Think Tank: A Manifesto
“People are searching for their wizard and what their wizard looks like is different…there’s a danger in thinking that magic pill exists. There are no wizards…nothing that I know is going to apply in all situations”. -Max El-Hag
I spent my playing career looking for Wizards. Don’t get me wrong, experts exist. There are geniuses in the world of goaltending, I trained extensively under some: Jon Elkin in Mississauga, Brian Daccord in Boston. There are so many more that I wanted to meet and learn from: Ian Clark, Francois Allaire, Bob Essensa, Rob Tallas, Mitch Korn, Pasco Valana. The list goes on and on.
In the late 2000s to mid 2010s, all these wizards were behind their respective curtains. It was: “Pay for the camp, come learn the secrets”. The mythical red binder of drills would make it’s way around the ice like the nuclear football. Ice sheets full of goalies with the arena doors locked: “No Photography”.
The secret is: there are very few secrets left in goaltending.
We build relationships and have conversations with our athletes. Not program drills and whisper secret incantations.
If someone can take my drills and have the same result I’m not coaching.
The desire for collaboration, conversation and creativity is what spawned the Goaltending Think Tank.
We are the response to experts in ivory towers. We’re not afraid to do things differently. We are the open market, the round table, a tribe that revolves around one idea: together, push goaltending forward.
We don’t want a bigger slice of the pie, we want to grow the pie.