The Mindset of Elite Goalies (Ian Clark): The Last Line Episode 4

Welcome back to The Last Line with Ian Clark presented by InGoal Magazine and From the Crease, the new app designed to bring Ian's more than quarter century of goalie coaching experience and expertise to goalies all over the world. I'm Kevin Woodley from InGoal Magazine, and joining me as he will episode every episode, this is number four. Ian Clark, former goaltending coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets, Vancouver Canucks. He's worked overseas. He's worked all over the world.

He's worked with some of the biggest names in goaltending. And each episode, we're gonna get together at the last line and talk about some of the trends, stories around the league now, your history in the game. We're gonna take some questions from you, the listeners. We're getting better at that. Reminder, the last line at ingold mag dot com is the email.

If you've got questions you want answered from me and Clark, send them along. If you've got questions you want answered from me, let's be honest, nobody does. So send them for you. All roads lead to beer league. If you ask me questions, that's where you'll end up too.

Last episode, we talked a lot about Sergei Bobrovsky, one of your former pupils. Towards the end, we were talking about skate edges. And I'm reminded of a story about his build mindset and summers and how like, he won the Vezina Trophy, and he didn't just say, okay. We're done. I'm going home.

You guys had, like, a little research project. Can you can you walk me through that story?

So yeah. So Bob Sergei, I was, of course, blessed to have had the opportunity to work with this goaltender, and, it wasn't just one year. Every year, Sergei would depart from the season. He would take a brief period to decompress, and he would then immediately you know, he would come to me and he'd be like, okay, Clarke. What are we gonna do next?

What's our next project? How how are we gonna take a step? So the the the story you're referring to was literally within a matter of a week two weeks of winning his first Vezina Trophy. And he called me. He said, Clark, you have an idea.

And I said, okay. Bob, what's what's the idea? He goes, I know how we're gonna get better for next year. This this is the goal. I've just won the Vezina Trophy.

Ultimate example of build mindset.

Yes. And I said, okay. Sergei, tell me your idea. He's like, how about we do this? We'll take the five best goalies in hockey.

This is coming from the Vezina Trophy winner.

The best goalie in hockey by definition. Right.

We're gonna take the identify the five best goalies. We'll study them, and we'll steal one thing from each one of them. And that's the kind of you know you know, people might think, well,

everybody else trying to steal from you.

Right. But that's the mindset he had. How can I grow? We all often talked about having a limitless skyscraper. You're just always adding another stairwell to the skyscraper.

What stairwell or what flight of stairs are we gonna add next? So he came to me and he asked me that. So we identified the goalies.

Oh, are you willing to share the five goalies that he identified as the five best in

the game?

Well, he didn't.

We did it we did it jointly. I I don't even remember exactly. But it was

a cop out to me.

No. No. I'll give you some names. I'll give you some names. You know the time frame that that would have been?

Yeah. I'm trying to think because

I'm gonna say it was probably 2012, 2013 maybe.

Around there. Yeah. Yeah.

So, Carey Price. Okay. K? I'm certain he was on that. Absolutely.

I am thinking Henrik Lundqvist. Yeah. I can see that. Pekka Rinne. Yep.

Tuukka Rask.

Yes. All very unique. Jonathan Quick, too, in how they did it. There you go.

Okay. We got a list. That I I don't know if that was a they got

a list. But that they're all unique. Of course. Like like but very unique.

Yeah. All great goalies are unique.

There you go.

So they so we identified these five goalies, and, of course, it was my task. You got you got to do the homework. I got to do Bob went to Maldives. I got to work the video. So, anyways, we we we I got to work on this and and, you know, watched, you know, a handful of games of each goaltender to see if, you know, something really stepped out at me.

And, of course, lots did, and it was a it was actually a wonderful experience, to be honest with you, and very interesting. And one of the things that came out of it, though, which might be shocking and surprising because all those goalies probably would have been characterized as largely butterfly goalies.

Right.

Every goalie, every one of those goalies in every game I watched had some standing saves, which is in retrospect, it's not surprising to me. But at the time, it was really interesting. What absolutely cemented in my brain was the power of patience.

K.

The power of neutrality.

We talked about that in one of the early app. We define neutrality in one of

the earlier episodes. And so and and the power you know, from a reactive standpoint, the importance of patience. So, you know, I actually coming out of that project, I do a lot of talent evaluation, obviously, scouting and and what have you. And I I actually look for that now, and have for a number of you know, for well over a decade now. And but it is you know, if I see a goaltender making some, I say some because, of course Can't make them all.

No. Largely, you're gonna go down. Yeah. So some standing saves. I I am watching the goalies.

I'm watching their are they premeditating a down move, or do they actually have true patience? Because if I have true patience and there's nobody, say, around me and there's no other complication or dynamic and maybe it's a long shot, why wouldn't I just stand up and catch that puck or knock it away or whatever? Every one of these goalies had some standing saves in every single game I watched. And so we came with that in mind and based on our research project, which was what can we steal, we started building drills that actually supported that mindset.

Okay. So it's not like you're gonna tell Sergei Bobrovsky to stand up on everything. No. But you started to build drills that had components where he was making say like, walk me through, like, when you say we built drills out like that so that he would make some standing saves. Walk me through what that looks like.

Well We're talking about warm ups? We're talking about warm ups one, two, three, high

Yes. And down. Well, that and but and and to be to be clear, Bob would stand up on some

He already did.

He already did. K? But it was an important maintenance element for Bob. K. Or, you know, and and and, of course, I've carried that forward since then.

So, you know, designing drills and allowing, you know, allowing a lot of times we watch goalies and they're they're standing up in practice and they're never going down. We're like, wow. That's a lazy goalie. They're not following all of the habits and they're not playing it like a game. They're, you know, they're they're they're strategizing it or they're whatever.

The reality of it is, some standing saves do have value because it's a great indicator of patience on the feet of a game mixing in. And for us at the time, was about maintaining that blend or balance in the game and nourishing that patience. And so it was almost symbolic more than it was anything else. Like, can imagine if you're doing drills that incorporate some standing saves, there's a symbolically, you're it's kind of embedding in your subconscious that that's okay. You know?

This is not a cheat. It's not a laziness. It's okay to make some standing saves. So for example, you mentioned one two three. It was a drill that I created a long time ago, and and it's called one two three.

And it's

and it's warm primarily warm up on a game day. I've seen you do it with goalies here in Vancouver, Demko, all pretty much all of them.

All all all basically, every goalie

Right.

Incorporated this simple drill. It's very simple. Basically, it's three shots to the glove. First shot, the goalie will stand on. It has to be catchable.

Right. First shot will be shot. It has to be it can be here, up high. It could be a scoop down depending on the situation. It has to be catchable.

Shot to the glove, you stand. Second shot to the glove, you can go down or you will go down. And the third one, you will stay down because, of course, we need to be able to make saves from our feet. We need to be able to make saves going down, and we need to be able to make saves from our knees. So just symbolically, one, two, three, shot to the glove standing, shot to the glove going down, shot to the glove staying down, you might do three sets of that.

Then you do the same on the blocker side. One standing, two going down, three staying down. And it's just a warm up drill. It's good visual tracking. And and while it's good, it's good handwork.

It's good, you know, all those things. And symbolically and innately, it's embedding some patience in your game. It's funny

because I I I used to wonder that. I'd watch all these drills, and there are lot of goalies that do a similar type drill for more of the NHL. And I'd wonder why they were making saves standing up, or actually, I'd even wonder why they were working on their hands from their knees repetitively when most of the saves we make in a game are transitioning from stance to knees to butterfly and making saves with the hands. So, it's a group great sort of outline of why we do that. Do you mix it into other parts of drills?

I guess one you mentioned there, and this might be good for young kids. We we all have those experiences in practice where it's just coming fast and furious. And and keeping up to it would be impossible. So you can either complain that the drills and the shots are coming too fast. You can stop trying, or you can go to your goal line.

Well, what you can do is find a way to make the best of your environment.

Right.

Now I'm gonna bring a name out on the table here.

Okay.

Who I spent multiple years with and was and Sergei and I spent multiple years with, John Tortorella. Okay. And Torts was a coach that believed very, you know, in high pace, high energy out of the gate. His practices were just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it was shot, shot, shot, shot, shot, high tempo, high pace, high accuracy.

And at the end of the day, what ended up on that, he wasn't really too concerned about. He was worried about the pace. He was worried about the ignition out of practice for the whole group. And so we found a way how do you know, so often we're told as goalies, you gotta follow every rebound. You gotta, you know, honor the save process.

You gotta have the great habits, all these things. But the reality is your practice environment doesn't always account for that for the goalie. Right. And so what we've said was, okay. You know, Torts is gonna do that.

That's his thing. He's the head coach. That's his domain.

Right.

So what can we do to find a benefit in there? And so one of the things we would do is we would for maybe for the first component of the first set of the drill, we would be right out in position doing our thing. Maybe for this you know, and it was coming so fast and furious, and Sergei Bobrovsky is one of the best conditioned goaltending athletes in the world.

Right.

And it was a lot for him even. So what we've found what we found was was really helpful is let's drop back to our goal line, and let's use our hands hands, your number three anatomical behind eyes and feet. Eyes, feet, hands, in that order. Those are your three top anatomicals. Let's go back, and let's work our hands.

Let's work those quick twitch reactions. And and, you know, we're not going down every time. We're not following every rebound, but we're gaining a benefit from that. Then it also conserved a little bit of energy as well, then boom, right back out, away we go again. So it's kind of the same thing.

It was just about bringing some balance to what we were doing, you know, just like one, two, three, having balance between reacting from feet, going down, staying down, all these types of things. And then, you know, in practice, to ensure that we were finding a benefit from whatever environment we were presented with because we don't get to control our team team practice environment as you well know. And so we want you know, as a as a build mindset goalie, I want to find a way to use these reps to my benefit. And I will say this too. The one skill that can be executed on every single prep shot in practice.

There's only one. K? Only one. And that is visual tracking of the puck. It doesn't matter.

K?

And that's You were talking about hands, and I was thinking the eyes as an anatomical would be part of that drill

too. Right. So every no. So that shot is boom. Boom.

And and and you're tracking that puck, so you're getting that you know, you're there's lots of ways to turn your environment into a productive growth mindset environment regardless of what, you know, is is at first glance, maybe not goalie friendly.

I was just gonna say, like, have you dealt with that in other situations? I mean, that's that's like, this happens at the NHL level. This is this is a Vesna Trophy winning goaltender in a situation where practice isn't necessarily for him or about him. We've heard, and at Ingle, we've fallen victim to it. I remember over the years writing about this a little bit, like, how, you know, there's there's just so much practice that isn't good for the goalies or it's not about the goalies.

And we hear goalies, younger goalies complain and say, like, that's just not realistic. I don't wanna do that drill. It's not realistic. Finding ways to make it to your benefit is a skill. Like, and, like, you reverse engineered that one.

Can you think of any other examples where times in practice, a different way to get something out of it?

Well, think of, for example, sometimes, you know, for the purpose of system play.

Right.

You know, again, your head coach has domain over that practice plan.

It's not just all about us. Right? The other stuff matters.

Not. And and so let's use, for example, coach wants to see real crisp execution on a breakout. K. And there's no defensive pressure. It's a five on o breakout, and you're gonna go down the ice and effectively face a five and o breakaway.

Right.

And you we've all seen this, and we've seen

Right after the NHL. Yes.

We've seen different reactions by different goalies. And I'm gonna name and put another name out there on the good side of the equation.

Good. We'll keep it positive.

Yes. But, you know, we've seen those situations where and and you referenced it already, goalie saying, well, that's not realistic. That's unfair. Whatever. Whatever.

So that five one o comes down and the pass goes cross net, and they put it back the opposite side again. And it's a, you know, across the net twice, three times, and they put in the empty net and the goalie's sitting there with their hands in there. Like, you know, that's that's absurd.

That's absurd. Tic tac toe.

Yep. And and basically give in on the play.

Yeah.

Now there was a goalie that I knew, and I had the, again, the the the great opportunity to work with him with Team Canada. And this goalie's name was Marc-Andre Fleury. Incredible goaltender, incredible career. The more challenging what he was presented with. K?

One of the most infectious, positively infectious people, players you're ever gonna encounter. He welcomed the challenge. And the harder the moment, the more seemingly absurd the moment, the bigger the smile went onto his face because his attitude was, okay. No problem. Let's go.

Let's compete. So they we transform those moments. Maybe technically, maybe they're not perfect game realistic situations, but can we tackle that moment maybe with some of the intangibles? Maybe go play with your teammates and have some fun with them. Maybe work on your compete and your instincts and and and finding those creative challenging solutions that are ultimately the game turning saves that bring your teammates to their feet on the bench.

How are we gonna ever develop those if every time there's a challenge, we say that's unfair or that's absurd?

It's a great way of thinking it. And and, again, these elements that you talk about compete being one, the goalie IQ, because you have to solve that equation. Sometimes it's just compete. Sometimes it's fun in different ways. Right.

Sometimes it's a combination of the two. Those are part of your seven foundations of elite goaltending. Like, they're they're important skills. So instead of saying, this sucks.

Right.

This isn't realistic. If you you can find a way to, like, going back on the goal line is a way to sort of manage it from a tactical standpoint and work on something like your hands. Mhmm. Just competing like crazy and having fun with it, you're still developing skills that are important. You're nourishing those things.

Right. And the thing that also comes out of that is your teammates love you. It's always it's always a bit of a downer when the goalie is complaining. You're the backbone of the team. You are the the strength of the team.

So own that. Embrace it. Relish it. Wrap your arms around that and tackle those challenging moments with positivity and compete and and take that approach. And what's gonna happen is your teammates are gonna wanna go to war for out in front of you and battle for you, and you're gonna get a subliminal benefit out of that too.

The smile while you're doing it is important too. And we've had I talked to Filip Gustavsson recently about the lessons he learned having Marc-Andre Fleury as a partner, and he talked about how as his career went on and became a job Mhmm. You know, you start to become a professional and there's expectations and you get pay. Flurry just reminded him that it's still a game and to go have fun with it. And that mindset was a major shift for him, and it's, you know, it's a good reminder that even at the National Hockey League level, like, these guys get challenged with the same type of drills you hate in Bantam, and the ones that find unique solutions to it and ways to enjoy it are typically the ones that have more success.

Right. I was talking recently with a longtime colleague, I guess you would call it, Mitch Korn, one of the legendary goalie coaches in the history of the game. And we were talking about the commonalities of elite goalies. And for him, there was two. It's real simple stuff.

K? And you gotta remember, Mitch coach, Dominik Hasek. Yes. Pekka Rinne. Tomas Vokoun, Pekka Rinne.

Braden Holtby. Yep. You know? Juuse Saros.

Juuse Saros. Incredible, unique goalies. You know? And then and we were we were talking about and kinda comparing notes and, you know, you think about Roberto Luongo, Sergei Bobrovsky, Jacob Markstrom, Thatcher, very different goalies.

Yeah.

And the reality is the great ones are always unique. That's one of the reasons they're great. But we were talking about the commonalities. Two, absolutely love to play. And number two, out of this world competitiveness.

Like, level, not just like go to the Webster dictionary and figure out what compete is defined as. No. We're talking about out of this world competitiveness in nature. And that's what you know, even though they were ultra unique, those are the commonalities. You gotta love to play.

As a goalie coach, and I think I would refer people back to episode one too, there are ways to get that out of goalies, like the competitiveness. Like, some of it's somewhat innate. Mhmm. But there are ways to make sure that it's not lost. There are ways to maintain it, to encourage it, to nurture it through the way you structure your drills.

And I would I would encourage people to go back to the first episode of the last line with me and Ian, which wasn't quite as clean as this one, but we got to a lot of different topics, and that was one of them. So make sure you go back and check that out. Okay. So that was great. But we agreed.

Less of me, more of you, more of the listeners. More questions. More questions.

Right. For me, not you.

Yes. A 100%. Because nobody really wants to know how to get to beer league and how to be a below average beer league goalie. But if you ever do, hit me up. This is a question from Ty Party on stance.

And I didn't write it down exactly, so I'm just I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit, Ty. But, basically, the question was along the lines of, do you tell goalies to engage their core to stay upright? Find when I do multi shuffle plays, and I think he said I, but doing multi shuffle plays, there's a tendency to sink. And so how do you approach that? Do you talk about that on because your guys do a lot of shuffling.

You talk about the reverse track, a lot of shuffles back down to the post Mhmm. As a as a tactic. Do you think of it from a physiological in terms of the core, or how do you approach that when you're talking to goalies?

Well, let me first of all say, I am a big advocate of balanced deployment of your lateral tools. So I'm not a primary shuffle guy. There's some of those out there. I'm a big believer in balancing your shuffle work, k, with your t push work.

Right.

However, let's get on to Ty's question.

Okay. So But a reverse track is a bunch of shovels down to the post.

Right? That is a track down.

Track down. See Reverse tracking. There, folks. We need to see, again, fire up the glossary. Reverse tracking is with one skate on each post.

Correct. Got it.

And remember now. Yeah.

Track down. Play down the wall

Yeah.

Incremental footwork, round to clean entry to post.

There we go. Track down, not reverse track. We've got that. Fire up the goalie glossary. Make sure you check that out at From the Crease.

They're gonna have a glossary of all these terms. Let's get back to Ty, Lessemi, Moravyin.

So I don't reference it as Ty has phrased the question. I do talk a lot about athletic posture. And so maybe, you know, that's tying in a little bit here. Tie. Tying.

And the and my and my so as you know, Kevin, I'm a big proponent of a multistance system.

Right.

Goalies have multiple stances. K? And we wanna craft our stances to serve specific game function. So if I'm in a preparational mode and I need preparational function, I'm typically gonna be a little bit higher up, a little bit less flexed, a little bit narrower, k, in order to have high mobility and big presentation. Right.

As the play, if I'm a little bit uncertain, well, let's go to the obvious one. If I'm getting ready to make a save, I'm probably gonna be in fuller stance, a little bit wider, a little bit lower, k, a little bit more explosive in in a save function kind of mindset and physiology. And then if I'm somewhere in between, I'm a little bit uncertain. I'll give you an example. You've got Connor McDavid rolling on your right flank.

If I lock in on full stance, low stance on Connor McDavid, there's a very high likelihood he's gonna find a guy on the opposite flank named Leon Draisaitl.

Right.

And you're probably not gonna get over there because you're locked in full stance.

Now I probably skated to the bench five minutes ago, but yes.

You didn't get the start, actually. The now if I'm too high Right. In that moment, Connor McDavid's probably gonna take advantage of that and say, we'll just snap a shot here, and he doesn't look like he's functionally ready to make this save. Right. And Leon's not gonna get a point on the play.

Okay. He probably made the first pass anyways.

You're probably right. And so in that case, I might use something we would refer to as middle stance so that we have some safe function and some preparation function. And so but regardless of those stances, you need athletic posture because you're doing an athletic endeavor here. The goaltending is a very athletic endeavor. And so when we say athletic posture, there is form.

You know, these aren't sloppy, lazy, casual. Your body is engaged.

I was just gonna say you and and, you know, again, you don't think of it in terms of how Tai asked it, but you're probably needing core engagement to hold all three of those posture.

Right.

So your posture isn't sinking, Tai, as you come down necessarily just because of your core.

Right. And but I would say this about core because core is one of the physiological pillars to great goaltending. And so, you know, whether that's the rotational elements of goaltending. K? Because if you don't have strong core, you're gonna lose control of your hands on rotation as an example.

K? And in general terms, coming back, I think

swinging. Of course. We call

it anatomical conflict because a goaltender sometimes the goaltender's needs don't align with the physio normal physiological things that like the reverse position or some of these positions are not things that the human body wants to do. Right. And so often on rotation, for example, as that rotation comes around, the hands will swing back the opposite way. Not only does that affect rotate performance because it can affect their rotation bringing it up short, it can block the visual on that side, and I don't have a hand available if there's a quick play at the neck.

Yeah. You're I

need that hand and support we talked about.

Counterrotating last step. Swung it the other way. Right.

Right. And so core, k, helps support hand and arm stability and rotation. In addition, you know, I think we can you know, most people in the physiological realm of things are gonna tell you that, you know, power comes from the center or strength comes from the center. You know, if you drop a a pebble into a pond, you get the rings emanating out, and the bigger and the the highest one is gonna be in the middle. So, you know, a lot a goal I I cannot overemphasize the importance of core strength and stability to the goaltending position for all of these reasons and no doubt, Thais.

I I wouldn't say to a goalie necessarily, hey. Make sure you got an active core here. We're you know, that's it's kind I think that that would be more of a common physiological term associated with athletic posture and play.

In a lot of sports. And

Right. Right. And so, you know, I don't have I I I don't have a I don't have a problem with the phrasing of the question. I would prob I would phrase it a little bit differently, but I get what he's what can I say?

To the at the end of the day, Ty, if you recognize that that sinking, sitting, dropping as you're trying to maintain that tall, narrow stance isn't what you want, whether it's the core or maybe some leg things, like, there there's probably a need to do some strengthening work to make sure you can maintain that when you wanna be in that stance and recognize the transition and when you wanna be in the other one as in talk about through the three different stance systems. I haven't asked you this yet. I assume because I know that from the Crease the app, which is one of the presenting sponsors of this show and and and has all these different elements, is there a training physiological element in there as well?

Right. So every module so FTC is modular based.

Right.

There are eight modules per year. Every module has six lessons. And the lessons, obviously, are have different themes every time. But there are six categories of lesson. The first one is always called the foundation.

These are the foundational elements of the position. It does not matter if you're a beginner or young goaltender or you're a national hockey league goalie. Kobe Bryant always talked about never get bored with the basics.

Right.

And the reality of it is the basics, the foundational elements of the position, k, are fundamental to success at any level of play. The second one is called tactical advantage. It is about the strategies of gameplay. We can do all the technique in the world. At the end of the day, k, gameplay is not about technique.

Right.

Technique serves some elements of it. But at the end of the day, k, there is so much more to the goaltending position than technique, which is the seven ingredients to elite level goaltending that we've talked about. The third one is called leading edge skills. These are the next frontier of goaltending. Okay?

These are the skills that are gonna take the position forward. And And we've seen this over the course of our time together over the last thirty years of goaltending and seeing the advancement of the position. And that's what happens in that particular lesson. The fourth in every module is called goaltender physiology.

There we go.

So there it is. Okay? And I'll just quickly say the fifth is called the mental game because we know the importance of the mind in goaltending and any athletic endeavor, really. And the sixth lesson in every module is called the journey. And it is perspective driven content either internally generated or through experts that are outside of FTC.

Including we mentioned him in this show. I had talked to him earlier this week, and I understand he's gonna provide one of them, the legend himself. Mitch? Mitch Korn.

Mitch Korn. Yes. Mitch Korn is is is contributing. Roberto Luongo has contributed. Curtis McElhinney has contributed.

We have, you know, just incredible contributions that are gonna support the journey of goaltenders as they embark on their career.

So to rewind it back to four, the physiology Mhmm. Some training and exercises within that, like different things for different levels and

All lessons. K.

And tied to what we're Right. In that module.

All lessons with the exception of the journey have activities or drills.

And, Ty, I'm pretty sure there's gonna be some court work in there even if that's not necessarily what he would have said.

That would be module two. That would be module two.

See. There we go. Alright. Module two. This is episode four of the last line.

I'm Kevin Woodley from Mingle Magazine, Ian Clark from From the Crease. Thank you for your questions, Ty. That was awesome. We'll get to lots more of those as we move along. Again, the whole goal here is, and we're only far in, less me, more you.

Send those questions to The Last Line, all one word, the last line at ingoal mag dot com. We'll make sure we get them answered for you in a future episode.