1-On-1: with Jeff Hill

Roadrunners Goalie Coach Jeff Hill joined Jonathon Schaffer and Kim Cota-Robles on this week’s Happy Hour Show. For the complete conversation and to hear about Jeff’s Swiss experience, download this week’s show below.

Listen to “Climbing Up The Hill With Jeff” on Spreaker.

What has it been like to work with all the different goalies in the organization?

It’s been awesome. We’re very fortunate to have depth at the goaltending position throughout the whole organization. Starting at the top, I had the opportunity to be at training camp with Connor (Ingram) and Karel (Vejmelka) and it was awesome to be up there and work with Corey Schwab and Clay Adams, our goalie scout. We’ve developed a pretty good relationship since July when I hopped on. It has been really good to work with those guys. Then you come to our level, you have an established starter in Matty (Villalta) and then you get Jaxson to come in and we sign him in July. That just added a ton of depth to our stable and they’ve been awesome. They’ve been great to work with down here in Tucson. They’re both vastly different people and personalities: so that’s a lot of fun to have the complete opposites and just work to find a way to earn their trust and develop relationships with those guys. That’s a huge part of what I do, is just develop relationships and the on-ice stuff takes care of itself if you can establish a relationship. That’s what we’ve been able to do here, which is great. I had the opportunity to work with Dylan Wells and Anson Thornton during training camp as well. I got to know them and I’ve been down to Allen two or three times now to work with those guys. I was actually in Allen when Wells got called up here. It’s been really good and those guys are two different personalities too. So, we have 4 different personalities that I get to work with and it’s been a lot of fun.

It’s your first time on the show. Can you give us a quick elevator pitch of who you are and what your background is?

Born and raised in Cranston, Rhode Island, went up to the University of Vermont to play and then finished that up and started the coaching career. I started in midget and junior hockey, and then I did that in both Vermont and then in Culver, Indiana, in the middle of nowhere, and then moved back to Vermont and did six years there as a goalie coach and assistant coach with the University of Vermont, and then went overseas to Switzerland for two years in Bern and then one year in Adler Mannheim in Germany. I have a wife and two kids. I have a four-year-old, Logan, and a 1 and a half-year-old, Ava.

At what point did you decide to hone in on being a goalie coach? It sounds like you’ve been all over the bench doing different roles.

It’s funny, when we went overseas to Switzerland, that was my first time actually being a goalie coach, just a goalie coach. I’ve been an assistant coach, a head coach, a video coach, I’ve been kind of everything in my whole 16-or-17-year career and then when I went overseas to Switzerland was when I had the title of goalie coach. Then even up till last year I went from being a goalie coach in Switzerland to an assistant coach and I ran penalty kill and coached the defenseman in Germany. So, I’m back to being a goalie coach. I decided I want to start to kind of narrow my focus a little bit, I like doing the other stuff too, but I really enjoyed my time as a goalie coach in Switzerland.

Are you splitting time between different cities trying to work with all of the goalies?

My priorities are Tucson and Allen. I haven’t done a whole lot with our prospects yet. We have two prospects overseas, and we have two in college hockey at University of Massachusetts and Colorado College. So, I’ve been to Colorado once when we were out in Colorado; I got to see our guy there. It’s basically just here and Allen. I try my best to plan when our team is on the road, that’s when I would go to Allen, so I don’t have to double dip on the on the travel, that’s the plan but I hasn’t worked out that way. I’ll go on every road trip, other than when I’m in Allen and that’s only like once a month. Like for instance, I’m going from Calgary, I’ll fly right to Dallas and spend two days there and then come back for our practices. So extends my trips a little bit, but it’s nothing terrible.

Did you have any words of wisdom for Matty (Villalta) when he wasn’t playing so well? He has looked great in the past few games.

He’s the type of guy where if he doesn’t have the results that he’s looking for, he’s going to get right back to work. He’s the ultimate teammate at the end of the day; all he wants to do is win for his team. He doesn’t care about the numbers, I mean anybody who says they don’t care about the numbers is lying, but I think that’s in the background, it’s more about winning and that’s the one that he really cares about. The only way for him to do that is through work. We’ve started out with a lot of technical work with him and lately, when he hasn’t been getting the results that he wants, we’ve kind of taken a step back from that and just kind of said let’s play. When he’s feeling good, and has that flow and not thinking about things, that’s where he has success. So, we’ve kind of taken a step back from the technical aspect of the position and said just play and I’ve been just a support for him and let him kind of work through it. I tell them every day, whatever you need just let me know, I’m here. If you need to watch video, let’s watch video, if you don’t, let’s not. If you need to do extra work, let’s do it, if not, we’re OKAY. So, until we get through that, we’ll start to ramp up the technical again. But right now, it’s just about feel and making sure he’s feeling comfortable and confident and just playing.

We were talking the other day about goalie masks and then we watched a video of Ed Belfour where he was moving completely different than the goalies of today. What do you think is like the next step in evolution for the position?

I think that goalies were the first ones to have specialized coaching, and they kind of made the game hard to score because they were ahead of the shooters. Now skill coaches exist for players, like ours, Brian Slugocki, and the shooters are now catching up to the goalies. There’s a lot more scoring now than there ever has been, so now the goal is to kind of find a more creative way to take it back. The game has changed a ton, I think I saw that the other day, in the past five years, slot line lateral plays have increased 40% and so your skating has to be elite at this this level. So, that’s one area where it’s changed a lot is just the amount of north-south skating, it’s a lot more east-west. You have to be a good skater to be able to survive in this today’s game. I think for goalies it’s just trying to find a way to be efficient in your movements and make sure that you’re always in position because the shooters are way smarter than they used to be.