Mike Smith vs Schmiddy
Breaking down his hot start and how his play has degraded
Mike Smith has had a very strong start to his season. Coming off a poor 2019-20 season, where he sported a .902 SV%, Smith has bounced back with a .934 SV% through 8 starts. Not only have his stats been good while winning 6 of 8 starts, but there was cause to believe the improvement could be sustainable as there had been noticeable differences, as I indicated early in the season here:
Smith’s early improvement was likely for two reasons. The first was Smith’s change of trainers during the offseason. The 38-year-old started training with Adam Francilia, who has worked with numerous NHL goalies as they try to bounce back. The list of goalies he works with or has worked with includes James Reimer, Thomas Greiss, Devan Dubnyk, and Connor Hellebuyck. According to reports, his work focuses on stabilizing goaltenders’ core, so that they can move more efficiently. Jason Gregor outlined Francilia’s work here.
The other factor that could have allowed for Smith to tangibly improve at age 38 was the fact that he was hurt for the first month of the season. Obviously being hurt is never ideal, but during rehab, Smith would have had the opportunity to work closely with Oilers goalie coach Dustin Schwartz, which would have allowed the two to refine Smith’s technique, particularly his tracking, and fully integrate the improvements from his change in offseason training.
Rotations and tracking have always been points of focus in Smith’s game, particularly during his tenure with the Oilers. When his game is strong, he’s executing those parts of his game cleanly, and he struggles when those facets fall apart. This will be the first installment of a 2 part series breaking down where Smith was succeeding early and how his game has fallen off as of late.
Tracking
Modern tracking is more than just seeing the puck. In order to sustainably make saves, goalies need to track the puck in and out of their bodies. The first step in doing so is to actually understand the net space available from the puck’s perspective. Regardless of what the shooter might see, the puck travels in a straight line into the net. As the following picture shows, the available net space is actually much smaller than it appears.
Understanding the available space allows the goalie to track in a certain way. Particularly for larger goalies like Smith, every reaction will be down, and with proper positioning, can be made in front of their body. This concept is referred to as box control and is thoroughly explained in this video by the Syracuse Crunch.
Early in his season, Mike Smith was executing this concept almost perfectly, particularly in his starts against Ottawa and Montreal, as shown in the next couple of highlights, available here and below:
However, over the past 2 weeks, Smith’s tracking has started to slip. With the exception of the Vancouver shutout, Smith has given up a goal against where tracking was the primary issue in every game since February 15th.
The goal:
and my breakdown:
The goal and my breakdown:
Other goals where tracking was an issue include the 4th Jets goal in the game he got pulled, the goal in the Calgary game, and the Marner goal against the Leafs.
To my eye, it seems obvious Smith doesn’t feel like he’s seeing the puck well. On the first Leafs goal, he is down early and chases Marner out of the net. And despite Spezza pulling off that move numerous times throughout his career, Smith was down early again. If Smith was confident in his ability to track the puck, he would be able to be patient on his feet because he could quickly react to a shot.
Smith’s poor tracking has resulted in more bad rebounds as well. Particularly in the Vancouver shutout and the Leafs game, Smith has made difficult saves after creating scoring chances himself due to poor rebound control. The most notable instances of this were the saves on Jake Virtanen during the second period of Thursday’s game
Mike Smith started the year with strong tracking technique, leading to fantastic results. Recently, this part of his game has fallen off, leading to leaky goals and other parts of his game degrading as well. As we saw with Koskinen early in the season, this may be simply due to fatigue and a lack of practice time that Smith would have benefitted from during his time off. Or, this change could be Smith reverting to his old habits, which could spell trouble for the Oilers’ tandem plan.
In the next installment, I’ll go over how Smith’s rotations, and how they’re preventing him from giving himself a chance to make the save.
Really like this breakdown, thanks for sharing. Thoughts on his strong tracking at the beginning of the year tying in with him being fresher physically? I've heard multiple goalies refer to how much easier tracking is when their body is in a good spot.