4 October
Practice after our first game focuses on some basic team skills by introducing basic breakouts to the team. During their time in squirts, we used the final 10 minutes of our half-ice scrimmage to focus on breakouts as teams were constantly moving the puck up and down the ice. When kids move up to squirts its a different game, as one would expect the transition from half to full ice to be. They grasp the concept, but we sense that it will take time to fully ingrain into the players that they can’t just skate the length of the ice repeatedly with the puck. The puck must move with passes, and I remind the players that the fastest thing on the ice isn’t a player, coach, or referee, it’s the puck.
I’m lucky to work with coaches who think differently than I do. We end practice with a game of dodgeball, which provides some fun, some competition, and maintains an element of skating development with starts, stops, and moving on edges. Scott added this to the agenda, and it’s a good way to keep the kids involved in the practice and leaving the ice on a high note. Sometimes I forget that the players on the ice are 9 and 10, and that simple games like dodgeball or freeze tag maintain levity in practice, ensuring that players look forward to the next practice.
Prowl Squirts end the practice with a game of dodgeball
9 October
Our first road game of the season in Virginia Beach, and thankfully it’s later in the afternoon. It can be painful waking up at 5:30 for the short drive to our rink in Yorktown, but the hour drive to the VA Beach rink can be rough. Anyone who has ever been in the Hampton Roads area understands that traffic jams can happen at any time. There can be a fatal crash in the HRBT at midnight or 3 in the afternoon all the same. So it’s an hour drive, and we always factor an extra 30 minutes for traffic. On this day, we arrive at the rink a bit early, as the roads were generally clear.
We have eight skaters for the game, and run 5 offense and 3 defense each period, rotating players at different positions each period. This is a philosophy I intend to generally follow throughout the year as I think players at the 10U level should gain experience and appreciation for each position. With only eight skaters a couple wind up playing more defense or forward, and in the third period I ask for volunteers for defense, and three players instantly raise their hands.
The game has a rough start with the VA Beach team scoring six goals in the first half of the first period. Our players are generally flat-footed and not attacking the puck. Multiple times the opposing team skates the puck past our players who stand still and watch them skate by. I look at Joe (my fellow coach) and think to myself that the game is going to get out of hand. There is no mercy rule in hockey like there is in little league baseball. A team can run up the score to a hundred if the talent mismatch is great enough. While I don’t think they will score 100, in my mind 20 is a distinct possibility. But then things change.
Our team starts attacking the puck, getting to the open pucks before the VA Beach players and putting a player on the puck when VA Beach has possession. We start to control the puck for greater lengths of time in their zone, get some good shots, and if not for the terrific goaltending of the other team, we probably score a couple goals. At the end of the first period the score is still 6-0, but the feeling of the game has flipped.
The second period feels like a new game. We get more shots on goal, control the puck and generally the flow of the game. The opposing goaltender continues to make some amazing saves, but halfway through the second Brendan gets by the defense on a breakaway and puts one through what has been up until now an impenetrable fortress. On the next shift a similar play occurs, and we find ourselves down 6-2. VA Beach puts another one in the net, and we go into the third period down 7-2.
Joe and I take the minute between periods to tell the kids how great they are skating. When they go back out to start the third, we look at each other and briefly mention how great the team is playing. The final period resembles the second, although we don’t score any goals. We had chances, shots, and the advantage of attack zone and time of possession, and the game ends with the final score showing VA Beach 8, Prowl 2.
Despite the score there are tons of positives to take away from the game. Most importantly the kids didn’t quit, didn’t get discouraged, and competed hard the entire game. In team sports when another team jumps to a quick lead the negative ions start flowing fast (and yes, I know the positive/negative ion thing isn’t real). Being a hockey player is more than the ability to skate fast, make tape-to-tape passes, and to put the puck in the top corner of the net. Being a hockey player is about effort, grit, and competing the entire game. You can learn a lot more about an athlete observing them play down six goals in the third period than you can watching a player skate around a cone in a drill during practice. Indeed, half of being a hockey player is comprised of traits we don’t teach on the ice at practice twice a week.
11 October
I miss the first practice of the week while attend the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) convention in D.C. Brendan still makes it to practice as Coach Scott picks him up and drops him off at the house. It’s nice as Brendan gets a chance to play and spend time with one of his better friends on the team. One of the greatest aspects of youth hockey and youth sports in general is the relationships and friendships you make with other players you’re growing up with. As an adult, we form friendships with other coaches and parents of other kids on the team.
13 October
Each week we have two practices, Monday, and Wednesday, followed by a game on the weekend. At the conclusion of each game, we award a MVP puck to the player of the game. This week we start a new tradition to name the hardest worker at practice throughout the week. I get the idea from Pete Carroll’s book Win Forever, where he started a tradition at USC where he recognized the hardest working player at practice each week. I initially thought of awarding a stuffed panther (our team logo is a panther), or a small trophy, but my fellow coaches recommend a championship belt that we can pass on one week to the next. It’s a brilliant idea. At the end of practice we call up J to award him the title, and his teammates love it. They bang their sticks on the ice, and the new tradition is a success. Rewarding and recognizing effort can be just as, if not more important than praising talent.
The Prowl Squirts Hardest Worker Championship Belt
It’s often said that there is no such thing as a new idea. This is mostly true, and I find many of the ideas as a youth coach from reading books by other coaches and athletes. Here is a quick list of some of the books I have found helpful over the past couple of years. I will add more in future posts.
Behind the Bench by Craig Custance: Less of a hockey book and more of a leadership book. Behind the Bench follows discussions and interviews with multiple NHL Stanly Cup winning coaches. The coaches explain their philosophy and what they do different than anyone else. The interesting aspect of coaches like Mike Sullivan and John Tortorella is that they had opportunities early in life to pursue other careers that at the time offered stability and a solid paycheck, but chose to start at next to nothing to pursue their dream. Moreover, one coach offers the insight that you never know where the next great idea will come from, it could be a rookie skater, or the guy who cooks breakfast. Be open minded, communicate, and always be willing to learn.
Win Forever by Pete Carroll: In this book, Pete Carroll describes his coaching philosophy and how it led to multiple championships at USC and a Super Bowl victory with the Seattle Seahawks. Although Carroll is a football coach, his theories on practice and running a team are applicable in all sports. I stole the hardest worker of the week idea from this book.
The Captains Class by Sam Walker: Here the author examines the captains of the greatest dynasties from multiple sports. What Walker discovers is that the captain of these teams wasn’t necessarily the best player on the team, but often the player that possessed a greatness in character. Their character built chemistry on the team, or the team’s intrapersonal dynamics that impact performance. Leadership and athletic ability are two distinct things and something coaches should recognize and understand when picking their team’s captain.
Scotty by Ken Dryden: Ken Dryden is the best hockey writer ever. Whoever comes behind him is a distant second. The Game should be required reading for anyone involved in the sport. But in Scotty: A Hockey Life Like No Other, Ken Dryden talks with Scotty Bowman about his coaching and life’s philosophy, the evolution of the sport and then ranks the greatest teams of all time. Perhaps his main insight is that a coach must understand the players the he or she has, and then apply their talents accordantly. For the most part, coaches at all levels don’t get to choose all their players. Even select teams are constrained by the talent pool they choose from. You can force players into a system, but must design a system to match the players you have so they can attain the fullest potential.
The Playmaker’s Advantage by Leonard Zaichowsky: Here the author provides page after page of wisdom on developing young athletes. From the foundational advice to raise kids who play multiple sports to describing how coaches must tailer practices and games to their age groups. Indeed, when coaching the squirt level trying to employ drills I did in high school simply won’t work. 9- and 10-year-olds are not miniature adults, their brains are still developing, as are their physical skills.
Quiet by Susan Cain: Not a sports book, but one that is worth the time to read for anyone who encounters other human beings. The book describes various personalities with a focus on introverts, and how they differ from extroverts. The next time you see a professional athlete hesitate to talk to the media, or appear uncomfortable at public events, the simple explanation is they are naturally introverted. The book changed how I interact with my kids, as I am raising one extrovert and one who is more introverted. With the latter, I back off on pushing him to interact with crowds, and understand that after periods of excitement (like a hockey game), he needs his quiet time playing with his toys in his room to recharge his emotions. Social overstimulation can have the same effect and be just as exhausting as going a extended time without sleep. As an assistant professor at the staff college, I took the wisdom in this book and applied it to the classroom where I get a feel for who the introverts are, and figure different ways to draw their thoughts into the conversation, thus preventing extroverts from dominating all the discussion. I take this to the rink by seeing a players caution to try a new skill or go first in a drill as retreating from the novelty or overstimulation, not from a disinclination to play hockey.
16 October
Early morning game lining up our P1 players against our P2 players. We bring in a goalie from the peewee team as our normal goalie is playing in a travel team tournament. Between the P1 and P2 teams we have full time goalie and one set of goalie equipment that we rotate between players each week as they volunteer to stand in the net. Because we have one full time peewee goalie and one skater playing goalie, we agree to split the time of each goaltender between the two teams. This helps to maintain a closer and more competitive contest.
The game is generally close, and we win 7-5. The story of the game however is that we can see the players making progress in learning how to play their positions, and more importantly a faster pace of play as our skating drills are starting to pay off. There is a lot of work to be done on positioning, passing, and other skills, but we are only a month into the season. At the very least the game provides another data point on how we will design our practices over the next couple of weeks.
On the ice after our game is the mites. They are short players and ask some of our younger players if they are interested in another game. Brendan and couple teammates jump on the opportunity representing the future of rink rats everywhere. The mites separate into older and more skilled players from the younger and newer to hockey players. So although some kids are playing a level down, its no more than a year and against kids who can play at a higher level.
Brendan has fun, and comes off the ice gassed after the second game. Brendan then makes some interesting comments about the difference in style, and it becomes clear why the transition to squirts is a big jump, and a completely different game. The half ice aspect means skaters are constantly starting and stopping, and skate from one end to the other. Indeed, there is no neutral zone and there is a rapid transition from offense to defense. The 2-minute controlled shifts means skating for longer periods of time, whereas in squirts we tend to change lines at a minute to a minute and a half intervals. Further, there are no faceoffs where a player can take a moment to catch their breath before the referee drops the puck.
Another change when moving to squirts is the necessity to improve backwards skating. Most of the goals come off breakaways, often from the red line or blue line in. Players in squirts often blow by defensive players whose backwards skating skills don’t quite match their ability to skate forwards. We rarely see goals come from sustained pressure in the offensive zone, or from cycling the puck low. The latter type of goals will hopefully come as they move up in age levels.
Overall the main lessons we learned over the past couple weeks is that we need to continue development of skating drills and other hockey fundamentals, but balance that with hockey sense and a basic understanding of what to do with the puck when they gain possession. Finding this balance seems to be the challenge ahead of us.