The Two Most Important Keys To Success

Two Things You Have Some Ability To Control 

Time to give you (what I think) is very useful and important information. This is more for the parents with children who aspire to a more advanced level of hockey.  Later I’ll get back to more of understanding this “beast” you’re dealing with.

As you will find out soon enough, I’m not a huge fan of the level of proficiency of coaching at the minor hockey level. This is a big subject and I will deal with it in more detail in future blogs. For now, let’s just say that I find it quite tragic that at the very formative years of our young hockey players’ lives; the coaching is being performed by people who for the most part are dimly aware of all the knowledge and skill sets required (let alone the experience) to take full advantage of the extraordinary learning capacity of these young kids.

I’ve found; however, there’s one thing even the dumbest coach figures out pretty quickly. They soon figure out which players are a net contributor or a net liability to the team’s success during the play of the game. It’s kind of like a balance sheet; a player either contributes to success or you’re scared as heck when they’re on the ice. Since every coach is judged by his success (basically winning games), guess which players the coach prefers to have on the ice?

Two Things You Have Some Ability To Control – Individual Skills & Attitude

Individual Skills

There is no such thing as the perfect hockey player …. never has been …. never will be.  If you could conceive of all of the “attributes” the perfect hockey player would have; that would just never happen and that player will never exist. That’s actually one of the beautiful things that makes life interesting.

What every hockey player brings to a team is his own unique individual package of “attributes”. Some attributes you have absolutely no or little control over. If you’re five foot nine or  six-foot three,  bow-legged or knock-kneed, (how do I put this delicately) dumb or smart; these “attributes” are for the most part simply put; built into your DNA …. period!

So Let’s See What You Can Control

You can give your child the opportunity to learn, improve and hone their individual skills.

A hockey player straps a boot with a blade attached and moves over a surface of frozen water. It’s called skating and you had better be proficient at skating to have any success. Unlike the “good old days” hockey today is not just north/south and up & down your wing. The quick starts & stops, change of direction and transition at incredible speeds are vital to success in today’s game. Additionally, you need to be able do this while handling a puck.  While all this is going on, the opposition is fully willing and prepared to take your head off with a body check if you’re not paying attention or sufficiently skilled.

Individual hockey skills can be taught. The Russians showed us that fact, and although it took some time for that to sink in here in the West, it finally did sink in and we now have qualified people who can teach these skills. I was fortunate enough to spend 14 years working with a hockey school run by a somewhat “quirky genius” that was trained in the so-called “Russian” method of hockey skating and skills development. I personally watched how it worked; and it worked well in deed. This school has legitimately graduated more players to the NHL including a good number of 1st round draft picks. The school still operates today. I was also fortunate to work with a couple of dedicated and conscientious guys that have gone on to run their own hockey schools. So I know this works and I know it’s available; your challenge will be (if you’re so inclined) to identify and find a good school. Hockey schools and their evolutionary history here in the West is a topic on its own and I’ll deal with in some detail another time and hopefully provide you some guidance.

One thing that’s a real shame is the lack of good “shinny” hockey opportunities available for young players. Shinny hockey provides an unstructured fun time for young players to just fool around skating with a stick and a puck with other players trying to take the puck from them. Most ice time today is made up of highly structured practices and hockey school sessions. While these are necessary and valuable for development, unstructured shinny time is a valuable and necessary component to practice spontaneous creativity.

An Important Thing To Know About Hockey Skills

As much as hockey is a team sport, ultimately success comes down to winning one-on-one battles. At the higher levels of hockey, the players in that stratosphere can all do enough of the “big” skills elements or they just wouldn’t be there. Ultimately it will come down to a player’s sum total of “smaller more nuanced” elements of individual skills that will lead to winning more of those one-on-one battles; and if you’ve ever played the game, you realize that you really don’t have to be that much better to beat your opponent more often than not.

In Part 2, I’ll talk about “attitude”. You can possess a ton of skill, but your progression to a higher level will be more limited and more difficult without the right attitude. And parents; pay attention, you will have a big impact!

There’s a lot more to come.

The Two Most Important Keys To Success

Two Things You Have Some Ability To Control 

Note:

If you’re new to this blog and reading it from Facebook, make sure to click on the BLOG/NEWS link in the menu at the top of the page and scroll down to read previous blogs on this and other subjects.