How EBUGs help with NHL goalie load management

The NHL is requiring each team to have a full-time emergency backup goalie on its roster, under the new collective bargaining agreement. Some teams are going one step further.

NHL.com correspondent Kevin Woodley wrote a piece last week on how EBUGs can help full-time netminders with load management throughout the season. Several NHL teams have their EBUGs travel with them on the road, and others used theirs to take the majority of shots in practice.

On a special Monday roundtable episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Woodley joins former NHL goaltenders Carter Hutton and Devan Dubnyk to discuss EBUGs and how the role has evolved in the last few years.

Carter Hutton: What did you find out as you started to peel back the layers of this new EBUG situation in the NHL?

Kevin Woodley: Even on a gameday skate, goalies are basically out there as a target. Think of a daily practice: if you’re facing 20 rush drills, you can’t go hard on all 20. You might take five good reps then you have to back off. At some point, it’s diminishing returns and you’re not doing yourself any good. You’re just out there as target practice.

Some of the guys I talked to for the article, they hoped that EBUGs could be a big difference for goalie injuries. Jake Oettinger of the Dallas Stars said a lot of his practices were just to make sure guys had a target, an NHL-quality target, not a zamboni driver. He didn’t want to bail on his guys, but he knew that it was costing him health, the ability to stay fresh. He knew it was a negative.

Some teams are treating this like a true legitimate practice goalie. The Utah Mammoth did it last year, which I think is why Karel Vejmelka played so many games last year. There are benefits beyond just keeping your goalies fresher; if you’re a power-play guy, they want to practice on the fresh stuff, but they need to wait for the goalies to warm up and for the rush drills. By the time PP1 gets out there, the ice is pretty chewed.

Not in Utah: When they’re on the road, they had their third goalie travel with them last year, and he would go out and work against PP1 while Vejmelka and Vitek Vanecek would do all their goalie drills. That’s Andre Tourigny using the third goalie not just to keep his goalies fresh, but keeping his skill players happy.

There are benefits to using an EBUG as a practice goalie, but unfortunately, there are a lot of teams who aren’t really treating it that way. I think there’s a lot of goalies who would love to see it evolve to the point where the EBUG is really part of the rotation so the full-time netminders can get a rest.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…