#goalies are weird

[unch4rted-territ0ry]

Some random goalie gifs I have on my phone

[incorrectcanucks]

Artūrs Šilovs: Change is inedible.

Thatcher Demko: Don’t you mean “inevitable”?

Artūrs Šilovs, spitting out coins: No, I did not.

[lagerloutfic]

can't stop thinking about that arty/leon fic,,,,,,,,, just curious, are you still planning on making a second part to it?

Took me a little while but we made it, baby!

don't you even try and explain | E | 12k | Leon Draisaitl/Artūrs Šilovs & Background Leon Draisaitl/Connor McDavid

It’s like, Hockey 101 – skate hard, take hits, play smart, and don’t fucking make sex tapes with your division rivals. This is kids' stuff.

Continuation of the Leon/Arty Winner's Room fic.

[insidious-apple]

anytime a goalie is asked why they became a goalie the answer is always one or more of the following:

i don't like people touching me

i like crushing people's dreams

i like being dramatic

i'm a bit lazy/slow outside of the goal

the gear looks sick

my idol is a goalie

i volunteered in practice and kinda got stuck there

i like the pressure/intensity

i cannot generate offense to save my fucking life

[chaoticgoodit]

Addendum : I think what makes the Boston Bruins Goalie Tandem so very fascinating to us is their connection- their abject REFUSAL to emotionally isolate from each other or treat eachother as the competition (pejorative) or the enemy.

They are companions, a team in and of themselves, in a way we’ve never really seen from goalies in professional hockey.

And yeah, pretty fuckin’ weird [about each other] too 🧸 💛

what is it about goalies that leads to the "goalies are weird" thing? do weird personalities lend themselves to the job? are they actually that weird? does it have something to do with the unpredictability of the position? (take this in whatever direction you want really--you seem to know a lot about this kind of thing so i'm interested in reading your thoughts!)

okay, so i think a lot of factors are actually at play here. consider the following:

hockey players, as a whole, are a really superstitious group of people. even forwards have a lot of weird lil rituals and habits that they do to make themselves feel better about the game (see the guys who always have to be the last one off the ice at warmups and the games they play with each other to make that happen). this goes doubly so for goalies it seems (i will do a little list of some goalie superstitions i really like).

when you’re a forward, you’re one of three guys on the ice doing the same thing for your team at any given time. when you’re a defenseman, you’re one of two guys on the ice doing the same thing for your team at any given time. when you’re a goalie, you’re the only one. and the other guys on the team get line changes, but when you’re the goalie? it’s just you, for 60 min a night.

consider this: it’s just you, for 60 min a night, and (at least in the nhl) playing in front of like 15,000 to 25,000 people.

when you screw up as a forward, a defenseman is hopefully there to cover up your screwup. if the defenseman screws up, the goalie is hopefully there to cover up the screwup. if the goalie screws up? the goal light goes off and those same 25,000 people see a point against their team that you appear to be solely responsible for.

every night you play, 6′+ tall 200 lb men are firing vulcanized rubber disks at your head and body anywhere from 75 mph to 100+ mph a shot. you’re catching those disks in your hands, blocking them with your helmet, or using your body to do it. sometimes you’re doing a split. sometimes you’re just throwing yourself at them. these same giant men are occasionally crashing into you at high speeds while you’re a relatively stationary target.

so like... just by nature of the position, you can gather that playing goal is like: a very heavy mental responsibility. it’s the position that i think is most visibly responsible for the team’s losses, and you can see how fans of a team and the press will absolutely tear into goalies during rough streaks (rip to most philadelphia goaltenders). and to get to the nhl level i think you also have to be a pretty strict perfectionist and very hard on yourself, so the mental toll you put on yourself for those losses has gotta be pretty tough to deal with. listen to almost any interview with goalies and they will talk about how hard it is to cope with very bad games, although they all have different ways of coping. carter hart meditates and does a lot of mindfulness exercises and tries to focus on only the moment that he’s responsible for right then; elvis merlizkins has said that while he used to get down on himself for losses he simply does not have the time to do that in the nhl.

i think this quote from kevin constantine, a former goalie and current head coach (he coached the silvertips for a while and is currently working in korea) is a really good summary about whether it’s nature or nurture that goalies are weird:

"When I grew up the saying was, 'Go to the playground and find the weirdest kid and that kid can probably be your goalie, because goalies are weird,'" Constantine said. "And then as I went through being a goalie, observing the goalies, being part of the fraternity, I don't think it's that at all. I think we take very normal athletes and we make them a goalie, and the process of doing that makes you weird. It makes you different."

"You don't get to come back to the bench and talk about how things are going [in the game]. You're just isolated and that willing(ness) to go in harm's way and the isolation you play with, I think if you do that repetitively you become a bit of a strange duck. So yeah, goalies are a little weird."

[x]

it’s a really tough position to play. there’s a reason that goalies like carter hart (i.e., coming into the league at like 20 years old and having very solid professional seasons without much of a regression) are rare and that goalies like jordan binnington (coming into the league at approximately 25 years old and still calder eligible, having some regressions) are more common. beyond the inherent athleticism required in having to do splits and lunge and catch, you gotta be aware of where a tiny puck is amidst a shitload of chaos going on in front of you/screening you/ guys jabbing at you. you have to be aware of what’s going on at all times, even if it’s not in your zone. even if you’re not actively playing, you always have to be on. for 60 min a night, wearing a shitload of heavy pads. (have to take shit, per that last reblog? tough luck.)

there is something to be said about the isolation. you have your backup and your goalie coach, but it’s not the same as the camaraderie the forwards or the defensemen have. you’re one of like two guys on the team that can do what you do and it probably seems slightly magical to the rest of the team.

i also think it’s like very much a mental game (both the stress and what you have to do to prepare). i’ve read a lot about the training that goalies do in addition to their own ice work and it’s frankly pretty bonkers. like carter has an entire visual training/eye tracking program on his ipad and a lot of them do some kind of program like this or talk to a coach especially for that aspect of the game; similarly, a lot of goalies specifically talk to sports psychologists to manage the stress of a game-to-game.

you probably have to be a pretty odd duck, ballsy sort of person to be like “yeah i wanna be the last line of defense for my team” in the first place (or a younger brother because tbh out of many nhl brother pairings it seems like the goalie is always the younger one and got forced into doing it as a child) but that the process of learning how to deal with the ins and outs of the position also makes you a little bonkers.

and if you want evidence of “are goalies weird?” please watch literally any video of ilya bryzgalov talking about like....... anything. some of them are more visibly weird than others (again, see ilya bryzgalov and “the universe is so humongous big” and “is just game, why you have to be mad?”) but most of them are like. pretty weird in more quiet ways. again, literally any interview with or about carter hart (my favorite was him getting made fun of as a small child for constantly going around telling people he wanted to be better than carey price...)

anyway here are a few goalie superstitions/habits that i particularly like although most of them are older (if you have any more modern anecdotes feel free to share):

patrick roy liked to talk to the goal posts because they were “his friends,” he would also refuse to actually step on any of the lines

glenn hall would make himself throw up before every because he felt he played better if he was physically ill beforehand

eddie belfour would lose his shit if a teammate touched his equipment pregame (like threaten to kill them lose his shit)

pelle lindbergh wore the same orange t-shirt for each game and refused to wash or sew it if it was torn and he’d only drink the same drink with two ice cubes from a specific trainer from the right hand during intermissions

ron hextall was the one who really started the banging the posts with his stick thing

ron tugnutt had this whole routine, like figure eight in the crease, abrupt turn into a crouch, 20 feet from crease....... like it goes on. there was probably like ten steps to his whole Thing

a lot of goalies will not even talk to reporters about their superstitions because they’re so superstitious about them

there was one goalie whose name i can’t remember who used to dye his hair blond before games

there are a bunch of goalies who can’t stand having the opposing team put pucks in the net during warmups to the point where they will push the nets out of the crease and turn them over to prevent it from happening.

anyway in summary: while some odd characters may gravitate towards the position, even if you’re not a weirdo when you start, you’ll probably be a weirdo by the time you finish. it’s a tough position to play and it’s a lot of stress and responsibility. how people cope with that emerges in varying ways, some of them Odd.

(thank you for asking this question i LOVE to talk about goalies and i tried to explore some of this in my fic writing but it’s nice to talk about it on main too).

[poke-checked]

pk lost a drill so he just? Launched his stick into the stands

[ratatatastic]

preseason is for scrumming for your goalie's honour because someone tried to get to close to him while he was down

nashville predators @ florida panthers doubleheader game 1 | 9.22.24

chilling while all hell breaks loose

[unch4rted-territ0ry]

Finished it

I experimented a bit ad I hadn't drawn for a while, but I think it turned out good :D

[ripley-lv426]

My love for this man is verging on obsessive. He's like the human embodiment of a Four Loko.

pyotr kochetkov just checked a man 🫡

(01/02 canes @ rangers)

[hoejosatoru]

Your favorite dman pairing <3

[lagerloutfic]

Losing my mind over your new Leon/Arty fic, you’re a fucking genius

Sex is cool but have you ever had a random internet stranger say they like some goalie porn you wrote? Cool.

If you're so inclined, you can find said goalie and the idiot who thought they could handle it right here.

[unch4rted-territ0ry]

Like I said, do not EVER separate them, in one way or another

tonight delivered on the goalie besties content

[naanima]

There is something fucking amazing about Marc Andre Fleury yeeting/flipping TWO number one drafts in one game, seemingly with MINIMUM effort.

Flower, who was a former NUMBER ONE pick of 2003 by the Pittsburgh Penguins did that.

Twenty years later and Flower is flipping generational talent Connor Bedard (2023 #1 draft). And upending veteran Taylor Hall (2010 #1 draft).

Flower played with generational talent Sidney Crosby for over a decade, he can yeet you kids. Old man Flower kicking ass & taking names. LOLs.

[lehkonen62]

kind of crazy that georgiev can have a stellar game and avs reporters will still go out of their way to discredit him.

[yes-perwallstedt]

This article is a delight