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Copyright
Ó 2004 Jukka Ropponen
One
thing I noticed during last season, when I made some special
analysis for goalies, was the ratio of goals scored on backhand
shots. When I discussed this with those goalies the answer
was usually the same: "Backhand shots are hard to read!"
Why is this?
To
find out I created stats from normal practices and noticed
that because players usually have a lot more time and space
to take their shots in practices, they fairly seldom took
any backhand shots. Therefore, goalies really didn't get to
practice them much so it was so hard for them to read them
properly. I also noticed that goalies seem to go down way
too much on backhand shots and this doesn't make much sense
as players usually try to go high with their backhand.
| Video
Examples (Click on image to play .wmv file)
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| Stopping
backhand shot using butterfly |
Making
the stop standing up |
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| Combination
drill with shot followed by quick backhand |
Breakaway
with deke to backhand |
As
a result I started to build a lot more backhand drills for
my goalie workout sessions. The important part was the repetition.
Goalies need several repeats in order to really start to get
a grip on backhand shots.
I would recommend to do the following type of backhand workouts
when possible:
- Players
cutting from corner to the front of the net and try to score
using backhand shots every time. Goalies need to try both
saves, butterfly and stand-up, to find what works in different
situations.
- Combination
drills where the goalie telescopes out and in > moves
to a shot from opposite site > faces a quick backhand
shot from a skating forward
- Breakaways
where the forward is forced to deke and go high to his backhand
every time. With these, I force goalies to experiment both
stand-up and butterfly saves because in many cases, butterfly
goalies drop down too early and/or expose un-needed open
space for a forward to score on.
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