I get emails from parents often asking me to send their son or daughter a quick note after he/she has had a tough game or stretch of games. My first instinct is to give that word of encouragement, and search for any clues as to why their game may not be in the place it should be. Sometimes I find some fundamental things I can help with over email, but for the most part I come back to one question every goalie should ask themselves...how long is your goaltending career going to be?

Imagine a peewee aged goalie who's getting frustrated because he let in a couple of goals in practice. Or, a girl who has just lost a "big" game against a rival. My first objective is to get the goaltender to think of things in some sort of perspective. For the peewee...there were a couple of shots that he wasn't happy with the result of. If he wants to play high school hockey, he has at least 3 or 4 years before he gets into high school. How many practices are going to be in that 3 or 4 years? Let's say conservatively, 3 practices a week on average. How long is a hockey season (not counting summer or fall hockey)? We'll say 4 months. It works out to about 48 practices a year, and 144 practices over 3 seasons. My next question to that peewee goalie is this...at practice number 113, are you still going to be thinking about those couple shots you didn't stop way back when? Use the same strategy with the girl.

It's all about gaining perspective. I've learned in pro hockey there's a lot of time for things to turn around. We play 80 games. Sometimes the season seems like it's taking forever. If I carry one bad practice with me for 80 games, over 6 months, for how many weeks, I'm going to be miserable the entire season. I need to gain perspective and know that I have time to get myself out a funk.

Youth players may not have the benefit of 80 game season (why would they want to). But they DO have that benefit of knowing how long they want to be playing hockey for. Everyone wants to play pro hockey. Not everybody does. But don't think that you letting in a couple shots in peewees is affecting your draft status, and thus your pro career. Learn from my experience, the NHL draft is great for those lucky enough to be drafted in the 1st round. After that, it's a crap shoot. It comes down to who's working the hardest.

"Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard."