E1 - GOALTENDERS’ EYE SKILLS - BETWEEN A PREDICTIVE & PROSPECTIVE APPROACH

Facing a shot have some many components. You must trust your practice, yourself and your reaction. A shot grows to be more and more challenging to save as you improve in your development. You are not the only one getting better, players also want to reach a higher level.

A shot cannot be followed thoroughly by the human’s eye and that's what makes it more impressive when you dig into the research regarding reaction time. There is no time to think when the shot’s release, everything is automatic.

Your reaction becomes your trusted defense. Even if your eyes can’t follow it, shots have a high percentage of being save even at the NHL level, which means that success ratio can also be practiced at any level.

Eye’s skills, occlusive behaviors or visual prowess are all a synonyms. Goaltenders’ eyes skills have a certain perplexity to understand and master. Panchuck and Vickers did insightful research on perceptual habits that enable the understanding of perceptual habits on a shot’s release for elite goaltenders compared to amateur goaltenders. There are specific gaze behaviors when you are observing a shot and some characteristics of this shot’s release can be helpful to build a practice around it.

Whether you are a coach that wants to assess goaltender or an athlete that wants to get better, recognizing how you are analyzing and interpreting the shot of a player is crucial for your performance. Since your success, as a goaltender, is directly linked on whether you can save the puck or not, having a better awareness of

how you are currently interpreting the shot

&

how you can improve that part of your game

is something that needs to be understand and implement into your goaltending training practices.

BACKGROUND

Performing in interceptive movements (i.e.: hitting a baseball, catching the puck, returning a tennis service) can be demanding. Athletes determine, with the acquired information from external stimuli, what the events’ outcome will be. From the external stimuli (i.e: the baseball, the puck, or other information from the environment), there are different approaches to conceptualize and move around when encountering the things in your environment. Two main theoretical approaches has been presented in the scientific literature:

A predictive approach is when the performers forethought their action planning before the external stimuli is even occurring. In this case, the goaltender will anticipate the point of interception or where the puck will go to make the save. Usually the goaltender's decision to save the puck is already established before the puck carrier has attempted its shot release.

A prospective approach rely on the continuous observation of external stimuli until the event have reach the point of interception. In this case, the goaltender view the shot as a dynamic and progressive event until the point of interception occurs. Until the puck is in contact with the goaltender’s equipment, there is a constant analysis of external stimuli.

From the study of Panchuck and Vickers, they proposed the implementation of a predictive approach had better results (save percentage), within the study’s protocol, compared to a prospective approach. Given the dynamism of the game of hockey, it is challenging to replicate something similar to the hockey demand. Gaze behavior in goaltending has still not been properly established to conclude the dominant use of predictive approach. A lack of studies on the subject makes the concept around goaltending and occlusive behavior hard to preset. Results are simply not conclusive enough to create a strong understanding on goaltending eye’s skills. Therefore, predictive approach can’t be the only answer for goaltending eye’s skills.

Despite the lack of scientific information, there is enough acquaintance to create a theoretical representation of gaze behaviors. The suggestion presents as an operation of both occlusive approaches. Since shot's locations, play makings and tactical plays always change and vary in-between games and level of plays, a theoretical representation of gaze behaviors in goaltending would question the general use of occlusive strategies within both approaches.

ESTABLISHING YOUR OWN APPROACH

There is no black or white characterization. Meaning that you are probably doing both a predictive and prospective approach during your shot interpretation. Still, what is the best practice of interpreting a shot? And how can you be better with your occlusive behaviors?

There is no human that has the capacity to practice visual prowess and reach the perfect deliberate harmony between the two approaches. The human eye can’t expect to do so even with practice. This is why there are two occlusive strategies and predictive approach (anticipation) has its utility in some situations, while prospective approach is useful in others.

Predictive approach is a better strategy at closer distance. It requires the goaltender to use the proper set of movements based on the situation in front of the crease. There is, in anticipation, a good choice of technical movements that must be performed depending on what the demand is. Anticipatory reactions are performed when the goalies are ahead of the play, there’s more time and space to examine possibilities of actions or when you are late on the play and not enough time is given for adequate reactions.

Prospective approach will be used more efficiently from longer distance. It requires goaltenders to put its focus on the release of the shot and react based on the information the player is giving you. Every shots has its own data collection, you only need to differentiate from the goods to the deceptive information. If you have good tracking habits and a solid positional stand, your prospective approach strategies should be fine since it used a reactive-based behaviors.

THE WRIST SHOT PARADOX

From the current understanding of information processing approaches, a wrist shot is the shooting technique that gives the most perceptual cues compared to other shot types. More perceptual cues makes it then easier to make a proper save as more information is given to make an adequate reaction.

But it goes against the scoring breakdown from the NHL that present wrist shot as the best techniques to score a goal. The rational hypothesis to this contradiction is the potential wrist shot can give to players. Independent to a goaltender’s ability, a wrist shot can be well potent from a lot of characteristics: fast release, deceptive information, precision, and the possibility to release through puck handling.

Indeed, the wrist shot gives a lot of perceptual cues, but it also has the most opportunity to integrate deceptive information from the release. Deceptive strategies make it harder for a goaltender to use a prospective approach strategy. Prospective approach is used to react more to the shot’s release. When deceptive information is added to the equation, it gets tricky to react adequately. Therefore, it is why predictive approach may be useful in this some cases.

What to do?

Both prospective and predictive approaches are a part of your reaction, for each one of them. For every shots, you are using both your predictive and prospective approaches, it is matter of which one is more prevailing for each one of them. Instead of practicing both approaches distinctively, the best strategy is to focus on game-like situations. Based on close play situation, screen plays, and others, you will be able to define what is the best strategy to use for each on-ice situations. And you will find, depending on your goaltending qualities, which occlusive strategy would be best and how your technical reaction should be. It is a matter of being consistent in your movement and also in your way of perceiving the play and the puck. A part of your occlusive behaviors rely heavily on your ability to deliberately focus early. It is your responsibility to assure your occlusive behavior is on point. Maybe you need to integrate more or less warm-up repetitions before starting the practice. Through specific on-ice drills to off-ice ball-to-wall drills, there are multiple ways to make sure your tracking habits are in check.

Thank you for your reading, please contact me for further information on goaltending specific contents. It would be my pleasure to follow through with practice, consultation and training hacks.

LP