A long time ago, 12-year-old Logan Thompson was battling shooters inside the East Calgary Twin Arenas ice rink.
Even at a young age, the competitive streak in the Washington Capitals’ star goaltender was evident. Because of that, Thompson was a huge fan of the game of “rebound,” which pits the goalie against anywhere between five and seven shooters.
The shooters take turns firing pucks from the top of the slot while the others circle the crease hunting for rebounds. If the goalie can make the save and freeze the puck or deflect it beyond the goal line, he earns a point. If the army of shooters can get the puck into the net, they earn a point.
It can be a brutally taxing game for the goalie, who is always outnumbered, but Thompson loved it. He would play it all night if the rink didn’t have to turn the lights off eventually.
Years later, Thompson is still battling shooters with every ounce of energy he has. Now, of course, he’s doing it in the Stanley Cup playoffs, where he has been perhaps the best goalie in the NHL this postseason.
“The most impressive thing that sticks out when you get to know Logan Thompson is his competitiveness,” Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. “He’s just an ultra, ultra-competitive guy that when the puck drops and the game starts, he wants to win so desperately and will do anything to keep that black rubber thing out of our net.”
Thompson dazzles the crowd with spectacular acrobatic saves. His blend of athleticism and commitment to never giving up on a puck makes for one of the most entertaining styles of goaltending, and at the moment, it’s one of the most effective.
He leads the NHL playoffs with 9.3 goals saved above expected, has a .922 save percentage for Washington and should be one of the early favorites for the Conn Smythe Trophy. And he’s doing it with an unorthodox style built around his strengths.
It all started back in Calgary.
“He has always had the ability to make every routine save, but also steal a whole bunch more,” said goalie coach Justin Cardinal, who has worked with Thompson since he was 10 years old. “So instead of training to a cosmetic standard, let’s play to your strengths.”
Logan Thompson, left, and goalie coach Justin Cardinal have worked together for almost two decades. (Photo courtesy of Justin Cardinal)
Thompson plays from a low, crouching stance. He leans forward, sticking his head and hands way out in front of his body to crowd the puck, eliminate shooting angles and, most importantly, maximize his elite reaction time and athleticism.
“If you’re more forward, you’re meeting that puck way closer than if your chest was upright,” Cardinal explained. “He understands reading shot release. He has very, very good hands and feet. His athleticism is one of his biggest strengths, so let’s play with that strength rather than limit it.”
Many of Thompson’s tendencies go against the grain of some traditional methods. He certainly doesn’t make himself “look big” in the net — at least not from the camera angles high above the rink.
“In the early 2000s, everybody was big into the idea of being big and filling space,” Cardinal said. “Well, you can fill 99 percent of the net, but if the shooter hits the one percent then you’re not doing your job.
“I think that’s one of the biggest things that has changed in the game in the last 10 years. Guys are shooting the puck a lot faster and a lot harder. What does that mean for us goaltenders? It doesn’t mean that the pucks are going to hit us more. It means that we need to make more saves.”
Thompson rarely enters blocking positions and hopes the puck hits him. Instead, he relies on his reads and puck tracking, reacts to shots and uses his lightning-quick hands and feet.
Logan Thompson’s been pretty, pretty good this season. 🤩
Take a look at these two stops. 👇
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— NHL (@NHL) November 22, 2024
“It was a completely new style for me to coach,” said Tyler Plante, longtime goalie coach for the Western Hockey League’s Brandon Wheat Kings, who coached Thompson as a junior from 2016-18. “I was more of a big, blocking goaltender, so he was kind of an anomaly to me. I was always jealous of guys who played like him because it looked like more fun.”
When Plante first started working with Thompson, he immediately recognized Thompson possessed a trait that was difficult to teach.
“He won’t quit on a puck,” Plante said. “I never had to work on that with him. He just naturally wanted to not let his teammates score on him, which was pretty fun and entertaining. It was quite a treat.”
That hasn’t changed. During Thompson’s four seasons with the Vegas Golden Knights, his practice battles with Jonathan Marchessault were legendary. The games of rebound were loud, boisterous and fiercely competitive. At the end of the contest, one would be hooting and hollering in celebration while the other was pulling their wallet out.
Now in Washington, Thompson has a new practice combatant: a formidable shooter who has spent his entire career getting under his opponents’ skin.
“I’ve been on him all year to try and get him flustered, get him off his game and keep him on his toes,” Washington forward Tom Wilson said. “Maybe it’s just practice makes perfect, and now he’s just finding that rhythm where he’s just in his happy place and he’s just feeling good.”
It’s no surprise that when the playoffs arrive, and competitiveness on the ice reaches its peak, Thompson thrives. Over the last two postseasons, he has saved 15.1 goals above expected, good for second in the NHL despite making only 12 starts during that span. He’s already living up to the six-year, $35.1 million contract extension he signed with the Capitals in January.
“I always had a belief in myself and just needed a team to take a chance on me,” Thompson said. “I’m really thankful that Washington did and like I said, I’m not gonna take it for granted. I’m going to keep working hard and pushing myself to be better every day.”
Perhaps where Thompson’s reactionary style is most evident is in his post-integrations. He uses the reverse vertical horizontal (RVH) position quite often, but his approach differs from most. Rather than simply dropping into the position as a blocking technique, he is active from it. He’s constantly reaching his gloves at pucks, reading releases and making saves. He will even leap into the air from his knees to get his shoulders on high shots from the position — something you’ll almost never see from another NHL goalie.
“The answer is not less RVH, the answer is better RVH,” Cardinal explained. “We have to understand that RVH isn’t necessarily a save, it’s a stance. So what is our stance responsible for? Being able to move and make saves.”
Thompson also positions himself well to explode out of the RVH at any moment. He keeps his hips high (rather than slumping into a lazy, seated position, which is one of the easiest faults of the stance) and his weight light and balanced, rather than leaning too heavily into the post. This gives him unique mobility in the event a lateral pass is made in front, like on this incredible save he made in the first-round series against the Montreal Canadiens.
The way Thompson leaps out of the RVH and gets his right skate so far up the ice is impressive from a leg strength and weight standpoint. That move sets him up perfectly to explode across and rob Nick Suzuki.
“He’s a great goalie, and he’s confident with his abilities,” Capitals forward Andrew Mangiapane said. “Obviously I think him coming in this year and just doing what he’s doing gives everyone kind of belief on our bench that he’s a great player. He just gives us, I think, some calmness back there, even when we do give up a Grade-A (chance), we always have him back there backing us up.”
Thompson isn’t just an athlete. He has great hockey sense, which helps him read and anticipate plays. Perhaps just as important: He understands his own physical capabilities and how to maximize them in each situation.
For example, while Thompson isn’t afraid to challenge shooters well outside of his crease, he typically plays pretty deep. Depth management — how far a goalie plays from his goal line as the play develops — is one of the easiest ways to actually see a goalie reading the play visually.
This save in Game 5 of the first round against Montreal is an excellent example of Thompson using great depth management to make a difficult save look easy.
Near the beginning of this three-on-one rush, Thompson came way out of his crease. Initially Canadiens forward Jake Evans was skating toward him as a shot threat, but then he flipped his hips to set up for a cross-ice pass.
The moment Evans gave away this clue, and removed himself as a shot threat, Thompson immediately retreated back into his crease with a swift c-cut backward. He remained square to Evans, just in case he tried a shot, but he was already preparing for the pass by giving himself far less distance to travel to get over. At its core, this is simple geometry, shown by the graphic below. But it’s all instinct in the moment on Thompson’s part.
The result is Thompson exploding across for a huge blocker save to deny Kaiden Guhle’s one-timer and keep Montreal off the board.
“He’s a rock,” Capitals forward Dylan Strome said. “He kind of did what he did all year. We feel really confident with him back there.”
Thompson has made a career out of proving people wrong. He went undrafted — largely because he was stuck behind WHL champion Jordan Papirny on the depth chart in Brandon and didn’t start until he was 19 — but fought his way through a long, windy road to the NHL anyway.
Now he’s proving his style works at the highest level, in the biggest moments. If not for a late-season injury, he was on track to be in conversation for the Vezina Trophy this season. In the playoffs, he’s given Washington a chance to win every night.
His secret weapon is his competitiveness, which has carried him from a small rink in Calgary to the NHL playoffs.
“Not that other guys don’t have that, he just has it to the nth degree,” Carbery said. “It’s why, in my opinion, one of the main reasons why he’s been able to be so successful in his career and why he’s been able to achieve things that a lot of people didn’t think he was going to achieve. He’s overcome obstacles and adversity, and proven a lot of people wrong because of that competitive fire in his belly.”
(Top photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)