Earlier, the McKeen’s scouting team brought you a piece that highlighted the attributes that we value the most when evaluating players.
What was absent in that piece was information about the assessment and projection of netminders. That’s because we wanted to enlist the help of our resident goaltending expert and scout Liam Crouse in a stand-alone piece. Below you can learn how Liam evaluates the position and what he looks for.
The Top 5 Attributes For Goaltenders
#1 Positioning
You can think of positioning almost like the culmination of a goalie. Everything a goalie does is essentially to give them the best possible positioning on any given play. It takes into account skating, play reading, tracking, and, to some extent, even athleticism. But even though these critical skills play a huge part in positioning, they aren’t the sole determinants, and you can possess all of those talents and still end up out of position. Positioning is so important because it is the main factor in whether you will make a save. Generally, if a goalie is in a good position on every shot, they're going to make a lot of saves. Even with bad hands and poor tracking, if you place yourself in a good enough position, you will still make a lot of saves.
Positioning encompasses other areas like angling, depth control, and cognitive areas such as route selection and knowledge of the proper movements to make in different scenarios. You can still have good positioning if you lack one of the two major skills, like skating and play reading. You cannot, however, have good positioning at all if you lack depth control or angling. Skating determines how easily you can get into position and can provide more liberty in how one chooses to position themself. But with exceptional intelligence and depth control, a goalie can make mobility factors somewhat obsolete by playing in the most optimal position, where minimal movement will be required to adjust. Great positioning is the ultimate goal of a goalie. It’s the largest factor in making saves, and encompasses so many important skills, and as such, it is the first thing I look for when scouting goaltenders and thus the most important attribute.
#2 Skating
There’s an old saying in hockey that the goalie has to be the best skater on the ice, and it’s for good reason. It makes up the foundation of the position and is a major determinant for how a goalie positions themself, their speed and mobility through the crease, how reserved or aggressive they can play, and in general how easy it is for them to follow play. In the NHL, there really aren’t any bad skating goalies like there can be for forwards and sometimes defensemen. Sure, if a player has poor skating, they may not have that high of a ceiling, but skating is so integral to a goalie that it doesn’t leave much room for error. To make it as someone with lower-end skating, a goalie has to be very good at pretty much everything else and possess few flaws elsewhere.
Now that’s not to say everyone has to be fast, speed is just one component of skating, the most important aspect is edgework. With strong edgework, a goalie can make seamless, smooth shuffles and movement through the crease with precision, making speed less important. Think of someone like Connor Hellebuyck, for example. He isn’t known for explosiveness and constant quick movement like someone like Igor Shesterkin. But his edges are very strong, and he’s efficient in his movement, making his positioning precise and fantastic, and it allows someone on the slower and unathletic end to keep up.
Now, skating isn’t necessarily an innate ability like natural intelligence and athleticism; it’s something that is developed from scratch through thousands of hours of practice. But there lies the problem: By the time serious goalie prospects become eligible for the draft, they’ve already put in that kind of work through their formative years. And with skating still being the primary thing that every goalie works on throughout their entire career, if they’re lacking at 18 behind their peers, it’s going to be extremely hard to make up that ground compared to everyone else. Skating is notoriously hard for players to significantly improve upon, and it goes the same for goalies. If that area is below par, it’s only likely they will be able to get their skating up to average, and as I’ve said before, that can still limit their ceiling, especially if they aren’t elite at most other skills.
#3 Play Reading/Anticipation
The cognitive aspects of goaltending are typically headlined by anticipation or play reading. Like skating, anticipation is a fundamental skill to goaltending that influences almost everything that the goalie does. There are two main parts to anticipation. 1. Seeing and processing the unfolding play, predicting passes, and understanding the positioning of both defenders and attackers. And 2. Reading the release of the shot and predicting where it’s going. Effective play reading gives the goalie an edge in positioning because they will know when and where to adjust their depth to either play a pass or challenge a shot. It also gives them a major edge in travelling across the crease. If they’re able to see a play unfold and safely predict where it’s heading, it allows the brain to process and react much quicker, cutting down on total time to move to a new position.
Reading the release of a shot essentially provides the same benefits, but for making saves. It’s very important, especially for medium to high shots to the hands, as if you can tell where the puck is going beforehand, it will be easier for the glove to react and move to that area. However, it’s important that you’re able to get it right. A lot of goalies try to predict and end up guessing wrongly, and maybe they were thinking blocker and move to that side while the puck is blowing by their glove. It’s not necessarily a guessing game, and you still can't really move before the shot actually happens, but if you’re able to get a prediction correct, then you will again be able to move quicker and make the save or motion much easier than if you had no idea where it was going.
The cognitive aspects are developed with experience, but it is much more of an innate ability than skating is, making it difficult to improve upon, especially drastically. Think of it like school. Some people can understand the material much quicker and easier than others, and just generally learn faster. That’s not to say effort doesn’t play a big part in how well you can do in school, but for some, it's just generally easier to perform well. The same thing goes for goaltending. Some are born with a natural eye for the game, and others aren’t. It can be improved, but it takes a lot of time to do so.
#4 Athleticism
Athleticism is probably the most difficult thing to make any improvement upon because the upper limits of athletic ability are simply capped out due to genetic factors such as joint mobility and specific muscle and tendon insertions. You can train your explosiveness and flexibility to a point, but there just may not be certain levels you can reach. This makes athleticism a highly desirable quality in goalie prospects because in theory it gives them a higher potential because other skills are technically easier to develop.
Athleticism is important because it can allow the goalie to make high-danger saves, mostly seen on cross-crease passes. But it also leads to better recoveries, giving the goalie a chance on any kind of play. It enables them to make very difficult saves on chances that otherwise should have gone in and gives them the ability to steal games. Making huge highlight saves also brings an underappreciated value in generating momentum for the team and creating an electric atmosphere for the fans. The only reason why athleticism isn’t the most important skill is that, ideally, it should only be used as a last resort. You don’t necessarily need athleticism to get by if you have great positioning, skating, or play reading, because if you move smartly and efficiently, then you can sometimes make what would sometimes be huge saves look pretty easy and routine.
#5 Tracking
When it comes to actually making the save, not counting for positioning, the most important skill is tracking. Following the puck from the release of the shot all the way into whichever body part makes the save is vital. A goalie can’t process a shot and react accordingly if they don’t have good vision on the puck, which is why it’s so important to always be glued to it.
On shots alone, the difference between great tracking and just solid tracking can be a big rebound that otherwise would have been smothered. And the difference between solid tracking and anything less is typically a goal. It is seen most prevalently with shots to the hands. Goalies who typically have “bad hands” are generally worse at tracking pucks because their hands just aren’t moving to the proper location quickly enough. It’s also vital for play reading because, as mentioned previously, you need to actually have vision to process. If a goalie struggles in tracking pucks through traffic or has difficulty following quick passes, they’re going to cognitively process the play slower because they simply aren’t supplying the brain with sufficient sensory input.
Why tracking isn’t higher up on the list is because it’s more or less a habit, not necessarily an innate skill. You can develop tracking relatively more easily than the other skills above it on this list by genuinely just putting a lot of effort into constantly practicing in every situation. It also develops with more experience naturally, as quicker-moving pucks force the goalie to adapt and develop their tracking capabilities. But at the same time, most goalies should be good at tracking at 18, so if they falter severely, they’re likely going to be very far behind their peers, and if drastic improvement isn’t made, they will be exposed the higher up they move.
Biggest Green Flag: Refined, composed, and great attention to detail
When scouting goalies, particularly young draft prospects, one of the biggest green flags I like to see is actually their level of refinement and attention to detail. It sounds a bit odd, as this isn’t necessarily a raw skill; it’s actually something that can be developed, especially more easily than intelligence, skating, and athleticism. But the end goal for goalies is to be refined, to be very composed and methodical, purposeful in every movement, and to rid the excess.
This is something that you will see that most prospects will have to work on and develop. But there are a few odd ones who don’t really have to do that, and this opens up a different avenue of them being able to devote more time to either getting better at more important skills or allowing them time to eliminate a weakness. There is a caveat, though, and it’s that the goalie has to have some kind of serious skill elsewhere. Refinement of bad goalie skills doesn’t get you anywhere, obviously. One of the most common archetypes that are legit NHL prospects you see are athletic, erratic goalies at 17 and 18. You can say yes, they have raw potential because they have unteachable skill, but their development will still be very up in the air because they have to tame their athleticism and basically break all their bad habits and develop much better ones, something very hard to do, especially for goalies who more often than not, tend to be ritualistic and superstitious.
A much more refined goalie is more projectable because they don’t have to spend time developing that area; they can focus on their weaknesses much more easily. A good recent example would be Lucas Beckman, who struggles with skating, something that can kill most careers. However, given his considerable talent elsewhere and his exceptional composure and refinement at such a young age, he can devote his focus to improving his major weakness. Or you could look at Carter George, who plays like a 10-year pro at 18, and he’s able to freely improve much more important areas of his game and get even better.
Attention to detail can also be a strong indicator of work ethic and could be seen as a potential indicator for future development. This is because it takes a tremendous amount of work to play at a high level and remain so in control and purposeful; some NHL goalies still struggle to achieve this level of consistency. If they’re like that at 18, then it means they would’ve been putting in absurd amounts of time and effort, as it’s not something that comes naturally, and it would be pretty safe to trust that they can continue to do so and get even better in the future. Bad habits are really hard to break, so it’s always a huge green flag when they play with nothing but good habits on the more technical side of the game.
Red Flag: Overreliance on athleticism and size
The biggest red flag I see in goalies is an overreliance on athleticism and size. This dependency on natural talent and size can breed lots of bad habits, and it tends to end up creating more problems for the goalie than those qualities can solve. You can actually see this phenomenon happen in all positions of the sport throughout the course of one’s career.
When gifted with these, it’s easy to dominate at lower levels growing up and even sometimes in junior. And because it’s so easy to dominate, complacency becomes common, because why get better at other things when you already can’t be scored on? But then you get to higher levels, and all of a sudden, the smaller guys who were forced to develop and grow their technique are outperforming you because your neglected technique is getting exposed as your size and athleticism are no longer sufficient on their own. If you rely too much on that stuff, you’re not going to be sufficient in the other areas of the game. But the real problem is the bad habits.
When you go through life getting really good results regardless of process, typically, you are going to think you’re doing everything right. That mindset is very dangerous because it can be immensely difficult for coaches to change the way the goalie plays if they’re simply not buying into what they’re being taught - usually because they think it’s beneath them or they just don’t think they need to change. This goalie may still have natural talent to work with, but their development is going to be much longer and more difficult than others, making them a complete wildcard and, in some bad cases, not even worth the effort.