GTP TV Episode 37: Please Stop Saying This

Don’t you dare say this!

There’s a phrase that grates on my nerves and I have been hearing it a lot lately. When you think about it, I’ve never heard Carey Price or Jonathon Quick or Ken Dryden or Johnny Bower say this phrase so I think probably you shouldn’t either, although I know sometimes you feel this way, please stop saying, “Well my team basically hung me out to dry.”

 


Check out this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/AvGzpZAA-64

For starters, it sounds awful. It sounds like there’s no ownership in that. Imagine too, love him or hate him, but imagine Tom Brady or someone, “Oh, my offensive line basically hung me out to dry today.”

No. It sounds terrible. No one actually believes you. They might smile and be like, “Oh, yeah,” and agree, but they honestly don’t believe you.

What you’re saying is my team decided that they would rather lose a game and make me look bad than play to the best of their ability on that day.

That probably isn’t true.

If it is true, let’s try to apply a little bit of logic to it, probably faulty logic, but let’s just try. If that’s true then probably the corollary is true.

Then that means there are days when you consciously decide, “I’m not going to stop these pucks. I’m going to take the loss just to make my D and my team look bad.”

Again, I’m sure it feels like you got hung out to dry and losing never feels good either, so you feel kind of bad anyway. You’re looking for a reason and that your team hung you out to dry, and then you can kind of focus on that, yeah, and then that time the puck went in the corner and the guy overskated it and then he passed it out right in front of the net.

But saying they hung you out to dry implies they did that stuff on purpose.

Do you think it’s possible that they made a mistake or a lot of mistakes?

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a game where you know what you’re supposed to do but for whatever reason you don’t seem to be able to do it and the puck’s going in the net and you know you’re better than that, but it just isn’t your day.

Is it possible that a guy or two or three on your teams has the same thing? Is it possible maybe they’re not in awesome shape like you are, they don’t train the way you do, and they just ran out of gas on that and they just literally couldn’t get back in time, they couldn’t beat their man back.

You see their mistakes, just like people see your mistakes, and it makes them feel bad just like it makes you feel bad. By having that internal dialogue that they hung me out to dry, just makes it worse because it also almost makes it an adversarial relationship. They did this to me.

I’m sure there are some completely dysfunctional teams where the team really is like, “Let’s just make our goalie look like shit today.” That’s sort of a different thing. The guys I’ve been hearing it from, they play on good teams, that win games and are sort of high calibre teams, so I know that’s not the case.

Instead of making it all, “They did this to me,” think about what could I have done maybe to help them out more. Sometimes that’s even just using your voice. Instead of they make a mistake, the puck gets turned over and it ends up in your net. You’re not going to be happy, but sometimes too it’s like, “Don’t worry about it, Stevie. You got this next one.” Something like that that helps lift them up rather than they’re like, “Oh, I know that was my mistake,” and then you give them the old stink face.

I give people the stink face too. When people on my own team score on me, I give them the full-on stink face. Instead of doing that, so something that’s going to help bolster them up. Help them play better because that’s what’s going to save your bacon.

Even after the game, it’s like, “We didn’t have our best game,” because the win is for the team, it’s not for you. And I’ll ask goalies, “How did the game go?” “Well, we lost 1-0. My team didn’t help me out at all.” Well, I’m sure they tried. I’m sure they were trying to score. They didn’t not score on purpose.

Maybe the other goalie was really, really awesome. Again, instead of being like, “Well my team let me down,” that’s again us versus them. I am awesome, but my team sucks.

But our team came up against a really hot goalie at the other end, or a fantastic defense at the other end, and we couldn’t get one in the net. See how that sort of has a different color and feel to it, because you’re all in it together.

Think in terms of that, we win as a team, we lose as a team.

Sometimes you’ll see, even in the NHL, teams that have no business winning a game. Their D is playing terrible, their forwards are playing terrible, you see it in the NHL. They do a no-look pass of the puck right in front of their own net where a forward’s there, *boing* right in the net.

They don’t mean to do that. That’s not what they thought they were doing on purpose, but it happens, people make mistakes.

Sometimes you see games like that where the goalie stands on their head and makes saves they have no business making to actually steal a win for their team. That’s what great goalies do.

It’s not going to happen all the time. Sometimes you’re still going to get that loss.

So how did your team play? What was the outcome? Then how did you play and what could you do better to help out even more?

There are going to be times when you play great and the team as a whole doesn’t have an awesome outing and there’s going to be a loss.

There’s going to be times when your team is playing great, your forwards and your D are playing great and you’re just on an off night and they’re going to take the loss.

It’s a balance, but I don’t like the terminology or the feeling of “my team hung me out to dry”.

Just think in terms of it like we couldn’t find a way to win tonight.

Then you think of where your part is in it, what you could have done better. Maybe even that’s … part of that is being a cheerleader or help your fellow teammates to sort of bounce back and get it together, but they’re not hanging you out to dry.

It’s just a little pet peeve of mine that’s been growing for a while and it’s … I just can’t keep it in anymore!

That’s your episode of Goalie Training Pro TV. We will be back next week with another episode. This episode is going to be, we’re going to work on the TRX, we’re going to go over, one of you asked for some TRX stuff and if I use it and if I think it’s a good tool, so I’m going to break it down how I use it with goalies and some exercises that you can do with the TRX. That’s next week, we’ll be up again. I won’t give you a little scolding and talking to.

You guys have a great day. Cheers!