Puck-handling still an issue for Quick

For all of his strengths and successes during his time with the KIngs, goalie Jonathan Quick has always had one glaring weakness: handling the puck. Goalie gaffes are not entirely surprising — after all, there’s a reason why they’re goalies, and not forwards, right? — and, for the most part, Quick’s mistakes haven’t hurt him significantly, but they were nearly a huge problem last night. Quick’s attempt to clear the deflection by Matt Calvert, rather than cover the puck or push it to the side — gave Columbus its first goal, and Quick later mishandled a puck that led directly to a Rick Nash goal. Today, I asked Terry Murray whether issues such as this are typically mental, or whether they require work in practice…

MURRAY: “I think there’s a combination there. It kind of crosses over into both. You talk about it and you address it. It becomes a decision that you have to make, as a player. We do want for him to work on those parts of the game in practice. That’s where we do a lot of the drills, on the goalie to the defensemen, breaking things out with a lot of communication. The first goal is simply a play you don’t want to see happen. You want to see the goaltender stop the puck. If you’re the goaltender, just stop the puck, settle it down and hand it off to your defenseman. Of, if you’re under a lot of pressure, take the faceoff. It’s like a defenseman standing at the offensive blue line. As a rule of thumb, you never try to shoot a rolling or bouncing puck. Settle it, stop it, put your foot behind the stick, get possession and maybe it just has to be a rim to the back of the net again. But certainly you don’t want to risk the opportunities that happen by a puck bouncing over your stick. That’s instinctive. You hope you’re doing it enough, as a young player coming through the ranks, and talking about it enough as you’re growing and getting to the National Hockey League, that it becomes a fundamental that kicks in, instinctively. It’s such a fundamental that it is overlooked sometimes. It’s something that you just assume is in place, as a player, and you’re not addressing it every month, or every couple weeks, in the practice.”