Andrei Vasilevskiy just sort of shrugged.
To the Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender, there’s nothing special about his morning routine at the rink. It’s some basic stretches, some pilates work, a little yoga mixed in here and there. Just the standard things Vasilveskiy has to do in order to prepare his body for a practice, a morning skate or a game. You know, loosening up, just like anybody else.
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“Simple as that,” he said.
Right.
Vasilevskiy is surrounded by world-class athletes in the Lightning locker room. Guys whose bodies are finely tuned machines, who carry barely an ounce of body fat, whose VO2 Max lets them push their bodies to near-superhuman limits, whose physical and mental gifts allow them to do almost unimaginable things on the ice.
And they all stare at Vasilevskiy, just loosening up, like he’s another species. Or from another planet.
“If you see his routine that he does in the mornings at the rink at practice and before games, you’ll understand why he can do all that on the ice,” Steven Stamkos said, shaking his head in wide-eyed marvel. “I see that and I immediately think of how long I’d be on the IR if I tried some of that stuff.”
No, Stamkos can’t do the splits. Connor McDavid’s hips likely couldn’t handle the contortions an average goalie makes during a goalmouth scrum. Auston Matthews probably can’t kneel down and bend all the way backward so his head touches the ice and then bounce back up, the way so many goalies do during warmups. Nathan MacKinnon surely can’t explode laterally with one leg folded underneath him the way your average ECHL goalie can.
The human body simply isn’t designed to do what goalies do.
“Garret Sparks can get in a full split, and he’s probably 6-3, 6-4, 230 pounds,” said Chicago-based performance coach to the stars Ian Mack. “We’ve got all these elite athletes hanging around, and he’s laying on a power plate in full split. Everyone’s staring at him like, ‘What the fuck’s wrong with this guy? We can’t even touch our toes. This guy plays the same sport we do?’”
Well, yes and no.
Are goalies born, or are they made?
Well, it’s complicated. In theory, anyone could do the things goalies do with their bodies. In practice, it’s not so simple. The way Mack explains it, it’s not about “lengthening muscles,” which is how stretching and flexibility are so often described by laypeople. It’s about somehow convincing your brain to believe that you can do the splits.
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“Usually, people’s limiting factor is their central nervous system,” Mack said. “You’re not going to increase the length of the muscle, you’re going to increase the central nervous system’s ability to believe that their body can be controlled in those lengthened positions. The reason you and I can’t get to a split is because our brain and central nervous system are like, ‘Yeah, right, buddy, no chance. You have not shown us at all in our combined 80 years on this planet that you can go into this position without hurting yourself. Stop.’”
The way the brain ensures you do stop is through pain signals. The further down into the splits you get, the more your brain tells you that it hurts, so you won’t try to stretch any deeper.
Look, there’s a lot of biology involved here. Ask a simple question about why certain people can do these things and why most others can’t, and Mack rattles off a grad school’s worth of medical jargon. There’s the muscle spindles reflex, the Golgi tendon reflex and autogenic inhibition, sliding filament theory, the alpha motor neuron, actin and myosin and fascia and all sorts of other anatomical bits and trigger points and fail-safes.
You know, standard meatheads-at-the-gym stuff.
Some players, like Sparks, want to know all of it. They want to understand why they can do the things they can do, and how they can push their bodies even further. Every inch of reach counts when you’re going post-to-post. Other goalies are less concerned with biomechanics. They just want to know how to maintain it.
Because while goalies are indeed made, not everybody can be made into a goalie. Genetics count.
The 10 NHL goalies interviewed for this story all said the same thing — they were always naturally flexible and springy, dating back to when they were kids.
“I would just drop down into the splits without doing anything,” Seattle’s Philipp Grubauer said.
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“I think I was lucky, a lot of it was just natural,” Anaheim’s John Gibson said.
“As long as I can remember,” Vasilevskiy said.
John Gibson said discovering pilates a few years ago has greatly improved his flexibility, thanks to increased core strength. (Jonathan Kozub / NHLI via Getty Images)For many goalies, that natural flexibility is how they became goalies in the first place. When nobody else on the block can get into the butterfly, let alone the splits, you become the goalie by default, whether it’s ice hockey or street hockey. And hey, people like doing things they’re good at.
Everyone has a genetic floor and ceiling. For goalies, their floors and ceilings are higher than average humans. So it becomes a matter of nurturing those natural gifts to reach the point where you can reach the puck.
“You get shaped by the position you play a little bit,” Carolina’s Frederik Andersen said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to, as a human being, be in these positions a lot. We weren’t really built like that. We played goalie throughout our teenage years, or even before that, and it just kind of shapes your body (so) you can do certain things that maybe most people wouldn’t be able to do if they tried to do it right now. It’s all I’ve really known, too. Those types of movements are pretty natural to me.”
Of course, there’s nothing natural about the splits. Or the lateral explosions from compromised positions. Or the acrobatic twists and contortions required to keep up with the chaos a series of rebounds creates in the crease. But goalies can do those things because they’ve always done those things.
So their central nervous systems buy in.
“They probably started with a predisposition to be more flexible than the other guys,” Mack said. “But they also got into those positions more consistently when they were younger, so their brain said, ‘OK, I believe you. I’ll allow this.’”
Remember back when you were 20 years old and you could basically digest anything? You’d eat an entire pizza and a dozen super-hot wings and wash it down with a six-pack and wake up feeling great? Do that in your 30s, and you’re going to feel it in the morning. Try it in your 40s, and you might feel it for a week.
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Goalies are kind of like that, too.
The older you get, the more work it takes to feel good.
“Six or seven years ago, it was just get dressed and get out on the ice,” Minnesota’s Cam Talbot, 34, said. “Now there’s a lot more time that goes into it. I’m at the rink two, two and a half hours before even a practice just to make sure I’m feeling good enough to get out there and not hurt myself. The game’s getting a lot faster and there’s a lot more east-west, so you have to prepare for that.”
For Talbot, that means a lot of foam rollers, soft-tissue massages, extra stretching and a cold tub followed by a hot tub. For the 28-year-old Gibson, discovering pilates a few years ago has made a big difference in his routine and his results, as core strength powers his Gumby-like limbs. When Buffalo’s Malcolm Subban is sitting around the house watching television, he’s doing simple stretches on the couch. Vancouver’s Thatcher Demko delineates between flexibility and mobility and tackles both traits with equal fervor during his lengthy pregame routine. Pittsburgh’s Tristan Jarry said he’s constantly working with the Penguins strength and conditioning staff to come up with new ways to keep him pliable and durable.
Pliability and durability go hand in hand, of course. If you pull a hammy every time you make a save, you’re not going to have much of a career.
“My dad told me that you have to be durable,” Vasilevskiy said. “Because you can be a good goalie, but if you get injured a few times a year, no one will count on you. That was the main thing for me, just to stay durable and consistent. Stretching helps me with that.”
That’s a big reason why goalies revere Chicago’s Marc-André Fleury so much. At 37 years old and in his 18th NHL season, Fleury still regularly flashes the kind of athleticism that made him the No. 1 pick in the draft nearly two decades ago.
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“How old is he now? Turning 37? Ask me in six years and I’ll give you my honest answer,” Grubauer said with a laugh. “It shows what an athlete he is. And he competes at the highest level, and I think that’s the challenge for everybody. Yes, it’s hard to get into the league, but to stay in the league for so long and be successful for so many years, it’s incredible.”
Fleury believes he has the same range of motion he had as a 19-year-old rookie. It just takes an awful lot more work than it used to.
“It gets harder,” Fleury said. “I used to do nothing. I could do the splits and stuff and it was always fine, right? Now, I usually skate the morning of the game just to get on the ice and start stretching, start moving around, warming up, facing a few shots. Just to feel better at night. The staff on the team usually helps me, too, with stretching, with needles, and all sorts of different techniques to keep the hips and everything moving and loose.”
Ah, the hips — the pivot point for those splits, those lateral movements, those butterflies. Like a catcher with his knees, it’s better for a goalie not to even imagine what their hips will feel like at, say, 50 years old.
“I try not to,” Jarry said.
“I don’t even want to know what my knees and hips are going to feel like when I’m 50,” Talbot said. “They already feel like I’m 50. They’ll feel like I’m 90 when I’m 50.”
Just because you can do the splits doesn’t mean you should do the splits.
Mack was in Las Vegas recently and went to see a Cirque du Soleil show. The acrobatics on display made Vasilevskiy look like Abe Simpson. The fact that so many of the performers were in their late 30s or early 40s made it all the more impressive.
Like goalies, those performers certainly were naturally flexible as kids. And like goalies, they’re surely stretching regularly, building core strength through yoga and pilates, and eating certain foods that support their individual bodies’ collagen type.
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But there’ll eventually be a price to pay for defying basic human biomechanics.
“Too much of anything’s not good,” Mack said. “Goalies absolutely should be worried about it. Guys who skate a lot, that’s not great for their bodies. Gymnasts doing a bunch of backflips, that’s not good for their bodies. And guys that are stretching for 10 hours a day long-term, that’s not great, either.”
Sumo wrestlers. NFL offensive linemen (Mack said Chargers lineman Michael Schofield, husband of hockey star Kendall Coyne Schofield, is one of the more flexible athletes he’s ever worked with). Gymnasts. Skaters. Goalies. Cirque du Soleil performers. All of them make their living by willing their bodies to do things they probably shouldn’t. All of them will deal with residual effects down the road.
“There’s a lot of moving parts,” Jarry said. “And sometimes it’s not too natural what happens.”
There’s a bright side, though. Most NHL players retire in their 30s or early 40s. Not only will they have the time to properly take care of their bodies — for skaters, it’s mobility work to counter years of skating; for goalies, it’s stability and strength and resistance bands to counter years of abusing their hips — but they have the resources, too. With proper care, the damage can be mitigated. That’s the life of a goalie; the daily maintenance doesn’t end when your career does, it just changes.
Besides, most goalies will tell you it’ll be a small price to pay to live their dream. A dream that burrowed into the recesses of their minds when they were kids, the first time they instinctively dropped down into the splits to make a save, drawing slack-jawed awe from their buddies.
The first time they realized they were … different.
“It got you into the NHL, right?” Fleury said. “So whatever happens, it was worth it.”
(Top photo of Andrei Vasilevskiy: Mike Carlson / NHLI via Getty Images)
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