Lots of interesting stuff today on the goalies, with Terry Murray saying that Jonathan Quick will start tomorrow against Atlanta after sitting in favor of Erik Ersberg last night. This is obviously a big season for Quick, being named the starter and now going through a bump in the road. I do think he has struggled of late, but throughout, he has been honest and good to deal with. I talked to him today about the work he has done with goalie coach Bill Ranford over the past couple days. Also, there are comments from Murray about Quick’s game. To me, the most interesting part was Murray’s reference to Quick working on stopping high shots. I also talked to Ranford, and I’ll be posting his thoughts shortly…
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Question: Anything in particular that you’ve been working with Bill on?
QUICK: “All the little stuff. Just being detailed and doing the little things well. It makes my job easier.”
Question: Terry has talked about the importance of practice for goalies. Do you think it helped you to get a couple long practices this week?
QUICK: “It does. Obviously when you’re playing games every other night, you get into a rhythm, which is good, but there are little things, details, that you might lose sight of. When you get a couple days of practice to work on things, it slows the game down a little bit for you and makes it a little bit easier.”
Question: Sitting out a game probably isn’t something you enjoy. Is there any part that helps? Getting a little mental break?
QUICK: “Absolutely. It is good, from time to time, to get a mental break, and physically too. You’re still getting ready for the game, but it’s not as intense as if you were playing in the game. Obviously if anything happens, you’re in the game at the drop of a hat, so you have to be ready for that and you’re not taking the day off, but you’re not trying to get as amped up as if you were playing.”
Question: I imagine, though, that it probably makes you want to get right back out there…
QUICK: “You see the boys battle in front of you, and there’s a sense of helplessness because you want to be out there. You want to be helping them and you want to be battling with them, but you encourage them on the bench and you try to stay in the game and help out as much as you can, even though you’re not in the game. But yeah, you do get a sense of, you want to get back out there.”
Here’s what Murray said Quick’s work with Ranford…
MURRAY: “It’s more of a focus on some urgency on his game, being real quick to the shooter. There were some drills that he was doing on pass-outs from below the goal line, and being right on top of it right away. Being bigger. Billy and I spoke about this. As the player is attacking him on any of the shooting drills, I found that he was really getting small, getting bent over. I couldn’t even see the crest on his sweater in the early part of yesterday’s practice.
“Again, Billy talks about that and puts a couple drills in place where now he’s more upright, he’s bigger and his skill is able to take over in a lot of those situations, because of his ability to react to the low shots. He’s tremendous in that area, but we felt that by him getting so bent over and crouching into a smaller physical condition, it opened up the top, and he worked on that part of it especially.”
Couldn’t agree more with the last comment, a lot of goals against him have been the high corners, and a good enough shooter will know that and is aiming for it.
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Agree, VanKingsFan.
Look at it this way:
Who will be the U.S. goalie during the Olympics, now that Mason’s rep took such a shot yesterday? Bet Quicker puts a streak together before the Olympics, just watch…
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Bako:
Mason is Canadian, lets not throw around insults here like being part of the USA Hockey team (Kidding, just want to get the trash talking going before 2010 in Vancouver!)
The way he is playing right now, Ryan Miller is without a doubt the goalie for team USA, and the back up has to go to Craig Anderson right now who has the entire Avalanche team firmly atop his shoulders.
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Just out of curiosity, do goalies ever practice the 2 pad slide? This was THE SAVE back in the day, but you never see it anymore. Now it’s all talk about being bigger in the net and butterfly.
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54 Fighting:
I believe the term is “2 Pad Stack”
And if I remember correctly that was a Billy Ranford Specialty!
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VanKingsFan:
Sorry, my bad…
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My intention in bringing up the Olympic team is motivation, nothing else. I’m sure that Quick is thinking about it.
There is still a lot of hockey between now and then…
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honestly, was kinda hoping ersberg would get the nod tomorrow night. obviously, i think that quick is our number 1 and will be a big reason we a) make the playoffs and b) have any success in the playoffs.
however, from what we’ve seen from quick so far this year, outstanding saves at times but still not making a certain save when the team needs him to; and with the game that ersberg had, a quality start, his first win in nearly a year and reason to start him in nearly a year; a consecutive start could go a long way in repairing/re-establishing his confidence, even if it is in his back-up roll. you send a message to quick letting him know this is your team, but thats not a given.
your gonna need to start both of them in back to back games on an east coast, 5 game road trip. many pluses’ could come out of ersberg going friday nite, then you give the ranes (sp?) back to quick and see if the more consistent game comes back to jonathan. and in the big picture, thats what we all want, the jonathan quick to progress from what we saw last year, not regress. cause we’ve all seen how that one ends.
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Interesting. I remember when Quick got the call up last season, you really could see how seamless his butterfly was and how upright he remained even when he dropped to his knees. You don’t see that patience or control this season. It seems he’s relying a lot on his skill (which is really good) and less on his positioning. Where as last season, it was a good mix of the two.
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I agree with the view that Ersberg should start against The ATL, and Quick should start against Tampa. Guess we’ll have to deal with it.
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Stacking the pads is less used these days as it tends to be a last ditch effort, with minimal control of the rebound laying on your side isn’t the best place to be. With the dominance of the butterfly style you’re more likely to see the butterfly slide which gives a goalie many more options to close down the play or react to what happens next…
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i do NOT agree.
Quick has been nothing but solid for us between the pipes. He has made HUGE timely saves for the Kings in every game. The team overall has been struggling, so we can’t blame Quick.
He is everything we need in a goalie right now. Get him back out there and keep his confidence high.
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So, JPUCK, you want to play him in both games? Is that what you’re saying? It’s not about blaming Quick. It’s about using him in the right games.
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