by Shannon Penfound, Staff Writer and Event Coordinator, All Habs Hockey Magazine

WINNIPEG, MB. — On Thursday evening, the Winnipeg Jets hosted the Montreal Canadiens for the first and only time this regular season. You can read a recap here. I was fortunate enough to attend the game, and despite the 5-2 loss, did my best to take in every moment. But when the rambunctious crowd started heckling Canadiens’ netminder, Dustin Tokarski, I began to wonder: how does heckling a goalie affect his performance, if at all?

Most fans at home heard the taunting ‘We want Carey’ and ‘Ole’ chants from the Winnipeg crowd, but you may not have caught the ‘Budaj is better’ chants that were also spewing from the upper bowls. Winnipeg Jets fans have reason to be excited, having a team that, for the first time since returning in 2011, is close to a playoff run. The city is buzzing and I will be the first to say that I wholeheartedly hope the Jets make the playoffs. Recently, Winnipeg fans have also been known for being quite creative in the ‘heckling’ department, having yelled out ‘Who’s your captain?’ during a 5-2 Jets win over the captain-less San Jose Sharks on March 17^th. So I decided to do a bit of research and found that, unsurprisingly, there is legitimate power behind heckling the opposition’s goaltender, perhaps especially so for a younger, more inexperienced netminder like Tokarski.

The main way in which heckling affects a player is through his confidence level. Many sport psychologists actually define self-confidence as an internal ‘belief’ that you are able to perform desired behaviours with success¹. Essentially, for a goaltender, the obvious way to achieve success is to do his best to prevent the other team from scoring. Interestingly, in athletes, confidence has been thought to be either state-like (confidence exists today, but could be low tomorrow) or trait-like (confidence is a part of your personality and is quite stable)¹. If a goaltender deals with more state-like confidence, it can wax and wane over the course of a season, depending on how close he is to performing his desired behaviours successfully. Tokarski has had a rough season and is 6-6-3 with a .910 save percentage (Sv%) and 2.81 goals against average (GAA.)

Even though his interspersed starts may be a part of the issue, let’s take a look at what low confidence is linked to:

• Negative emotions
• Lower effort level
• Game strategies become confused
• Performance level decreases
• Concentration decreases

Aside from the fact that Tokarski’s Sv % on Thursday night was .773, the reality is that the goals allowed weren’t all on him. Much like other games when Tokarski is in net, we see how much this team over-relies on stellar goaltending and what the Canadiens truly are without the magic of Carey Price. Though the Habs managed 41 shots on goal (sixth time achieving 40+ SOG this season), Ondrej Pavelec seemed to see everything that came his way. And defensively, I think it’s safe to say that Alexei Emelin and Jeff Petry had a tough night.

What we also need to keep in mind is that Tokarski is playing his first solid season in the NHL, in a hockey market that is notoriously hard on goaltenders. Tokarski is also in a back-up position to the best goaltender in the league (arguably, the world). Talk about pressure. For the first two periods of Thursday’s game, Tokarski would head to the bench during commercial breaks to chat with his teammates. After allowing four goals on 13 shots, it was clear to see that Tokarski knew that this game wasn’t going in his favour. During the third period, he no longer went to the bench during commercial breaks and teammates would skate by and tap his pads to give him some encouragement. Tokarski’s family was rumoured to be in the crowd bearing witness to all of this, and I don’t care who you are, that has to be a tough one to get through.

So what is the next step? As we bear down for the last few games of the regular season, resting Price when possible seems smart. But is Tokarski going to be able to help carry this team when needed? I, for one, am very interested to watch Tokarski’s next game to see how he is able to bounce back from not only a poor performance on the ice, but potentially a bit of a blow to his confidence courtesy of some Canadian fans in the Western Conference.

1. Weinberg, R.S., & Gould, D. (2011). Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology. (5^th). Champaign,IL: Human Kinetics.