Pattern Recognition

Hockey is said to be the fastest sport on earth, with experience playing the game I have to agree. With a game as fast paced and ever developing in front of us at all times, one of our biggest assets can be simple pattern recognition.

Patter recognition is a simple study of what is happing, or what has happened in and around the net. The first portion of pattern recognition, being the after the fact portion, is a simple study of video from past games and practices. There, coaches and players can look, stop, rewind, and slow motion what happened and how it happened. This unfortunately doesn’t help many of us during the game. I have yet to see an NHL goalie go to the bench and pull out his iPad to review the last goal. So what do we do during the game? That is the second portion of patter recognition, which is the happening now portion. During a practice, do you ever notice players shooting the puck to a specific spot in the net? Is that because they just want to shoot there, or is it because they see something that you aren’t recognizing? More often then not, players will adapt to what the goalie is doing, this adaptation will show if we know what to look for by recognizing the patterns.

For Example: If the opposing team gets a power play and continues to try to set up a back door play, this is a pattern. A good goalie will see the play develop over and over and make the proper adjustments to hedge his bet against this type of play.

In this article, I included a video of the Men’s NCAA D I Championship video with the goals as highlights. Take this video at face value though, as what you see doesn’t tell the whole story. In the video it appears that Hunwick had no chance on the over time winning goal. Minnesota-Duluth, set up the puck behind the net and made a great pass to the back door leaving Hunwick defenseless, or so it seemed.

If you go back and review the actual game film, you will find a pattern in what Minnesota was doing. In the same shift, Minnesota made three cycles behind the net in an attempt at that very play. Each time they cycled and looked for a pass, Hunwick would unsuspectingly use a post leg down position to seal off any attempt at a wrap around. As we have all discussed, the post leg down makes us vulnerable to any movement away from the post. Three times in a row Minnesota looked for that pass, and three times in a row Hunwick utilized the post leg down.

Elite goalies in this type of a position would have recognized on the second attempt that they were setting up the back door play and used either a Post leg up position allowing for a push off, or a standing position. Hunwick here again used the post leg down due to poor pattern recognition and was unable to push off the post to make the save.

With that being said, please taking nothing away from Hunwick as he had a great run and did make many exceptional saves. Recognizing what was happening during that shift, in-real time, could have allowed him to make that back door save.