BE SET EARLY!

For those of you that know me personally, I am a goalie nerd.  I love watching the position and often miss out on a lot of what happens in games on film or on TV because I am just watching the goalie play. I am typically paying attention to how a goalie moves in the net, how they approach different shots, how they step to the ball, how they hold their hands on their stick and any other number of different things that comes with playing goalie at a high level.   

I have come to the conclusion that there is no one perfect way to play the position. Coaches may tout that their way is the only way but that to me just seems short sighted and lacking in creativity. In reality, there hasn’t been much change in the general principals of goaltending in the last 15-20 or so years. Yes, many have come along since then and promoted different types of fine tuned style and minutia but generally speaking, goalie play is not all that different from the mid 2000s and the days of Tillman Johnson, Matt Russell, Doc Schneider, Kip Turner, Harry Alford and Jesse Schwartzman just to name a few of my favorites.  They all are completely different goalies and solve goalie problems in their own way. There are a few characteristics about these goalies that are consistent. In my mind they are: steping to the ball, drive the stick to the ball, stay relatively centered between the ball carrier and the net and be a great ball handler after the save.  Style and personality all vary but each style has to run through the gauntlet of those 4 characteristics.  

Technique or style is like an accent in the English language. We all speak the same goalie language but the accent we play with has a lot to do with our physical characteristics coupled with our prior coaching and goalie experiences. No two goalies are exactly alike but a lot of goalies choose to solve problems in similar ways. 

I noticed something new last year. 

I noticed something new that goes against the grain. I noticed something that I hadn’t seen in lacrosse goalie before. 

If you watched Colin Kirst (Rutgers) and Logan McNaney (Maryland) at all last year (2022 Season) you might have picked up on what I am about to talk about.  Both goalies were by far and away the two best goalies throughout the entire season in my opinion. Some others had ups and downs but for the most part Kirst and McNaney were consistently the best all year.   They both, ironically, were executing a subtle change in the general philosophy of goaltending.  (I don’t mean to infer that this change is what lead them to stellar seasons, it just so happened that they both were doing this and both were excellent; a wonderful coincidence…)

When the ball is in the stick of an Attackman behind the net, goalies at a young age are taught to face them in their ready stance. As ball carriers dodge defenders behind the goal from side to side, goalies are taught to pivot slightly to face the ball carrier and stay square to him. The coaching point is, “Keep the ball and the ball carrier in front of you.”  If the ball moves to the left, you pivot slightly to the left and vice-versa. Traditionally, as a ball carrier pushes towards goal line extended (“GLE”), goalies are taught to pivot their back foot to their ball side post in preparation for a shot once that ball carrier reaches GLE. The timing for executing this traditional pivot step should occur the moment that the ball carrier passes the horizontal line from the back of the crease to the sideline or slightly before that spot.  Some goalies even played that pivot step a yard closer to GLE. It is a pretty quick sequence of events if a dodger wants to get in front of the goal for a quick shot (try imagining Jordan Wolf of Duke dodging from behind in 2013 and 2014 - I remember it all to well…). 

Here is where I noticed Kirst and McNaney executing what I believe to be a significant technical difference. Both played the ball behind the goal more like a hockey goalie.  They both would stay square to the ball when it was behind but their pivot step occurred far earlier than I can ever remember.  Both Kirst and McNaney are pivoting to their post when the ball carrier is roughly 10 yards below GLE or DEEPER. Watching this, one might think, “That isn’t really all that different…”. There are only 15 yards of real estate from GLE to End Line. I actually found myself saying, “He is there on his post so early!”  If you watched both goalies execute this strategy in games It may not have jumped out to you but to me this was a completely new way of thinking about how goalies address the ball behind the net.

Both goalies are basically telling the Attackman behind the net, “If you throw the ball to an open teammate in front of the goal, he won’t surprise me with a quick stick finish.”    There is one major factor to understand that I believe to be inherent about the goalie position and is shared amongst goalies that are playing at a high level.  A ball carrier behind the goal is not able to score from behind the net.   Kirst and McNaney decided to move so quickly to their posts before a feed or a dodge became threatening that if a ball did get fed to an open teammate, they had more than enough time to find the shooter before the ball arrived. They had already presented their ready stance to the shooter and read the shot out of his stick.  

If I were to apply this theory in a coaching point to a goalie I was training, it would sound like this: Be set on your post Early.  If a goalie is wasting time by trying to pivot to the shooter at the moment of the pass, the actual shot will arrive earlier than the goalie has presented his ready stance to make a save. Saves in these instances happen mostly out of luck, not because of great save technique.  Kirst and McNaney decided that rather than practice perfect timing of their presentation, they would practice perfect positioning first and eliminate timing and movement from the equation.   In a situation where the offense is trying to gain a timing advantage with a quickstick, both goalies take a lot of that advantage away by being ready for the shot early.  A simple and straight forward approach that I think is completely different that what most goalies are doing. I will be on the look out to see if more goalies in the college ranks are executing this technique this year.