Ep 6. Susan comes back from skills courses with questions

Susan attended Hockey Canada’s Instructional Stream courses: Skating 1 and Development Defensemen 1. We debrief her experiences and Dave answers her questions. 

Coaching Call is is a question show about coaching grassroots hockey. We have a certain take on coaching hockey. We believe in using sport to make players better people on and off the ice. Your hosts are David Trombley, a coach with 30 years of experience at all levels and ages, and Susan Sim, a new house league coach. Submit your questions at http://newcoach.ca/ or in the comments.

Chapters

• 0:00 Hockey Canada Instructional Stream Courses
• 11:31 Annual Development Plans for Teams and Individuals
• 20:00 Too many forwards, not enough defenders

Transcript

Susan: So I took two Hockey Canada courses on the weekend. They're from the instructional stream. There was a morning class on skating. Skating 1. In the afternoon there was a Developing Defencemen 1 class. In the evening, it was a 3 hour, nominally a 3 hour class on teaching goaltending skills. All of these, I only did the first two because I thought all three would be too much. 

This is part of the instructional stream as opposed to the coaching stream. It's very skills oriented how to teach certain skills. So each class is mostly in the classroom. It's about two thirds in the classroom. 

For example, in the morning where they're skating. Here's how you teach these skating skills. Then you go on ice, and then there's a demonstration of the things that you learned.

The Developing Defensemen was similar. About two thirds, one third. They did individual tactics, but not team tactics, and not strategy, and not systems. So very... Oriented to that part of the pyramid. 

Hockey Canada has a plan, there's five or six different skill areas that they want to roll out courses in. Level one is for five to eight year olds. Level two is for maybe ten to thirteen, fourteen year olds. Level three is for, fifteen and beyond. 

 Most of the people there were coaching like 10 to 13, 14 year olds. So the instructors adjusted the content up, so they were taught, teaching us more advanced skills. 

Now for somebody like me, everything was completely overwhelming. Like it was just too much. I could pay attention for about the first hour, and then it's like I can't hold this in my head.

For example, in the skating, they were talking about crossovers. It's okay, I understand crossovers because I've been working really hard on them. Can't do them, but I understand them. Backwards crossovers, and they're talking about different kinds of edges. We've talked about Mohawk, and the term for this now is called a heel to heel.

Makes complete sense that it's, a little bit more accurate to call it a heel to heel. Because it really has nothing to do with Mohawks. 

Dave: I agree because I get so many clients that come to me, teach me the Mohawk and I know they're just like, I want to make sure they know what the Mohawk really is. I'll be like why don't you show me here off ice what you think a Mohawk is. I get different versions of what they think the Mohawk is.

Then whatever they're showing me, I'll help show them how to do whatever they're showing me. 

Susan: They presented it in the classroom is that they would have a slide. Then they would say, here's a drill where you can teach this and then they would show a video of of kids demonstrating these skills and they would say, oh yeah, you should, watch this a few times and you'll see the differences of how to do this.

 What am I seeing? What am I looking at? It turns out there's a coach manual for points of performance, but they didn't give it to us. So I've gonna to email the organizers and say, can I get this manual? That's how my mind works. It's like, how do I give feedback? This is something that you and I have talked about.

It's easy to get a drill off of the internet. Okay, here's the drill. Oh, they're not doing it right. That's not how it's supposed to look like. Okay. How do you shape the behavior? So that you get what you want what it's supposed to look like. 

I can't tell them. I could get someone to demonstrate it, but that's not the same.

I think that's the difference between teaching and coaching. Coaching, you have that close relationship where you go, okay, now move your foot a little bit differently. Put your weight back. You're not using enough of your outside edge. That's what I need to be able to do. Firstly I didn't get that, and secondly what they did give me, and maybe if I had more hockey I'd be able to get there.

Dave: You have your skills coach and then you have your hockey coach, which is really completely different and there's similarities between them. Two of them and there's big differences between the two of them. The hockey coach is bringing the team together to play as one, when, before you go on the ice and then the skills coach is analyzing individual skills to help each individual become a better team player.

 Starting from the skates and working up. , as you go through shooting, obviously, yeah, your foundation of your stance and all that for balance. When you look at sports, I don't care what sport you're going to pick, balance is always number one.

Balance is number one. It doesn't matter whether you're playing in a wheelchair, or you're playing with one leg, or two legs, balance is number one. When you have balance, then you're able to either strike a ball, throw a ball, shoot a puck, body check, whatever it is. 

 There's three key elements in skating: balance is number one, your technique, and then obviously your strength and power, how fast you can go and then just listening to my adults I said, there's fourth, there's a fourth element and they're all looking at me.

What else could there be? It's called confidence. The amount of confidence that you have to do that task. If you're afraid, then your confidence goes down here. If you're like, I'm ready to do this. You see the kids like, yeah, I'm ready to do this. I get all the confidence. All your elements, your top three elements really come in together to strike forward and to perform at a higher level.

Yeah, it's all interesting. You know how they put it all together. It sounds like a great course you took. 

Susan: Some people got a lot from it. When we got to the Developing Defensemen class I knew that I wouldn't be able to do the on ice skills. by the time we got to the end of the skating, I could do the skills for, I think, maybe about 80% of it, just slowly and badly.

But the last 20% is there's no chance, I don't have this. For the Developing Defencemen, it was like I can't do these skills at all. So I pulled out my camera and I recorded the on ice portion. I offered it to the other people in the class. So I think that will help me absorb and remember the material better.

Dave: Mhm. Mhm. , with the defenseman, I would say there's a lot of backwards skating with the defenseman. A lot of backwards skating I would say that you would take each zone and you divide each zone into what you're trying to do in each zone, so maybe the defensive zone, sure you have breakouts, but, it's a lot of kind of keeping the player to the outside, you're positioning, you're skating, you're pivoting, you're opening up, your body positioning.

Your hockey stick positioning, obviously where you focus, are you looking at the puck or you're looking at the player and your peripheral vision picking up the

 in the neutral zone, it's how do we support each other, meaning defense to defense. Do we do the hinge, the hinging, over here has the puck, I get a hinge back to always give my defense partner an open passing lane. So they have an escape. you move into the offensive zone, working with your D partner, sliding left and right, and then if one defense pinches in, the other one comes back and over, it's always that hinging back and forth as you work together.

Yeah it's a lot of skating, a lot of backwards forwards. Your best skaters have to be centers, but defense, 'cause defense have to be able to be mobile, pivot, turn, backwards, forwards. That's every skill.

Susan: So one thread that came through both classes is the importance of agility. It doesn't matter how fast you can get from one end to the ice to the other. It matters if you can beat a guy to the puck 15 feet from you. Those short bursts of speed. They were also emphasizing small area games.

One of the instructors said, you can do an entire season on teaching skills using small area games. Kids love it. It keeps them motivated. When they're out on the ice, when they're playing a game, it doesn't look very organized, but somehow they do what they need to do.

Dave: Sure. I agree with that instructor, if you really analyze a hockey game, number one, if you divide the rank into six. So each zone, divide it in half. So you've got two, four, six, and majority of the game is played in one of those six . Little pockets. There's those little mini games. My one instructor, Brandon all my instructors are very passionate about hockey, and he's going down to play pro hockey this year in New Haven, Connecticut.

 He brought up a stat to me. He says, David, what do you think the percentage of the hockey game is played along the boards as to the center of the ice? I never really took any knowledge. I never sat down to wonder. Of course they got analytics on everything these days. I believe the number he said was between 80 to 85% of the game is played on the boards.

Five feet from the boards. Everything. That's a lot of the game. That's a lot of the game.

Susan: That makes complete sense. What is happening when you're in the middle of the ice? You're going somewhere. So when you're going somewhere, you're going to get there in a hurry. You're not hanging out there and going, Oh, I have possession. Isn't that great? You have a goal. You have an objective.

Dave: Absolutely. A lot of the times, once the kids get a little bit, they start recognizing that the defense play the middle of the ice. So they need to go to the outside of the ice to get around. That's where the open ice is to skate and penetrate. When you dump the puck in, we don't like to encourage dumping the puck, but you can dump the puck in.

It's going to be along the boards. When you shoot it to the goalie moves it to the corner, moves it along the boards. There's a lot of play on the boards. We're trying to break the.

Susan: What was the percentage again? 80% of the game is within 5 feet of the boards.

Dave: So now you're thinking where do we have to be better at? How do we get the puck out? There isn't a breakout strategy. Step one, two, three, and you get out. It's really about supporting the puck carrier. Where is that puck? Majority on the boards. Chipping it off the boards, having the center close for support.

So it's a give and go, system as you're breaking out. If it doesn't get out, everyone stops before the blue lines stay inside. Yeah, there's lots of little things, it's it's great. It's great for the game and for kids. I really like listening to you talking about the course.

I think it sounds like a great course and it's learning that the game is not as big, like we don't have to use the whole area of the hockey rink. It's just being better at parts of the hockey rink. There's so much detail in every sport, and just speaking about hockey. When you come off the ice or any game and a parent comes up to you, we need to focus on A, B, C, and you're like, absolutely, but we were focusing on D, E, F, did you see those things?

 They're like, no I didn't see those things. I did, because I was

Susan: hmm, mm hmm, mm hmm. 

Dave: E, F, and I know about A, B, C, and then we got everything else down to Z, like there's just so much to accomplish.

Susan: So I have questions. One of the things they said in the course is that you need an annual development plan. This makes sense to me. You need to have a sense of where you're going. So what I did last year was that I would see what the kids were doing or not doing in the last game, and then I would choose drills based on gaps.

 So I was always chasing the gaps. But I didn't really have a plan for where I wanted to be. I didn't have an image in my head of what I thought the player should look like at the end of the year.

Dave: You take any level, all the way up to the professional, and they will have a plan, an annual plan as well, where they want to get to, where they want to be better at, where they want to close the gaps. I am a big believer of all that. Then you have to throw in that magic word of flexibility, because you have to be flexible.

Every hockey team is probably going to have areas, probably three to five that you can continually work on all the time. So you may have in your head we want to create more scoring opportunities off the rush, including the defensemen, jumping up into the play, but then evaluating your team, you're like our defenseman can't skate, carry the puck, or maybe they just don't have the hockey IQ just yet, to make that work.

Maybe your gaps are somewhere else. So you create your overall master plan and then you start evaluating, call it a month and you just go, okay, wow, our gaps are really here, and here. This is where we need to focus on. You adjust your overall map to where you need to really go and close on those other gaps. And That's everything in life as well.

 I was coaching AAA and the one year our kids were so offensively gifted that our whole Pyramid was how do we create more offense off the rush because we had smart defense smart forwards and then we got Our players moved to other teams and then the next year there was a different team No one could carry the puck.

No one could shoot the puck. No one could jump up in the play. So it's like we couldn't carry that same plan to the next year We almost had to throw that away and create a new plan. Being flexible. So yeah, there's always that evaluation. Then it's like, where are we going? Where are the gaps?

What do we need to do for the next month? I think you do a monthly plan. You can have your overall plan. It's nice, and it's good to get it down on paper. You communicate that to the parents. This is our overall plan. Then you communicate your monthly plan as you keep going. We've evaluated the team.

We realize that our gaps are... We need more skating skills, puck skills, and we're going to work on the team skill, which is really important. Everyone has their own perspective. That's the tough part, one parent feels offense is more important. Another parent feels goaltending is more important.

 Passing is more important or whatever and you just got to be that leader and you just step forward with that being flexible. Closing the gap on the little things. If the kids are more comfortable, better positioning in their D zone, knowing where to be. The offensive, you just let it happen.

Sometimes I just go, go get the puck, go to the net. Keep it really simple. Maybe one plan for the offense. Because in the offensive zone, if you screw up, you're still 200 feet away from where it really matters. Going in your own...

Susan: That's right. 

Dave: You know what I mean? Just get your butt back, right?

Get your butt back. So it's yeah, being flexible and have an overall plan, which is fine. But don't be so detailed about that overall plan. Just keep it simple. Then all of a sudden you're going to see your team evaluate your individual skills. Have some little scrimmages during your practices.

See who, what the hockey IQ is, too. Is everyone sitting and watching? What do I do? Or you can actually. You can actually see some players thinking, giving goes, passing some decent positions. We got some smart players. Maybe we can do this moving forward with our overall plan into small monthly plans.

Because really, how many practices do you have in a month, Susan? Top of your head.

Susan: Between four and eight. 

Dave: Yeah, between four and eight. So it's not really a whole bunch of time. When you bring in your goalie instructor, you really want to even tell him what to do and you'd be like I want you to evaluate our goalie. Go ahead, just do it, but just don't give it to them. This is what we noticed in our last game.

 Our goalie went down and could not get back up. You know what that is. Strength, right? Or laziness, either one of the two. Our goalie was making these great saves, but the rebounds were going ten feet out. So their strategy on how to not give out the rebounds so far. They do this little move.

 The goalie had a hard time tracking the puck. It just helps that goalie instructor to get on the ice and start working. They'll have their own evaluation, which is great. This one or two little things for the goalie instructor, and they're like, Okay, thank you, I appreciate that.

 Then they'll incorporate that into the play.

Susan: this makes sense. This makes sense.

Dave: They all know what to do

Susan: They just need little hints, little clues. And then go to it. You know more about this than I do. But I know enough when I see, oh, that's not right. That's something to work on. I don't necessarily know how to fix it, but it's oh, that's a gap. That's a gap. Let's fix that.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Dave: When you're doing your game, you have a little notepad. You just write down your notes.

Susan: Yeah, I didn't use a notepad last year. I could remember, Oh yeah, that's a thing. But this year I'm going to start using a notepad. I'm going to pay a little bit more attention to goals and assists. I know this is obvious. But I didn't pay any attention at all last year to goals and assists.

I was like, okay, we got the puck in. I was watching the play as opposed to who finally sealed the deal. Who actually put in the puck in the net was less important to me than if someone was in the right place. Or that they were skating hard, or this player is always skating too slow.

 That's the kind of stuff I was paying attention to. This year, I'm gonna pay a little bit more attention to some of those numbers, but also who was on the ice? What shift, what line was on the ice when something happened?

Dave: Analytics, that's what you're talking about, Susan, analytics are important. , the other thing, and as I'm not going to tell you nothing that you don't know is how do we make the kids who don't touch the puck, don't get the goals, don't get the assists, feel part of the team. Those are the tricky ones, and, but like you said, you could have a boy that just works really hard, but, whether he can't shoot, can't score, can't pass, but is on the puck all the time. Maybe that's a player you put on for your PK, penalty killing. They will track and hunt and, all that.

Or maybe put on against their top line. We want you to start their top player, if you're going to match line, hard to do in house league. I get that. I understand. It's about making everyone feel part of the team. Because that's when you create that team. That's the coach, right? 

Skills guy. Skills guy is just out there trying to work with everyone on their skills. Trying to move on individually somehow. Where the coach is trying... All the individuals together feeling good. How do you do that heart thing? You know that yeah Oh, there it is something like this feeling good about themselves.

Susan: So I would say I didn't have any trouble with the number of kids that I had last year knowing each kid and knowing what they were good at. I was less plugged into what motivates each kid. That's something I want to get better at this year. Like their why, what's your why? 

Dave: I think that's wonderful because everyone is motivated differently. It's on Darcy's hockey team. Some are motivated by scoring goals. Others are motivated by stopping the play. Others are motivated by Being a team member and let's party afterwards. Yeah, there's a lot of good things.

For me I like being the offensive guy. I like being, for me, feeling part of the team was contributing offensively and always being asked to be on the ice and helping the team that way, 

Susan: Of the 17 kids, two like playing D, everyone else likes playing forward. My approach is going to be everybody plays everything. We're just going to have drills or skills that are, useful for, Both forward and D. I'm going to build up both kinds of those skills because I can't have 15 forwards.

 Somebody's going to play D. So my goal is to have, two good D on every D shift. Because last year in house league, I would have one good D and then one guy who, this is the best place we could put them. I think there's a certain experience you have, you talked about hinging, for example, when you have a real partner out on the ice.

 They work well together and they understand the other person's role. I think that's really cool. That's teamwork. That's when you can have, these click moments or these, power moments that you go, Oh, that was great.

Dave: You don't want to try to hide the weakest skater on defense. Not a good spot.

Susan: We hid them on the wing. Yes.

Dave: You hide the wing until they develop their skills. And what are the advantages of learning every position? I played defense for one season and I did not want to play defense. I'm a center.

That's where I naturally go. I learned so much from playing defense. On how the forwards need to come back to support the defense. So it's an easier break for us and all these little things and how the defense can jump up into the play and support the offense and the forwards, it's so many little things, but I was fortunate because I was a very good skater and.

But I still didn't know how to play defense. My mind was very offensive.

Susan: Yes.

Dave: Every time I got the ball, I went forward. Very lucky that the defensive coach goes, You can do that offensive, but you can't do it every single time, David. You gotta use your players. When you start giving, going to players, you create more open ice in the middle for you to go.

But if you just keep carrying it, the other team is going to just track you, and they're going to be on you, and then you're not going to have the success that you're looking for. I was like, oh, okay. All right, and you start trying these little ideas, because kids have their own ideas, and you're, battling those ideas with your ideas and not trying to make them wrong.

But just trying to make them expand of, hey, you can expand you as a player. In this way, but how do you create more open ice by carrying the puck or by pushing it to the side? The defense goes over there, the four checker, and then you skate through the open ice. Make them think.

Make them think so. I think you're doing the right thing, shifting everyone around and you can do that evaluation. Maybe it's a three month thing, and then you're starting to write down tendencies, who has better tendencies to play at certain positions. My worst thing is a really funny story.

I was coaching a 16 year old triple A team in the summertime, and we're playing all these great teams. The guy who formulated the team, there's one tournament, 16 forwards. I was like. What are you doing to me? Like I have to pick the defense now. So we get on the ice and I said to everyone, I'm going to pay the top four guys. money, whoever the fastest backward skater is. So this is during a game, the pre warmup, we didn't skate around. I had everyone on the goal line. They had to backward skate as fast as they could the center ice and then forwards all the way back in. I picked the top four guys and they won. They won. I paid them like 10 bucks each. You guys won the gift. They're like, what'd we win? You're playing defense tonight, and 10 bucks. Get back here. It was like, I got paid, but I don't want to play defense. So the first game was fine, but the second game trying to find defense was difficult because everyone knew what I was going to do. But anyways, we made it through, but yeah, I said to the parent, you have to give me defense.

I, I can't do this. Now I got to talk to the parents and they want to know why you picked this son and that son. I just flipped it. I said, you go talk to the guy who organized the tournament. I need four people on defense. I can't play five forwards every shift. We started to change, then I needed to change a little bit as as a coach.

I said why don't we try one defense and four forwards? So we had one forward to jump up in the play. , I can't remember what our record was, but it just started to create a little bit, one back and four forward. So it was different. It is the summer. Who cares? Win, lose, draw, it doesn't matter. It's one weekend. 

But that's what I recommend for you, Susan, is that over three months, you have your notes and you start evaluating. Certain players have tendencies will start being better in certain positions. Playing defense, left playing winger, playing center. The ones that can really skate to hunt the puck, not afraid, man, you're going to put at center.

Want the puck all the time. The ones that kind of still are really good on the boards, up and down. They like to watch the play and then jump up into the play. It could be wingers, and then you have the people that like to keep everything in front of them. There's your defense. There's your defense. So yeah, it's an evaluating the team and talking to the team and saying our team best team is when these players are playing these positions.

Susan: Yep. 

Dave: That's the coaching skill part.

Susan: Thanks, Dave. This was, this is a really good chat today, like they always are.