Now let's look at a couple of more areas where the goaltender can help his/her team by controlling the puck better. First of all, it is a good trend that referees have started to force the young goalies to play the puck more instead of falling on it every time and getting a whistle. I would like to see more and more coaches starting to use their goalies as 6th skaters out there. What I mean by this is that when a goalie catches a puck with his/her catch glove and has good control of it the first thought should be to see if he/she has any of his/her own teammates open to pass the puck. Naturally the goalies need to learn to stick handle etc. as well, but this can all be taught quite early as a basic principle and then when the goalies get older, there should be more emphasis on it. As a rule of thumb, it is most of the time, better to play the puck to your own teammate than forcing a face-off at your own end. Basically this could mean that each time a goalie makes a pass to his/her teammate after catching a shot, it equals a won face-off at his/her own end. Naturally there are situations where the pass is not possible or it does not make any sense because of a long shift etc. The better stick handler a goalie is the less his/her teammates need to skate to the goalie to pick up the puck and the easier it will be for the team to break out quickly from their own end.

Goalies can help their team quite early by stopping the shoot-ins behind their net. This has to be practiced so that the team will know what to expect from the goalie during the game and this way the team will gain an advantage over the opponents by being able to predict where to skate for the puck sooner than the opponents. There also has to be good communications between the defense and the goalie on shoot-ins.

Goaltenders also needs to develop the capability to clear the puck when going to stop a shoot-in, especially when their teammate gets into the situation that he/she can't get to the puck. In these situations a goalie needs to get the puck high on the glass with a hard shot usually with their forehand so as to buy the defense and the goalie enough time to play the situation before the opponent gets good control of the puck or shoot's it.

As a goalie it is very important that you are a good stick handler on close-in plays, and can clear the loose pucks in front of the net or cover them with good technique and quickness.