Kochetkov Opens 9-0 for a Hurricanes Record, Inside the Goggles NHL Goalies Train In

NHLWhy close to 20 NHL goalies are training with their peripheral vision blocked

Trac Optics goggles take away what a goalie sees at the edges and down low, so the only way to find the puck is to get the head and eyes pointed at it. Goaltending coach Lyle Mast designed them, and they go under the mask, on the ice or off it. Kevin Woodley reports on NHL.com that close to 20 goalies on seven NHL teams now use them, after about three years of prototypes, and that vision specialist Josh Tucker, who has worked with 40 NHL goalies, has been giving them to clients for two years.

The teasing comes with the gear. “Get chirped all the time,” said Rangers goalie Dylan Garand, and Calgary’s Devin Cooley hears “lots of ‘Batman.'” Boston’s Michael DiPietro tells his off-season shooters: “Guys, trust me, it makes my life way harder but (when) I take these off, I can actually see the puck way better.” For Cooley, the payoff is posture: “they force you to keep your head down and keep your weight forward.” Flames goaltending coach Jason LaBarbera, who has Cooley and Dustin Wolf use them in crease-movement drills, says: “I’m not in their eyes, so I can’t see what they’re seeing but they certainly like it” (NHL.com, Kevin Woodley).

The idea behind them is what Mast calls head trajectory, and he and former NHL goalie Devan Dubnyk laid it out on InGoal Radio Episode 369 in September. Dubnyk’s short version of the sequence he teaches: “it’s look first and look down and then move.” He also called the goggles the fix for what he found hardest over a full NHL season, keeping his tracking consistent.

On InGoal: Devan Dubnyk and Lyle Mast: The Science of Head Trajectory (Ep. 369), Devin Cooley’s Pro Reads, and Dylan Garand’s Pro Reads.

NHLAround the league

• John Gibson stopped Frank Nazar on a penalty shot with the game tied in the second period on Thursday, and Detroit pulled away to beat Chicago 4-1. Gibson finished with 18 saves (Red Wings).
• Mackenzie Blackwood played his 300th NHL game on Wednesday, stopping 20 of 22 shots in Colorado’s 5-2 win over New Jersey, the team he started his career with (OHL).
• Nico Daws, who came to Winnipeg in the Connor Hellebuyck trade, played his first game as a Jet on Thursday, stopping all nine Tampa Bay shots in the third period (NHL.com).

On InGoal: The Backup Mindset: Mackenzie Blackwood Learned From Cory Schneider.

PWHLFrankel built her goalie camp around the female coaches she never had

When Aerin Frankel started her goalie camp in Boston in 2022, she had her own childhood in mind. “I never had a female goalie coach growing up that I could look up to,” the Boston Fleet goalie told PEOPLE’s Sean Neumann. The camp is three days on the ice with about 40 goalies, and turnout has more than doubled since the first year, with plenty of campers coming back. Boys can sign up too, but the point, she said, “was to just have female coaches around.” Her verdict: “It’s honestly one of the things I just take a lot of pride in” (PEOPLE, via Yahoo Sports).

On InGoal: Lenny Mosca: Coaching PWHL MVP Aerin Frankel with the Boston Fleet (Ep. 372) and No Weird Tricks Required: Aerin Frankel and the Power of Goalie Basics.

CollegePayne stops all 40 at Syracuse, Debnarova makes 37 in a 0-0 tie with No. 11 UConn

Delaware is in its second season of NCAA hockey, and on Thursday Charlotte Payne gave it a 1-0 road win over Syracuse with 40 saves. The Orange outshot the Blue Hens 40-14, and the only goal came from Wren Abboud at 9:02 of the third period (College Hockey News box score).

In Worcester, Holy Cross freshman Livia Debnarova held No. 11 UConn off the board for 65 minutes, 37 saves in all and 15 of them in the first period, for her second shutout of the season. UConn took the extra Hockey East point in a four-round shootout (Holy Cross). At the other end, UConn’s Taylor Belchetz, whose 43-save shutout was in our Oct. 5 edition, stopped all 14 shots she faced.

Around the NCAA

• Maggie Hatch made 30 saves in Robert Morris’s 4-0 win over Lindenwood on Thursday (College Hockey News box score).

U SPORTSWestern's Liam Sztuska stops all 36 in a 2-0 win at Laurier

Liam Sztuska stopped all 36 shots in Western’s 2-0 win at Laurier on Thursday. Ben Campeau and Darius Bachler scored 35 seconds apart in the first period, and Sztuska held on the rest of the way as Laurier outshot the Mustangs 36-28 (U SPORTS box score).

International16-year-old Yakov Kazantsev is the youngest goalie to play in the KHL

Yakov Kazantsev was 16 years and 335 days old when he came on for Lokomotiv Yaroslavl late in Thursday’s 6-2 home win over Sochi, and the KHL says no younger goalie has played in the league. He took over from Alexei Melnichuk with about five minutes to go and made a couple of saves, wearing No. 22 (76.ru).

InternationalHellberg, Blomgren, and Schlegel in Sweden and Switzerland

Around Europe

• Magnus Hellberg weathered HV71’s best spell in the first period and finished with 28 saves in Djurgårdens IF’s 3-0 win on Thursday (Hockeysverige).
• Oskar Blomgren stopped all 30 shots as Malmö Redhawks won 3-0 at Rögle BK on Thursday in Sweden’s SHL (SHL).
• Niklas Schlegel made 27 saves in HC Lugano’s 4-0 home win over Lausanne HC on Thursday in Switzerland’s National League (National League).

JuniorRyerson Leenders, 20, wins his 100th OHL game

Owen Sound’s Ryerson Leenders reached 100 career OHL wins with a 28-save night in a 4-3 home win over Sarnia on Wednesday. He is the ninth goalie in league history to get there, and the win put him in a tie with Adam Dennis and Jacob Oster for seventh on the all-time list (OHL). Leenders is from Nanticoke, Ontario, was a seventh-round pick of the Buffalo Sabres in 2024, and also played for Mississauga and Brantford before a June trade to the Attack (Wikipedia).

Also in the OHL

• Brantford’s Vilmer Salén Forsberg is the only goalie named so far to Team CHL for the Dec. 1-2 CHL USA Prospects Challenge against the U.S. National Under-18 Team in Chicoutimi and Québec City. The 6-foot-6 Swede, the first import goalie in Bulldogs history, is 6-2-0-1 with a .931 save percentage in his first OHL season (OHL). His profile was in our Oct. 3 edition.
• Windsor’s Michael Newlove, 19, stopped all 27 Erie shots in a 3-0 home win on Thursday (Windsor Spitfires).

HistoryErin Whitten, the first woman credited with a goalie win in men's pro hockey, 33 years ago today

On this day in 1993, Erin Whitten of the ECHL’s Toledo Storm came on in the second period for the injured Alain Harvey with the game tied. She stopped 15 of 19 Dayton shots, Toledo won 6-5, and the win went to her, the first for a woman in goal in men’s professional hockey (The Associated Press). Whitten, now Erin Whitten Hamlen, was also the U.S. national team’s starting goalie from 1992 to 1997, with four World Championship silver medals (Wikipedia).

Also on Oct. 30

• 1943: Hall of Famer Bill Durnan played his first NHL game, a 2-2 tie for Montreal against Boston.
• 1965: Hall of Famer Eddie Giacomin won his first NHL game, with 30 saves for the Rangers in Boston.
• 1975: Hall of Famer Rogie Vachon earned his 30th regular-season shutout, 21 saves for Los Angeles against Pittsburgh.
• 1991: Patrick Roy played his 300th regular-season game and won it, with 22 saves for Montreal against Winnipeg.
• 1996: Mike Richter played his 300th regular-season game and stopped 53 of 54 shots in a Rangers win in New Jersey. Three years later to the day, in 1999, he played his 500th, in Montreal.
• 2003: Marc-Andre Fleury, 18, earned his first NHL shutout, 20 saves for Pittsburgh in Chicago.
• 2008: Roberto Luongo earned his 40th regular-season shutout, 28 saves for Vancouver in Los Angeles.

The NHL game details in this list come from the NHL’s game records at NHL Records.

On InGoal: InGoal Radio Episode 300 with Marc-Andre Fleury and InGoal Radio Episode 200 with Roberto Luongo.

BirthdaysMontembeault

Happy birthday to Montreal Canadiens goalie Samuel Montembeault (30), a World Championship gold medallist with Canada in 2023.

New on InGoalA first-shot goal isn't automatically a bad goal

We looked at all 67,422 first shots NHL starters have faced since 1997-98. They stopped .931 of them against .908 on all shots, but the first shot tends to be an easier one, the fair bar today is about .922, and a first-shot goal says very little about how the rest of the game will go. Read: A first-shot goal is not automatically a bad goal.

Have goalie news, a big save, a signing, or a coaching hire? Send it to news@ingoalmag.com.