Today concludes our three-part season-starting series:
Part 1: Why 'Practice Players' Exist and How to Avoid Developing Them
Part 2: Why Flow Drills Suck & Why Coaches Should Throw Away Their Cones and On-Ice Objects
Some of these many need further investigation. We hope these give you great inspiration and direction of how to improve your practices.
Principle #0 - Why We Play Sport
Before we even get started, we need to understand why we involve ourselves in sports in the first place. Namely, it’s to have fun and to have a sense of community, while also teaching/learning lessons that apply to life beyond the field of play.
A good barometer on whether Principle #0 was been covered is that players want to be at the rink and around their teammates. Same with parents too!
Ideas & Examples:
The atmosphere is energetic
Players are breaking a mental sweat
Do players want to get to the rink early or stick around late?
We love the environment and guiding principles from Norway, a country that punches well above it’s weight class in developing world-class athletes and active, healthy adults & children.
Rather than running warmup activities on the ice, jump immediately into the meat of practice.
Do we really need a traditional warmup activity? Can we accomplish a proper warmup off-ice?
This can help players turn the switch to compete mode when they hit the ice
Starting practice with fun
Kids want to play. Hell, adults want to play. Avoid working on puckless skating drills on the first day of practice.
Consider starting practices with small-sided games (SSGs). Players will never be late (by choice) again.
Choose SSGs over ‘bag skates’
Most poor performance is not due to lack of care. It’s usually an energy, focus, and fun problem or something beyond hockey.
Bag skates do very little more than tire the players and make them hate being on the ice.
Meanwhile, playing a game increases focus levels and is fun. They raise morale and players become more engaged.
Related: Norway's Athletic System That Has Led to Olympic Success
Principle #1 - Environment is the First Teacher
The first principle is to create a great environment. This is because the environment is always the first teacher. Creating a safe and enjoyable environment is vital.
Ideas & Examples:
Avoiding rote drills and creating practice players
Working directly on technique or reads. Nothing in-between that is actually a workout disguised rather than player development
Reads from the environment
Representative practice activity design
This is skill development within a tactical activity rather than isolated by itself.
Constraints-led approach (CLA) and game-based approach.
Derived from game study are areas that players and teams want to improve upon
Work on what we want to develop and improve
High-frequency skills
Similar to the style of play you seek to deploy
Repetition without repetition
Repetitions within an environment where each will be different
As we learned from Martin St Louis… a bad read (learning opportunity) is better than no read at all.
Principle #2 - Player Responsibility
The second principle is to have players take on the responsibility and prepare them to be leaders. Parents and coaches cannot make the decision for their children. Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.
Ideas & Examples:
Coachless Activities… Coaches should focus on coaching, mot running activities
A good start is having No Whistle, No Whiteboard, No Problem.
Coachless = Don’t need coaches for the activity. No coach pass or dump is needed
Whistleless = Players do not need whistles to start or join the activity.
Actual skills of coaching are Observation, Explanation, Demonstration, Checking of Understanding, and Question Asking
Non-Linear Activities
Players choose their own adventure. There are no set routes and decisions.
Controlled chaotic practice environments help in the development of anticipation and problem-solving.
Coaches Questioning & Guiding
Activities/Drills have limited value. Increasing what players are able to see and process is extremely valuable.
A great general way to approach this is to have a curious mindset and try to learn from the players. A teacher who’s still learning has sky-high value.
Moving roles (Switching mind’s focus) and positions
As we saw in, When And How To Choose A Position In Ice Hockey, hockey is a late-specialization sport.
There is great value in practicing different roles and positions at practice. One of my favorite things to do as a coach is to ensure players are never filling the same role/position twice in a row.
Principle #3 - Developing Transferable Skill
Working on Skills That Transfer, Skills That Last
Some skills are more valuable than others. What skills do players need for the season? What skillsets do players need for the long term?
Aligning play style with practice design
If you play a possession style then keep-away type activities are a must. Progress then to a goal orientation within the activity.
Avoiding point shots? Create situations for defensemen to understand their other reads
I like my players to read off each other and play a lot of small sided games that require positional rotations or no set positions at all.
Drills and activities that require perception, prediction, decision, execution/action, and outcome.
Giving bad pucks/passes to players to challenge players to turn poor pucks into good pucks
80% of puck touches start outside the dots.
Practices tend to have more perfect passes than in a game. Giving poor passes on purpose is a great idea.
Utilize ability-based grouping to find the Goldilocks challenge level.
Have a great player? Find ways to handicap them
Have a weaker player? Find ways to set them up for more success.
Utilizing practice video to give feedback and encourage practice to game transfer.
Personally, I like to watch practice film and send clips to coaches and players.
There are many benefits to watching your practice film. There are more puck touches and purposeful situations to isolate for improvement or praise.
Good luck and have a great season!!
Further Reading
Linking practice to games via practice to practice to game transfer
How USA Hockey is enhancing and improving their coach’s education