The First Goalie Post.

2012-03-12T12:14:00.002-07:00

Hockey players are a dime a dozen. You can pick them up at your local convenience store. Any Bozo that can strap on a pair of skates can call themselves a hockey player.

Me circa 2007. Before the explosion of the yellow dangler throat guard.

Goalies on the other hand, well, they're a special breed. It dawned on me recently that I don't really have a goalie post in particular and I got to thinking. Maybe, just maybe, I need to create a goalie blog. I figured I'd start with this and see how it goes. I don't want to divulge too many goalie union trade secrets after all.

Anywho!!! Like I was saying, it takes a special kind of person to be an ice hockey goalie. It's been said time and time again how "off" goalies are. There's some truth to that. I speak from experience as a fellow member, in good standing, of the union.

So, why are goalies a little different than everyone else? Well, if you ask your average hockey player they'll say we're dumb because we've been hit in the head too many times. Or that we're crazy for standing in front of a frozen, potentially lethal, projectile. Some would say we did it to get out of all the skating drills. Regardless the reason they come up with I challenge their logic and counter with this.

We're freaking smarter than you idiots up front.

How so? Well, let's explore shall we?

1. Goalies spend a lot of time alone, mainly on the ice. Even on a crappy team, we probably only see about a shot a minute (C'mon goalies, you're smart, do the math). As a result we quietly contemplate the meaning of life. We alsoly watch what you guys are doing in front of us and we see all of your mistakes long before the puck reaches us and we have to cover for you. Sure, our mistakes go up on the score board but at least three of you had to screw something up before we were given the opportunity to either succeed or fail.

A good goalie knows his place as well. A good goalie keeps his team's mistakes quiet because we know how sensitive your forwards are when we start pointing out that you over dangled in the neutral zone and created another 3 on 0. No, it's cool, I'll just make another big save.

2. We wear more protective gear. This is why I wanted to be a goalie and I'm sure I'm not the only one that thought the gear looked cool at a young age. How does that make us smarter? Because we'll go out of our way to put some extra Charmin in our goalie pads to keep from getting hurt. We do it to help you forwards out after all. If we're not injured and we cover more net then we stop more pucks and we all win more games.

3. Along the same lines as wearing such awesome gear, we do everything we can scientifically to take up more net. This takes a great deal of research. We talk to equipment guys and see if they can "add a little pad here" or "make this a little baggier" to stop more pucks to win more games and help our team out. Is it cheating? Nah. Besides, if you're not cheating, you're really not trying hard enough.

Those are just a few ways goalies are smarter than forwards that I can see. We do a lot of observing. We watch plays unfold in front of us. We see where other goalies are weak and some of us will sell out a fellow goalie on an opposing team in order to get the W. Especially if that goalie is a full right goalie. Ugh, those guys are like mirror images of us lefty's.

Smokey The Goalie

The First Goalie Post.