Steve Valiquette

Steve Valiquette grew up in Bolton, Ontario, an hour north of Toronto, and spent his age-16 summer making the pre-dawn drive into the city five days a week to train at the Jim Park Goalie School. His father would wake him at 5 a.m., load him into a cube van, and let him sleep on a cot in an office before he hit the ice at 8 o'clock. Valiquette has pointed to that summer as his biggest year of growth as a goaltender Pro Tips with Steve Valiquette Analytics Founder Believes Compete (and Journaling) Crucial.

Selected by the New York Rangers in the eighth round, first pick of that round, in the 1996 NHL Draft, the Etobicoke-born, left-catching netminder stands 6-foot-6 and played 46 NHL games over the course of his career, posting 16 wins, 14 losses, 5 overtime losses, a 2.74 goals-against average, a .905 save percentage, and 4 shutouts. Nearly all of that NHL work came with the Rangers before he finished his playing career in Europe.

After retiring in 2012, Valiquette founded Clear Sight Analytics, an organization built around the use of numbers to understand hockey. InGoal Magazine has covered Steve Valiquette in two InGoal articles.

On the InGoal Radio Podcast, the subject of which was later covered by InGoal Pro Tips with Steve Valiquette Analytics Founder Believes Compete (and Journaling) Crucial, Valiquette discussed both the data side of his post-playing work and the competitive habits he believes are essential for any goaltender trying to reach a high level. He offered the statistical frame that shots after forcing east-west movement with passes below the hash marks are up 42% in the NHL, and he drew on his own path to illustrate how narrow the odds are for any young player: by his count, of the 18,000 kids who sign up to play hockey in the United States each year, only 250 across all positions will someday play Division I NCAA hockey.

In the goalie clinics he runs in the summer, Valiquette requires his goaltenders to journal — recording game situations, drills, and even drawings of save techniques — not as an assignment for him to review, but as a reference for the players themselves. He keeps a shoebox full of Moleskine notebooks from his own playing career, cataloging drills from coaches including Sudarshan Maharaj and Rangers goalie coach Benoit Allaire. "Your memory will betray you," he has said of the practice. "You must write it down, because at some point during your hockey season, you're going to hit a tough spot and you can lean on what you've written down" Pro Tips with Steve Valiquette Analytics Founder Believes Compete (and Journaling) Crucial.

He also asks his students to spend at least 10 minutes a day on off-ice visualization and physical movement rehearsal — knee pads, gloves, and stick, no puck required. "If you can do it without a puck, you can do it with a puck," he said. "But if you can't do it without a puck, you cannot do it with a puck" Pro Tips with Steve Valiquette Analytics Founder Believes Compete (and Journaling) Crucial.

On the question of technique versus compete, Valiquette draws a clear line. Technique, in his view, gives a goaltender access to the puck and a fighting chance, but does not by itself stop it. He is particularly focused on goaltenders continuing to battle on second and third saves even when a chance appears hopeless, and has built an accountability structure into his clinics: when a goaltender does not go for a puck, they skate the ice. "I promise the goalies every summer you're going to have so much more fun when you compete," he said. "Because competing is your mindset. It's a decision you make in your head" Pro Tips with Steve Valiquette Analytics Founder Believes Compete (and Journaling) Crucial.