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Are All Coaches Liars?

This May Seem A Bit Harsh – But ……

You probably won’t be aware of it at first, but you’ll find out soon enough if you child shows noticeably above average skills and production.

Now I know that all coaches are not liars; however I know for certain from experience that more than just a few are out-and-out liars and a considerable number severely embellish one particular part of the truth.

There Are The Usual Promises

There are the usual promises that one hears from a coach as you move up to the higher levels of hockey and if your child is recognized as a really solid producer . It usually goes something like this; “I really think your son/daughter is a great hockey player and he/she would great wearing our jersey and I’d love to have him/her on my team” …. and then it goes on from there to; “they’ll be a first line player for sure”, lot’s of ice time including power play and penalty kill”, absolutely a go-to player” and “captain or alternate captain for sure”.

Why Do They Do It?

 Because The Primary Goal Is To Recruit Well

The first priority becomes recruiting.

And so, they do it because they want to impress everyone. Now that’s not an unusual human trait. Everyone wants to impress but many hockey coaches feel the need to impress and be highly regarded as an important aid to recruiting the best players.

Unfortunately actual “coaching” then becomes secondary. As I’ve written before, coaches feel the need that they absolutely have to win. And so, they quickly come to the conclusion if they can recruit all of the best talent; then they are assured of winning. (Actually, I have good evidence to the contrary. In a future blog I’ll write about a peewee triple A “dream team” that was put together in the early nineties that turned out to be a disaster).

The big area that coaches seem embellish the most is their hockey accomplishments. I’ve found this is where the majority of the majority out-and-out lies are made. I’ve caught coaches “BS-ing” such things as being drafted by an NHL team and playing some games with an NHL team. The reality is that there are some really good sources for verifying this information.

So Why Do They Do It?  –  Because It Works!

Why do they do it?  …. because this is what impresses parents the most. Even with parents that I’ve given advise to about this consistently come back to me with the same comments when talking about a coach or for that matter a guy that’s running a hockey school. They invariably make comments like “this guy was drafted by such-and-such NHL team”, “this guy played in Europe” and so on. This is simply what impresses parents the most. It is a big help in recruitment and good recruiting makes a coach’s life so much more easy.

The idea that this alone is the conclusive determination of a person’s ability to be a great coach is simply not true. Here are some great NHL coaches with little or no high level careers as hockey players; Ken Hitchcock, Jon Cooper, Bob Hartely, Pat Burns, and Scotty Bowman. There are a lot more skill sets that are necessary in order to be a good coach.

Unfortunately, there is now a lack of attention to coaching as the emphasis is so much on recruiting.

Are All Coaches Liars?

There’s a lot more to come.

Note:

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