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Singing a New Tune: Goalie Band Helps Train Netminders |
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Written by Jon Waldman
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 Anyone who has ever been a goalie will tell you that one of the hardest habits to break is getting set too deep in your crease.
No matter how many times a coach, teammate or angry fan will tell you to play at the top of your zone, the natural tendency is to drop back and settle into your net, so much so that if an onlooker tilted his or her head, they’d swear you were lying in a hammock.
One Winnipegger, however, is looking to reverse this trend.
A hockey coach and former goaltender himself, Bob Unger has developed a training tool called the Goalie Band. The device is an outward-shaped semicircle of durable plastic composite, which affixes to a hockey net. Without any give, netminders are forced to stay at the top of their crease and rid themselves of the nasty back-peddling habit.
The origins of Unger’s invention emanate from his own frustration of watching goalies back into their nets, leaving an incoming shooter more opportunities to put a puck by them in a snap. At first, he would put his stick up against a trainee’s back to keep them from going deeper in the crease, but quickly found that he was dodging pucks more often than he would’ve liked. Enter the prototype for the Goalie Band.
“I came up with this piece of plastic and perfected it so that I could stand off to the side and stay out of the way of danger,” he recalls. “It actually worked. It kept (the goalies) where I wanted them for shooting practices.”
It didn’t take long for other coaches to want to use Unger’s new invention.
“The first night I used it, a coach watching from the sidelines said, ‘Bob, my goalies are doing the same thing; can I borrow it?’ I said, ‘no, I broke it, I’ve got to take it home,’” he says.
Following this conversation, Unger, with support from his wife, looked into patenting his new device, and the Goalie Band was born.
Along the way, Bob and his fellow coaches found a secondary use for the Band. Rather than have the netminder positioned outside the crease, goalies were instead put inside their zone, with the band strapped in front of them acting as a screen, preventing them from seeing the play.
The Goalie Band quickly caught on with professional hockey coaches, beginning with Rick St. Croix, who was then a coach with the Manitoba Moose. The team used the band during their practices, and St. Croix still uses the device in his hockey school. Other clients include the Kootenay Ice of the WHL and Dominik Hasek’s goalie coach in the Czech Republic.
As the popularity of the Goalie Band continues to grow, so too should the skills of netminders across the hockey landscape, thanks to Winnipeg’s own Bob Unger. Check it out at goalieband.net . |
