A practical, no-jargon walkthrough for volunteer coaches — what to look for, what to fix, and how to develop a better goalie without overhauling your practice plan.
Read the guide ↓Coaching Guide
If you're a volunteer coach who got handed a goalie and a whistle, this is for you. Here's a practical, no-jargon walkthrough of what to look for and what to do — the same fundamentals that make up the full Goalie Guide training.
You don't need to have played goal to coach one well. Most of what separates a developing goalie from a stagnating one isn't hidden technique — it's a handful of visible habits that any coach can learn to spot from the bench. The goal of this guide is to give you the eyes for it, so every rep your goalie takes builds a good habit instead of reinforcing a bad one.
Consider the math: roughly 80% of a youth goalie's practice time is spent with coaches who never played the position. That makes you, the volunteer coach, the single biggest influence on how your goalie develops — far more than the occasional specialist clinic. The pressure of that is real, but so is the opportunity.
When you're new to coaching goalies, it's tempting to chase advanced concepts — reverse-VH, post integration, butterfly slides. Skip them for now. At the youth level, three habits separate goalies who develop from those who stagnate. Everything else builds on these.
Watch the puck — all the way in. Tracking the puck from the shooter's stick into their own equipment is the single most important habit in youth goaltending. Nearly all soft goals — the ones that go through the five-hole, off the skate, or through the body — trace back to a goalie who stopped watching. A goalie who tracks well will find a way to get their equipment in front of the shot regardless of their formal technique. And good tracking means they also control the rebound — into the corner, into their chest, not back into the slot.
Use the stick. Most shots in early youth hockey travel along the ice. Getting your goalie in the habit of using their stick not just to save shots, but to steer them, accomplishes a number of things. A goalie who uses their stick has to track the puck all the way through contact, which reinforces the most critical habit. Deflections with the stick are also the most intuitive way to control a rebound — and they start young goalies thinking not just about the shot, but what happens after the save. In the absence of this habit, young goalies default to dropping to a butterfly and hoping the puck hits them. That's not goaltending — that's hoping.
Take away space. When a goalie stands on the goal line, the shooter has the most possible net to aim at. When the goalie moves toward the shooter — to the top of the crease or beyond — the shooter sees far less. This is often called "challenging the shooter," and at the youth level it's a simple trade: shots are more likely to just hit the goalie or miss entirely. The tradeoff is leaving more open net if the shooter makes a great pass or dekes. We'll take that deal in youth hockey — and it gets smaller as your goalie's footwork improves — but teaching that is for a goalie coach to handle later.
If you only ever work on these three things, you'll still do more for your goalie's development than most coaches manage in a season.
Poorly set-up equipment can sabotage a young goalie. Pads on the wrong legs leave the knees exposed to shots — and unprotected when the goalie drops into a butterfly. Dangling toe-ties cause them to slip during even basic movement.
None of this requires goalie expertise; it just requires knowing to look, which most volunteer coaches never do.
The most common mistake is having your goalie simply receive practice: running the same warm-up and conditioning drills as your skaters, then standing in the net facing shot after shot without time to reset or adjust their positioning. That builds fatigue and bad habits, not skill.
Give your goalie a heads-up before drills so they can set up properly and know what's coming. Don't let skaters shoot at the same time or back-to-back. A goalie who faces a smart, controlled progression learns; a goalie who faces a firing squad learns to flinch and survive. End on a save so they leave practice with a win.
Games are where confidence is made or broken. Your job between whistles isn't to fix technique — it's too late for that and the goalie can't process it mid-game. It's to keep them calm and help them reset. After a goal, the single most useful thing you can do is not look disappointed — they will look for your reaction every time. What you say should be short and forward-looking: "That's okay, buddy. Next one." Skip the judgment; it won't help and might hurt. Save the teaching for the next practice, when they can actually absorb it.
Watch for the goalie dropping their head or shrinking after a bad goal. A quick, steady word — or just a nod — does more than any positional correction. Goalies who feel supported play bigger; goalies who feel judged play small.
Goalies are wired a little differently than skaters, and generic "good hustle" coaching washes right over them. Be specific and be calm: "great tracking on that one," or "remember to clear that rebound to the corner." One clear correction at a time sticks; a list of five things overwhelms and they'll remember none of it. Think of it like a golf swing — if someone gives you five things to think about, your next shot will be worse, not better.
Check in with your goalie the way you would a skater you're developing. Ask what felt good, what felt hard. The position is isolating, and a coach who simply pays attention — who knows the goalie's name, watches their reps, and speaks their language — changes how a kid feels about strapping on the pads every week.
Key Takeaways
This guide covers the basics. The full Goalie Guide training walks every coach in your association through all 10 modules in about 30 minutes — one flat fee, unlimited coaches, no goalie experience required.