be on the ice every week. I know. I know. That's tough for a lot of people.

Every other kid out there seems to be signed up for something and your group chat is going talking about all the different things people are doing. You see Instagram posts, Facebook posts, and in the back of your head, you're hearing, if he's not working, he's falling behind. Here's what I want you to hear. A break is not falling behind. Kevin talked about it today earlier with Jakub Dobes and how he has been a little bit more thoughtful about how he uses his time in the summer.

A break is the work. The mental and physical grind of a hockey season takes a real toll. Rest is not laziness. It's recovery. It's letting the body consolidate everything it's learned.

Goalies who come back from a genuine off season are almost always hungrier, more focused, and more coachable in the fall. Now, one good camp, maybe a couple. Absolutely. Find a really good goalie program. Ideally, somebody who's teaching philosophy you've already researched.

The InGoal Coach Directory is a great place to start. If you want to learn about those programs, just head over to ingoalmag.com. Check out the link there. A focused week or two with a great coach can be really, really valuable. But a camp or two is very different from filling every week, June through August with ice time.

And there's one thing I gently push back on specifically, the player development sessions so many people run. And they need you so they call. We know you want to stay involved. We know you want to have your kids seen by different coaches, but putting a goalie in front of a bunch of players who were just trying to rip pucks, that is not development. That's just target practice.

Your goalie is not a prop for a skater session. Now that said, if your association runs something and skipping it entirely puts you on the wrong side of the politics, well, play the game a little, show up, be visible, be a good community member. Relationships definitely matter in minor hockey and everywhere in hockey. Burning bridges over a summer skate isn't worth it. Just don't mistake participation for preparation.

So give yourself and your goalie permission to step back from the ice a little. Fill that time then with something better. Get them outside, get them moving, but it doesn't have to be in a crease. Baseball, tennis, fitness programs, even one specific for goalies. You've heard us talk about pickleball.

What a great one that wasn't around when I was playing, especially for us beer league guys. Mental reps matter too. Few sessions with a tool like NHL Sense Arena or Vizual Edge, working on your tracking, decision making, cognitive work, those can keep your neural pathway sharp without any physical wear. Think of it as keeping your brain tuned between, you know, between reps, low effort, genuine benefit. And then here's something that doesn't get said enough.

Family time, hikes, bike rides, a trip somewhere, sitting around the fire. These things matter more than we give them credit for. A kid who feels connected, rest, and loved, not defined entirely by their performance and goal is a much more resilient athlete, full stop. Hang out with your friends. Don't have to be hockey friends, just friends.

Do silly things. Do fun things. Have a summer. The goalies who burn out, they usually get there because summer stopped being summer, because the pressure never let up, because someone often with the best of intentions decided the rest was a risk. Rest is not risk.

Rest is part of the plan. So this summer, find a good camper to show up when it matters, then put away the gear, hand them a glove, a racket, take them on a hike, let them sleep in, and when September comes, watch how they skate onto the ice like they actually wanna be there.

I wanna be there. What's what's wrong with with being a target? I keep hearing that that it you just don't wanna be out there being a target.

Well, first off, a lot of guys just hate it and that creates the burnout right there because they can be really miserable sessions, especially when they're, you know, goalie drills where the guys are absolutely ripping from about six feet out or less. So they can be a miserable experience for a lot of goalies who feel like they need to be there because you're not seeing the same scenarios that you see in games. So you're not learning game reads, you're just learning practice reads. And and you've heard Woody go off many a time about how practices aren't friendly to goalies. Well, skill sessions that people run, go double.

And would say, like, we used to rant about this a fair bit, and and doesn't mean you never do it. Part of especially in season, part of your as Hutch mentioned, if the association needs you out there, there are times, yes, in season, it's part of the job. Like, you can't just skip it all the time. And you can find things in drills that aren't goalie friendly. Like, it doesn't mean you just give up.

If you're in your your your team session, team environment, and you've got these not goalie friendly drills, you can't just get mad at it. Find something you can take out of it. That's one thing we've come around on and and stressed a fair bit over the years. Sure. But like Dobes said, don't wanna just be out there endlessly being a target.

I actually had this conversation with as our feature guest coming up, Joshua Ravensbergen, about how much he's on the ice. And, obviously, being out in the North Shore, there are some incredibly skilled professional hockey players at the North Shore Of Vancouver, North Vancouver right now. Think of the Bedards and the Celebrinis and all these guys. And I think he made a comment, same kind of thing, trying to find that balance. You know, if he likes to go to three on three skates and and more of a shinny environment, but understanding that too much of it, you can start to build bad habits.

If it's just all backdoors, backdoors, backdoors, and you start cheating because you have to to make a save against in in that space, in shooters, that elite. And that's where you have to find that balance. But I gotta tell this story share this story that he mentioned because he was skating with Celebrini because they're obviously they're both San Jose Sharks. But Celebrini, this is a this to me says a lot about who he is as a cat or as a he's not is he the captain yet or future captain or whatever he is? Like, he checks in with young draft pick, yet pro going to college, Joshua Ravensbergen during these skates to make sure that it's not too far to one side, that they haven't tipped the scale to the point where it's doing nothing for him as a goaltender.

He actually asks the goalie, and he'll do drills for the goalie on top of the stuff that's for the shooters. And I thought that said so much about Celebrini. And maybe as a goalie, it's okay if you're in these sessions to say, hey, Like, can I get a little time for me? Or, hey. We've we've crossed the line here on on on stuff that actually works for both of us now.

Yeah. Between between shots. Right?

Right.

A chance to reset.

Or even scenarios. Right? Like, if if you as shooters are spending hours taking shots you will not get with time and space you will not get once during a season. Are you actually working on something that applies to your game or to the game? And that's like it it works both ways.

And I know skill work. There are skill elements in there that that can have a benefit because the application is not always at the end a shoot and score scenario, and it's the buildup to that. But putting shooters in an environment that's not realistic to the game is every bet as detrimental to them as it is to the goaltender. Right? So that conversation about having it both ways, I think, matters.

Go back to something. It's been a while since we've discussed this, I think, but that concept of, you should probably only have so many butterflies in your practice week season, talking about limiting the number of butterflies a young goaltender can use in a season, for health reasons, much like pitch counts in baseball. Where do you want to spend that budget of butterflies? Do you want to spend it in one of these skill sessions just mindlessly going through reps or do you want to send it spend it in purposeful sessions with a goaltending coach with a a good practice that set up for everybody's benefit, maybe every now and then need to be a little bit selfish with how you're gonna spend your time for your own health.

Sounds to me like you're talking practice goalies.

See, I've never been the I've never been a three doesn't go into two kinda guy, but

Oh, I love it. So yeah.