Goalies, defensemen must work in tandem to overcome screening opponents

VANCOUVER --Avoiding traffic jams is as important to goalies on the ice as it is to drivers on the highway.

Robin Lehner is having a renaissance this season with the New York Islanders. Part of the success story, he says, is derived from effectively managing the traffic around him.
Seeing through or around intentional screens set by the opposition or from the tangle of legs and torsos that naturally congregate around the crease during extended play in the attacking zone is high on any successful goalie's to-do list.
Lehner isn't just patting himself on the back when he talks about how much better he deals with opposing screens, however. He quickly acknowledges it's a team effort, one that involves the goalie and his defensemen being on the same page.
Lehner, in his first season with the Islanders, is 23-12-5 with a 2.22 goals-against average that ranks third in the NHL, a .926 save percentage that is tied for fourth with teammate Thomas Greiss and an NHL career-high five shutouts. He was named the Islanders' nominee for the Masterton Trophy on Thursday, awarded for perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.
"Because the majority of the shots these days, in my opinion, are through traffic, so if you don't have a good traffic strategy, you are [in big trouble] in this league," he said.
Lehner also cited other changes on and off the ice that have been important to his success, including tighter defensive play in front of him under first-year New York coach Barry Trotz. That includes better incorporating the defensemen into an improved traffic-management system, which might surprise some who think dealing with screens is simply a matter of the goalie battling for sight lines.

That remains true at times, but with big forwards often forcing the goalie to pick a side to look around them rather than seeing over them, it's also important the goalie and defensemen are on the same page about preferred sightlines.
The default is typically for the goalie to look around the short side of a screen.
"If there is a flank shot or someone attacking from the sides, my d-men know they have the far side of the net and I have the inside of the net, that's our assignments," Lehner said. "Now I know I'm not allowed to get beat on the inside but I also know my D has the far side, so even if I have to take another step and I'm opening up a little too much net far side, that's fine because I'm going to trust my d-men and also the [opponent] in front of me screening to take up that space.
"If I can take another step to my left and be confident with that, I'm going to see pucks all the time and even if someone tries to go bar-and-in on my short side, I know they only have this side so it's going to be so much easier to focus on and react to."
Goalies defaulting to the short side when forced to look around a screen isn't new; it has always made sense on multiple levels.
A short-side shot travels less distance compared to one to the far side, which allows more time to react to if a sightline to the release can be established by looking on the short side.
As Lehner indicated, there are also typically more bodies in the middle of the ice that a far-side shot can hit, whether it's the screening forward himself, a defenseman purposely in that lane, or other players crowding the crease.
Of course, it's not always as simple as it sounds.
Opponents go to school on goalie tendencies, especially in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, working to develop moving screen systems that force opposing goalies to switch the side they are looking around just as a shot comes. Some also try, through screen design, to drag a goaltender too far to a preferred side right before a shot is released.
"Some plays are a little more set and you can work with your guys to clean them up during the season, tell them what you like, where you like to look," said Marc-Andre Fleury, the No. 1 goalie with the Vegas Golden Knights. "But sometimes there is a lot of crisscrossing and you just have to fight to find [the puck]. I'd rather keep trying to find the puck than just going down and hoping it hits me. You go up, left, right, do a little dance, and try to find it however you can."

The last thing a goalie wants to do is drop passively behind a screen, effectively taking up much of the same net area as the screening forward.
The key is finding the shot at release, so at the very least the goalie can shift into the shot. Having defenseman on the same page can help.
"In the perfect-case scenario, I love when my D allow me to see the puck, they take the far side and allow me to see short side, for example," Columbus Blue Jackets goalie Sergei Bobrovsky said. "Some D are very smart with those things and it's so enjoyable to play with that, but if D try to block the shot by being square in the middle, it's very challenging because I lose the puck and I can't really look for one side or another."
Being able to pick a side, in concert with the defense, can simplify a tough situation.
"In warmups if you have a guy shoot five pucks to the glove, five to the blocker, are you ever going to get beat? No, you know where the puck is going to come," Lehner said. "Reactions fail when a guy is in the middle and he can shoot anywhere because then you have to process and then react. If you know where a shot is going to come, you don't have to process, you're just going to react to it.
"So, having a strategy and a game plan through traffic and how to look over them, how to still be calm and in balance, it helps your game tremendously."