Ice Hockey Goalies: The most important yet underrated player position
Ice hockey is a fascinating sport; it is extremely fast paced, brutally violent and very exhilarating to watch. One of the most important jobs on the entire team is the last line of defence or as they are known, goalkeepers. These are those brave individuals that stand in front of the goal and deflect shots made at them with incredible force. Their job is to keep the puck out of the goal and this requires goalies to be extremely fit, agile, have a very high level of skating ability and be extremely tough. Being a goalie in ice hockey is the most thankless, demanding and stressful job on the entire team.
Today, goalies in the sport wear a lot of protective gear to protect them from serious injury. When ice hockey started to become popular in the 1870s, the poor souls who stood in front of the goal would wear only shin pads. They would constantly get injured; they'd get hit in the face and all over their bodies.
It took quite a while for protective gear to be introduced as essential wear for goalkeepers and it was in 1959 that Jacques Plante of the Montreal Canadiens, decided he was sick and tired of continuously getting hit in the face with the puck and started to wear a mask to every single game.
He started a trend with this, as all goalies started to wear masks and then slowly other protective gear such as neck protectors and pads were introduced. Recently the NHL has introduced size limits on pads, gloves and blockers because the bigger they are the easier it is to stop goals, (Kidzworld, 2010).
Goalies used to be simply the biggest guys on the team, but today a goalie has to have incredible reflexes, intense concentration skills and the ability to take blows both from the puck and from other players. A goalie is usually also the best skater on the team because of the sometimes acrobatic manoeuvres he or she has to perform in front of the goal.
They also has to have tremendous puck handling skills because the puck has to be dished out to team mates instantly to start a counter attack once a shot has been saved. The stress levels that a goalkeeper experiences are a lot more than any other player on a team because the entire match being won or lost sometimes rests on the shoulders of that one player, (Scott Noble, 2005).
Even with all that protective gear on, most goalies suffer a number of injuries; cuts and bruises are the most common ailments that have to be dealt with, but some have been known to suffer concussions and even broken bones. Being incredibly athletic really helps in this regard and as most injuries suffered are minor, a tough goalie will be back in front of the goal in no time. One of the best of all time was Dominik Hasek of the Ottawa Senators. He was known for his athletic abilities and superb goal saving skills and was nicknamed the Dominator because of his dominant playing style.
An innovative and extremely creative teenager in America, who is also a huge ice hockey fan and a goalkeeper on his school’s team, has designed new protective pads that are all set to revolutionise goalkeeping in the game. High school student Trevor Leahy, started to think of ways to make it harder to score goals and he came up with an ingenious new pad design.
Since the net at the back of the goal is almost clear string in a cross hatch pattern while the pads of goalies are either blue or black, this innovative youngster designed pads, gloves and shin pads that had the same pattern on them as the netting of the goal. Because a forward aims for the back of the net and looks at the clear cross hatch pattern when he is about to shoot, by making the pattern on the pads the same design the shooter will inadvertently aim for the goalie instead. This will make saving shots much easier, (David Rattigan, 2009). We will have to wait and see if his innovative design gets approved by the governing body of the sport because the game is about scoring goals and not making it easier to save them, so the idea may be rejected.
Being a goalkeeper is a very difficult job in any sport that has them, but it is more so in ice hockey. With players routinely crashing into goalies and the puck flying at them and hitting their bodies at very high speeds, it is not an easy thing to do. We will continue to see many new innovations entering the game but the speed and fast paced nature of the game will remain, as will the athletic abilities and intense reflexes of those that stand in front of the goal.
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