“I’ll say it again — stopping shots is 90 percent mental.”

-Jonathan Quick

When the most physically gifted goaltender of his generation makes a comment like that, you listen. I claimed that the first part of Quick ‘s Players’ Tribune article gave us a different understanding of time. The second part forces us to consider the psychological aspects of space.

Quick spends most of part two discussing elite shooters’ instincts for deception. His discussion of Pavel Datsyuk from part one, however, is where he most explicitly defines what he means by it. The first type is camouflage:

“He’s a magician in the way that he’s able to hide the puck on his stick [….] His quick release and the fact that he’s hardly ever looking at the net when he shoots [makes it] extremely difficult to track the puck coming off his blade. Most guys have a little tell. You look at where the puck is in relation to their feet, or the way they’re bending their knees to get ready to shoot, and you just know what’s going to happen before it happens. But the problem with Datsyuk is that he fools you with his intentions.”

The broadcaster’s cliché “you can’t stop what you can’t see” has been intelligently modified here. It’s not just whether you see the puck that matters; the way you see it, from stick to net, is crucial. Datsyuk is able to interfere with the goalie’s perception of the puck from the outset. Logically, everyone knows it must still be on his stick as he stickhandles, but when the puck is obscured by his blade or body, certain automatic, physical processes are interrupted. You have to switch modes from automatic visual tracking to the far less effective fully conscious deductive mode. Basically, instead of just knowing and seeing where the puck is, you have to be constantly thinking of where it must be, and that extra cognitive load is disruptive.

Datsyuk’s deceptive, no-tell release gets taken to the next level by Steven Stamkos:

“He […] releases the puck more from his front foot. The less time the puck is on the shooter’s blade, the less time a goalie has to read where the puck is going. It’s a microscopic difference — maybe a few centimeters — but Stamkos whips the puck off his stick so quickly that it almost looks like he’s “pushing” it. Stamkos doesn’t have a tell — he doesn’t bend his knees dramatically or drop his hands to signal that he’s about to shoot. It’s just on you.”

The first deceptive aspect of his release is physically, visually challenging for goaltenders: he has the puck on his stick in a shooting position for a very short time. Goaltenders do far better with at least a half second of clear puck focus, but Stamkos eliminates that with a very quick release. The second deceptive aspect of his shot comes before it’s even taken. Goalies inhabit both a physical space, and a mental space on the ice. When the eyes are disrupted by a screen or lightning-quick release on a one-timer, the goalie is unable to move to the right physical space in time.

When a player doesn’t give the goalie the usual signs a shot is coming, the goalie may already be in the right physical location to stop the puck, but because he is mentally positioned for a shot coming later, when the puck would be in a new location, he is unable to react quickly enough, and gets scored on just the same as if he were standing off his angle.

Goaltenders most always try to stand on the imaginary line that joins the centre of the net to the puck, meaning they are always (ideally) positioned with as much body between puck and net as possible. However, no experienced goaltender, much less an elite one, sees the play for the immediate moment only. Everything in an unfolding situation points toward a certain likely direction and style of attack. The goaltender is able to respond to the eventual shot not because his reflexes are great (no reflex is that fast), but because his body has read and understood what’s going to happen next, and adjusted accordingly.

Max Pacioretty fools opposing goaltenders because, like Stamkos, his release happens with no clear tell:

“Notice his body here. No windup. No big change of momentum.”

As the shot is released, the goalie is still mentally positioned for more puck carrying leading to a shot later on. Unless it hits him, he’s already beaten. And as if that weren’t enough, Pacioretty’s playmaking ability causes further mental convulsions for the goalie:

“The puck is right out in front of him, so he could just as easily make the pass. The goalie is frozen because Max has given himself multiple options.”

Here, Pacioretty shows us the second kind of deception: creating and maintaining options. Physically, the goalie has to be lined up for the shot, especially from such a dangerous sniper. Mentally, though, the goaltender cannot simply lock onto the shot possibility, since the pass is about equally likely. As a result of the goalie’s split focus, both shot and pass options are more likely to succeed. Mentally, he’s being torn in half, which inhibits his physical response when the shot finally comes.

Once again, the case of Datsyuk the magician makes this as clear as possible:

“I’d call Datsyuk a master chess player. As a goalie, your nightmare is when the puck carrier has multiple options. Datsyuk has a knack for seeing the entire ice and holding onto the puck until space opens up and he has a couple different plays he can make. He kind of stretches you and forces you to get caught in the middle of taking away the shot or taking away the pass. You have to commit to one or you’re toast. It’s a 50-50 gamble sometimes with him.”

By giving himself multiple options, Datsyuk improves his odds of scoring on any of them. The balancing threats of the pass or carry mean the goaltender is going to be caught mentally preparing for all three possibilities, which is more or less the same as being prepared for none of them. He may be standing in the right place, but he is not present there in a way that will allow him to react as he must.

What’s most troubling about Quick’s account (for goaltenders) is that he offers no solution to the disruptive mind-body splitting that elite shooters can cause with their skills of deception. This, of course, is precisely what makes them so lethal; you can understand their methods on the deepest level, but that only more fully reveals how hard they are to stop.