Goalie Science

The Goalie Science CurseThey praised Devin Cooley. He got hurt. They called Stuart Skinner a lock. Winnipeg lost nine in a row and Skinner gave up seven on roughly 20 shots. The curse is real. Connor Hellebuyck is the next victim. He has actually looked solid coming off a bad Colorado loss, so we will see.Jacob Fowler and the Billy Ryan War Room ClipThe clip going viral shows Billy Ryan arguing for taking Fowler in the Montreal draft room. The argument: he is not the biggest, not the most skilled on paper, but he has won at every single level he has played. Jamie’s takeaway is that hockey IQ is always a more transferable skill than any technical move. Fowler knew the shot tendencies of every college hockey player he faced. That is pattern recognition and positional awareness at an elite level.What Jamie sees watching Fowler’s film: extreme efficiency of movement. He does not over-push. He does not over-commit. He hits his mark and stays there. That is the template he shows to undersized goalies who are being coached to be fast at the expense of being precise.Carey Price said in a recent interview that Fowler is the one NHL goalie he watches and sees himself at the same age. That is a significant endorsement from the goalie who changed how the position is coached.The eye test problem: scouts saying “he looks like a goalie” is one of the most frustrating things in goaltending evaluation. Most scouts are not goalies. A kid has to pass the non-goalie eye test before the goalie specialist even gets to watch him. Gear fit matters. Vertical gear graphics make goalies look taller. Fowler looks smaller on TV than he is in person.The funniest story of the episode: a dad hired a 6'6 stranger to attend his son’s games and pretend to be the grandfather so scouts would see the family height potential.Askarov and ConsistencyNashville could not get the Hellebuyck deal done and ended up with Askarov. The read is that Winnipeg did not want Askarov as part of the return. He has shown he can come in and have good games but has not proven he can string it together. What the NHL needs from a starting goalie is not perfection, it is consistency.Devin Cooley InjuryLower body. Looks like it may be a knee based on the clip. Jamie points to his Shurkin video as the last time he tried to diagnose a goalie injury on camera and got it completely wrong when a new angle came out showing it was an ankle that was obliterated. He is staying cautious this time.Semyon Varlamov Double Knee ReplacementPartial knee replacements on both knees, roughly a 24-month rehab. Jamie’s breakdown: the miraculous part is not the surgery itself, it is that after 15 years in the NHL and that much pain, he chose to come back at all. Quality of life after knee replacement typically improves dramatically. The hard part is the loss of strength and the relearning of motor patterns, not the knees themselves. He probably feels better out there than he has in years.FAI Surgery as a Future Performance EnhancerThe question Buj raises: baseball parents already pay for pre-emptive Tommy John surgery on teenagers. Will hockey parents start paying for FAI surgery to open up hip mobility in goalies who do not need it yet?Jamie’s answer: yes, probably. The difference is that FAI shaving is a bone structure issue and doing it on a still-growing athlete carries unknowns that Tommy John does not. If a kid genuinely has FAI and is in pain, getting it done strategically at the right time makes complete sense. Using it as a mobility enhancement on a kid who does not need it is a different conversation. Some parents will do it anyway.Side note: genetics matter. People of Eastern European and Asian descent tend to have more open hip sockets, which is part of why certain countries produce more naturally flexible goalies.Osgood-Schlatter in Young GoaliesBuj raises it because he sees it constantly in developing goalies. Jamie’s breakdown: it is not the knee growing too fast, it is the patellar tendon pulling on the tibial tuberosity as the bone grows faster than the tendon length can keep up. It causes the characteristic bump on the front of the knee and discomfort that peaks around ages 11 to 15 in active athletes.What helps: isometrics and eccentric loading to strengthen the muscles and take load off the tendon, not just stretching. Seeing a physio is worth it. It will not go away instantly regardless of how good the program is, but a good strength program can mitigate severity. Roughly 20 to 30 percent of athletes get it versus around 10 percent of non-athletes, which tracks with activity levels being the main driver.For Weston at age 11: Jamie’s recommendation is to start a proper youth strength program this summer, three to four times a week, full range of motion. Prevention is easier than treatment.PWHL Roster ExpansionThe league just expanded from 21 rostered players with 4 low-paid reserves to 25 fully contracted players paid at league minimum. Tia Chan helped explain the details. It is a step in the right direction. The bigger structural gap is still the absence of a farm system: if you are the 24th player on a PWHL roster and not getting game time, there is nowhere to develop. On the men’s side you go to the AHL or ECHL. On the women’s side, you go to Europe or senior A. The long-term fix is probably using NCAA as the de facto development system while the league drafts younger and waits.ShoutoutsCharlotte Payne: 40-save shutout, 1-0 win over Syracuse for Delaware. If Buj is a PWHL team, he is making a call.Gabby Brazil: D3 women’s program at Roger Williams University, first ever program win in a 2-1 shootout with 40-plus saves. She trained at Ghost for half the summer. Buj notes her baby blue gear is unbelievably sick. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jamie’s Grand Rapids Griffins Ebug ExperiencePostava got called up last minute. Jamie got the call from Roope at 5:45 while running a video breakdown session with his mentorship group. He threw on a wrinkly suit, drove downtown, and sat on the bench for the night before being released from his PTO immediately after the game.Highlights: being back in a room where hockey guys are just hockey guys, watching Trey Augustine from the bench instead of the stands and making mental notes for future breakdown clips, and playing against his former team. Fran came. She took pictures. She has now seen Jamie in real hockey gear exactly twice in their relationship. She was fine with it.Jamie’s comeback conditions: win the lottery, sign in the south of France with co-ownership so he cannot cut himself, or somewhere in the Netherlands. That is the full list.Mental Health and the Grinding YearsJamie says he has now accepted, as of a couple months ago, that if he had kept grinding he probably would have made it to the NHL on a full-time basis. He needed to see a sports psychologist earlier and was too proud to do it at a time when mental health in hockey was still something you could be ostracized for. The YouTube video he recorded about this is still unreleased. He will probably release it.The broader point for goalies still playing: you can always get a real job. You cannot go back in time and sign an AHL contract at 33. If you are still enjoying it, grind.The RVH Conversation (Again)To be completely clear for anyone new: the RVH is 1,000% an essential movement at high levels. The game is too fast not to use it. What Jamie and Buj are against is spending an entire off-season doing 25,000 RVHs in training at the expense of everything else. The situation dictates when you use it. Your physiology dictates whether it works for you. Tall goalies with flexibility and skating ability are increasingly being asked to use it more by NHL and AHL development coaches because they fill more net. That is a real trend and Jamie is adjusting how he coaches taller goalies to reflect it. U10 and U12 goalies doing RVHs because their goalie coach teaches it as the default is still the problem.Connor Hellebuyck Trade: Will System Fit Change EverythingThe question Jamie brought to the table: can Hellebuyck replicate his Vezina-level success playing behind a Sheldon Keefe system in New Jersey after spending his career behind one of the most structured defensive systems in the league?Stuart Skinner’s early Winnipeg numbers are the comparison case. Sixth in the league in goals saved above expected at 5.9. Expected GAA of 3.32, actual GAA of 2.6. That is three-quarters of a goal better than the system would predict. Skinner and Hellebuyck play a similar style. Skinner is thriving in the system Hellebuyck just left.Linus Ullmark is the textbook example of how this works in both directions: dominated in Boston behind a system that cut off lateral plays, struggled in Buffalo and Ottawa which gave up exactly those plays, now thriving again under Travis Green in Ottawa with a changed structure. System matters.Both hosts predict Hellebuyck will not replicate Vezina-level numbers this season. They both acknowledge they will probably have egg on their face by spring.Peptides in Youth HockeyReal rumors from the GTHL about parents giving young athletes unregulated peptides to stimulate early puberty and dominant 13 and 14 year old development.What peptides are: chains of amino acids that can turn on or off signals in the body. The GLP-1 class are the ones with actual FDA-approved pathways. Everything else people are buying online is coming from overseas with no guarantee of what is actually in the product.The science problem: a Swedish study on hockey player development tracked athletes who matured early, on time, and late through competitive hockey. By the time players reached NHL age, late bloomers made up a slight majority of NHL players. Early developers dominated at 13 and 14, then got caught. Paying to accelerate early development in a sport where late bloomers win long-term is just bad math on top of potential medical harm.Join the survivor pool: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/1/d/e/1FAIpQLSfoUrKG_ju25pYKU6yJt6ksxHbTMO1BRFKJkWM1NM5O1pOO5Q/viewformUse code GOALIESCIENCE16 for 30 days free in the Ghost Goaltending Club. Link below.https://ghost-athletica.circle.so/ghost-goaltending-app  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Charlotte Payne Update46 saves on 47 shots, 2-1 win over Union at Delaware. Buj’s take: she is the most complete goalie he has ever developed and there was never any doubt she would get here. The off-ice variables are what separate the goalies who make it from the ones who don’t.Devin Kulie on the Unconscious BrainKulie described his best games as ones where his conscious brain stays out of the way. When he is smiling and having too much fun, he shifts into conscious mode and gets beat. Jamie and Buj break this down through motor learning theory: cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages of skill development. In a game, goalies need to be autonomous. The second you start thinking about how to make a save, you are already behind the play.Confidence Training vs. Competence TrainingConfidence training, telling your goalies where you are shooting, produces a short-term bump and a long-term decline. Competence training is hard, feels bad in the moment, and produces massive long-term gains. Both coaches train competence over confidence and the results over a full season reflect it.The Arousal Curve and Pre-Game RoutinesEveryone’s optimal zone is different. Eric Comrie played sewer ball before warm-up. Braden Holtby sat alone in a dark room with a towel over his head. Both were right. Your job as a goalie coach is to help your goalie find their zone and then protect it, not push them into yours.The 1% StatOne out of 64 NHL starting goalies is under six feet tall. That is not doom and gloom, it is math. Smaller goalies have to be consistently better than taller goalies to get the same opportunity. The earlier they understand that, the better.Pre-Scout StrategyLook for trends, not tactics. Give your players something they can actually use in real time. Buj tells the story of putting “five-hole open on wraparound” in a pre-scout 20 years ago, the coach ripped it up, and the team scored a wraparound five-hole goal two periods later.Book RecommendationsThe Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler. Behind the Bench by Craig Custance. Sean Avery’s autobiography. Burke’s Law by Brian Burke.ShoutoutsTJ Hughes scored his first NHL goal off a Nathan McKinnon pass against the Penguins. Gabby Brazil hit the top fitness percentile on her team at Roger Williams University in her first year as a D3 goalie. Buj’s STA U16 goalies have three shutouts in a row and four wins in a row.Buj’s Survivor PoolHis U12A Admirals team is running an NHL Survivor Pool starting October 31st. DM Buj on Instagram to enter. Estimated prize around $2,500 Canadian. He wins every year and will remind you of that. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episode: 152Hosts: Jamie Phillips and BujRecorded: Monday, October 5, 2026The NDL ExplainedThe National Development League is USA Hockey's attempt to create a Quad A tier with 36 to 40 teams, structured like a junior hockey organization, designed to feed the USHL. Teams would operate at U15 and U17 levels with unlimited out-of-state American players and a cap of two international players per roster.For Fox Motors Hockey, it is a damned-if-you-do situation. Join and risk losing local bubble players to travel costs and distance. Don't join and risk becoming a second-tier AAA organization that bleeds top players at 15 and 16.The rumored rule banning NDL players from signing with major junior programs would be fatal. It pushes the best American players away from the league entirely before it ever gets started. Buj's solution, stated for the fourth year running: just make the USHL part of the CHL.NCAA International Player CapA rumored 20% cap on international players in NCAA D1 hockey came up as a side discussion. Jamie doesn't think it survives the legal exposure. Buj, as a Canadian, admits he'd welcome it. Both agree it would accelerate the fracture of the NCAA model and hand the CHL back its dominance over the junior-to-college pathway.Pet Peeve 1: Changing Stance on Day One of CampJamie's biggest one this year. Goalies coming back from high-performance camps convinced their stances are broken after a single ice session. The problem: you cannot evaluate a stance in structured drills with stationary shooting. You need to see a goalie in real situations, under read pressure, over multiple days.Changing a goalie's stance without that context undoes years of development, creates self-doubt, and makes them play uncomfortable. There is no universal perfect stance. Let the goalie be athletic first, then make targeted changes if something is demonstrably not working.Buj's example from the day before recording: a smaller U15 goalie playing extremely wide, equipment too big, pre-programmed to drop straight down. Only after 30 reps of the same miss pattern did a stance adjustment become warranted. He explained why, pointed to Lucas Dol of Anaheim as a reference, and let the goalie decide. That is the right process.Pet Peeve 2: Making Changes Without Explaining WhyWhen goalies can't explain why they do something, you've built a robot. Both coaches emphasize teaching goalies to understand their game, not just follow instructions.Example: a goalie doing a blocker-side elbow wrap on the post with no idea why, because a coach told him to. The fix was explaining the dead arm concept, walking through all the transitions it enables, and letting the goalie decide if it felt better. It did. Changes stick when goalies understand the reason behind them.Pet Peeve 3: Fix It at the Next Level ThinkingMaking preemptive changes based on hypothetical future problems. Nobody knows what will or won't work at the next level until a goalie gets there. You risk creating present-level problems by dismantling what's currently working.Example: a high-level college goalie being pushed toward more RVH use before playing a single pro game. Jamie's position: if it's not broken at your current level, don't fix it. When you get to the next level and something doesn't work, fix it then.The Roberto Luongo Rebound Control StoryTwo years in New York working exclusively on rebound control. It never improved. He got traded to Florida. New goalie coach simplified the approach: you give up rebounds, so let's work on tracking them out and repositioning. Hall of Fame career followed.The lesson: rebound control is not a skill you directly train. What you train is tracking, positioning, and balance. Stay square through the shot, track the puck off your body, and the rebound goes where your body naturally puts it. Goalies who say they need to work on rebound control are usually being coached to steer pucks rather than read and react, which creates worse outcomes on both the original shot and the rebound.Pro Coaching vs. Private CoachingAn honest conversation about the career crossroads both coaches face. Moving up the pro coaching ladder means censoring opinions, accepting being the whipping boy when goals go in, and playing a political game neither of them is interested in right now.The Sheldon Keefe screaming at Steve Briere clip from the Leafs Amazon Prime series is referenced as the most accurate depiction of what the job actually looks like. Jamie's stated preference on record: AHL, ECHL, and prospects development. That's where the development work actually happens. If anyone in a position of power is listening, he wants the development role, not the NHL bench.Gear CornerBower's new one-piece skate with a connected boot has surfaced in leaked retail brochure images. The concept checks both boxes: the performance stiffness of a fused one-piece boot with the flexibility benefits of the connected system. Buj wore one-piece Trues when playing in Manitoba and loved them but switched out because a broken component meant no skates at all. The newer iteration reportedly addresses that. Both coaches are excited to get them on feet.CCM TAC line pads and glove: genuinely good. Jamie's working with a U14 AAA goalie in them. The V cutout in the blocker cuff near the stick improves grip and squeeze for puck handling. Small design detail, real on-ice difference. Jamie's takeaway from the CCM summit in Montreal: the engineering hours that go into one small design change are significant, which goes some way toward explaining the price.Flow DrillsNot a fan at any age. Buj's preference is five minutes of flow to warm up, then real hockey: two-on-ones, three-on-twos, small area games, PK situations. That's where reads actually develop. Everything should be connected and purposeful from U9 on up. If a coach is running 40 minutes of flow, you're not going to change their philosophy. Coach with people who share your philosophy.ShoutoutsMadden Omera and Matthew Brownley earned their first official AAA starts at the Toronto Titans tournament in their U16 draft year. Both had been DA goalies all the way up. The message: not playing AAA at U14 or U15 does not end your journey.Charlotte Payne: another win for Delaware women's D1 hockey, 35 saves on 36 shots against Lynnwood. The Blue Hens are building.Code: GOALIESCIENCE16 for 30 days free in the Ghost Goaltending Club. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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