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I'm not your coach, or there to see it in person. But from the video alone, I can tell you that much of your problems are simply because your stance isn't wide enough. Your feet are too close together, meaning you are too upright and having to bend too much. That is affecting your technique, balance, and ability to make saves on the ice and down movements. Simply, you are too high off the ice. Get your feet wider and bend your knees more (just doing one or the other won't help). Keep your knees closer together under your body, not as wide as your feet. If you keep your knees more in a straight line, you'll be leaving your 5 hole exposed, and not be as agile, just like your coach said. As far as the 5 hole, my pads won't cover mine fully either. You have to focus on bringing your knees together, not your feet. Even if the thigh rises don't touch, having your knees together and your stick in place will close up that space. If there is a little tightness in your hips when you go down with your knees together, bring your butt down a little, that should do help. Also, if you go to Sarah at PAW, she can make you a thicker landing block. The increased height, even 1/2", will help alleviate stress on your hips when your knees are together because it allows your ankles to drop lower than your knees. I know it's difficult to get your feet flared out. I have a narrow butterfly also. I'm not talking about widening your butterfly, it is what it is. But if you worked on dropping by bringing your knees together, even if your feet go back, you'll see improvements to your mobility and speed . You can't keep your butt up if you bring your feet backwards. You'd fall forward onto your face. They are linked with each other. I have an older goalie that I coach sometimes. He is used to playing the old stand up way, and had a very difficult time learning the new techniques. His stance was too upright, and his feet too close together. When he dropped, it was like you, his knees went forward and his feet back, and he would get stuck like that and become unable to make second saves or move around the ice. He also had hip mobility issues like you. We were able to get around them by loosening up his pads a lot, especially his toe ties and boot straps. And getting him to widen his stance so he can bring his knees together, but while still being able to drop his but lower to take the stress off his hips. Now he can drop into a regular butterfly, and move around the ice better. He needs to work on his weight transfers and such to really be able to slide around. But he's become pretty solid. His hands, stick, and angles were pretty good before. Now that he is getting wider and lower, he's become pretty solid because his pads are much quicker, combined with the rest of his game. I think you'd see these kinds of improvements also.

Get the stacks as thick as she can make them. It will really help with stress on your hips. Yep! That's pretty much it. -Butt forward, as much as possible. It doesn't have to be completely perpendicular to the ice. The best way to explain would be far enough forward that your weight is still on your knees, not centered or more back over your calves/ankles/feet. Drive the knees together and down, towards each other. You're still going to go forward some, just not as much. -Feet wider. But knees still closer to shoulder width. Knees should be closer together in relation to the angle of your feet/legs. This will help with the point above because if your feet aren't wide enough, you can't bring your knees towards each other since they are pretty much already there. Those two things are tied together. If you work on them you'll really add to your already good foundation and really see improvement. A good way to work on that at pickup would be to get on a line - it could be the blue line during any free time or warm up, or the goal line to the side of the net if the play is in the other end. Stand in your wide footed stance, knees closer, both feet on the line. And practice dropping so that your knees land as close to on the line as possible. Make adjustments to your stance width, and drop direction as needed. This way you can see how changing things affects the direction your knees move. Good luck!

I was under the impression that after two hours (game and practice) I should have worked hard enough to exhaust myself. Beedee, we do a similar drill at the clinic. One coach stands in front of us, we come off the post to the top of the crease, take a shot, and go back to the opposite post. Or we start at the top, and the coach will shoot either glove side or blocker side, and the idea is to react to the puck and step toward whichever side to stop it. We can also butterfly, or slide, or whatever we want to work on. The head coach basically runs all the drills off a triangle model, having us work without a painted crease so we get muscle memory of where the goal is in relation to us, and don't need to rely on a visual aid. (watch the puck instead). (I'm amazed that people have stick practice that does not ultimately degenerate into pickup.) If you can wrangle another goalie, a fun one to try is putting two nets back to back, and having a bunch of skaters passing the puck around - they can shoot on either net at any time. Great for awareness and whatever movement you want to do.

Thats a great feeling Badger about feeling good after a session! Glad to hear you are progressing well with the conditioning and position. I did sticktime at Lakewood (my local rink) with my teammate and almost 30 other people today, it was a zoo! The good news is that they had 5 nets out there. 2 of them were reserved at the south end for a goalie lesson and the other was for a couple guys skating out. The third and fourth were positioned at center ice, facing each other, cross ice. My buddy and I chose to focus on working on stuff at one of the side nets. I did take about 15 shots in the main net, but it was too chaotic. Back at the sidenet I had my friend help me with my lateral movement and slides. Id start at tbe top of the crease, he would tap his stick which was my cue to start my movement to the post. I would look in the direction I was going, pivot my lead foot and drop that leg as I pushed with my opposite foot, resulting in a butterfly slide. As I slid be would then shoot the puck from a relatively steep angle, simulating a one-timer. I felt really good doing these since I had worked on them on Monday. This time it felt more natural and I was able to stay up right and well balanced while squeezing my elbows to my body to seal the 7 hole. We went back and forth between waffle board and glove side. After that I helped him out with his wristwrs from in close, and same with his back hand. Tried to simulate rebounds to top of the crease for him to backhand in...he did great. We also worked in one-timers with some other guys but that was too hectic with all that was going on. The ice got chopped up pretty quickly but I was still abke to work on my butterfly pushes and made great progress with those! We ground down some of the cowling on the inside portion of my skates and it gave me better contact with my blade on the ice. Here is a picture of my skate, we ground down those ridges, they were interfering with my ability to push. I know my foot should be more upright when pushing from butterfly, but right now my technique still blows, so grinding them flat was a huge help!

I have been running the teams(not team+) for a little over a month. I have one spot that rubs (been baked twice). I put elite insoles in them, changed the wheels(to soft for my liking), and switched to wax laces. I like them more and more every time I skate. These my be the first skates that didn't kill my feet for the first couple months. My usual process for skates is. Break them in for a month or so with pick up and practice then wear them in leagues. Didn't do that with these. Straight up replacement of my old skates.

So I finally broke down and will be in the Alkali family. After trying on an 11 and seeing they were too snug I noticed that Inline warehouse had the Rpd Teams in an 11.5 so I bit the bullet and ordered. Really hoping the 11.5 will give me a little more room in the toebox without giving too much room. So to check again im not going to be disappointed with the Teams and not the Team+?

we all hope its for the last time too man. Hope all goes well.

Be well. Good thoughts your way.

oh, someone got a car, I thought it was a freeze frame from a Cialis commercial

I don't know if I just didn't work as hard this week, or if I'm getting stronger, because I felt really good after pickup & practice. Sore, but not like 'oh god I have to walk two blocks to the bus stop with my gear shoot me now' sore. I'm going to go with it being the latter because it makes me feel better to think that. Pickup game was really light - only eight guys, on our small ice, plus the goalies - and I made a lot of good stops, although 3v3 with one sub per side they get tired pretty fast. At the clinic we did movement, movement, movement. Shuffle from one side to the other, come out, go back, all triangles. Right leg is still a bit wonky coming off the post, and left leg is still wobbly on the shuffles, but overall better. I don't have the most precise technique but it does work at least most of the time. The coach noted that I have the flexibility to do a lot of things but the strength part hasn't quite caught up yet. Best thing for me about pickup is how the guys are always, always passing - I don't think I've ever just had one guy come in on a breakaway, they nearly always pass, so I have to work at reading the play and the puck, because unlike certain other pickups, I can't assume that the guy who just got the puck in the neutral zone is going to barrel in and fire a shot at me.

Found this last night. Not sure who's it was but I picked it up a few years back. Pretty sure I never used it. And of course my season is over til the fall.