Unmasked: Sabres' Johnson comfortable with coach

When Chad Johnson found out the Buffalo Sabres hired Andrew Allen as their goaltending coach last summer, he was prepared to put his foot down when it came to altering his playing style and positional preferences.

Johnson, 29, was open to suggested technical tweaks that might make him better. Like a lot of professional goaltenders, he spends the summer working with a private coach to stay on top of changes in a position that is constantly evolving. But after playing for several coaches with five NHL organizations during his first six seasons, Johnson also learned it is important to be able to manage and stand up for his own game.

"Over the years, I have learned this is my job and I need to stand up and say, 'I know you're the goalie coach but …,'" Johnson said, pausing. "I just wish I had in the past said, 'I am not doing this,' maybe taken a little more responsibility on my own."

Johnson didn't need to fight for his preferred playing style. He knew after one phone call from Allen, who studied video of all of the Sabres goalies before talking individually to each of them, that any changes would be made together.

"I knew right off the bat he was open to different styles," Johnson said.

Johnson knows that isn't always the case. Goalies who bounce around from team to team can sometimes end up with so many opinions on what they need to change that they lose track of the foundation that got them to the NHL in the first place.

Being able to recognize what makes you comfortable is one thing. Standing up for it, especially early in your career, is another.

"That part is tough, but you have to, and I think the older you get the more you are like, 'Hey, I know what I need to do to have success,'" Johnson said. "I need someone that has that same vision and can see that same things. If they don't have that, that's where you can start to see struggles because you can't have one way of playing the game. If it was one way, everyone would play that same way. It just doesn't work."

Suggested changes often relate to depth, and although there are plenty of success stories about a goalie simplifying his game and movements by playing deeper in the crease, the reality is, changing where a goalie plays affects other parts of their game.

Vancouver Canucks goalie Ryan Miller wasn't completely comfortable last season playing back in his crease the way goalie coach Roland Melanson prefers. Miller didn't trust his coverage and felt he needed to use his hands more, which left him opening up on shots, and now he plays more at the edge of his crease. Conversely, after leaving Vancouver, Eddie Lack struggled early this season trying to play a more aggressive style with the Carolina Hurricanes.

"You spend your career making reads on certain situations at a certain depth, and when you start to change that, everything changes," Miller said this summer, adding he was "in a better place to take in more" in his second season working with Melanson. "You have to be open to changes, but you also have to hold true to what makes you good. It's a balancing point."

Allen, who joined the Sabres after four years with the Chicago Blackhawks as their goaltending development coach, agrees. That's why he went over situation-specific video with his new pupils before the season, trying to get a feel for how each approached certain plays and what elements they believed was important to feeling good and playing well. As expected, the answers were different for each goalie, but knowing how they differed allowed Allen to tailor his practice plans to Johnson and Robin Lehner, who returned last week after getting injured in his Sabres debut on Oct. 8.

For Lehner, it's a matter of adding a little more of the technical structure that usually leads to more consistency, finding a way to be less reliant on his obvious reactive talents and speed without taking away from those natural gifts.

"Build a technical base without making them feel like they are robots," Allen said.

Johnson has great patience on his skates, holding edges to beat passes and read shots without defaulting to his knees prematurely. He continues to work on his post play, adding more reverse-VH by sealing the short side with his lead pad on the ice and his body leaned up against the post. But where some now make that their default technique on sharp-angle attacks, Allen also understands Johnson doesn't feel as comfortable with that short-side knee down early in reverse-VH. It plays away from those strengths of holding his edges compared to the original VH technique, with the near-side skate on the ice and that pad stacked up vertically against the post.

Although he's helping Johnson get more comfortable using reverse-VH, Allen isn't forcing him.

"It's a two-way street for me," Allen said. "In drills there is a lot of conversation about, 'Hey, how did this go in this situation?' and if they say, 'You know what, I liked it,' then it's, 'OK, let's do a few more reps like that.' That's the way we've done it here."

That may seem obvious, but Johnson knows it's not always the case in the NHL.

After going 17-4-3 with a .925 save percentage behind a good Boston Bruins defense two seasons ago, Johnson signed a two-year free-agent contract with the New York Islanders in 2014 but struggled with an .889 save percentage last season. Traded to the Sabres in March, he was unable to play at the end of last season because of injury. He is 12-12-2 with a .920 save percentage for Buffalo this season and credits Allen for working with him to establish mutually agreed upon positioning staples they can monitor and correct if he starts to drift.

"When things don't go well some guys say, 'OK, now you are going to play 2 feet out compared to before,'" Johnson said. "People think that's not changing your style, but it really is. But I didn't have a good foundation to come back to, so it was, 'This didn't work, so now you have to change your whole thing.' You get lost."