Goalies increasingly go to narrow stance, upright posture

VANCOUVER -- The routine is the same every time Connor Hellebuyck sets up for a face-off in the Winnipeg Jets end: Starting from the middle of the net, he centers himself to the dot, sets his feet from an upright posture, and lowers into his stance with his hands pushed forward and stick raised, finally tapping the blade down to the ice as the puck is dropped.

Hellebuyck's routine could easily be mistaken for ritual or superstition, but it's about consistently setting up the stance and posture that have become his foundation.
"I am putting the anchor in," Hellebuyck said. "I am setting the foundation things -- my feet right, my pelvic tilt and my core activated -- and then from there, everything just needs to fall into place, and I know it's working when I am able to just be loose and tap the stick, loose hands, maybe shove them a little deeper in my gloves, just the little things that make you calm up top."
Hellebuyck altered his stance during offseason work with new trainer Adam Francilia the past two years, and he's not the only NHL goalie who counts on it as a foundation. The way a goaltender sets up in his stance affects everything he does, from skating efficiently and powerfully, to being able to react into pucks rather than opening up or reaching on shots.
"It changes everything," Vancouver Canucks goalie Jacob Markstrom said.
Markstrom is one of many goaltenders in recent years who has narrowed his stance, setting up with his feet closer together, especially when the puck is higher in the zone or along the boards. He is making that adjustment this season with new Canucks goaltending coach Ian Clark, who initiated similar changes in Sergei Bobrovksy while with the Columbus Blue Jackets.

In the simplest terms, narrowing the stance improves a goalie's mobility by keeping his feet underneath him and giving him more leg extension with which to push. Conversely, if a goalie is already spread out too wide with his legs, there isn't much extension left to make a powerful, controlled push, whether it's left to right or up and down the crease.
"It's just easier to move," said Detroit Red Wings goalie Jimmy Howard, who has a .915 save percentage in 2 1/2 seasons since making a similar stance adjustment after 2015-16, when he had a .906 save percentage. "You are just freer to move. With better hip mobility, you can hinge better, and that way you can get better pushes. I still get wide when the puck is below the hash marks, just to give yourself a little more blocking surface but also to get down into that butterfly a little quicker, but I used to be wide all over the ice."
Howard, who played in the 2019 Honda NHL All-Star Game at SAP Center in San Jose, also adjusted his positioning with new goaltending coach Jeff Salajko after the 2015-16 season, playing within his crease after being one of the most aggressive goalies in the NHL early in his career. But narrowing the stance was the biggest change for the 34-year-old.

"Getting older, it's a lot easier on your body, that's for sure," Howard said.
It's not a new concept. Henrik Lundqvist narrowed his feet and got more upright in his stance with the New York Rangers in 2012 because he felt more patient compared to the lower, wider stance earlier in his career that he said caused him to go down sooner on every shot.
Pekka Rinne of the Nashville Predators narrowed his stance and lifted his chest more upright, and then won his first Vezina Trophy as the top goalie in the NHL last season. He called his new stance a more efficient way to move compared to a lower, more hunched-over setup that had created a lot more opening-and-closing delays in his lateral movements in previous seasons.
Rinne also talked about his stance change having a positive mental impact, saying, "The game feels a little slower," like he was looking down at it from "the driver's seat."

Markstrom has used the narrower stance to take some of the tension out of his game that used to lead to early goals, often because pucks leaked through him.
"In the beginning of a game, you have a tendency to want it too much, be too aggressive and get too wide," he said. "When I narrow my stance, I feel like I am more in control and it's so much easier to move."
Playing narrower and more upright with the chest also makes it easier to keep the hands out in front and active, something that helped Bobrovsky, who used to be so hunched over with the Philadelphia Flyers that his hands were up by his ears, after adopting Clark's three-stance system in Columbus. Having the right stance can also improve tracking, and how well a goalie can see and access the puck while dropping to the ice by altering the mechanics of how that movement is initiated. Finding the right stance, and trusting in it, can even help a goalie's psyche during a season.
"It helped so much because anytime I would falter, I had something to fall back on, I had the confidence built into the foundation," Hellebuyck said. "It wasn't feel anymore, it was, 'I know what I am doing and I just need to continue to do it,' and I can fall back on the foundational details every single day, and that foundation is the pelvic tilt, stance and balance."