Coaching Call
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.
You can submit your questions at http://newcoach.ca/
Coaching Call
Ep 9. Unequal ice time considered harmful (Or how to create and play your lines)
One of the great arts of coaching is putting players on lines and putting those lines on the ice in a game. Do you give player unequal ice time? Or do you give players equal ice time by rolling the lines? Who do you put on your power play and penalty killing special teams?
Our guest on this episode is John Bird, who won a city championship while rolling lines. John has coached youth hockey for over 25 years at levels ranging up to AAA.
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.
Welcome to Coaching Call, our weekly podcast where we answer your questions about coaching hockey. More than skills and drills, we coach for connection and character, both on and off the ice. Good morning, Dave.
David:Good morning, Susan. How are you today?
Susan:Busy, busy, but happy to see you. How are things going with you?
David:Today's great, Susan. The Jays are in a playoff run. They're in the playoffs right now. In addition to that, I walked Reggie this morning. We had a great walk today. And I'm back and I'm ready to have a great session with you.
Susan:Hey, so what I've been thinking about is ice time.
David:Mmm.
Susan:As a house league coach, I had a requirement to give equal ice time. I had to give every child equal ice time. And now as a select coach, I have the opportunity to do unequal ice time. And I'm trying to figure out how to approach this, how to think about this. In terms of house league, equal ice time was problematic in the following way. I had certain kids who were not cooperating and I had no tools available for me to gain their cooperation. Ice time was a valuable tool that I would have liked to have. And the kids were not cooperating in a couple of ways. One, they were not coming to practice or they were not coming, on time. They would come two minutes before the start of the game or they wouldn't be on the bench when the game started. And I also had a couple of kids who, were trash talking. They were trash talking the other team. They were trash talking their own team. And I had no tools to get them to be more respectful to the, to everyone else, including me. wanted to get your thoughts on unequal ice time, because I know things can go wrong that way too.
David:Absolutely. As a player growing up, Susan, I always felt the best players should be on the ice all the time. And, for me, I pushed myself to be one of those best players and it frustrated me to no end, when the coaches would put on the Fluddy Duds, and the Fluddy Duds for the power play, or the Fluddy Duds for the penalty killing. And the regular shift, yeah, I knew that they had to have their shift, but, still, for us to win, we needed the best players on the ice all the time. That's what drove me as a player. I started to, realize that, maybe we do need them a little bit, but still I remember playing Bantam AA. We're in the city championships and our coach would still roll the lines. Roll the lines means that every player gets played and it would drive me to no end why he wasn't putting out the best players were in the city championship for heaven sakes and we ended up winning. We won. It took me a long time to realize why he rolled those lines when I became a coach.
Susan:Let me ask you about your player perspective a little bit, because that's important too. you as one of the first or second line players want, thought you should be out. Now, one of the concerns that I have would be just getting tired. Aren't you better fresh, and you've had some, rest on the bench?
David:Oh, I could go all game long, Susan. whatever it is, it just drove me. when I was 15 years old, I was playing minor midget and midget. I was playing two games every Saturday. And so we had our first game at one o'clock and then right after our game was the midgets. And then I wasn't the only player that was brought up, but I would actually play back to back games every Saturday. So not having enough energy. Most boys do have enough energy to play every other shift.
Susan:Okay. I'm going to believe you on that. But I've seen the players on the ice at the end of even a 90 second shift. They're not skating as hard as they are at the beginning of that 90 second shift.
David:I agree with you with that. A player can't stay on the ice for the whole entire game. You got to train the player when the shift, when they come off, when you get tired, when to change. No, I agree with you there, 100%. But, you know, once you come off, have a drink of water or whatever the choice of drink is these days, BioSteel, and then boom, they're ready to go straight back out again, right into the fire. They're ready to play.
Susan:Thanks for sharing that about you, Dave.
David:Oh, absolutely. And that's the one thing with house league is that you have the three minute buzzer. I'm not too sure how long your buzzer is. Three minutes is way too long, and so you have this equal ice time of this three minutes. And you can tell the first minute and a half is pretty strong for both teams, and then it just dwindles down. Everyone's looking and waiting for the buzzer to go. So maybe that needs to be tweaked a little bit as we go through.
Susan:Yeah, they do the three minute buzzers where it's like a forced rotation, up until about eight or nine years old, and then after that, they do just shift changes without the buzzer. We end up rolling the lines, but it's not as strict as it is when they're little. When they're little, you have your roster. and you just go 5, 5, 5, 5,whatever your roster is. If you're 13, you have 13 people on your roster, you just roll to the top. And so you have to be careful what order you put the kids on the game sheet so that you have reasonable lines, no matter how it rolls.
David:I've seen that format. I've also seen different formats in different house leagues. for instance, my daughter plays in the Scarborough Sharks. They didn't have that. We didn't have to submit the team list to the timekeeper so that we're making sure that every girl had the same amount of shifts. And but anyways, we still had the three minute buzzer rule. I think that could be definitely changed just a little bit. Tweaked. It could be tweaked.
Susan:To maybe 90 seconds,
David:Yeah, something like that, but you got to be ready to go on and off, right? You got to be ready to go on and off. Yeah, absolutely. 90 seconds would be great.
Susan:That's a good push. Yeah. What about in, the other leagues that you've either played in or coached? How did you figure out unequal ice time? Did you have special teams? Did you have like first lines and, lower third or fourth lines? And how did you do the rotations between the lines?
David:You know what, as a player growing up, you remember, so in my brain, I am hard wired that the top players get the ice all the time. So this is what kind of drove me all the time, and even simple things, even you get on the ice and you're out for 20 seconds, and I used to tell my wingers, because I played center, do not look at the bench. And that was almost like a sign for the coach that they change. And then... When they looked at the bench and they changed, I would give my wingers crap, as we went to the bench. Stop looking at the bench, like this, right? I'm tired though. I said, pretend you're not tired. Stand up. Don't breathe. Because I wanted to be on the ice all the time.
Susan:I've had that problem where I couldn't get players to come in and I'm screaming my head off, waving. In fact, I've got the entire bench screaming and they're still not coming in, but yes, go on.
David:My first year university was the first time... it was interesting. You know what, the first couple games that we played, I was in the first and second line, and then I got pushed straight to the fourth line. And the fourth line was one shift, a period, maybe two. And all of a sudden, you know what, you're like, wow. What just happened? what's going on here? And the coach was more like, figure it out yourself. OK. I work hard during practice. I show up early. I do extra work. What am I doing wrong? Figure it out yourself. That is an old style of coaching, which personally I don't believe in. And I've changed when I went to coaching to really talk to the kids. You know what, maybe let them think a little bit, but I'm not gonna let them think for a couple of weeks or months to try to figure out their problem. Let's work with the players so we can get them back up to a higher level. I also start to realize being on that fourth line and being only played once a period, that boy, I just really didn't feel part of the team anymore. That I was just warming the bench. And it wasn't a good feeling. I really start to realize that when you roll the lines, when everyone has a role on the team to play, maybe this is a power play, maybe you're on the penalty killing, maybe you're third line checking their best players on the other team. When everyone has a role and you give everyone a specific role, man, they feel special and they feel like they're adding to the team value. hmm. I took time, though. You had to ingrain that out of me. and then when I got in, when I got in the coaching, I started house league, rolling the lines, same thing, but then you had to make sure you're trying to push the right players in the right sequence so you didn't have all the great players on at once and all your weak ones on at once either because I didn't work either. And then when I got into higher level coaching, the double A and the triple A, I really did start to roll the lines, but I really tried to get players better, responsibilities for what the capabilities that they had. What did you bring to the hockey team? And I wanted to use that as an advantage to the team and make that player realize that they're important.
Susan:I like that because different players have different aspirations and it's better to figure out where they want to go because they, the response is, I get to, as opposed to, I have to.
David:Yes, absolutely. But then there was a girls team that I worked with. I was the head skills instructor for that team, and the head coach, Jeff, he had a different philosophy. It was all about winning, and he put out the first two lines, like rolled the first two lines until we got at least a two or three goal lead, and then he included the other girls. So it'd be like first line, second line, first line, third line, first line, second line, first line, third line. So the top line got double shifted and then the other lines were every other shift, as you can see.
Susan:The girls knew, right? They knew this was what, what was going on.
David:Even though they were told ahead of time, even though the parents were told ahead of time, this is what's going to happen, when it starts to happen, it's not a good feeling. I can tell you that. It's not a good feeling, right? You want to be part of that team and you try to feel that. All right, I'm not as good as that first line, but still, if everyone had a specific role and they knew what that role was, then they became more valuable. And they feel part of the team. I think that's a big part of it.
Susan:I think you're pulling on a really important thread there that like, what does it do to people or the team when not everyone is treated equally? Of course people have better skills than the other. but I think there needs to be like equal respect. Like I, as a person, am not less valuable because I'm not as good a skater.
David:And what happens if the coach doesn't deal with this, on an ongoing basis, then that group that doesn't play much, or see much ice, or feel good, they have their own little tribe in the room. They start to sit together, that's the group over there that plays. We're the group that doesn't play. Then you get division. Then you have division in the room, And then all of a sudden, when you pull a player to say, hey, can you do this? Why? You want me to do what? Almost like they don't care.
Susan:If you choose to do this strategy, is this a necessary outcome or is there something you can do?
David:if you have the strategy of playing the best players, is that what you're asking, Susan?
Susan:Yeah. Is there something that you can do for the morale, in the room that people don't feel like they're left out?
David:Absolutely, you have to be able to communicate to the whole team how important they are to the team. And you kind of come to them and say, we need you be first to the puck. Keep that puck in the other end. We want you to forecheck their top line or their second line. It's so important. Whatever it is, you got to bring those skills that that player has to the each game. And then during the practice work on the weaker skills, obviously, To coach better players is really quite simple. It's a little guidance, Was Wayne Gretzky ever coached? Sure. He had guidance. Was Bobby Orr ever coached? Little guidance, right? But you know what? Those guys are going to be on the ice because they're leading the team. They're leading the team. And it's everyone else who likes to be part of the team, but they got to know what's special about them. What's special about me? And then when I went from fourth line at university to third line and second line, and I became one of the captains, I realized what it's like to be one of those fourth liners. And so, maybe the coach didn't go back and talk to them, but as a leader group, we made sure that we went back and we chatted with those players and told them how important they were. Maybe during the practice and how hard they pushed the first and second line during power play or during the game, how much we want them to be on the ice, when we need a break. Absolutely. that's a team. That's a leader. Mhm. Mhm.
Susan:I think that's one of the good things about having a captain or even being a captain is that you can do a lot of this pro social stuff. That you have a peer first among equals kind of thing that you are this bridge and you have those opportunities.
David:It's hard to know if those kids have the capabilities of actually leading the team at the young age group. Most times when you have 12 and under, or even 15, 16 and under those leadership qualities, maybe still not might not be there, but they can definitely lead on the ice. They can show how hard they work and, never give up attitude. That's pretty much where we start with our leadership with young players.
Susan:Hmm. Mm
David:See, it's hard to have a leader saying, you're late for, you're late for the game. You're late for practice. That's mom and dad, right? That's mom and dad who's late. You can't blame the kid for that.
Susan:Yup.
David:I think with kids though, man, the best place they can lead is on the ice. Show us what you have. I'd never give up cheering on the bench. Come on guys. Let's go girls. Come on. Go, go, go. Let's be first on the puck. Let's be ready. All right, and that's what a great leader does in the early stages.
Susan:I guess what you're saying, I'm going to repeat back a little bit, is that if you choose to have the strategy where you have the first and second lines play a lot and you have your third and fourth lines play less for whatever reason. that both the coach and the captain or assistant captains have an important role to play to make everyone feel like they're part of the team. You need to give those third and fourth line players something to do and not to just tie their value to their ice time and also give them opportunities to move up as they practice through the year.
David:Absolutely. You know what, I think when you're dealing with kids, everyone's going to progress, but you want to have them have an opportunity. Maybe I'm getting on the power play once or getting on the penalty killing once and showing them that you do care and you want them to develop. And if things don't work out, that's okay. But you can maybe say, Hey, you need to improve on your stick handling and passing skills. Keep bringing that up. Keep working hard, but we're going to put you out there in the PK, or we're going to put you out there and check in their top line. And you know what, you got to keep pumping the tires of these young people because it's very easy that they beat themselves up very quickly too.
Susan:Okay. this is great. I want to, ask you some very practical questions because I don't, I just don't have the hockey knowledge. Okay. So if you have a power play team, that means one of their players is in the penalty box. And so you are up one player.
David:Correct. That's
Susan:right? Okay. And so what lines would you put, or what, special teams would you put on a power play team? Do you put your best players out or do you put some of these other players out?
David:During a hockey game, it all depends, who's up next, if you want to put it that way. Fresh. Because we talked about that. Who's fresh. But sure, we definitely want to score a goal or at least create as many opportunities, scoring opportunities we can against that other team. And I'm looking for puck handlers, people that can pass the puck well and people that can shoot the puck well, those are the kind of the offensive skills that we're looking for right now. We're not looking for, the player that gets the puck and handles it like a hot potato, you know, put it down the ice. We need someone that has confidence with the puck. We need the players with confidence with the puck. That's who I'm going to be looking for to put on to the power play, to create these scoring opportunities.
Susan:Okay. Now on the flip side, we have a penalty and so we're down a player and we have to put out our penalty killing team. What kinds of players would you put on the penalty killing? And again, depends on who you have up available, who's fresh, that kind of thing, but what would you be looking for?
David:I'm definitely looking for someone that, has their head on a swivel all the time. someone who can think a little bit of strategy, not just tunnel vision on the puck only. Because we're short. Where are they passing that puck? And then if we do steal the puck, they gotta be good at battles, stealing the puck, and icing. If you can't shoot the puck 10 feet, you can't get the puck out of our zone.
Susan:Mm
David:Any good for the hockey team, because we want to clear the puck out of the zone so that we get it to the other end to kill time on the penalty. So you know what, I'm looking for someone that's smart, that's gritty, that's quick, that has their stick out, head on a swivel, and has a little bit of knowledge up here on the PK. Mm hmm.
Susan:This is really helpful. I like it when things are spelled out like that.
David:Okay, and you know what? Players, they got to be able to work as a team. You know what, you have that chit chatting going on, but and also not afraid to block pucks, to get in the way and block a shot if need be too. And every age group is a little bit different, but primarily it's you want to hunt that puck down and we want to get the puck out of our zone down to the other end. Mm hmm.
Susan:Okay, so let's look at the other end of the spectrum. Say you have decided that, you don't want to have unequal ice time. You want to roll your lines. I think I know what that looks like. It looks a lot like house league. You'll have strong players and less strong players. Do you mix them up so that every line is similar strength?
David:A little bit, you know what, maybe on paper you want to mix it up. So you go we have a strong center and a, a strong winger and a weak winger. And you go all the way through down the lineup and on paper, it'll look great. And then when you get to practice or you get to the game, you're like, this is not working out because in hockey and sports, there's chemistry. Some players just play better with other players. That doesn't mean that all the top players are going to be on the same line together, but there is some chemistry that you have to figure out there as well. And I remember coaching Peewee AAA, and we had a boy, Lee, and he was on defense, and he was struggling so much on defense. And then we had another boy, named John, he was playing forward, and he was struggling on the forward. And then, it's so weird. One was suited more for forward, and one was suited more for D, but when we switched them, it's like magic occurred. It's just like... Lee was better at forward and John was so much better on defense and it all worked out. So that's part of coaching. You got to figure out the chemistry not only of lines but also of individuals as well and not be afraid to move players. Don't don't kind of put them in, you are at defense or you are this, I think there's an opportunity to grow them at all positions. So you just have to work with it. That's coaching.
Susan:I think this makes sense. I'm just going to ask you more questions
David:Yeah.
Susan:about very gritty details. Okay. Last year I never had the opportunity to play my two best defenders together. They ended up on different lines because I would have one strong defender and one less strong defender. I had two lines of defenders and so one of the consequences of that is that my two best D never played together. And I think it would have been a really lovely experience for them to know what it's like to play with another strong D.
David:I would have done it. I would have just said, we're going to try it once. We're going to see how it's what it's going to look like. and what it's all about. You just go for it. You just try it. So you have your other D partner, maybe not be as strong. now it's about for them and you as a coach to show them when they're on the ice together, this is how you play. And when you have the two strong players together, it's not okay, now we're just going to go for it. One has to hang back as they support each other, but it's really quite unique. It is come back to that coaching again when you have two weak ones, you have two strong ones, and you're going to have that sometimes. It could be through illness, could be through injuries, whatever it is, but maybe it's a good time to try it once during a game. Absolutely. Yeah, you got to go for it.
Susan:Yeah, in retrospect, like at the end of the season, I looked back and said, I should have done that. I think I agree with you.
David:You know what, you can't play safe all the time. You can't play, you know what, you got to take challenges. You got to take these little risks. And you say it to the team, you're in the dressing room, we're going to try something really different today. we're going to move all the defense to forwards, and all the forwards to defense. We're going to shake it up, all right? And they're going to go, what?
Susan:And this is what the regular season is for. And that's why the regular season is so long. You can do all these experiments and this is where you, grow and figure out who everybody is.
David:Absolutely, because the biggest time I grew as a player is when I played defense for six months, or for half a season, not six months, but half a season. And I'm a centre. I play forward. That is my natural go to. And then when I moved back to defense, I was like, What do I do? How does this all work? And all of a sudden, you know what, there's a whole bunch of one on ones you have to learn and better positioning. But I really learned where the forwards needed to be on breakouts. I really needed, I needed to learn that. So then when I went back to playing forward, I couldn't be up by the far blue line looking for those stretch passes. I needed to be back in a lot closer to support the defense. So it grew me as a player. It grew me as a player.
Susan:That growth in the six months, did you go into it looking to grow or was this something that came out over time?
David:It came back to more ice time. It made me really happy, right? I knew that the coach was rolling the lines with the forwards and we had nine forwards but only four defense. And I was like, do I want to play every other shift? Or, so there was a little bit of selfishness, if you want to say it that way, but it's so weird how I learned from that selfishness to grow as a player. It's interesting.
Susan:I don't want to completely dismiss selfishness cause I say, I think selfishness has a place, in terms of advocating for yourself, but also when you have the puck. Take the puck Make an opportunity for yourself as opposed to going, I have a hot potato. I'm going to ditch it. I'm going to dump it. I get it away from me.
David:The whole idea of the hockey game is controlling the puck, number one. You want to control that puck. And you're going to have players that don't have the confidence to control the puck. They want to give the puck away. Or they're afraid to shoot because, if I shoot and miss, or if I don't score, everyone's going to be looking at me like I've failed. So there's a lot of little small things that's going on out there. A player that loves control of the puck and loses it and doesn't care? That's great. Someone that shoots all the time and doesn't mind missing or the goalie making those saves? That's great, too. But you don't want them doing that all the time, Susan, right? There's a mix. And the best question that, I can't remember who gave it to me. It could have been my dad, who knows? He says, When you're going in on the net, who has a better opportunity to score? You? Or your player or your team, one of your teammates. And so that was the quick question whether to pass or to shoot. That question there really elevated my game to another level. Just that one question, but it happened just in a split second, a microsecond and I knew when to pass and I knew when to shoot.
Susan:These are the cool things that can happen when it's not only about winning.
David:Absolutely. But the main goal. Always wanted to win. It's in me. I'm super competitive and I've had to learn that, losing sucks, yes, but... what did I learn from losing? How am I going to grow from losing? You need to just push it over. Like the Toronto Blue Jays, when they got swept by four games, I think the fans are more mad. The players. The players are mad, don't get me wrong, but they gotta learn and grow and move on, right? So we gotta move on from that. What's more important? It's your teammates. It's your 15 players on the team and hopefully everyone gets along with each other. Maybe not everyone gets along with each other, getting along with each other and becoming friends. After. Absolutely. So we're going to bring on John Bird, one of my coaches and one of my, favorite coaches who, you know, growing up playing in the GTHL. Hey John. How you doing, buddy?
John:I'm doing great, Dave. Thanks for having me. name's John Bird, coached about 25 years in the G. And, plenty of experience to offer and ask away,
David:Beautiful, so at Bantam, it would be, a classification U 15. I don't know, something like that. John was one of my coaches. We won the city championship. I'm a player, along with many other players, who felt that, the best players should be on the ice all the time. But John rolled the lines and was very successful. John, when did you learn to roll the lines and that was the best thing to do for hockey teams?
John:I'm not really sure I learned it. I believe I kind of fell into it. Just the progression of the teams I had, starting from house league, A, double A. We always had such a good group of kids and parents and, we wanted everybody to learn and have fun. And it just seemed to... It just seemed to work so well. I come from a very competitive background where coaches, didn't necessarily play all the players all the time and maybe subconsciously, that helped me to decide, it's better to play everybody fairly. Obviously you have your moments where a coach has his time to play certain players, play his best five players, the end of a period, beginning, you're up a goal, down a goal, but I think with our team, everybody just seemed to, just enjoy it so much more when everybody felt involved and felt the success of all our wins and you know It sure helped that we did really well. So that was the big thing
Susan:Did you have to get everyone to a certain skill level before you did that, or you just did that and let things play out?
John:I think we let things play out. We certainly you know worked with everybody on power plays and penalty kill and tried to obviously get everybody's skill level up That, they felt comfortable being in the situations we put them in. For the most part, it worked out really well. Actually, one of the funniest stories that I've ever had was when we were in the city championship, we're in the final game, it was tied seven points each and we were pretty much rolling the lines. And one of the mothers came down to me and said, John, what are you doing? Putting my son on the ice, we want to win this game. And I went, no, we're just, we're going to go with the flow and, let it all work. Hey, and thank goodness we won.
Susan:that would be my next question is like, how do parents react when you do this? You have this mom who didn't think her son should be on and you probably have some people at the other end too, where they think their child should be on.
John:Yeah, it goes both ways for sure. One of the biggest things I learned was at the beginning of the year, you have to explain to the parents and the boys. what your philosophy is going to be as far as ice time goes. So if everybody's aware of your philosophy at the beginning, it's very hard for them to argue during the season because you just point out to them, I explained this to the, at the beginning of the year to you, that this is what I was going to do. and then a lot of them will realize, yeah, That's true. and also when you do, give extra ice time to guys, it should be the guys that deserve it during that game, you don't go in with a preset. Okay, these are the five guys I'm going to go with because they may not be having a great a game as some of the other guys. So if you give them a shake, to play that, that last minute or something, again, it just builds confidence in everybody. It builds confidence in the team. And, it just seems to work a lot better.
David:So John, you know what, obviously motivating the good players is easier, but, how do you bring those lower players, the ones that are, maybe struggling a little bit, or they feel that they shouldn't be on the ice, cause I've had players come to me, Coach, don't put me on, and I'm like, I'm definitely putting you on now, because you're trying to help each and every individual. How did you help the, the weaker ones as, if you want to put it that the lesser skilled?
John:I think you, you got to put your arm around them and encourage them every little good play they make. I think you got to pump that up with them and tell them, what a good play they made there. And, garner their confidence each and every step along the way. When they do make a mistake, I think you just, take them to the side and talk to them quietly about it and just, try and work out what they could have done better on that play. And it's just a step by step process that, you just got to keep motivating them and let them know you're in their corner and you're going to battle through it together.
Susan:I really like that answer. I think one of the things I didn't do enough when I was coaching last year was having one on one conversations with players. I relied very much on the group conversations in the dressing room, and so that's something that's worth trying for me in the future.
John:I think it's very important to have one on ones because then you get them away from the group and you know how they're feeling and what their expectations are and get the mood of them. And, then I think you can react better to each and every player individually when you're coaching them.
Susan:How do you do this? Do you wait outside the dressing room or do you take them with you outside the dressing room? Because I can see that being a little bit awkward too.
John:Yes it is. I try to more do it in practice time where it's not as obvious right after a game. Emotions are high after a game. I don't like to the players too much after a game. I like to let it sink in a little bit. We always used to call it the 24 hour rule. That everybody waits and lets the emotions and everything calm down a little bit. And then you just, have a general conversation with them, whether it's on the ice, drills are being done, you call somebody over and you just have a little chit chat with them. And then it's not as obvious that you're centering somebody out or, something's going on. And if you're doing it all the time, players just accept that, hey, coach is talking to me and, it's not a big deal. He's not, doing one thing or the other. He's just, wants to get to know me and my situation and that. So I think the guys get used to it over several practices.
Susan:That's, that's helpful. I've tried it and they just look like, look at me like a space alien. Why are you talking to me? I thought we're playing hockey, but I think I just need to stick with it more.
John:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
David:I know that when I first started to coach, I had my parents meeting in the beginning and then that's the last time I went to talk to the parents. Just let me coach. Just let me work with your kid. Let me develop your kid because that's where my wheelhouse was. Obviously now I knew it had to change. John, when you're working with parents, has it changed from when you first started to maybe potentially now or to the, at the end?
John:Yes. Very big change. obviously the, the first few years, parents were just happy that their kids were playing. And again, my first few years I was coaching at A and double A, where obviously it's a little bit less serious. Up in the Triple A, everything's a little bit more pronounced and all that. And then obviously in my later years, and you get into the bantams and the minor midgets and that everybody has this goal of OHL, NHL and uh, agents become involved, so it becomes a little bit more different dynamics. But I think as long as you try to keep the lines of communication open, going back to that handout at the beginning of the year, if you're following that all the way through, I think you can go back to that and explain to parents, I said this is what I told you at the beginning of the year it was gonna happen. As far as discipline goes and ice time and all that, and most of the parents obviously settle down a little bit and agree with you or walk away, at least maybe not agreeing, but understanding where you're coming from.
David:Mm-hmm.
John:Obviously today's game, coaching is a lot more difficult and, you certainly gotta be more prepared at the beginning of the year for everything and how you are going to handle all the situations that come up.
David:So, what John's saying is that you need a really good manager.
Susan:out.
John:very important.
Susan:the manager is definitely important, but, it also means you, you as the coach need to have this philosophy from the outset that you can explain. And also to get it down on paper so the parents have it, and that you can refer to it.
John:Absolutely. You have to have that parent handout at the beginning of the year that each and every parent has it. If they sign off on it, then, everybody's starting, from the same page and, everybody knows where they're heading and what's going to happen throughout the year.
Susan:Dave, do you want to wrap up, or ask any additional questions?
David:it was great having John on today. His perspective on ice time was invaluable and for a lot of us, for a lot of us new coaches, to realize that each player on the team needs to feel important. And their value on the team as well. Ice time is definitely where they feel the value of offering their services to the team and a coach is in full control of that ice time. John, thank you for coming on and, we'll talk soon.
John:Thank you very much for having me. It was a lot of fun.
Susan:We'll have to have you again. Thanks, John.
John:Any time. Thank you very much.
David:It's really great having John Bird on today. What you realize and what you learn is that sometimes it's trial and error and with John, he was flexible. You could definitely tell that it wasn't something that was just came to him. It was just like, he knew the value that there was more to having the whole team play rather than just, one or two lines playing. And I think that's the biggest thing that we can take away from John, is that you gotta be flexible. You really gotta be flexible and work with your team.
Susan:Flexibility and taking some risks, too. Being willing to try new things. That was a lesson for me for when I put lines together in this coming year. it's okay to put two strong players together and let the two weak, less skilled players sort it out.
. David:Absolutely. Because you don't know what's gonna happen. Maybe something good will happen from that, and that's all you're doing. Maybe you give more confidence to those two weak players. And then you give more confidence to those two strong players, in different ways. Absolutely. And that flexibility and rolling the lines and using everyone worked for John. And why did it work for John? Because he won. Obviously he had good players, but you know what? He won. those good players during practice worked with each other.
Susan:I think the winning is a consequence of working together. I think you can get many of the benefits. even if you don't win. You can have the team cohesiveness, good morale, and people having a good time, the connection and learning life lessons. The winning is the icing on the cake. It's, the cherry on top.
David:Susan, the cherry on the top is the championship trophy. You know what, the winning, that's the cherry on the top. But there are so many other things you can win at. And we sometimes go blind to that. We forget about that. And the only thing that we look at is the scoreboard. And the scoreboard isn't always where you're winning.
Susan:Completely agree. I think that's a good place to end this episode, David.
David:Absolutely. All right. I think it's a great place to end too, Susan. what a great day. I hope you have a great afternoon.
Susan:Thanks for tuning in to Coaching Call. We'll be back next week to answer more of your questions. The audio podcast is available from directories like Apple, Spotify. The vidcast is available on YouTube. Send us your questions in the comments or on our website at newcoach. ca. Bye!