Intressanta ord från Chicagos målvaktscoach Jimmy Waite:

“First of all the Swedish guys and most Finnish guys, they are better athletes than us,” said Waite. “They work more on agility and flexibility more than us. I think in North America for the last 10 years we are focused too much on just technique and we forgot you’ve got to be flexible and a better athlete.”

Perhaps the best example in the flexibility department is one of the leaders of the current Finnish goaltending revolution, Calgary’s Miikka Kiprusoff, who stretches for three hours on a game day – 45 minutes before and after the morning skate, and another 45 minutes before and after the game itself.

Waite also points to Antti Niemi, who backstopped the Blackhawks to the Stanley Cup with an incredibly wide butterfly and numerous explosive pad saves before being dismissed over salary cap concerns this summer and signing in San Jose.

“My guy last year Antti was a great athlete for a big guy,” Waite said. “Finnish and Swedish guys are such unbelievable athletes and they can make a lot of saves because they are so flexible. They are better athletes and then they got the technique and the size too and that’s what makes them so good right now.”

As Waite points out, the quality of teaching has also improved greatly overseas, with Finland leading the way two decades ago with programs to ensure position-specific coaching from the first-division pro leagues to eight-year-old first timers. Sweden has followed suit, but only in the last five years, so many of the goaltenders coming over now grew up having to rely on natural instinct and reactions before getting more modern technical and tactical coaching later.

Waite sees something to InGoal’s theory, developed after recent interviews with Eddie Lack and Henrik Karlsson, that there is a benefit to Swedish goalies not being inundated with technical schooling at too young an age. Instead of being taught to block at an age when shooters just aren’t good enough to exploit the corners they may have left open, they had to learn how to battle and react and use their hands first, another important trend Waite sees in the NHL.

“Right now a big, huge part for goalies is the battle,” Waite said. “The best goalies in the NHL now are not just good technical goalies anymore. A big, big part is how he competes, how he battles and sometimes that’s even bigger than your technique, so that’s very different for the last five, six years. Six years ago it was all big goalies, square, butterfly, set, they were the best. Now that’s not enough. You’ve got to battle, that’s the big part.”

Waite points to Boston’s Tim Thomas as an example, and also to his new goalie in Chicago, Marty Turco, which isn’t something he would have done before.

“I wasn’t a big fan of Marty Turco before, but I’ve learned a lot of stuff from him and he learns some stuff from me and we got a god mix right now,” he said.

Tim Thomas makes a stop during a wild scramble sequence Monday. (Photo by Scott Slingsby)

Don’t get Waite wrong. He still preaches the importance of good technique, even to Turco, who has already improved how he moves back to his net, rotating with plays that go wide now rather than backing straight in, which used to leave him off the angle and vulnerable to sharp-angle shots. And technique is still the focus in work with young goalies. It remains a cornerstone of consistency. But Waite has also seen the importance of competing increase over the last five or six seasons in the NHL, and is now incorporating more battle drills.

“You need more than just a good technical goalie,” he said. “You need to compete and that’s maybe even more important now because every young goalie is coming into the league and they are big, technically very, very good. So what makes them better than the other ones? It’s how they compete and battle. Sometimes I love to tell my goalies ‘just be unpredictable, do something that is gonna surprise the shooter, whatever it is.’ It doesn’t have to be pretty.”

Even, as Thomas has proven this year, it doesn’t always look technically sound.