Goalies: Thinking about switching to goal

[Trl3789]

So heres my quick experience story. I'm coming up on a year playing hockey. Played college football and baseball, graduated (i'm 23), and got bored quickly playing pick up basketball. In March last year i started skating for the first time, then took the beginners hockey class, and am now playing D for a EEEE team.

I have always wanted to play goal though, but figured learning to skate first and getting my feet wet was more important. Now I dont really have any idea how i would go about switching. I'm really just looking for tips on how to go about getting started. How do i measure the equipment, where should i get it, basic technique help, really anything.

Thanks a bunch guys.

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[Malarowski]

Tacking on to this (I do that a lot lately):

Is there a way to try out goalie? The price of equipment is prohibitively high to just dabble with it and then find out I hate it. Do most people simply bite the bullet and go with it, or just sell their gear if they don't like it? I am not in a league yet and have no hockey friends per se to ask for a goalie's gear, even though that would be weird to begin with.

Is the best option to hope to pick up some 2nd hand stuff, go to a clinic or pick up and just try it then? We have all kinds of skating/clinics around here, but I haven't seen anything specific to goalies at all. I am interested though whether that would be something for me. I am not very flexible (I guess you one can work on that), but I am pretty quick and pretty fearless about getting in the way of shots. I played goalie in football and team handball before whenever our regular goalie couldn't make it and nobody else volunteered with good success.

 

[Any Colour You Like]

If there's a place that you know of that rents equipment and has rental goalie equipment, rent from there. Here's a sizing guide:

http://www.goaliemonkey.com/sizinginfo.html

It pretty much explains everything you need to know about equipment. Goaltending isn't easy, and you need to try and figure out how you'd want to play first. Get a net, and put it in your basement (if unfinished). Have somebody shoot pucks at you, and see how you'd want to stop the shot. If you rely on mobility to get across the crease, you'd want equipment with flexibility. If you rely on positioning and the butterfly style, get a stiffer pad.

 

[ganave]

Tacking on to this (I do that a lot lately):

Is there a way to try out goalie? The price of equipment is prohibitively high to just dabble with it and then find out I hate it. Do most people simply bite the bullet and go with it, or just sell their gear if they don't like it? I am not in a league yet and have no hockey friends per se to ask for a goalie's gear, even though that would be weird to begin with.

Is the best option to hope to pick up some 2nd hand stuff, go to a clinic or pick up and just try it then? We have all kinds of skating/clinics around here, but I haven't seen anything specific to goalies at all. I am interested though whether that would be something for me. I am not very flexible (I guess you one can work on that), but I am pretty quick and pretty fearless about getting in the way of shots. I played goalie in football and team handball before whenever our regular goalie couldn't make it and nobody else volunteered with good success.

Tough to answer... I jumped in because a friend of mine started playing hockey in a novice league and I was sick of the drama of rec baseball. I wanted a new team sport and found out that hockey is all over town.

I'm not very flexible either, I have an incredibly narrow butterfly. I'm also a horrid skater compared to everyone else. Working on conditioning too, good god I didn't realize how in shape goalies need to be.

You can probably get a decent set of used gear on the different goalie boards - I got my C/A, blocker, catcher, and (unused) goalie jock for $240 on here. I lucked out on my pads and got some very heavily used Reebook Kohos that were formerly the local HS team's backup, backup pair for $100. They get the job done, although I'm salivating over some Passau's...

You can check out --

http://www.goaliecrease.net/forums/

http://www.goaliestore.com/board/

If you post that you're looking for gear on goaliecrease there might be someone with some stuff that isn't really worth posting on the classified sections and give you a good deal. You should buy a brand new helmet though and plan to spend (at least) $300 for it. I'm using a Reebook 7k, but I wish I had the cash for a hackva at the time. I like the 7k though, I've gotten a few slappers to the head and it does a good job of deflecting the puck.