What does a Icehockey Scout do in Switzerland?

I very often notice that people think completely wrong about what a hockey-scout is doing in Switzerland and not seldom even sports-journalists don’t know or don’t do research enough about what is a scout’s life and in my personal case what is a scout’s life in Switzerland.

The biggest misunderstanding is that a lot of people mix a scout’s job up with the one of an agent. A scout – who takes his job really serious - can’t be an agent and vice-versa because an agent is first and foremost a salesman of his clients and a scout must be a completely independent and very critical voice in terms of player-evaluations. So many people think that me as a scout I have clients (players) and they pay me money or the they believe that I discover a hockey-talent that nobody else knows about, then bring this player to a team and get money for this. Completely wrong. In these modern times there are no hockey-talents undiscovered anymore and nobody else knows about; these times are long gone but of course there are tons of different opinions about players.

Once again: A hockey-scout is an independent critical voice in the full process of player-evaluations. In my personal case I’m proud to work for 20 years now for the NHL, write reports about players, discuss players with my scouting-colleagues and do international criss-cross-rankings of so called “NHL-draftees”, players who might get drafted in the upcoming NHL-draft. In addition I have a small consulting-job since 9 years with the target to help a Swiss National-League team (3 years SCB and now since 6 years EHC Biel) to find promising B-League-players and/or junior-players with pro-potential. Both jobs are small jobs, means part-time-jobs. My fulltime-job is the one as a Head Human Resources in an international tourist-company with more than 1’500 employees worldwide. Another not seldom misunderstanding is that not me as the scout takes decisions for the club. As a consultant I present recommendations about not very well known players, young players and import-players. Of course the club never asks me about already established players from our league because they know these players well enough  - some sporting-directors even played with or against these players – so they don’t need my opinion about such players. In the very end there are players playing in a scout’s team the scout did recommend, players a scout never got asked about and even players a scout explicitly didn’t recommend to hire. It’s wrong to believe that players in a team got hired from a scout.

To summarize:  A scout is not an agent, doesn’t get money from players and also not from clubs for specific player-recommendations and a scout doesn’t take decisions in a club about player-recruiting. A scout is a critical, independent voice in terms of player-evaluations and usually gets a yearly small consulting-contract with the target to support the sporting-director in his decision-taking.

Personally I look at it as a small company, means I can’t do everything by myself because there are tons of interesting hockey-games worldwide and of course I can’t cover all of them. I couldn’t do so even if I would be a fulltime-scout, personally I follow approx. 100 games per season live in arenas plus tons of games at home on computer. So, one of my most important parts is to evaluate and “hire” two highly qualified so called birddogs in each of the relevant hockey-countries. People who deliver me professional, critical und detailed infos about players in their countries, I – resp. my team, the team who asks me – could be interested in. Even after 20 years I’m still fine-tuning this group of birddogs, I’m sure that my educations in human-resources subjects are a big advantage to this. It’s naive to believe that a single scout can evaluate worldwide all relevant players. A good scout needs excellent “birddogs”, needs excellent information, high-end stats and a certain level of technology to come to a fair amount of relevant information about players. He definitely needs an experienced eye and needs to go to games in the arenas, especially to games what won’t be broadcasted on TV and/or via live-stream. Then you put all the single information-puzzle-pieces together to a hopefully clear picture. In the very end it’s always up to the scout to give an opinion. Do I recommend to hire this player for this or that price, are there cheaper, similar quality alternatives, are there similar players on the market? To all these questions the scout gives his personal answer but this answer should be based on a variety of information, of course including personal player-viewings. In terms of our Swiss player market I also started to run an Excel-sheet with informations about approx. 600 players in our different SUI leagues and with a dynamic evaluation process. This database is going to be updated every 6 months.

What technology do I use? I go to games with my I-Pad-Mini in terms of line-ups and looking up some stats if needed. I have my prepared paper-document in front of me with up to 5 players I follow and report about in a single game, write my notes down in handwriting and transform my handwritten notes at home into a computer-system. Some scouts chose the direct input to computers and work with laptops during games. I might also go this direction in the very near future probably. I’m a bit conservative with the use of latest technologies but in the very end I definitely will use it also. In addition I know dozens of helpful webpages with information about players, buy worldwide all relevant hockey-magazine, keep them and read all kind of books with the subject of talent development, talent evaluation and hockey-related content.

You see, I’m a real “puckhead” and now we come to the perfect profile of a hockey-scout. Is it an advantage if you were a player in the past? Yes, it is definitely an advantage compared to somebody who never did do a team-sport. Is it important that you were a pro-hockey-player in the past? No, not really. Don’t overrate the level you played, this is not very important. But of course I did and do talk here and there with former NHL-players who are scouts now and in some details they did teach me interesting things what maybe former minor-leaguers don’t know. But: As it is in all jobs: The most important success-factor is the passion. You have to love your job, you have to love being a scout. If you are top motivated in what you do, if you work hard and if you love to work hard: THIS is the real success-factor. Rest assured that my “birddogs” (former players, passionate puck-heads, men and women) come from completely different backgrounds with different strengths and weaknesses. If you have different backgrounds in your team and you have the ability to take the best out of everybody… then you are an excellent scout. I’m not right there yet, I still have to learn a lot but I’m a keen learner and I guess I improve year by year…and I will never stop to learn until my very last day! 

To be a hockey-scout is the best part-time-job you can imagine! My worldwide network with awesome people is priceless and I love to travel to places I never would go as an ordinary tourist. Huge parts of my rich life-experience is because of being a hockey-scout for the NHL and some teams.  I’m very thankful and proud to be a small part of the great community in the game of hockey and hope that I can go on forever!

Horgen, 21^st March 2016 / Thomas Roost                                                                                  ScoutInSwitzerland.docx

Hockey Playoff Psycho Madness

You know the playoffs are here when everybody tells you that this is by far the most beautiful time of the year (although, let's be honest, this is actually just true for the underdogs…).

Playoffs are when top-scorer X is not scoring and “non-valeur” Y becomes the hero with a goal in the overtime and everybody has explanations for everything but nobody really knows…

Playoffs are here when too many choleric slightly red faces in the crowd become dark-red and the crowd switches from euphoria to depression and aggression within just a couple of minutes. Playoffs are when journalists from even quality-media lose temper and pray bar-room-slogans.

Playoffs are when you want others to believe that you know and you know nothing. Playoffs are when you can witness excellent textbook-psychology-examples of the good and the bad and when yesterday’s ‘good’ is tomorrow’s ‘bad’.

Playoffs are when experts explain that the losing team didn’t have enough leaders, didn’t want to win badly enough, lacked fire in the eyes and didn’t do the small things good enough and complain about other trivial observations. And playoff is when the disappointed hockey-mob takes over with martial rhetoric and some media start to jump onto this bandwagon…

Especially the series between the ZSC Lions and SC Bern shows me a lot of very interesting aspects about the psychological characteristic of playoff hockey and not only in terms of players and coaches but also experts, spectators, and media.

You’ll find my observations later in this column because first of all, I want to explain how “fair” hockey playoffs are. Thanks to some clever brains at the Harvard Sports Analytics Collective and at Hockeyanalytics, we not only believe but we really know that:

1. Hockey playoffs are heavily influenced by randomness.

2. Goals for and against are the only winning/losing factors.

3. Hockey is played by human beings at high speed in tight, size-limited rinks on a very slippery and sometimes imperfect surface with a small rubber. All this is a perfect recipe for a chaotic event and if you don’t believe in this, then you never watched a hockey game.

4. There is a great deal of statistical proof that goals happen randomly.

5. The only unambiguous event in a hockey game is a goal, all other events are just a matter of opinion.

Most people, especially fans but also experts and journalists, struggle to accept all of this. We love good stories and want to believe in cause and effect. Yet, there are too many chaotic factors and there is randomness everywhere in the game of hockey.

So, coming back to my psychological observations in just 5 (five!) playoff-days (3 games). First of all, let’s have a look at the teams: After a very successful regular-season with just the disappointment in the Champions Hockey League (which has at least partly to do with the level of our league and not only with the level of the ZSC-Lions), the Lions began their first game as one could have expected. Their plays were full of dynamic, full of confidence and these first 10 minutes in game one were a complete mirror of the regular-season: Skillful, fast and confident ZSC Lions and an SC Bern with limited mobility, average skills, and shaky confidence.

As we all do know, the game changed. Bern did score out of the blue but Zurich still played pretty well, still a bit better than Bern but in the end, they lost on penalty shots. Similar sights in game two: The ZSC Lions controlled most parts of the game but didn’t score enough goals to eliminate the ever burning and slowly growing Bernes flame.

To be fair: SC Bern’s defense was very clever and disciplined in all three games so far. They tried to close the slot area and did pretty well. In the end, another win for Bern in another game where Zurich was slightly better.

Game 3: A completely different psychology: Shaky Lions with trembling hands on one side and on the other side, Bern, who had to cope without three of their most skillful players (Blum, Plüss, and Roy). The intensity was good in this game but the skill-level made me really worrying about our level of hockey.

Besides Nilsson and Matthews, the aspects of puck management, hand skills, passing quality, and shooting technique were really bad in this game. In a game with quite a lot of possible players for the Swiss national team…

For some reason, the Lions had a 2-0 lead and many (including me) thought that this can be the turning point in this series. Not so fast… Bern did come back with two goals and what happened afterwards is, once again, a textbook psychological observation about losing confidence, about losing control, about losing composure and becoming hectic.

The other way around, in terms of the SC Bern: From this point onwards Bern was clearly the better team and they well deserved the win in the very end. Within just three games in just 5 days, a stable winning team did transform into a messy group of players with no confidence at all and the year-long losers from Bern all of a sudden started to play calm with solid passing and smart, composed decisions.

In the very end, I even found some small arrogant plays simply to show the Lions how ridiculous they are. Unbelievably interesting to follow all this. This is the playoff! This is playoff excitement and also a bit of playoff unfairness.

Let’s turn the page and observe what happened in the stands, in the crowd: A happy Zurich-crowd in the beginning, full of optimism and applauding also the smallest easy plays at the beginning of game one. A shaky mood during the rest of game one with alternating angry outbursts and supporting chants and sometimes big silent question-marks.

After losing the first two games, it took only 35 seconds into game three until the first unhappy sound roared through the Hallenstadion after a sort of sloppy pass was played. A Very shaky atmosphere for the rest of the game. The crowd support always seemed to be on very thin ice and more and more red and aggressive heads started to illuminate the Hallenstadion and choleric outbursts added even more spice to the already exciting game.

Even more interesting are the reactions and comments from experts and journalists – This is again textbook-psychology at it’s best: Most of the media praised the Lions throughout the year as the 'Swiss poster boy' of our league. They applauded the speed and the skill of this team and the smartness of coach Crawford who did do so many things so much better than Guy Boucher in Bern.

However, the majority of the media changed their opinion extremely fast and criticized Crawford for giving Matthews/Nilsson too much ice-time and not enough to other players.

Well, if you look at it rationally, it’s the "chicken and egg"- problem: What was first? Did the coach give additional ice time to Matthews/Nilsson because they played indeed better than the others or did the others play bad because they didn’t get enough ice-time?

I tell this even to the angriest and most self-confident critic: You don’t know! It’s just a guessing game. My personal observation was that in game one Nilsson/Matthews were by far the most dangerous forwards and nearly nothing did come from any of the big-name Swiss forwards.

Every coach on this planet would have reacted with additional ice-time to the hot players and this is exactly what he did. So I only agree with these critics to a certain point because it was a common, pragmatic decision of a coach. But of course, I also don’t know, it’s just my opinion.

Did Crawford mix the lines in the wrong way, did he play with the wrong import-players? Well, maybe… we just don’t know, all these theories are just guessing games. As of today, I even listen to voices who want to fire Crawford immediately.

To fire the coach who led the team to a championship, to a runner-up medal and to two regular-season-titles and a Cup win, a coach who five days ago nobody really questioned. It’s unbelievable how not only a player, a team or coaches but also experts and journalists lose composure, calmness and get overwhelmed by emotions and irrational reflexes. Once again, textbook psychology at it’s best.

Everybody always says: “I’m so excited for the playoffs.” Well, as manager, president or head coach of a “clear favorite”, I would not be very excited. Instead, I would have a lot of respect and even a little bit of anxiety, just because I know that even a clear favorite can easily fail in the playoffs.

What about the coaches? Crawford is already well-known from his time as an NHL-bench-boss for losing his composure in critical situations. He obviously hasn’t learned too much in this respect since then and he might even think that the refs show more respect towards him compared to more low-key head coaches.

However, the refs don’t care and right they are. So Crawford’s behavior during games and in some interviews are haunting him after all is said and done, it’s simply counterproductive( the same goes for McSorley by the way).

On the other hand, you have the unheralded Lars Leuenberger and after a sort of sloppy start with the one or the other unlucky interview, I start to notice a certain ability to learn. He is improving and from what I can observe from the outside, I quite like how he behaves, treats players during the games and answers questions after the battles.

He is low key, composed and quite rational. I guess there is some potential in Lars Leuenberger. But once again… my coach-critics might be different if the puck had gone the other way if the Lions had benefitted a bit more from lucky bounces. It’s easier to act calm and relaxed if you are winning. So…

Towards the end of my “praying” ;-), I just want to remind every reader that the ZSC Lions played very well for almost a full season with just one bad week and the SC Bern played a bad season with just one good week. This is the fundament for a professional analysis: to think about what worked out and what did not. I recommend to the Lions and the Bern-management not to step into the trap and to believe that for the winner, everything was good and for a loser, everything was bad.

Neither Crawford nor Leuenberger as coaches are heroes or scapegoats even if one won nearly all regular season games and lost in the first playoff week and the other had mediocre results for long stretches of the season and a sensational first playoff week.

We have to calm down and think cold-blooded and rational and in the very end,  we might come to the conclusion that the wisest judges are the softest ones and we all take our wisdom and theory as what they are: Unproven guessing games with a lot of examples to support our theories but with just as many counterexamples.

The playoffs are unpredictable, unexplainable and unbelievably exciting… but sometimes also really unfair. We have to accept all of this before we call for heads to roll and before we call the winners “messiah.” It’s as simple as that.

Coming back to the teams, the players. What should they do to prepare playoff games, to prepare crucial championships- or relegation-games? The somewhat disappointing answer is that you can’t do much, just quite a small part lies in your hands.

But I will start this discussion with a question: What is the difference between game 7 in the regular-season and game 7 in a playoff series? Is the rink smaller, the net bigger and you play not 5 on 5 but 6 on 6? Of course not… it’s just the result in the end what makes a difference.

The loser goes home and the winner gets to practice tomorrow. Intensity arises from unscripted competition. The suddenness of events in playoff games often exposes mental and physical weaknesses. It matters how players and coaches react during critical moments in the heat of a crucial competition.

The team and the players practice their sport for moments like this but in practice we cannot truly replicate pressure situations and that’s why we have to train for pressure situations in other ways. This brings us back to our game 7 in the regular season. How one prepared and performs in this game is more or less indicative of how they will perform in playoff competition, in championship or relegation games.

When athletes think too much, they are not really thinking too much because they are usually thinking about the wrong things at the wrong time. Wrong things are e.g. the hope for positive plays and the fear of what will happen when mistakes are made.

Athletes have to stay strategic and focus on what they can immediately control, e.g. execution of routine plays and the responsibilities of the given roles each player has within the team. Athletes have to think about the most basic, fundamental elements that are required of them to perform correctly.

Focusing on your responsibilities instead of focusing on wanting to make the big play or not wanting to make a mistake. Athletes who learn to treat game 7 of the regular season the same way as the championship game are successful in focusing on the aspects they can control The more consistent this preparation is throughout a season, the less likely athletes and teams will become victims of playoff pressure.

And you know what? I’m close to 100% sure that all players – in our example all players from the winning SC Bern and the losing ZSC Lions – were taught this and know about all this and accordingly, they prepare more or less their games in this way. But in the very end, we still have losers and winners and the most honest explanation about winning or losing would be: I don’t know, I’m just happy that we did win or the other way round.

It’s playoff time, enjoy and accept the unpredictable and the unexplainable! 

Horgen, 10^th March 2016 / Thomas Roost

How good is Arno Del Curto, HC Davos headcoach?

No hockey coach in Switzerland is as heavy discussed as Arno Del Curto from HC Davos. In these discussions I do notice mainly two camps: The befuddled lovers, admirers and the unfair haters. Also in the media there seems to be nothing in between but the media tends heavily to the uncritical admirers. Because I seem to be one of the guys without positive or negative emotions about this charismatic coach I guess it’s time for a more deep and objective analyses about Arno Del Curto. How good is he, what does he good and what does he not so good? Ok, I admit, also me I had a inner feeling about this coach. My inner feeling told me that he is a good coach and this on a scale „very bad, bad, average, good, very good, messiahs“. Let’ see whether I will change my not so factual based opinion about him after doing my „homework“, after this hopefully objective analyses.

First of all I have to explain what is a good coach. Of course, here already we can start the discussion but I stop this because it’s not the topic of this analyses. Just in a few words: A good coach is a coach who develops players, makes them better players. A good coach is when his teams play a type of hockey that attracts spectators and maybe even sponsors. A good coach is when he has better results than what you can expect from the existing player-roster and in the case of Arno Del Curto – because he is Mr. Everything in Davos – I also dig in deeper in terms of how good are the players he hires including import-players.

So let’s start with the non-factual element. Do Arno Del Curtos teams play an attractive style of hockey? This is up to your taste, do you like vanilla or chocolate? Well I have a very clear personal opinion on this. Yes, the way the HC Davos plays hockey is very attractive, I just love it. This is for me by far the best part of what Arno Del Curto offers as a coach. It’s just fun to watch the high-tempo, intense transition type of play! 10/10 points for this!

Next point. How good of a player-developer is Arno Del Curto? Do players develop better working with Arno Del Curto than they develop elsewhere? Of course we don’t have a clear answer to this because we never know how player X or Y would have developed in different circumstances. But there are some facts we have to face: Arno Del Curto usually manages to bring the best young (but not very young) hockey-players to Davos. He hires the key-players from the U20-nationalteams such as Genoni, Berra, Stoop, Sciaroni, Simion, Hofmann, Guerra (he hired him even before), later Walser. This is nothing special and has nothing to do with good scouting or something like that because all teams wanted to have these players but for some reason they did end in Davos (maybe because of the mystery aura Arno Del Curto can offer (and this would be a quality!) or maybe because of better offers than others (and this would mean thank you HC Davos “Kristall-Club”), probably it’s something in between. But again: All these young players were very well known and average fans would also have hired them. There are some unknown players what indicated good scouting (Corvi) and some average players nobody else wanted (Jung e.g.) but this result is very unspectacular, just average. I give him 5/10 for this. Do players develop better under Arno Del Curto than elsewhere? No, there are quite strong indications that this is not the case. Michel Riesen did more or less regress in Davos and a return to the NHL was never really discussed anymore. The normal expectation of U20-Nationalteam-keyplayers is that they develop into good NLA-players when they become 24, 25 years old with some of them will be forces even in the senior-nationalteam. And this is exactly what more or less happened with these players in Davos, they became good NLA-players but this is nothing unexpected exceptional and definitely nothing outstanding. Another fact to this: Not even one actual Swiss NHL-player did go through schooling of Arno Del Curto (Niederreiter did work just a couple of weeks with Arno Del Curto and the credit of Jonas Hiller and Reto Berra goes more to the goalie-coach Marcel Kull. To be fair: The credit to Arno Del Curto is that he hired Marcel Kull). Also the home-grown Davos players such as Dino Wieser, Marc Wieser, Simon Kindschi did develop more or less as expected, nothing spectacular. In the case of Marc Wieser I even have to tell that he did take his huge development-steps in his time in Biel… So, putting this all together there is definitely not a spectacular record in terms of player-development, it’s pretty much average, as expected. I give him 6/10... could easily be 5/10.

Arno Del Curto is also always responsible in hiring the import-players. How good is he in this? My definition of a good import-player: The player receives a contract-extension after the initial contract or he got a better contract in another Swiss A-team, the KHL or the NHL and succeeded there. I do list all import-players I did find in alphabetical order with maybe the one or the other mistake, means gives “just” the big picture. I did not include the NHL-lockout-players:

Oscar Ackeström, Dick Axelsson, Jaroslav Bednar, Vaclav Benak, Lonny Bohonos, Brian Bonin, Pavel Brendl, Jan Brejcak, Alexandre Daigle, Radek Dvorak, Niklas Danielsson, Todd Elik, Johan Fransson, Radek Hamr, Brett Hauer, Jonas Höglund, Zbynek Irgl, Lee Jinman, Patrik Juhlin, Ville Koistinen, Juraj Kolnik, Zdenek Kutlak, Erik Laundry, Mike Maneluk, Kevin Miller, Janne Niskala, Ryan O’Connor, Perttu Lindgren, Josef Marha, Janne Niinimaa, Pärssinen, Paulsson, Niklas Persson,  Alexandre Picard, Vojtek Polak,  Tyler Redenbach, Barry Richter, Yves Sarault, Petr Sejna, Devin Setoguchi, Eero Somervuori, Ahren Spylo, Petr Sykora, Petr Taticek, Vaclav Varada, Erik Westrum, Daniel Widing, Shane Willis, Landon Wilson

You can judge by yourself what players left a lasting impression in your mind, what players you really did like. Of course, this is a bit of a subjective measurement but still: If we look at this list and compare with import-players in other teams I give him 7/10, he is definitely better than average in this category but also clearly not outstanding.

The team-results: Are the HC Davos-results better with Arno Del Curto than what you could expect looking at the team-rosters? The facts: Since 1996 he did win 6 championships plus 3 runner-ups. This is definitely a good or even a very good result on first sight. How good were the rosters in all these succesful years? In 2002 he had Weibel, Hiller, Forster, Gianola, Jan Von Arx, Ambühl, Patrik Fischer, Reto Von Arx und Michel Riesen. This roster was simply the best in this year, favorit to win the Championship and he delivered. Good job but not really unexpected outstanding. 2005 was the NHL-lockout-year with Nash, Thornton and Hagman. Looking at the roster: HCD was the clear favourite and Arno did deliver. Good job but not really unexpected outstanding. 2007 still with brothers Von Arx in their prime with some decent additions (Baumann, Guggisberg, Winkler), did win again. Not the clear favourite but one of the contenders. Did win, very good job. 2009 with the additions of Grossmann, Stoop, Bürgler, Della Rossa again one of the contenders. Did win, very good job, did win as a contender but not as the clear favourite. In 2011 again some key-transfers with Back, Ramholt, Joggi, Tallarini, Sciaroni. Definitely a contender but maybe not the clear favourite. Did win, very good job. In 2015 Davos benefitted from the transfer everybody else also wanted to realise. Andres Ambühl, in addition they had Walser, Hofmann, Simion, Du Bois, great but probably not cheap players… Still not the clear favourite because of the ZSC Lions, but definitely again one of the contenders on paper. Did win, very good job. On the downside there were years in between with not so good success. Especially between 2012 and 2014 the HC Davos results were in average worse than what could have been expected from their rosters. My mark to all this: 8/10 very good but not exceptional.

International results:

I do exclude all the Spengler-Cups from this (by the way I love the Spengler Cup!) because it’s always a tournament with too many extra-players here and there and you never really know how serious the games are played in terms of results.

I do remember Arno Del Curto very well in various interviews where he declared international success as the most important target. Many years back – unfortunately I can’t remember the exact year and the team they played – he declared a game in the then called “Europacup of the Champions” as the ultimate target of the season and Davos quite badly lost. It was in the Czech Republic or Sweden, I can’t really remember, sorry. Fail, maybe he did overrate Swiss hockey at this time or he just failed. Not a good job. Years later there was the ultimate match-up vs the Chicago Blackhawks in Zurich. Arno Del Curto declared this game as the most important of the season and he wanted to show the NHL how good his team is. It was a desaster, 2-9. The game strategy was very naive, Davos wanted to beat this brilliant NHL-team with speed, intensity and skills… common… Badly failed, Arno Del Curto, it was an embarassing Swiss hockey-moment but also probably the birth of the ZSC-Lions miracle-win vs Chicago just one or two days later… This year we had the Champions Hockey League and it was the ultimate dream of Arno Del Curto to win this pot. Davos played really well in this competition and did do so as the only Swiss team. Respect, quite well done but not in the final and not winning the pot. A good but not a very good and not an outstanding result. For international success I give Arno Del Curto 5/10 – and if it would be not this good Champions-Hockey-League-season 15/16 it would be a 3/10. To be fair: This international success-mark is based on just a couple of games and of course on very thin ice, but still.

Putting everything together in one basket. What is my conclusion? Did this analyses change my inner feeling? You might remember: My inner feeling did tell me that Arno Del Curto is a good coach.

My final conclusion:

Arno Del Curto is a good to very good coach, something in between. According to my analyses he is slightly better than my inner feeling indicated. Between good and very good means clearly better than average but it also means not very good and also quite far away from outstanding and definitely not a messiahs!

What about his personality? I don’t know really, I don’t know him personally but there are some indications that he is a very sensitive person with a pretty thin skin and this leads sometimes to the one and the other irritating comments in critical media-inverviews. After so many years as the undisputed Zar of Davos I also noticed some diva-like behaviours. He also tries to make much play with his charisma, tries to show too much that he is a rebel and unique. But that’s ok, he is a salesman and yes, to be a good salesman is part of the game if you want to have good contracts and who doesn’t want to have this? And yes, he is charismatic but charismatic has nothing to do with good or bad but we have the tendency to vastly overrate charismatic people and underrate humble, low key personalities.

In the very end maybe my most important sentence once again: It’s just fun to watch games of the HC Davos. Thank you Arno Del Curto for this entertaining part of your coaching!

Horgen, 28^th February 2016 / Thomas Roost

Arriving in the NHL - What to expect and how to prepare: Part 3 - Goalies

Is a goalie worth 50% of a team, is he the so called Mr. 50%? Is the goalie by far the most important player in a team? I tell twice no. In the tendency the importance of certain goalies is a bit overrated. Is the goalie an important player? Yes, yes, yes! Let me explain my still a bit unpopular opinion: Goalie-performances in single games are in deed extremely important but this is different from the importance of certain goalies…. Hmmm, I try to explain again: I know not a single goalie on this planet who doesn’t have excellent, good, average and below average stretches during a long season. So, even if you have Carey Price of Henrik Lundqvist between the pipes comes playoff-time, you never know for sure what kind of performance you will get out of them. Will they be hot? You pray to god that they are… but you can’t know this. On the other side you might face the franchises No4-goalie because of injuries, illnesses or other reasons and you might hope that this goes to your advantage. But the truth is that there is always a chance that this no-name No4-goalie will outperform your star-goalie in a certain playoff-series. So again: There is a significant difference between the importance of a goalie-performance and connecting this with a certain name, a certain goalie. This comes because there are just 30 No1-NHL-goalie-jobs on this planet but maybe close to 100 excellent goalies on this planet. If you take also the best goalies in European leagues then we soon will have 120 excellent goalies. Whether this worldwide improvement in goalie-quality is because of bigger equipment or better goalie-education is up to debate. Probably it’s both. This is bad news for goalies in contract-negotiations because if the goalie wants too much money the smart GM simply goes for the next one and the chance is big that this next one has a very similar quality than the one who wants too much money. All this means that as a GM you never should feel too much pressure to sign this or that goalie, in the tendency the market-value of goalies is going down and this is – believe it or not – because the worldwide goalie-quality did improve so much lately that the market nowadays offers to many good goalies for not enough demand. Examples from this season: Did you notice any significant change in team-performances with the Winnipeg Jets? They lately played with their No3-goalie but they even have slightly better results. Any significant ZSC-result-changes? Their No1-goalie Lukas Flüeler is out for long stretches, the No2, Niklas Schlegel, did take over and sometimes even their No3, 4 and 5-goalie plays… and I can’t find a real difference in the team’s win/lose-ratio. The same goes for SCB with the change from “no name” Schwendener to import-goalie Stepanek. Again, this doesn’t mean that Lukas Flüeler - or in the case of the Winnipeg Jets Ondrej Pavelec - are not important players but please also don’t get fooled, don’t overrate their influence.

The plays of the modern NHL-goalies:

What we have to know about modern NHL-goaltending is that if you are relying on your reaction time to make saves you are out in a hurry. Fast reflexes are highly overrated. Modern NHL-goaltending is mostly about intuition, reading the game and geometry. You are watching the puck-carrier, quickly analysing all of the guy’s options, looking at his feet, hands, eyes and body-positioning and then take the decision for what kind of action you will be prepared. Most of the goalies work has to be done before the shot even comes! Again, if you are relying on your reflexes, on your reaction-time: You are toast! So you have to study opposing shooters, as a goalie you have to be a life-long student. Connor Hellebuyck tells that he always was a diehard fan and just loved to watch and study all the goalies and shooters. He was and is a goalie, a fan and a student at the same time. One of the first findings in Hellebuyck’s studies was that most goals are going in when goalies were deep. So he started to develop a system to stay a bit out more than others. Modern NHL-goalies rely mostly on positioning and taking away as much open space as possible.

Basically a modern NHL-goalie is big and fast. Goalies smaller than 183cm are most likely not get drafted in the NHL. Average size of drafted goalies for the NHL is very close to 190cm. They are athletic monsters, lean and agile and cover a lot of the net even before they put the gear on. The NHL will likely shrink the pants and the arm-pads in the near future and this will have a bigger impact than when they reduced the length of the pads. Where will this size-hype end? In theory we are looking for goalies who are more wide than tall ;-) . 

Smaller goalies also can look bigger if they use the shoulders to their advantage. Smaller goalies need to be absolutely sensational in all other aspects if they want to have a chance to become an NHL-goalie. The only young smaller goalie I can think of becoming a small chance to play as a No1 in the NHL is Nashville’s Juuse Saros, the actual No3 or 4 in the Predators depth-chart. In addition to be big you also need to be a very good athlet and be fast with your movements. Especially lateral movement is really important and this because of the already discussed top snipers who can change shooting angles in a split-second. Coming back to one of the best young NHL-goalies:

Connor Hellebuyck

The biggest honour for a goalie is if you call him big and boring and this exactly is Connor Hellebuyck. If you watch Hellebuyck just follow his state of the art positioning, a real beauty! In the end everything looks pretty easy and all this comes from his positioning. His saves then look pretty easy but they are relatively easy because of his high-end positioning and reading the plays.

Connor Hellebuyck

Jonathan Quick

Jonathan Quick is a very athletic goalie and is very explosive from side to side and in the splits. Please also watch how he likes to position himself extremely low. This position allows him too see better through sticks and legs. He also spends a lot of time sitting in a complete butterfly split. With this strategy he can deal better with all the deflected pucks

Henrik Lundqvist

Henrik Lundqvist  is less athletic than Jonathan Quick but he is standing very tall and wide during games. He definitely looks bigger in the net than he is. He also reads the plays unbelievable well, anticipation is second to none and watch how his body positioning is still under perfect control while moving. In addition his ability to be “square” to the shooter is also something to watch, to study in the plays of Henrik Lundqvist. Unlike Helleybuck he is a goalie who plays a bit more deep in the net.

 

Henrik Lundqvist

Carey Price

Price is extremely economical and precise in his movements and watch how well he handles the puck. He also is very quick moving laterally. Like Helleybuck nothing looks really spectacular if you watch Price and this is a strength and not a weakness.

Braden Holtby

Holtby is the hottest NHL-goalie at this point. Like Carey Price he is very mechanical and precise with his movements and shows excellent angle-plays. In addition his butterfly-technique is state of the art with just very few holes while still maintaining an upright posture and good balance. He also usually shows excellent stick-positioning and I also love his rebound-control.

I really recommend you to study these goalies in all the mentioned aspects and much more. Also study the snipers, how they usuallay act in what situations. This study allows you to read and anticipate the game much better and reading the game is most important in modern NHL-goalies life because – as I mentioned earlier: If you rely on your reflexes as an NHL-goalie you will be out of the game very fast.

This 3-part-column contains quotes from Mark Streit, Jonathan Quick, James Neal, Connor Hellebuyck, Kevin Shattenkirk, Andrew Berkshire, Drew Doughty, Scott Stevens, Patrick Kearns, Bernd Freimüller, Anthony Weiner and Logan Couture. Thank you!

Horgen, 7^th February 2016 / Thomas Roost