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posted 04/24/2012
Theimportance of goaltending to a hockey team cannot beoverstated but, unfortunately, for a variety of reasons the attention paid tothetraining and development of young goalies is typically an afterthought to theteam practice. Even the drills that involve the team’s goalies are knownas “shooting drills” for the skaters and not “goaltendingdrills” for the goalies. It is not uncommon to see the team’sgoalie spending half of the allotted practice time standing still while coacheswork with the skaters to enhance their skills
Toretain interest of players in the goalie position time andspecial attention has to be given and skill and confidence developed. Infairness, odds are that most minor hockey coaches were skaters themselves atone time and just aren’t aware of how to go about developing their younggoalies. As a former goalie, I had a natural slant the opposite way. My firstinterest was in ensuring I paid special attention to that critical position. While working with the goalies on the teams I coached, I was frustrated by myinability to prevent them from constantly backing up into the net instead ofchallenging shooters in practice sessions. Adding to that frustration was thefact that there were no training aids out there dedicated solely to goaliedevelopment.
As a result, Irealized I’dhave to develop my own product to solve the “backing into the net”dilemma and after much time spent in development and testing I created andproduced my own practice training device. Please read what is forward toHockey Clubsaround the world below,
I am contacting youto advise of myhockey invention, the Goalie Band, which would be a valuable asset to yourprogram. A lot of goalies get left out at team practice because coaches don'tknow what to work on with them at all levels and there just aren't any devicesout there to assist them during a whole practice. We all know the criticalimportance goaltending plays in the outcome of any hockey game.
As a coach of hockey goalies, I was frustrated by my inability to prevent themfrom constantly backing up into the net instead of challenging shooters inpractice sessions. As a result, I cameup with this practice training device which I have now used for several seasonsand which has resulted in a markedimprovement in the game performance of these players. This is aproduct that every local community club program (indoor ice or outside ice),team, goalie school, and individual goalie should own.
As a result of demonstrating the product to a number of hockey professionalsincluding Ed Belfour, Vladislav Tretiak and several AHL players as well as manyamateur players of all ages I have received much positive feedback and interestin the great potential for the product to assist in improving skills for allplayers. The original intention of the product was to train goalies to stay outof the net and challenge the shooters, however, the more we used it the moreuses we discovered for both goalies and skaters. We now have developed drillsto practice handling screen shots and workingon reaction time. The skaters use it for target practice and forpracticinglifting the puck over a simulated goalie pad when in tight to the goal. That’s just a few of the opportunities for instruction the productpresents.
This product offers tremendous opportunities to assist with the development ofhockey players of all ages.
For moreinformation on the Goalie Band visit my web page www.goalieband.net (Used in Canada,U.S.A. & Europe)
Thankyou,
BobUnger
“Helping CoachesCoach”
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