Jamie’s Grand Rapids Griffins Ebug Experience

Postava got called up last minute. Jamie got the call from Roope at 5:45 while running a video breakdown session with his mentorship group. He threw on a wrinkly suit, drove downtown, and sat on the bench for the night before being released from his PTO immediately after the game.

Highlights: being back in a room where hockey guys are just hockey guys, watching Trey Augustine from the bench instead of the stands and making mental notes for future breakdown clips, and playing against his former team. Fran came. She took pictures. She has now seen Jamie in real hockey gear exactly twice in their relationship. She was fine with it.

Jamie’s comeback conditions: win the lottery, sign in the south of France with co-ownership so he cannot cut himself, or somewhere in the Netherlands. That is the full list.

Mental Health and the Grinding Years

Jamie says he has now accepted, as of a couple months ago, that if he had kept grinding he probably would have made it to the NHL on a full-time basis. He needed to see a sports psychologist earlier and was too proud to do it at a time when mental health in hockey was still something you could be ostracized for. The YouTube video he recorded about this is still unreleased. He will probably release it.

The broader point for goalies still playing: you can always get a real job. You cannot go back in time and sign an AHL contract at 33. If you are still enjoying it, grind.

The RVH Conversation (Again)

To be completely clear for anyone new: the RVH is 1,000% an essential movement at high levels. The game is too fast not to use it. What Jamie and Buj are against is spending an entire off-season doing 25,000 RVHs in training at the expense of everything else. The situation dictates when you use it. Your physiology dictates whether it works for you. Tall goalies with flexibility and skating ability are increasingly being asked to use it more by NHL and AHL development coaches because they fill more net. That is a real trend and Jamie is adjusting how he coaches taller goalies to reflect it. U10 and U12 goalies doing RVHs because their goalie coach teaches it as the default is still the problem.

Connor Hellebuyck Trade: Will System Fit Change Everything

The question Jamie brought to the table: can Hellebuyck replicate his Vezina-level success playing behind a Sheldon Keefe system in New Jersey after spending his career behind one of the most structured defensive systems in the league?

Stuart Skinner’s early Winnipeg numbers are the comparison case. Sixth in the league in goals saved above expected at 5.9. Expected GAA of 3.32, actual GAA of 2.6. That is three-quarters of a goal better than the system would predict. Skinner and Hellebuyck play a similar style. Skinner is thriving in the system Hellebuyck just left.

Linus Ullmark is the textbook example of how this works in both directions: dominated in Boston behind a system that cut off lateral plays, struggled in Buffalo and Ottawa which gave up exactly those plays, now thriving again under Travis Green in Ottawa with a changed structure. System matters.

Both hosts predict Hellebuyck will not replicate Vezina-level numbers this season. They both acknowledge they will probably have egg on their face by spring.

Peptides in Youth Hockey

Real rumors from the GTHL about parents giving young athletes unregulated peptides to stimulate early puberty and dominant 13 and 14 year old development.

What peptides are: chains of amino acids that can turn on or off signals in the body. The GLP-1 class are the ones with actual FDA-approved pathways. Everything else people are buying online is coming from overseas with no guarantee of what is actually in the product.

The science problem: a Swedish study on hockey player development tracked athletes who matured early, on time, and late through competitive hockey. By the time players reached NHL age, late bloomers made up a slight majority of NHL players. Early developers dominated at 13 and 14, then got caught. Paying to accelerate early development in a sport where late bloomers win long-term is just bad math on top of potential medical harm.

Join the survivor pool: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/1/d/e/1FAIpQLSfoUrKG_ju25pYKU6yJt6ksxHbTMO1BRFKJkWM1NM5O1pOO5Q/viewform

Use code GOALIESCIENCE16 for 30 days free in the Ghost Goaltending Club. Link below.
https://ghost-athletica.circle.so/ghost-goaltending-app

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Charlotte Payne Update
46 saves on 47 shots, 2-1 win over Union at Delaware. Buj’s take: she is the most complete goalie he has ever developed and there was never any doubt she would get here. The off-ice variables are what separate the goalies who make it from the ones who don’t.

Devin Kulie on the Unconscious Brain
Kulie described his best games as ones where his conscious brain stays out of the way. When he is smiling and having too much fun, he shifts into conscious mode and gets beat. Jamie and Buj break this down through motor learning theory: cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages of skill development. In a game, goalies need to be autonomous. The second you start thinking about how to make a save, you are already behind the play.

Confidence Training vs. Competence Training
Confidence training, telling your goalies where you are shooting, produces a short-term bump and a long-term decline. Competence training is hard, feels bad in the moment, and produces massive long-term gains. Both coaches train competence over confidence and the results over a full season reflect it.

The Arousal Curve and Pre-Game Routines
Everyone’s optimal zone is different. Eric Comrie played sewer ball before warm-up. Braden Holtby sat alone in a dark room with a towel over his head. Both were right. Your job as a goalie coach is to help your goalie find their zone and then protect it, not push them into yours.

The 1% Stat
One out of 64 NHL starting goalies is under six feet tall. That is not doom and gloom, it is math. Smaller goalies have to be consistently better than taller goalies to get the same opportunity. The earlier they understand that, the better.

Pre-Scout Strategy
Look for trends, not tactics. Give your players something they can actually use in real time. Buj tells the story of putting “five-hole open on wraparound” in a pre-scout 20 years ago, the coach ripped it up, and the team scored a wraparound five-hole goal two periods later.

Book Recommendations
The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler. Behind the Bench by Craig Custance. Sean Avery’s autobiography. Burke’s Law by Brian Burke.

Shoutouts
TJ Hughes scored his first NHL goal off a Nathan McKinnon pass against the Penguins. Gabby Brazil hit the top fitness percentile on her team at Roger Williams University in her first year as a D3 goalie. Buj’s STA U16 goalies have three shutouts in a row and four wins in a row.

Buj’s Survivor Pool
His U12A Admirals team is running an NHL Survivor Pool starting October 31st. DM Buj on Instagram to enter. Estimated prize around $2,500 Canadian. He wins every year and will remind you of that.

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