Monday, December 27, 2010

2010-11 NHL Goalies YouTube Videos

I've been trying my hand at YouTube videos, and here's the result. I shouldn't really call them videos, because they are technically more like slideshows. I gathered photos of all 60 NHL goalies, mainly focusing on their masks and pads and put them together in these 2 videos.

I'm not very technically savvy, and this was a struggle for me, so don't judge too harshly. And I couldn't use the songs I originally wanted to, because of YouTube copyright rules. So these would not be the songs I would've chosen had I been able to choose from all songs, but these will do. They just aren't real "hockey-like." ;o)

Part 1 has goalies from Anaheim through Minnesota, then part 2 is Montreal through Washington. Enjoy! And I apologize to Red Wings fans...I misspelled Red Wings in the Howard slide. :( I'd spent too much time with them already and didn't give them the proper proofreading. Hopefully that was the only mistake...



Thursday, December 23, 2010

NHL Saves of the Week 12/21/10

Pavelec, Khabibulin, Fleury, Hank, Giguere, Brodeur, Ward, Raycroft, Quick, Hiller.

NHL Saves of the Week 12/14/10

Hank, Timmy, Jaro, DiPietro, Ward, Pavelec, Crawford, Varly, Raycroft, Kiprusoff.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Semyon Varlamov 2011 Winter Classic Mask

The Pittsburgh Penguins will host the Washington Capitals at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA on January 1, 2011 at 1:00PM US EST. The game will be telecast on NBC in the USA, CBC (English) and RDS (French) in Canada.



The first photo of Varly and his Winter Classic Mask is a screen capture from the video on the Capitals' website.


Then next are photos found on the Russian Machine Never Breaks blog. (Thanks, miseenjeu, for the link.)




Varly's and Neuvy's together:

Michal Neuvirth 2011 Winter Classic Mask

The Pittsburgh Penguins will host the Washington Capitals at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA on January 1, 2011 at 1:00PM US EST. The game will be telecast on NBC in the USA, CBC (English) and RDS (French) in Canada.



The first photo of Neuvy's Winter Classic Mask is a screen capture from the video on the Capitals' website.


These photos are from the Russian Machine Never Breaks blog. (Thanks, miseenjeu, for the link.)


Varly's and Neuvy's together:

Brent Johnson 2011 Winter Classic Mask

Thanks again to my friend and blog follower, thepatronsaintx, for pointing out the Penguins' Winter Classic Masks today. The Pittsburgh Penguins will host the Washington Capitals at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA on January 1, 2011 at 1:00PM US EST. The game will be telecast on NBC in the USA, CBC (English) and RDS (French) in Canada.

Brent Johnson's Winter Classic mask.







Marc-Andre Fleury 2011 Winter Classic Mask

Thanks to my friend and blog follower, thepatronsaintx, for pointing out the Penguins' Winter Classic Masks today. The Pittsburgh Penguins will host the Washington Capitals at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA on January 1, 2011 at 1:00PM US EST. The game will be telecast on NBC in the USA, CBC (English) and RDS (French) in Canada.

Here is Marc-Andre Fleury's mask.







Saturday, December 4, 2010

Best NHL Saves of 1st Quarter of Season

Halak, Backstrom, Lundqvist, Quick, Luongo, Neuvirth, Khabibulin, Gustavsson, Khabibulin, Garon, Lundqvist, Backstrom, Neuvirth, Nittymaki, Price, Roloson, Miller, Thomas, Ward, Price, Lindback, Luongo, Kiprusoff, Thomas, Vokoun, Giguere, Bobrovsky, Price, Conklin.

NHL Saves of the Week, 11/29/10

Price, Holtby, Rask, Steve Mason, Howard, Leclaire, Luongo, Kiprusoff, Fleury and Pavelec.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Robin Lehner 2010-11 Mask

Robin Lehner of the Ottawa Senators (born July 24, 1991 in Gothenburg, Sweden.)

Lehner made appearances in two games early in the season (a total of 34 minutes so far.) But that's enough to make the site!

From The Goalie Guild: "The left side features an oversized Ottawa Senator logo with the red and black flag flapping in the wind behind him. The right side features the “SENS” font logo running bottom-left to top-right. The final touch was the red Three Crowns of Team Sweden on top of another white and red flag and Lehner’s number 40 on the chin. All the graphics have a great 3d smoking effect. The backplate features the flags of Sweden and Canada and a tribute to Lehner’s best friend."











Mike McKenna 2010-11 Mask

Mike McKenna of the New Jersey Devils (born April 11, 1983 in St. Louis, MO.)

McKenna was called up and has played one game on 11/20/10 so far.
Edit on 12/3/10: McKenna has now played in 2 games. He came in for 58 minutes of the game against Montreal on 12/2/10. With Brodeur still injured, he might be getting some more playing time. I found out today that he played right here in Springfield, IL for the Jr. Blues in 1999-2000.

 The Goalie Guild describes his mask as his “Liberty and Prosperity” mask from Daveart Designs. Both sides feature smoking New Jersey Devils’ logos over red, black, and white racing stripes (McKenna is a big racing fan). Very hard to notice, but all over the mask are tiny, almost holographic Devils’ logos that add a very unique twist to the mask. The words “Liberty” and “Prosperity” (New Jersey’s state motto) sandwich the year number “1776″ for a little patriotism on the chin. The black cat-eye cage fits well, while the backplate features a little white cartoon character with a halo with a checkered and American flag behind him."
















Thursday, November 25, 2010

NHL Saves of the Week 11/23/10

Lundqvist, Khabibulin, Price, Roloson, Bernier, Nittymaki, Rinne, Howard, Lehtonen, and Thomas.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Guitars and NHL Goalies Have Always Gone Hand in Hand

This article is found at InGoal Magazine. Three of my favorite goalies play guitar (Theo, Hank and Miller.) Very interesting connection. The original article is found here.



by Kevin Woodley

Few realize playing guitar can make them a better goalie

The link between NHL goalies and guitars is well established.

From Ryan Miller, Henrik Lundqvist and Jose Theodore playing in their own bands, to NHL goalie turned goaltending coach Sean Burke jamming with Garth Brooks, to Mike Smith and Robert Esche celebrating their love of stringed instruments on their masks, there are plenty of links between goalies and guitars.

Turns out there may be a lot more to it than just another case of jock stars wanting to be rock stars. While these goaltenders may just be avid music lovers – or as Burke once playfully suggested, just want to get girls – their guitar-playing hobby enhances their puck-stopping abilities. It may sound far-fetched, but playing a stringed instrument really can make you a better goaltender.

“I had not heard that,” said new Canucks backup Cory Schneider, who began playing guitar when he first turned pro three years ago to fill winter downtime in Winnipeg with the AHL Manitoba Moose. “But yeah, I suppose it is a lot of wrist flexion and you have to be sturdy with your finger picking and things like that, so I could see how it translates to strong forearm muscles.”

That may also be true, but the real reason the guitar helps goalies has more to do with the brain than the forearms. It all has to do with how our brains work, how we learn skills, and how those skills contribute to and reinforce similar motor functions in a phenomenon called Transfer of Learning.


Ted Monnich, a former minor pro goalie, Assistant Coach for the Columbia Inferno of the ECHL, and musician, began studying the effects in 2003 along with sports psychologist Dr. Eva Monsma of the University of South Carolina. Monnich, who has also coached goalies in Turkey and Slovakia and currently works as a regional assistant manager with GDI goalie schools, started tracking the performance of select senior and minor-pro goaltenders, including himself and his students, after noticing his own increased glove hand agility and performance after practicing the guitar. He set out to determine if this was only coincidence or if there was a cause and effect relationship. It turns out there was.

“Over several seasons the study showed glove response and glove save percentage increased on a game-by-game basis after practicing music – by ear on the guitar – within a few hours prior to playing hockey,” Monnich said, stressing it had to be played by ear and not sight reading sheet music. “Likewise, the agility of musicianship increased after playing hockey. And a more difficult music seemed to produce greater short-term stimulation and enhancement of these functions.”

Monnich introduced the concept to goaltender Todd Ford, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs, when they were together in Columbia. Not only did Ford try it; he later started a band in Charleston. Monnich sent an email asking Ford, now with Hershey in the AHL, if he still played.

“He said ‘every day, it really works,’” Monnich recalled.

So why does it work? It’s about transfer of learning, said Monnich, or the idea a student will learn faster and develop a deeper understanding of one task if they already have some knowledge or similar skills from another task. This cross-task facilitation is based on similarities between processes involved in the two skills and is at the core of sports cross training. A common example in motor skill transfer is how learning to ride a bicycle facilitates learning to skate, ski, or anything that requires having to maintain balance while moving forward.

“Likewise with goaltending, learning to play a stringed instrument enhances motor functions, particularly of the hands and arms,” Monnich added.



So when a puck-stopping musician learns, practices and plays a song by ear on a guitar, they are stimulating the same right hemisphere area of the brain that memorizes the skills used in goaltending. By stimulating the right hemisphere they are stimulating the same neural pathways established to make a glove or blocker save, resulting in quicker, more adept glove or blocker responses.

“This stimulation is not necessarily greater than that received in regular on-ice practice sessions,” said Monnich. “But the variation in the source of stimulation – guitar playing vs. hockey practice – further reinforces the goalie’s skill. Guitar playing is not a substitute for on-ice practice, but an augmentation to reinforce the skills developed in practice and training.”

These skills of efficiently fretting a guitar’s neck and catching a fast-moving puck (with the left hand) stimulate and reinforce related neural patterns in the brain’s right hemisphere. Correspondingly, the right hand automatically selects the correct strings to pluck or strum as determined by the song, reinforcing neural patterns associated with the right hand response, usually the blocker.

“You are just manipulating your fingers in a controlled way that stimulates your brain in the same places that catching pucks or using your blocker stimulates it,” said Monnich “But you are doing it with things you have memorized, just like you have memorized saves. You memorized how to play guitar, you’ve memorized how to play a song by ear and it stimulates the same part of the brain as making a save and practicing it over and over and over just like a song. And then something stimulates it and that part of the brain fires automatically.”

Breaking it down further, Monnich explains that a song is composed of a series of unique patterns of musical notes, timing and rhythm. The musician learns to play a song by ear by practicing these patterns over and over again, and as each is learned and practiced, a new corresponding neural pattern (or pathway or chain) is constructed in the brain. When a musical phrase is “memorized” the musician can, seemingly automatically, play that phrase or line of notes without thought. In the brain each neural pattern is firing. When an entire song is learned and memorized through repetition, the entire series of neural pathways fire, not just individually, but as one entire pattern.

The same principles apply to goaltending, specifically when it comes to learning save selection, reaction, and appropriate post-save responses. All can be taught, learned, and practiced so the goalie responds automatically to the situation, without thought or seemingly any conscious analysis.

“Through repetition the neural pattern is reinforced so that when called upon it fires automatically,” said Monnich. “When each small movement is linked into the complete save the small pathways are joined into a larger neural pattern that fires sequentially. Through correct and regular repetition of the complete movement in practice situations, the entire new neural pattern is further reinforced and fires, not in stages, but instantly, in one large pattern, to a subconscious stimulus, typically the puck leaving the shooter’s stick and the proximity of other players. No thought is required to respond. The save selection and response is seemingly automatic and subconscious.”

Likewise in music, the memorized elements of a song are stimulated and recalled by the preceding elements, patterns or notes. The guitarist’s top hand moves automatically and efficiently along the length and width of the instrument’s neck, fingering the appropriate notes as memorized and recalled by the simultaneously firing neural patterns. Where the musician’s hand and fingers move is determined by repetitive practice of the learned song and its patterns. Likewise, through repetitive practice and drills, the goaltender’s glove responds automatically to the sight of the puck leaving the shooter’s stick and predetermined trajectory of the puck, also learned through practice.

“Guitar playing will not make a bad goalie into a good goalie,” Monnich said, “It won’t impart new or better skills. But it will stimulate, enhance and reinforce existing skills.”

NHL Saves of the Week 11/9/10

Yeah, I'm a little behind on the saves of the week. I was busy trying to get all the masks finished up the past couple weeks.

Johnson, Nittymaki, Pavelec, Price, Rinne, Budaj, Halak, Chris Mason, Raycroft and Khabibulin.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

NHL Saves of the Week 11/16/10

Turco, Giguere, Backstrom, Luongo, Biron, Fleury, Hiller, Ellis, Dubnyk and Price.

(I apologize for the fact that these save videos are so wide they wipe out the links on the right side of the page. I haven't figured out if there's a way to fix that.)

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Peter Mannino 2010-11 Mask

Peter Mannino of the Atlanta Thrashers (born Feb. 17, 1984 in Farmington Hills, MI.)

Mannino played one game when Pavalec was out after his on-ice collapse early in the season. According to The Goalie Guild, "A big Thrashers head logo set on an Atlanta 'A'; and a 'monster' Thrasher on a bloody background are accented by Mannino’s cute little bearded personal mascot."

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Index to 2010-11 NHL Goalie Masks on This Blog

I am a librarian, so I really dig organization. I want things to be as organized as possible. So the fact that there is no real order to the way my goalie mask entries are presented on this site is bothersome. I made an entry for each mask as I found it, so that's the order they are in. But I would like them to be organized by team. So I decided the best I could do after-the-fact would be to make an index listing the goalies by team, then with a link to their entry on my site. That way readers can find their favorite easier and just click on their mask if that's all they want to see. So here we go:

Anaheim Ducks
Jonas Hiller
Dan Ellis
Ray Emery

Atlanta Thrashers
Ondrej Pavelec
Chris Mason
Peter Mannino

Boston Bruins
Tim Thomas
Tuukka Rask

Buffalo Sabres
Ryan Miller
Patrick Lalime
Jhonas Enroth

Calgary Flames
Miikka Kiprusoff
Henrik Karlsson

Carolina Hurricanes
Cam Ward
Justin Peters

Chicago Blackhawks
Marty Turco
Corey Crawford

Colorado Avalanche
Peter Budaj
Brian Elliott

Columbus Blue Jackets
Mathieu Garon
Steve Mason

Dallas Stars
Kari Lehtonen
Andrew Raycroft
Richard Bachman

Detroit Red Wings
Jimmy Howard
Chris Osgood
Joey MacDonald

Edmonton Oilers
Nikolai Khabibulin
Devan Dubnyk
Martin Gerber

Florida Panthers
Tomas Vokoun
Scott Clemmensen

Los Angeles Kings
Jonathan Quick
Jonathan Quick's Anniversary Mask
Jonathan Bernier
Jonathan Bernier's Anniversary Mask

Minnesota Wild
Niklas Backstrom
José Théodore
Anton Khudobin
Josh Harding

Montreal Canadiens
Carey Price
Carey Price's 2011 Heritage Classic Mask
Alex Auld
Alex Auld's 2011 Mask

Nashville Predators
Pekka Rinne
Anders Lindback
Mark Dekanich
Chet Pickard

New Jersey Devils
Martin Brodeur
Johan Hedberg
Mike McKenna

New York Islanders
Rick Dipietro
Nathan Lawson
Kevin Poulin
Mikko Koskinen
Al Montoya

New York Rangers
Henrik Lundqvist
Martin Biron

Ottawa Senators
Pascal Leclaire
Robin Lehner
Mike Brodeur
Craig Anderson
Curtis McElhinney

Philadelphia Flyers
Sergei Bobrovsky
Brian Boucher
Michael Leighton

Phoenix Coyotes
Ilya Bryzgalov
Jason LaBarbera
Matt Climie

Pittsburgh Penguins
Marc-Andre Fleury
Marc-Andre Fleury's Winter Classic Mask
Brent Johnson
Brent Johnson's Winter Classic Mask

San Jose Sharks
Antero Nittymaki
Antti Niemi
Alex Stalock

St. Louis Blues
Jaroslav Halak
Ty Conklin
Ben Bishop

Tampa Bay Lightning
Dwayne Roloson
Mike Smith
Cedrick Desjardins

Toronto Maple Leafs
Jean-Sebastian Giguere
Jonas Gustavsson
James Reimer

Vancouver Canucks
Roberto Luongo
Cory Schneider

Washington Capitals
Semyon Varlamov
Semyon Varlamov's Winter Classic Mask
Michal Neuvirth
Michal Neuvirth's Winter Classic Mask
Braden Holtby

Brian Elliott 2010-11 Mask

Brian Elliott of the Colorado Avalanche (born April 9, 1985 in Newmarket, ON.)

Edit: Elliott was traded to the Colorado Avalanche in Februrary 2011. I will keep his Sens mask photos down at the bottom of the entry, since he was there over half the season.

This is all I have of the Avs mask so far.



From The Goalie Guild: "Casey Jones is sprawling over the top of the mask, with the main Senator logo on the right side of the mask and the “O” secondary flag logo on the right side of the mask."

Casey Jones is the hockey mask-wearing, stick-swinging vigilante who fought crime alongside the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the cartoons and the first movie.









Tuesday, November 16, 2010