Vision therapy offers goaltenders a new way to gain an edge

EDINA -- Ready for a lunch break after a morning of testing, University of Minnesota goaltender Mat Robson came around the corner at the First Athlete Training Center and his eyes got big.
A group of young kids were playing dodgeball, and the look on Robson's face immediately told a story. Flash back a decade earlier, and it was Robson who would have been out there playing.

"You guys want to play?" a voice suddenly asked the four goaltenders at the Wild's development camp last month.
Without delay, Robson, Dereck Baribeau and Hunter Shepard jumped through the door and the game was on. Any kid wearing a Wild shirt was allowed to play on the same team as the goalies.
When the game began, team netminders were outnumbered by a 3-to-1 ratio ... but they had experience -- and age -- on their side. Within minutes, they had conquered their younger counterparts, gave out some high fives and got back to work.
It was a nice break for the four goaltenders, who gathered on this day across town in Edina while the rest of the players at development camp remained at Xcel Energy Center. During the week-long camp, there are plenty of drills designed to better the skaters; whether it's stick-handling, edge work, or shooting.

For goaltenders, a lot of this work is rather mundane. Sure, they see the pucks. But the way they view the game is much different than most of the rest of the guys at camp.
That's why this trip west is so interesting.
Inside the complex, the goaltenders work with Josh Tucker on vision therapy and puck tracking, using state-of-the-art technology to better their own skills between the posts.
The program is called True Focus Vision Therapy and Sports Vision Training, and Tucker is not only the owner, but one of its main operators as well.
Along with a team of optometrists, an ophthalmologist and a school teacher, Tucker's program works with kids as young as 6 all the way up to the NHL, with Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk as one of its most notable clients.
They also work with athletes from other sports, including baseball, basketball and football players, to other sports like golf, lacrosse, soccer and even race-car drivers.

The True Focus program is not just for athletes. Parents have enlisted the help of Tucker and his team for assistance in reading comprehension. Others have seen improvement in the treatment of concussions and traumatic brain injuries.

"Our program was specifically designed to help kids with reading issues," Tucker said. "But what they found was, these kids were getting way better at reading, but the dad and mom were also coming in and saying, 'Thank you, he can finally catch a fly ball,' or 'he can finally hit a baseball,' things that were really important for the kid's confidence."
Tucker said the reading improvements were undoubtedly the most important developments, but that the hand-eye coordination improvements were hard to ignore.
On this day, Tucker is working with goaltenders, a job he's comfortable with; a former hockey coach at both Breck and Wayzata, Tucker played goalie growing up.
For goaltenders, learning to track the puck is critical. But it's not as simple as being laser focused on a black piece of rubber. The ability to open up one's field of vision to see not only the puck but also what is happening around it can help a goalie anticipate what could happen next.
All of this can be accomplished with various exercises and repetition.

"We do all this stuff to work with our bodies, whether it's yoga, pilates or lifting weights," Tucker said. "But the eyes, a lot of their functions are controlled by muscles. And if you work on those, it's no different than the rest of the body."
While vision training has been around for many years -- Wild goaltending development coach Frederic Chabot says he remembers the very beginnings of it from his playing days in Quebec in the 1980s -- the goalies at the Wild's development camp said they hadn't been introduced to anything like it yet in their careers.
After after a few hours at the First Athlete Facility, each said it's something they'd like to work into their training regiment.
"Unique is definitely the word, especially when it comes to our position," Robson said. "Being goalies, you don't really get a lot of goalie-specific drills; more so on emphasis on the legs in the weight room. But to get [tennis balls] bouncing in from behind you, using your peripherals, a ball coming upwards instead of the typical coming down off a wall, it's definitely beneficial for us."
When the Wild's camp goaltenders visited, they spent a couple of hours in an office with Tucker, learning about the program then going through a battery of baseline testing, including work on a virtual reality trainer that simulated seeing pucks inside Madison Square Garden.
After the dodgeball break, they hit the turf, starting with a juggling warmup before moving on to work with tennis balls and a net.
Wild goaltender Kaapo Kahkonen couldn't juggle at the start, but learned quickly thanks to a few vision tips from Tucker. Within 15 minutes, he was holding his own.
Inside the "crease," things quickly got competitive. With a goalie on his knees in front of the goal, Tucker set up three large boards, each angled at about 40 degrees from vertical. One was set up straight on, one was to the left and another to the right.
He then stood behind the goal, throwing a tennis ball off one of the three boards. Goalies were tasked with using their peripheral vision to track the ball into their body to make a "save."

That quickly evolved into a game called "Rebound," where the players not participating stood around the goal, creating a scramble-type situation, while attempting to knock the ball into the net.
"You gotta start slow; it's new to all of us," Robson said. "Once that happens, you play a game like that and that's when everybody's competitive edge comes out and makes it a lot more fun."
For a young goaltender like Baribeau, just 19 years old and entering his third season with the Quebec Remparts of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League this fall, that fun is what will keep this a part of his quest to one day reach the NHL.
After a bit of a timid start, both in testing and on the floor, Baribeau had come out of his shell by the end of the day and was thriving.
"I learned so much," Baribeau said. "It was the first time I was doing this. In a game, I don't really think too much about my eyes, so it was nice to focus on just playing with my eyes and looking at the ball."
Opening up those new training methods is all in a satisfying day's work for Tucker.
"Being a goalie is not the easiest job; it's like being on an island," Tucker said. "The position has completely changed over the last 20 years. They can target the gear, but really, goalies have figured out a better system.
"Of all the clients we have, goalies are probably our number one fans. Goalies' training mindsets are very different. They're always looking for anything they can do. They quickly and easily identify the importance of their visual performance in their game, and they're always looking to improve their game. This is as good of a fit as you're ever going to find."
Related:
- Shepard making more memories on Xcel Energy Center ice - Kahkonen ready for North American pro hockey debut - A look back at development camp