Playoffs, Tryouts, Season — How to Be the Best Goalie You Can Be

Apr 25, 2025

In playoffs, every goal matters and can change the game. There's more noise in the arena, more pressure from the media, more expectations from the team and fans.
Games reach a whole new level of intensity that you just don’t see during the regular season. And that pressure is often felt exponentially by the goalie.

How do you prepare for it?
It starts in the summer and throughout the season leading up to playoffs.

It’s simple: if you set your game plan, review it hundreds of times, watch thousands of hockey clips to identify each situation, think about what you would do as a goalie according to your plan — and work hard — especially in the summer to really master it... Then you’ll have a full season to put it into action.

Remember, your game plan is about knowing what to do in every scoring situation:
How to counter it, what options the opponent might have, and how and when to read the play properly.

During the season, it’s time to evaluate, adjust, break down even more videos — not only your own games but also higher-level games — and keep improving your understanding of the game so you can ultimately make faster decisions.

The ultimate goal?

That everything becomes automatic during games.

You shouldn’t be thinking — just seeing, taking the right information, making the best decision, and then resetting immediately for the next event.

Playing "Event by Event"

When you get into playoffs and truly apply the "Event by Event" concept, you should be able to naturally, without overthinking, break down your game into mini-sequences.
Good or bad, your goal is to end each sequence quickly and move on to the next one.

That’s how you manage your game.
(If you want to learn more about the concept, make sure to subscribe to PERFOGold here)

When you're watching clips on the platform, it’s easy to break them down, review them, and give positive or constructive feedback on what the goalie did well or could have done better. We don't care what happened a few minutes or even seconds before — that’s the point!

Each sequence must be treated as new and unique.
Every time, you find a solution to either make the save or avoid a bad rebound.

That’s what you want to work on.

And once you’ve truly mastered your game plan, your game reading, and your decision-making, you need to be able to connect all of it quickly during a game.

Mastering Your Game Plan... and Being an Athlete

To link everything together, you need a solid foundation. You have to master your skills: efficient movement, using your tools properly, tracking the puck, strong mechanics.

And above all — what we believe is the most important:
Athleticism.

For us, that’s the base. You need to be an athlete before you’re a goalie.

Be flexible.
React fast.
Have extraordinary feet.
Have the quickest hands possible.
Move. Be fluid. Be adaptable.

We can’t say it enough: you must be an athlete first.

Your structure, your technique, your skills — they’re there to optimize your game, to make you more efficient, to help you better control rebounds, help your defensemen, and stabilize your play. But your athleticism is what will allow you to stand out, to make the spectacular save when it matters most — not just move like a robot doing what you were taught your whole life.

When it’s time to be proactive, you’ll be ready.
When it’s time to be reactive — because the game isn't always perfect — you’ll also be ready, because you’ll have the tools, the mechanics... and the athleticism.

Playoffs - Tryout - Season

Preparing for playoffs takes time.
And even with all the work, everything can fall apart fast because of how fast-paced and high-pressure it gets.

But if you are properly prepared, and you live in the present moment, you’ll be just fine.

Same thing for tryouts:
A goalie who is prepared, who knows what to do at the right time — coaches notice that right away.

For me, a goalie who is athletic, reads the game well, seems consistent in their decisions, and can reset after a big save or a bad goal — that goalie earns a lot of points.

So, to succeed as a goalie, make sure to:

Be an athlete: flexible, quick, adaptable, strong, a gamer.
Understand the game: identify situations, read dangers properly.
(That’s why we created PERFOGold — to help you do exactly that.)
Have a game plan for every situation: know exactly what gives you the best chance to succeed.
Make decisions fast and efficiently in games.

It won’t happen by itself.

You need to:

Train off-ice,
Work on your mobility,
Focus on good nutrition,
Play other sports,
Watch hockey to better understand it,
Build an evolving game plan and study it constantly,
Practice your mechanics and technical foundations,
Practice randomness and chaos, so you can mix everything together and become a complete goalie.