Tactical Goalies

I think something happened around 2006. Someone pulled a switch, and drastically changed the landscape. No, I am not talking about global warming. I am talking about floorball goalies.

When I played, goalies were like the clichés: a bit odd. They cared more about getting their coffee than getting their physical training done, they listened in with the highest possible level of curiosity to stories the youngest guys would tell about their weekends off from floorball, and they shut their ears (until now, the only people in the world managing this) once the coach started talking about tactics. And they took every chance there is to play something else than their position as goalkeeper, despite being useless once we got to play NHL-rink during practice.

Then something happened. In my club coaching days, I have run into guys like Samuel Thut, Remo Leisi, Oskar Adler and Jon Hedlund. I cannot tell about their coffee habits, but I know that they all love the tactical part of the sport. And they love being goalies.

My floorball conversations with Jon Hedlund were not about weather he should change the way he technically slides from left to right. He knows that way better than me. It was more about when the appropriate timing for a slide would be, so that he would take part in the big tactical picture. The guy can pull of the most amazing saves, and sometimes in the period breaks I would ask him how the hell he saved a shot. His reply would be: ”Well, you told me what they want to execute on their powerplay, in my head I was halfway there when the pass came”. Heads-up guy, huge help for coaches and a tactical weapon.

What situations are there, where a good tactical cooperation with your goalies are a big advantage? I will present some generic and important ones, and then I will give you some examples from the real life.

The 2-on-1 situation
I think that this is the tactical situation where the highest number of teams actually has a deal with its goalie. It differs, though. Some would want the defender to stay between the two players, some would take away the pass and let the goalie handle the shot. Some would attack the ball carrier hard. I will be working on 2-on-1 situations on swiss unihockeys Mentorenprogramm, both offensively and defensively, since I think it has a lot of possible teaching points to it.

This is my side, that is your side
Falun has played like this for a long time. One of their defenders will focus on the far post, letting the goalie focus on the first post. If a quick diagonal pass makes it through, Faluns big defenders would be trusted to make a pretty challenging block, almost like a second goalie. Sometimes you will also hear about systems where defenders would block the first half of the goal, and the goalie the half of the goal closes to the center of the court, making him to have to slide less to get in position.

The Chodov block
We played Chodov in Czech Open with Pixbo, and I noticed how they used their goalie in a pretty intelligent way. Their defender on the ”sleeping side” of the court, would always hit players extremely hard and early behind the net, forcing us to never get to the far side that way. And once our technically skilled forwards would try to slide a pass through on the first post, the goalie’s arm would be there. It frustrated us for two periods, then we scored on a fake play, where we faked getting stuck behind the net and returning to the first post which the goalie’s arm would cover, making the aggressive defender fall back thinking he had done his job. Only for us to turn around again, and playing a stick-body pass to a guy with an empty net. That was actually the game winner. People may beat me in changing tires on a car or building a porch on the lawn, but I do not back down on challenges like these.

The non-shooting pact
The perhaps weirdest tactical instructions I have ever heard of, came when Jönköpings IK played a very important game in the playoffs of the Swedish junior championships. The goalie in Vrigstad called Peter Sjögren (who turned out later to be a great goalie for Warberg and Sweden), has a pitching arm the Toronto Blue Jays could have traded for, forced the Jönköping coach to say these words: ”Hey, guys… do not shoot. I said do not shoot. If we shoot, shoot on an open net”. Part of the Vrigstad gameplay was to counter attack on Sjögrens throws, after he had caught a distance shot from a Jönköping player. He did that several times during this game, giving his teammates breakaways alone against the Jönköping goalie. Until Jönköping decided not to pull the trigger any more.

Goalie, make your choice
I on purpose waited with my ultimate test, finding out whether a goalie has a tactical side to him or not. The 2-on-0 situation. The goalie approaching the shooter, and being too late on the obvious sideway pass, would never gather my attention. The guy anticipating the pass, taking a chance while sliding over early because of the tendencies of opposing forwards, would get my attention immediately.

Even though it sometimes will end up with the forward faking the pass and walking in with the ball in an empty net, I am convinced that out of a 100 duplicated situations, the active and tactically updated goalie would easily beat the passive goalie, and as a bonus giving himself a chance for a highlight reel save every time. And - perhaps the most important aspect - the active guys has made an active tactical choice. I love that from my goalies.

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_{David Jansson}

The Author:
David Jansson (1980) has been the Coach of the Swiss National team since June 2015. Already as a 17-year old, he debuted in the SSL (Swedish highest division) and between years 1995-2005 he had played for 3 different clubs  - Jönköpings, Älvstranden and Pixbo. His coaching career includes two years as head coach of the swiss club Floorball Köniz (2009-2011) as well as four years by Pixbo Wallenstam. He had also worked as the sports teacher at the floorball gymnasium in Gothenburg. He lives in Kloten.