Percentage Goaltending as I Know It

I've been getting a lot of questions recently about "Percentage Goaltending." Looks like some players have been at some camps and the term has come up.

But nobody can give me a clear answer to what they learned!

So here's my take on what percentage goaltending is. It may not be what you learned at camp. (If it's not just email me at jone4@shaw.ca and tell me what you learned and we'll go from there.)

But here's how I view percentage goaltending. First you need to understand what the shooter sees when he is looking at you.

When a shooter looks at you standing in the cage he has a number of options. He can shoot stick side high. He can shoot between your legs. He can shoot off stick hip. He can shoot off stick high. There any number of places he can shoot the ball and each one of those locations has either a high success rate of going in, or it can be considered a bad shot with a low chance of going in (i.e. A shot to the stick side high is not as good as a shot to the off-stick hip given the situation.)

Let's use this example: Let's picture the goalie for a second standing in the center of the cage and the shooter is standing at 15 yards right up the center of the field.

Most goalies are stronger to shots to their stick side. So most shots taken to the stick side of a goalie have less of a chance to go in than do shots on the off stick side.

But if a goalie stands right in the center of the cage he is leaving a large portion of the cage open to his off-stick side which we already know are tougher to stop.

So if the goalie were to take a six inch step to his/her off-stick side they would be lessening the odds of a ball going in on their off-stick side, and they would not be taking much away from their stick side save because they are already good at making saves to the stick side.

So what we are doing here is increasing our chances on making the save. Or increasing our percentage to make the save. This can also be called "baiting" the shooter. What we are doing, by moving ourselves in the cage is forcing them to shoot to a particular spot. If the goalie moves a bit to their off-stick side the shooter doesn't see as much cage to shoot at. In the shooters mind that doesn't look like a high-perentage shot. The shooter sees more cage on the stick side which looks more appealing but in reality the goalie has a better chance of making that save because it is on the stick side.

Now this is just a straight up example. It works even better when the shooter is shooting from an angle. I'll talk more about that in another post. Until then, let me know if this helps you. Email me at jone94@shaw.ca and we'll talk about it some more.