09/02/2026
Your struggles develop your strengths 💯
To be an elite goalie, you need elite skating.
Developing elite skating comes from repetitions and precision.
Sometimes, the same old crease skating patterns get boring (Even though crease skating is EXTREMELY important, and still needs to be done, OFTEN‼️).
Sometimes, you have too many goalies for crease skating! There are always ways to incorporate goalie ‘power’ skating into each practice.
We always start each session with at least 10 minutes of skating, and then incorporate those same skating patterns into the sessions drills⛸️
Above are a few of the skating drills I did with my goalies throughout the summer…
Here is a breakdown of the clips:
⚡️The first drill has the goalies spread out around the zone with coaches/shooters in the four corners passing the puck around. Give the goalies a different mode of movement to get from point A to point B (T-push, lateral release, long shuffle, butterfly slide, etc)
⚡️The second skating drill has goalies developing their edges with different line skating patterns. (Wide cuts, single leg, c-cut/glide/t-push)
⚡️The third is a a fun one that really builds athleticism, with goalies one foot hopping over lines and then going straight into a butterfly slide (credit: Robert Halyama “Coach Robbie”)
⚡️The fourth uses the centre circle and tendies can shuffle, t-push, slide, etc) around the circle (also great for bigger groups!)
🤯Here is a fun fact: you can use the ENTIRE ice for goalie skating - the lines, the circles, the hash marks.
Sometimes I’ll start at the centre circle on the red line, and do different skating drills while progressing down the ice to the crease (not all examples in this particular video), but it would look like this:
1️⃣Circle skating
2️⃣Line skating
3️⃣Hashmark skating inside the zones circles
4️⃣Crease skating drill with a warm up shot
Understanding how your body moves and building athleticsm doesn’t *always* have to happen in the crease.
