In the years leading up to 1959, goaltenders in the NHL never wore helmets. Jacques Plante, goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens, was the first goalie to ever wear one. He busted up his nose and refused to return to the ice unless he was allowed to wear the fiberglass face shield he had been using in practice (USAH). The invention of the mask was soon followed by the butterfly. Butterfly is the term for the standard position you see in hockey today when goaltenders drop down onto their knees to make a save. This was one of the biggest changes in goaltending ever. It finally laid a concrete strategy for stopping pucks instead of flailing around on the ice like a madman, frantically trying to get any piece of equipment in front of the shot.

The revolutionization of the butterfly was followed more than fifty years later by the development of a new strategy for tracking and stopping pucks. This breakthrough  utilizes just about every single major body part from the waist up. It greatly increases a goalie’s chance at making a save on any given shot. The name for it is head trajectory.  Many people undermine the importance of the mastery of this technique, because they think bigger goalies are automatically better and head trajectory comes natural. I’m here to tell you those are both false. Head Trajectory is the most important addition to ice hockey goaltending since the invention of the butterfly. It is scientifically backed and plays a key role in the success of talented goaltenders in hockey today.

Lyle Mast is ultimately considered the founder of head trajectory. He spent countless hours on the ice and in the library researching different ways to facilitate the position of goaltender. He is from British Columbia, so Canadian goalies were amongst the early pioneers of head trajectory. He worked with Los Angeles Kings goaltending coach Bill Ranford to develop it in 2008. It wasn’t until 2013 that it gained immense popularity in the National Hockey League and across various junior programs in the country (Mast).

The person who really popularized head trajectory was not actually Lyle Mast. Lyle taught it to his goalies and didn’t have much of an interest in spreading the word further than a select few NHL teams. Stephen Valiquette, current MSG analyst and former NHL goalie, was the first to teach it at a public training session. It just so happens that this training session was strictly for NHL elite goalies and prospects. This is where guys like Devan Dubnyk were first introduced to the idea (Woodley).

Valiquette best explains head trajectory as “a foundation that touches all parts of how we play the position. It's that valuable” (Woodley). a foundation that touches all parts of how we play the position. It's that valuable.Head Trajectory is an extremely complex series of events that maximizes the potential for a goalie to stop pucks. The entire process focuses on attacking pucks instead of being attacked by pucks. It all starts with mathematical angles. Naturally, if an object is closer to you, it will appear bigger. This is why you will see goalies take a step out towards the shooter right before they release their shot. It’s to appear bigger and eliminate the shooter’s vision of any openings. Cutting off angles is of the upmost importance (Kypreos).

 With head trajectory, the concept of closer appearing bigger applies to the hands. The ideal hand positioning involved in head trajectory consists of elbows locked into the hips with the hands pushed out as far in front of you as possible. This is so the shooter sees less of the net and more of the blocker and the glove. Also, since the hands take up more of the net when extended in front, the goalie doesn’t have to move his hands as much to attack the puck and make a save (Kypreos).

The next part of head trajectory involves the hips and shoulders. Before the shot is released, it’s important for a goalie to make sure his hips are square to the shot. That’s not even head trajectory, that’s Goaltending 101. When dropping to a butterfly after a shot is released, it is important for the goalie to move his hips in order to shift his torso as close to the incoming puck as possible. This will bring the chest closer to the ice, a crucial step when closing in on pucks. The shoulders must also be square to the puck and are used in attacking shots. Rather than simply catching or blocking a puck with the hands, goaltenders that learn head trajectory are taught to aggressively grab and punch shots out of the air, both actions stemming from the shoulders down (Prewitt).

Wrist motions must never be overlooked. This is where a lot of goalies go wrong. They do everything right just to have a puck bounce the wrong way and end up in the back of their net. When making a glove save, the most important thing to remember is F.F.F., or fingers finish forwards. Once the puck is felt hit the glove, it is very important to squeeze tight and make sure the finishing position looks like the goalie is going for a fist bump to someone in front of him. This is so if the puck does fall out, it will merely go straight down to the ice for an easy cover and stoppage of play. 

The blocker is slightly less complicated. When a puck hits a goalie’s blocker, there almost always will be a rebound since there is no way to smother the puck for a whistle. The face of the blocker must form a ninety-degree angle with the trajectory of the puck to maximize rebound control. Other than that, it’s as simple as punching the puck to where it has the potential to cause the least amount of harm. The errors occur when the blocker doesn’t form a ninety-degree angle with the shot’s trajectory, and is off center. This causes the puck to bounce unpredictably and often leads to a goal. Trainers spend countless hours with goaltenders drilling all of this into their head so it will become muscle memory and mistakes will be fewer. 

The absolute most important part of head trajectory is what one would think it is – the head. Many goalies have a terrible habit of using their eyes to track pucks instead of their head. This provides room for error, caused mostly by vision distortions caused by the nose. Moving your eyeballs means the puck is being seen from two different angles, changing in a rapid proportion. If a goalie instead locks his eyeballs in the middle of their eye sockets and turns his head and neck to track a shot, the puck will be seen at a constant angle and less vision distortion will make for a more accurate reaction from him.

The concept of head trajectory doesn’t end once the save is made. Many goalies are too lazy to realize this and it proves to become their downfall. Once the save is made, unless the puck is caught in the glove or chest, there will be a rebound. Our body sometimes will tend to start moving in the direction of the rebound before the head is fully turned. This greatly reduces the amount of time the goalie must react to a potential incoming shot. The head must always move first, no matter what (SituationalGoaltending).

Any good trainer will constantly hound their goalies about rebounds. Approaching the shot at the right angles is of immense importance. Even on drills where a goalie will see five shots, one after another, any good trainer will tell the goalie to follow his rebound: “Lead with the head… and the body follows” (Prewitt). It is essential to not become lazy with tracking rebounds one would consider harmless, namely the ones that go behind the net or into the corner. The boards can cause crazy bounces that will in turn confuse a goalie as to the whereabouts of the puck. Trust me, when a goalie doesn’t know where the puck is, it’s the scariest fucking feeling ever. Always track rebounds. 

The four largest goaltenders in the National Hockey League are Ben Bishop, Scott Darling, Devan Dubnyk, and Anders Lindback. Of these four men, the only two who have learned head trajectory are Darling and Dubnyk. Ben Bishop is six feet seven inches, and the other three are all six feet six inches (Salfino). These measurements don’t take into consideration the extra two or three inches they gain on skates. It’s no question, all of these men are behemoths. Some of them have been able to get to the NHL largely based on just their size. Technicalities were once unimportant when compared with height and weight of a goaltender.

Ben Bishop played for Tampa, up until very recently, and had never learned head trajectory. He’s an older guy and he plays as more of a hybrid style goaltender. In other words, instead of focusing on the finer points, Bishop, thirty years old, just kind of flops around and relies on his immense size to block pucks. This simply is a thing of the past. Nowadays, goalies can’t rely on size alone. They must constantly work harder and harder in order to evolve into an elite, modern goaltender. That is why Bishop’s backup, Andrei Vasilevskiy, twenty-two years old, has become Tampa’s starting goalie while Ben has been traded to Los Angeles to be a backup for Jonathan Quick. Vasilevskiy had to learn head trajectory to stand out as an NHL prospect and it has proven to benefit him in the long run.

Anders Lindback is a goaltender who is currently playing professionally in his home country of Sweden. At twenty-eight years old, Lindback had been playing in the NHL before head trajectory came about. He was a top young prospect who peaked in his mid/early-twenties. It’s not a coincidence he peaked around the time head trajectory came about. It didn’t help that the concept was developed in North America and didn’t make its way to Europe for quite some time. After bouncing around from team to team as a backup goalie and playing a season on the bench in Dallas, Lindback was cut and resorted to the lesser Swedish professional league. Those who don’t adapt don’t survive.

The NHL is evolving. It no longer has room for goalies like this who are not willing to adapt to the times. Younger players are beginning to shine above older players because they work harder to reach the constantly raising standard of a professional hockey player. They are brought up learning the newest concepts in hockey and train in new and outlandish methods to maximize their deadliness on the ice. Connor McDavid is the captain of the Edmonton Oilers, current leader in points in the entire NHL, and just recently turned twenty years old. Guys like this eat goalies like Bishop for breakfast.

Devan Dubnyk is one of the best goalies in the National Hockey League. He is currently fifth in goals against average, fourth in save percentage, and third in wins. It wasn’t always smooth sailing in paradise, however. Dubnyk used to play extremely similar to Bishop and ended up going through a period of time where he warmed the benches of five different teams in two seasons. Nobody wanted Dubey. The final team he went to was the Minnesota Wild, where he worked with Lyle Mast on head trajectory. Once he spent a season there, Dubnyk was ready to take over the starting position and did so in stunning fashion, becoming one of the NHL’s elite, modern goaltenders. 

Dubnyk accredits his success largely to his learning of the concept of head trajectory. He stated that he’s, “going to be working with it until (he’s) done playing hockey” (Woodley). It’s an idea that has potential to grow because of its multiple applications. Currently, the Minnesota Wild are one of the hottest teams coming into the playoffs. Dubnyk’s performance this season was stellar and he proved himself to be on the same level as guys like Carey Price, Pekka Rinne, and Henrik Lundqvist (Mclennan).

Scott Darling, who I happen to have trained with a few times in the past, is a goaltender for the Chicago Blackhawks. Up until recently, he had been the backup goalie for Corey Crawford. Granted, Crawford has won multiple Stanley Cups, so there is no shame in backing up a goalie like that. Darling has been considered the best backup goalie in the NHL. I know for a fact that he learned head trajectory, because I was actually in the same session, working side by side with him and our coach Brian Daccord working on our mastery of the new craft. This was in 2014.

Life was not always kind to Darling. After getting drafted by the Phoenix Coyotes in 2007, his life spiraled out of control. Starting at the training camp in the summer, Darling began to lose focus. He became lazy and unmotivated and was cut from the team. After attending UMaine and playing hockey there for one season, Darling had developed a terrible drinking problem and was kicked out of school. His mom developed breast cancer and this caused him to become depressed. He was playing for a random nobody team in Florida, gaining lots of weight, and was literally a bum. He decided to turn his life around and got professional help. He trained hard for three years, climbed the hierarchy of leagues, and signed a contract with the Chicago Blackhawks on July 1, 2014 (Drehs).

Enter the 2016-2017 NHL season. Darling has put in tremendous amounts of work with head trajectory. Crawford had a rough start to the season, fighting off injuries and inconsistency. Scott has risen from backup to fringe starter with Corey. It is not uncommon at all to turn on NHL network and see a highlight of Darling making a spectacular save. Scott Darling turned his entire life around and head trajectory gave him that extra push to make him known all across America as the kid that won’t fucking quit.

 Head Trajectory is the most instrumental invention in goaltending since the butterfly. For the most part, goalies that know head trajectory tend to be better than goalies that don’t. Ben Bishop and Anders Lindback are both failures as goaltenders. Darling and Dubnyk are the epitome of a cindarella story. Both of these guys worked to the bone to adjust to the times and turn their lives around. Both are still young guys and currently experiencing much success on their respective professional teams.

Size is not everything in hockey. I think by now, that age old myth has been busted. As Jamie Mclennan said, “Goaltenders have gone from that short fat kid who couldn't skate to the athletic monster who is not only lean and agile, but covers a ton of square footage” (Mclennan). Shooters are getting better, so goalies must adjust to this or they will fail. Head trajectory is the key to becoming a successful goaltender. Practicing this technique constantly and putting in countless hours of dedication to muscle memory are the biggest keys to becoming a successful goaltender today.
