In-season adjustments can be difficult for goalies

VANCOUVER -- There is a scene in the 1986 movie "Top Gun" when a Navy fighter pilot played by Tom Cruise is asked during a critical review of an aerial combat encounter what he was thinking.

"You don't have time to think up there," he replied. "If you think, you're dead."
Though it's certainly not life and death, NHL goaltenders can relate.
"If you think out there as a goalie, you never have a good game," Vancouver Canucks goaltender Anders Nilsson said. "When you are thinking as a goalie, you are usually a little behind, so that's not a comfortable feeling out there. As a goalie, you play your best when you are not thinking at all and you just go out there and play."
In a position that is constantly evolving, that can make it difficult to make style changes, especially during the season.
Whether it's tinkering with post-integration techniques, adjusting positional tactics, or altering body mechanics through modifications to stance or glove positioning, getting used to something new requires a thought process during repetitions in a practice setting.

Turning that thought process off during a game can be difficult.
"In-season is very tough to make major changes for a goalie," Nilsson said. "Ask any goalie when he has a good game, 'How did you feel and what did you think?' Usually you don't think anything; you just go out and play and see the puck. But when you make adjustments to your game, obviously, you have to think a little before it sets in."
New Canucks goaltending coach Ian Clark made changes to Nilsson's post play and stance, narrowing his feet to improve mobility and adjusting his chest angle and glove position to facilitate better puck tracking and to maintain more active hands that could react more seamlessly to the play.
Nilsson struggled to incorporate the changes at first. He trusts the changes will make him better in the long run, but he found himself thinking about them. He played two games in the preseason and finished with an .821 save percentage.
"There was a lot of thinking out there, a lot more thinking than there should be," Nilsson said after the first game of the season.
It takes time for something new to become instinctual. With Jacob Markstrom starting the first three games of the regular season, Nilsson got his chance and won three straight games after more practice repetitions with Clark.
Markstrom, who is making similar changes in his stance, took advantage of the extra practice time while Nilsson started four straight games to keep working with Clark on making all the new elements instinctual. After going 11 days between games, Markstrom returned to win his past two starts, making the save on 63 of 66 shots.
"It takes some time to be comfortable," Markstrom said. "In practice, you should work on new things every day. When you are comfortable, it is going to come in a game, but you can't force it into a game. You have to work on your new stuff in practice, and in games you just have to go out and play, and when you are comfortable with it in practice, it is going to come to the game automatically, it's going to transfer over."

It is more difficult for established No. 1 goalies, who have a hard time finding the necessary practice time for adjustments.
Braden Holtby of the Washington Capitals made some adjustments late last season before going on a run that ended with a victory in the Stanley Cup Final. That happened when Philipp Grubauer, the backup at the time, played in four straight games during a 10-game period that the Capitals called a "reset" for Holtby.
"I got that break unfortunately, but it was good for me because I can go out and work as hard as I can and after practice go to the point of exhaustion and work on things," Holtby said. "It's getting harder and harder to make those adjustments in-season now."
It can also be hard to stick with adjustments when the results aren't immediately obvious. The repetition that goes into mastering a new technique can be problematic at times, turning a new save technique into a default move even if it's not applied in the right situations.
Grooving a new technique and applying it at the appropriate time in a game aren't the same thing, and balancing the two when you are playing a lot isn't easy.
Winnipeg Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck experienced a bit of each when he made changes in his post-play tactics and glove position with goaltending coach Wade Flaherty two seasons ago. As good as he felt about the changes during the season, it ended with a .907 save percentage and questions about his upside and future.
"I could feel myself improving every single day, and that's what made that year so tough because I wasn't seeing the results I was expecting as I could feel myself getting better," Hellebuyck said. "[Flaherty] was absolutely monumental in getting me to believe and stick with it all the little things every day that we were going out there and we were improving, even when the numbers weren't what everyone wanted to see."
The changes paid off last season, when Hellebuyck was a Vezina Trophy finalist, finishing with a .924 save percentage, the best of his NHL career.
Making the changes in 2017-18 that paid off last season wasn't easy though.
Thinking too much never is good for a goaltender.