Hello everyone!
It’s been a while since I’ve written or dropped into your mailboxes. I guess that will happen when you get a regular 9 to 5 and you are gone 3 to 4 nights a week coaching a single team. Seems like there hasn’t been a ton of time (and yes, that’s me procrastinating) to sit down and write like I was trying to before. It’s something I would like to really get back to so hopefully this is the start.
I seem to always have something rumbling around in my brain hockey-related, but until Substacks comes out with a mobile app, it will be a while before I probably get to posting even more regularly.
Right now, I’m currently on the “front 9” of my team’s season and it’s definitely been a different beast, not only working with a new program but going down from the 18U age level to 12U. While I’ve been overseeing 12U teams for the previous 5 years in a director capacity, I wasn’t in the position of running the team on a day to day basis.
Coming in, I wasn’t really sure of what to expect as these are kids that I’ve never worked with before and I had never been apart of their curriculum. So what they do and don’t know has been a new task for myself and my assistant to find out and build our own plan to tackle.
That said I am enjoying going through the learning process with them and continuing to work on becoming a better coach, teacher and mentor.
This series of tweets by Justin Bourne (not the assassin Jason who is played by Matt Damon, but Bob Bourne’s son) had me reeling a bit:
Justin hits this spot on with his take here and I see it quite a lot on Instagram pages for skills companies and even read them on Twitter from other coaches. Hell, I even read it in other newsletters. I feel I know a decent amount about the game and skill development (I’m always learning), but all this “new” terminology that’s been thrown into the lexicon the last few years I’ve noticed is just taking ideas and making them more difficult to interpret, use or even adapt.
Speaking of skills instructors or companies (I promise I don’t hate them)…
I’ve recently been thinking about how there are so many players these days with great tools and skills for the game, but very little idea on how or when to properly use them. I guess it would be the equivalent of a carpenter knowing how to put a nail into a piece of wood with a hammer, but not understanding what that all leads too or what that can create.
I do like going back and watching videos that Darryl Belfry, who is one of, if not the best skills instructors in hockey in the world, used to post (yes I do know that Darryl is someone who has his own venaciular in regards to player development, but he’s working with the cream of the crop 99% of the time and he’s not someone I was referring to above) with his “Pro Playmakers series” and seeing how he would combine one area of a skill into something different within a game situation.
Is this something you would be doing with say Squirts and under? No. But I could see and I have personally done somethings of this nature myself where say I explain how to skate through the defenders hands to take the puck to the net (while making sure I’m explaining which edges to be on and where their weight should be) or say when to use a punch turn in the offensive zone to create time and space with 12U players and up.
Lastly:
I got into an interesting discussion with former pro goalie Mike McKenna after this tweet of his last week:
Yes… when I first started coaching AA coach, the program I was with, the coaches incorporated a dress code. So my team was one that took part and I don’t think I ever had a single parent complain to me directly about how terrible this was or that I was stifling their childs ability to express themselves individually.
The kids themselves could pick out whatever tie they wanted to wear as well as they usually work baseball caps (some wore sunglasses). We had fun with it and it was an expression of respecting the team they played for as well as the organization. I made sure whenever a kid left the locker room they had their shirt tucked in and tie on correctly. It was about being disciplined in following the team rules but also being presentable.
Now, with the team I coach this year do I have the same rules?
Absolutely not.
If the team wanted it, I would be fine with it, but since it’s not something already in the culture of the program I’m with (plus, I wear khakis and a polo everyday for work, I want to wear my Levi’s damnit) and we are going with team warmups, I’m okay with not having it.
Sometimes I wonder about these hills people choose to stand on…