ADM Kids

What we think of as universal truths about goaltenders don’t hold up to scrutiny.

No, not all of them are quirky or superstitious.

No, they aren’t necessarily less athletic than skaters nor does one size define the position.

But there is one thing that does hold true across all levels: Every hockey goalie had to start somewhere, and their stages of development along the ways are critical to success.

Their evolution has different markers at different youth age groups. Steve Thompson, USA Hockey’s Manager of Goaltending Development since 2019, recently shared some age-specific goaltender development tips.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways for the 14U and 16U levels:

Thompson recommends having two goalies split games at the 14U level, but he also wants to make sure the language around those splits is clear.

“At 14U, we would recommend splitting the game in half and having a starter and a closer,” Thompson says. “And we want to be intentional with that language ‘closer’. We're trying to get away from this backup language. Nobody wants to be the backup. It's really got some negative connotations there that can be hard on the kid, so we want to empower it like baseball does like. Yeah, you're the closer. It's cool. It's hard. We're excited. We're going to play some closing music as you come out at the halfway point in the second.”

It's also important for development, Thompson says, for goalies to be able to come into a game that has already started.

“A lot of goalies that end up achieving things in the highest level, they got their shot in junior college or pro hockey by the goalie that was the starter that night having a tough one and getting pulled or getting injured,” he says. “They have to go in cold, and so we're hoping that if our American goalies have experienced coming in at the halfway point of the second throughout a majority of their hockey career then it's just another night at the office.”

For 16U goalies, Thompson says that days with two games are a perfect opportunity to give each goalie a full game.

“We know full games are important and we want them to experience the stress and pressure of that, but we also want to make sure that every kid plays hockey when they go to the rink in youth hockey,” Thompson says. “If you got a morning and an evening game, that's a perfect opportunity for one goalie to play the full morning game and the other to get a full evening game.”

But even at that age, Thompson says, it isn’t uncommon to see even national championship teams splitting their goalies within a game.

“I think we're kind of in a rush to play those full games earlier than we need to,” he says. “We just want to make sure that we're not investing all our time and money into one kid. There are late bloomers, and we need to remember that these kids matter regardless of how good they are at stopping pucks. Their experience matters.”

14U and 16U are ages where the mental aspect of playing goalie comes into play beyond just the physical development.

“We start to have them read plays, make decisions based off those reads and start recognizing patterns,” Thompson says. “The goalie community in general has gotten really good at teaching the fundamentals because it's a lot easier to do that, and I think we have a lot of really good-looking goalies that get scored on often because we've stopped really teaching the play-reading.”

Failing to teach unpredictability can lead to goalies who have “robotic movements,” he says, which means that training sessions where goalies are told where the puck is going to go are not effective.

Their brains shut off and they can’t deal with variance in games. That leads to giving up goals, which tests their resilience – another key aspect of a goalie’s mental development, Thompson says.

“It’s really hard to be good every single night, and it's really hard to be extremely competitive all the time and resilient even when you're on a team that is giving up higher quality chances,” he says. “As goalie coaches or hockey coaches working with your goalies, you’re trying to really challenge them appropriately in practice. You want it to be hard enough that they're inspired and that they really are competitive, but not so hard that it's overwhelming to the point where they quit.”

Thompson, who rose through the youth ranks to play collegiately at Alaska-Fairbanks, acknowledges that playing goalie is not easy.

But it also has rewards that last far beyond hockey.

“I love the leadership qualities, the pressure and the tension that comes with it,” he says. “There's so much pride you can take in from choosing to play a role that has so much on the line all the time. There are so many people depending on you, and I think it's just exciting to watch these kids take this on and run with it. The ups and downs are really hard, but it's fun.”