Inside the Ice House, amidst the sounds of tape-to-tape passes and fans cheering, Ravens goaltender Ryan Dube finds himself singing songs in his head.
“Its always different songs,” he said.
It’s a bit of Jedi mind tricks that keep up his focus and his glove hand quick, Dube said.
Unlike a player, a goaltender’s mistake is put up on the scoreboard, so strides are taken to mentally block out the prospect of failure. Fellow Ravens goaltender Matt Dopud said he doesn’t like to think too much during a game because that’s when mistakes happen.
Dube agreed. Any negative thought could jeopardize a goaltender’s performance, he said.
“Whenever you start thinking negative, things start going wrong,” he said. “You miss-play a puck once or twice, you just start getting bad thoughts in your mind and it just kind of snowballs.”
Ravens head coach Marty Johnston also understands that goaltenders are a different breed. The amount of pressure Dube and Dopud have to deal with comes with the job, he said.
“They have to deal with failure a lot more critically than the rest of the players,” he said.
For this reason, Johnston said he will often use a time-out during a game to help the state of mind of his goalies. Pulling the goalie he said, although sometimes necessary, is a tactic he seldom had to use over the last two years.
Goals go in — that’s the way it goes. That’s why Dopud said he chooses to stay positive.
“What’s done is done,” he said of the goals he allows.
“Every goalie is going to let in the crappy goals every once in a while. [You just have to] understand it’s just a hockey game and stop the next one,” he added.
However, not all goalies are as mentally tough. Dopud said he remembers a goalie he used to play with and after letting in a bad goal, his shoulders would drop and body language would reveal that his confidence had been shot. Dopud acknowledged that moments do come when goalies feel like they can’t stop a beach ball. Often what will bring him out of a funk and psych him up is a big save — a “huge adrenaline rush,” he said.
“Mentally, you get real strong,” he said.
For these two goalies, the amount of shots they face is what helps them perform better, “100 per cent of the time,” according to Dube. When facing little action, “you get cold and you’re not as into the flow of things,” he said.
Just like many other athletes, goaltenders are superstitious. Goalies have been well documented as being among the quirkiest individuals to play the sport. After all, it takes a special person to stand in front of a frozen hockey puck traveling at 90 miles an hour.
Patrick Roy, arguably the greatest goalie to play the game, was known to talk to his posts during a game. It’s a superstition Dopud is familiar with, having first heard the story from his mother.
“She got it into my head that my posts are my best friends,” he said. “They save your back no matter what, sometimes.”
“I played junior with a guy,” recalled Dube. “He had to take a drink of water after every five minutes of time on the clock.”
Dube’s own personal rituals though, are something he keeps private.
“For my own, I keep them to myself. I guess it’s a little extra superstition.”
