A decade ago, some of the brightest minds in American goaltending locked themselves in a hotel room in Ohio and didn’t come out until they had rewritten the way goalies were being developed in the United States.
It happened inside a suite at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Columbus in May 2015. The group gathered around a table in the living room portion of the suite. On one side sat Mike MacMillan, national coach-in-chief at USA Hockey. Across from him were longtime goaltending coaches Steve Carroll, Billy Switaj and Kevin Reiter, and longtime scout, coach and TV analyst Dave Starman.
“Those two days are one of my favorite moments of my entire hockey life,” Starman told The Athletic. “We needed goaltending to be narrowed. It was just too broad. There was a lot going on and we figured if we don’t start to get this under one umbrella, so we have a set formula on how we want to develop goalies, we’re not going to do it well.”
In those 48 hours, the group rewrote the coaching education curriculum for goalies and developed what would eventually become the American Development Model (ADM) for goaltending. Their biggest focus was educating youth coaches around the country on how to design drills that better serve their goalies, even if they have no goaltending expertise of their own.
Fast forward 10 years, and the United States is producing elite goalies like they’re coming off a factory conveyor belt. The United States entered the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament this week in Boston and Montreal with three stars to choose from in net, and plenty of other talented netminders who didn’t make the cut.
Connor Hellebuyck, who stopped 20 of 21 shots in the tournament-opening win over Finland, leads the way. He’s having a historically great season for Winnipeg, with 35.89 goals saved above expected (no other goalie has more than 27), on track to become the first goalie since Martin Brodeur in 2008 to win three Vezina Trophies.
At 26, Jake Oettinger has already cemented himself among the league’s elite in Dallas. In an era in which most teams are turning to goalie tandems, Oettinger is proving to be a workhorse capable of carrying his team on a nightly basis. Jeremy Swayman burst onto the scene over the last two seasons for the Bruins, signing an eight-year, $66 million contract in October.
Jake Oettinger helps USA Hockey’s strength in goal at the 4 Nations Face-Off. (Gary A. Vasquez / Imagn Images)
Any of those three is good enough to start for several other national teams, as could a handful of other American goalies who won’t be making the trip. Vancouver’s Thatcher Demko was the runner-up to Hellebuyck in last year’s Vezina voting. Joey Daccord is having an excellent season in Seattle, as are Joseph Woll and Anthony Stolarz in Toronto.
The last generation of American goaltenders — headlined by Jonathan Quick, Ryan Miller and Craig Anderson — took a step in the right direction, but the current generation is on a different level, and the next wave of American goalies could be even better.
Dustin Wolf, age 23, is living up to the hype in his rookie season in Calgary. The California native is having one of the better debut seasons we’ve seen from a goalie in the last decade. Spencer Knight (23), Drew Commesso (22), Jacob Fowler (20) and Trey Augustine (19) are all elite goalie prospects at various stages of development.
How did we reach this point? It starts with coaching at the grassroots level, which improved greatly after that 2015 meeting in Columbus.
“The big thing was educating coaches,” Reiter explained. “You don’t have to be a goalie coach, but you need to be educated enough to give the goalies some type of feedback, and think about them and incorporate them when you’re coming up with your practice plan.”
Reiter and others observed typical practices and realized the vast majority of drills were not beneficial for the goalies. The netminders faced shot after shot with little to no rest or instruction. The rapid-fire nature of most drills actually builds poor habits for the goalie, who must abandon tracking rebounds to get ready for the next shooter in line. They also don’t force the goalie to make reads, so they will often cheat to get in position for the shot they know is eventually coming. None of that translates to real-game situations.
“We were focused on the 12-14-year-olds because that was the retention age that we lost good goalies, because they felt like they weren’t getting enough good coaching to justify the financial investment,” Starman said. “The way that we wanted coaches to teach the position, mentally, physically and emotionally, were the building blocks not only for the kids, but for the coaches who were coaching them.”
Because goaltending differs greatly from every other position in hockey, most coaches without experience in the position avoid teaching it. The group at USA Hockey came up with a plan to teach coaches around the country how to help their goalies and broke it into levels that eventually became the bronze, silver and gold coaching certification program.
It was two days of constant debate in that hotel room, with each coach playing his own role.
“For all the right reasons, Billy Switaj is a little bit of a contrarian,” Starman recalled. “He’s also very detailed. No matter what ideas we came up with, it would always circle back to Billy who would say, ‘Wait a minute, are we thinking about this?’”
Switaj goaltended at Boston College in the early 1980s, then went on to become the head coach for Kent State from 1989 to 1994, and is now the Mid-American District Coach-In-Chief for USA Hockey.
“Steve Carroll brought a lot of historical perspective,” Starman said of Carroll, who has more than 30 years of goalie coaching experience. “Every time we talked about changing something, Steve would go over the potential ramifications.”
“MacMillan and I are like the odd couple,” Starman said with a laugh. “We think alike, act alike, but the smallest thing can send us off on a tangent. I would say Mike and I probably wasted a good couple of hours just trying to prove the other person wrong.”
The group discussed how to teach bigger goalies versus smaller goalies because the styles obviously needed to be different. They settled on the fundamentals of goaltending: Stance, skating, positioning, save selection, rebound control and recovery — each connected to the biggest key, play-reading.
“We felt like, when we walked out of that room we had done something really significant,” Starman said. “Like we had laid the framework for what was coming next. We really felt like we put the skeleton in for people to build around as this thing evolved. We knew it wasn’t the end of the discussion, but that we had restarted the process that needed to be restarted.”
Immediately after, they organized two large coaching clinics, one in Minnesota and the other in Buffalo. Both were well attended and started the momentum that has carried through to today.
“It was a huge success,” Starman recalled. “It showed us two things. Number one, we can make this work. Number two, there are a lot of coaches out there that want to learn this information, because they might not have an ex-goalie in their program.”
Plenty of people who weren’t in that hotel room also helped build USA Hockey’s goaltending development into what it has become. Phil Osaer brought expertise and pushed the program forward as manager of goaltending for USA Hockey before joining the Tampa Bay Lightning, and eventually the Detroit Red Wings as the head of goaltending scouting and development.
Steve Thompson took over as manager of goaltending for USA Hockey in June 2019, and has emphasized youth development and magnified the spotlight on goalies within the organization. David Lassonde is in his fifth season as goaltending coach for the United States National Team Development Program (USNTDP) and has helped the program to several gold medals.
Finally, you won’t speak to anyone at USA Hockey without them raving about the work of Ron “Digger” DeGregorio, who has helped shape American hockey for more than 40 years, is currently the co-chair of the USA Hockey Board of Directors and is in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.
“Without Ron’s support, ability to fundraise and energy, none of this happens,” Starman said. “Ron, to me, is like the Wizard of Oz. The man behind the curtain. He has done so much for the growth of goaltending development in the United States.”
These development overhauls put American goalies on the right track from a younger age. The USNTDP has vaulted the elite goalies to another level. The program started in 1996 and has produced more than 400 NHL draft picks and nearly 100 first-round picks. It has consistently produced top players throughout its history, but with its purchase and renovation of the 9,800-square-foot workout facility in Plymouth, Mich., in 2015, the program reached new heights.
Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Matthew Tkachuk, Jack, Quinn and Luke Hughes and many others have come through the USNTDP. The program has also produced plenty of goalies, including Oettinger who played there from 2014-16. He is representing the U.S. at the 4 Nations Face-Off this week and credits the USNTDP for his development.
“If I wouldn’t have made that team I don’t know where I’d be today,” Oettinger said of the program. “I feel like it just propelled me so much, and I needed that badly. I was so raw before I made that team. That opened my eyes to everything about goaltending. I had goalie coaches and stuff growing up, but just the training I got when I was there — on ice and off ice — learning about nutrition and just growing up, was huge.”
Oettinger was coached by Reiter at the USNTDP, who scouted and recruited him from Lakeville North High School in Minnesota.
“I remember watching him in the Minnesota state championship game as a freshman, and just how cool, calm and composed he was,” Reiter said. “He’s on the bench grabbing some water during the TV timeouts. You watch the kid on the other end who was a senior, but he’s down in his butterfly moving all around, you could tell he was nervous. Jake was so calm.”
Oettinger and Reiter worked together nearly every day for two years.
“He had such a big impact on my career; I owe him so much,” Oettinger said. “Prior to that, I was just playing hockey. I had no rhyme or reason to what I was doing, or why. As much as goaltending is about instincts, you need a game plan and I had none. That was the first time I really worked on, ‘When the puck is here, I need to be here,’ or watched video. I felt like I was exposed to a whole new side of goaltending, and just jumped in head first.”
Oettinger transformed from a raw goalie relying on reactions and athleticism to one of the most technically proficient netminders in the world. His positioning and angles are second to none, making tough saves look easy on a nightly basis in the NHL.
He believes the environment at the USNTDP, and the subsequent years playing college hockey, could be one of the main reasons the country is producing elite goalies. Compared to the typical development path of a Canadian goalie, who plays major junior hockey in the CHL, Oettinger can see how the American model might allow for more growth.
“The CHL is hard on goalies, I think,” Oettinger said. “It’s high-scoring, and I just think the way the U.S. does it with the super-focused development for two years, and then you get to go to college and have all the time in the world to work on your game, is just a better way about it, at least in my opinion.”
Jake Oettinger gives credit to his time with the USNTDP. (Courtesy of USA Hockey)
While the USNTDP obviously wants to win games, the focus is far more on the development side compared to major junior hockey, where coaches’ jobs are on the line if they don’t produce results.
“I think it’s kind of nice to not have the pressure of being in the CHL,” Oettinger said. “You’re 16 years old, it’s not going well and next thing you know you’re not playing at all. At USNTDP, you feel like you can learn from your mistakes in games, then have all this time to work on my game for a year, get my feet underneath me, and go from there. That year was all about getting better, getting stronger, maturing and growing up.”
The extended runway that Americans often get means fewer talented goalies will be lost in the shuffle. The best goalie at age 14 doesn’t always end up being the best goalie at 18, and there are plenty of examples of late bloomers who ended up being elite goalies.
Look no further than Hellebuyck, who never went through the national program. He spent a season after high school proving himself in the North American Hockey League, then went on to the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he was a fifth-round pick by Winnipeg in 2012. If he were to have grown up on a more rushed, win-now development path, things may have gone differently.
Hellebuyck, Oettinger and Swayman give the United States a wealth of options in net for the first best-on-best international hockey tournament in years. Looking at the career trajectories of the younger goalies, the options may look even better for the 2026 Olympics.
It’s clear, American goaltending has never been in a better place.
On a recent road trip to Toronto, Oettinger ate dinner with his former USNTDP goalie partner, Woll. The two reminisced and marveled at how far they’ve all come.
“We were just talking about how crazy it is that me, him and Swayman were the three goalies for our World Juniors team (in 2018), and now we’re all starters in the NHL,” Oettinger said. “It’s just crazy, and it’s awesome.”
(Top photo of Connor Hellebuyck: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)