This is the last post on creating recruiting videos and it focuses on where to upload your video to share with coaches.
There are two types of situations to share videos with coaches. The first, is directly one-to-one with a specific coach and the second is one-to-many.
Video Analytics
Ideally, in both situations your want to post the video in a manner where you can track some metrics about your video. This could include various attributes like who has watched you video, how many times the video has been watched. In addition, you might also be able to track location, how long users watched the video and where the user came from prior to watching your video (e.g. search, email, social media etc.)
YouTube
The easiest method to upload a video to share is using YouTube. A public YouTube video lets your video be found via search engines and within YouTube and you can easily track views and additional measurements about your video. You can also upload the same or personalized videos for specific coaches or schools separately to track viewership by team. In most situations, YouTube offers all of these hosting services for free.
Vimeo
Another similar service is Vimeo which offers both free and paid options depending on which capabilities you might want for hosting , tracking and possibly editing capabilities.
Social Media Platforms
Many student-athletes also use social media platforms, such as, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram, to share their recruiting videos. This allows coaches to view the videos at their convenience and share them with other members of their coaching staff.
You can also store video files in a private folder in the cloud using Google Drive, Dropbox or Box and share links to those files with specific teams or individuals. Once again, using trackable links and privacy controls, you can control and specify who has access to you files and check if coaches have watched the videos.
Other Channels
It’s important to note that college coaches and recruiters may also use other resources to evaluate prospective student-athletes, such as game film, scouting services, and in-person evaluations. Therefore, it’s important for student-athletes to showcase their skills and abilities through multiple channels to increase their visibility to college coaches.
Team Website
One last category is the host the video on the same site where you publish you online hockey resume. It can be on your team site, using a recruiting service or on your Champs App profile page. Currently Champs App only allows YouTube video links, but in the future you will be able to store your videos directly on your profile page then share and track who has watched you videos.
Feel free to share your method of hosting your highlight videos – please send us your preferred method and we can add them to this post.
This post is not about creating professional hockey videos for teams or coaches. Nor is it intended to help with analytics or stat tracking like Hudl or Instat. Instead it is simply just to help players and parents make simple highlight videos college coaches want to see from potential recruits. As a result, we will only cover basic tools to help edit and produce these types of videos to the exclusion of fancy stat software packages used for more sophisticated needs.
There are dozens of premium hockey-specific video editing tools out there. This post does not cover in any of them. Feel free to do an online search if you want to find some of the top names in this category. Instead, we will only discuss the common general purpose video editing tools that are most popular and relatively simple to use.
There are also many, many service providers who will be happy to make professional looking videos for you for a fee. Nothing wrong with hiring someone to make your video, but with a little effort, you can save yourself a lot of money.
Candidly, I have used very basic tools to help edit video and create graphics. I’ve never paid for any additional software beyond what I already use either at home or at work. There are many parents (and definitely most players) who have better media-making skills than I do. But what matters is delivering presentable videos that meet the needs of coaches.
As for editing tools, there are many free programs and several movie editing tools which are relatively low cost. All of them are pretty easy to use once you’ve gone up the learning curve on your first couple of videos. . These software packages include iMovie, Final Cut, Adobe, Windows Movie Maker and Microsoft Video Editor. And these days there are many browser-based video editing tools as well.
You can make your own graphics using common graphical editing and presentation tools like Keynote, Adobe, Powerpoint and Google Slides. There are also good, either free or very inexpensive graphical design offerings like Canva and stock image sites.
What to include in all your videos
An intro graphic which provides the basic information about the player. Ideally it includes most of the following:
Profile pic
Birthday
Height
Graduation Year
Current Team
Position
Jersey #
Current Coach
Contact Info (optional)
During each clip/scene use some type of graphic (e.g. circle, arrow etc.) to identify the player
Informational Graphics
Another common element I’ve seen in highlight video (not full games) is some type of on-screen graphic which communicates to the viewer what type of highlight they are about to see. It could be anything from a goal or assist, to a good defensive play or fancy pass. If there are specific critical attributes of a player’s game that you want to emphasize, explicitly calling them out on-screen beforehand can be helpful.
Should you include music?
That is a personal choice. Many coaches have told me they’d prefer not to listen to a soundtrack with the video, but they can always mute the sound of any video if they don’t want to hear it.
I am sure I am missing some additional editing tools and other methods of cutting video, so please feel free to send us your methods and we can add them to this post.
In both the US and Canada, LiveBarn is the most popular hockey streaming service. What is great about LiveBarn is that you can easily download either 30 second clips or full games. While sometimes the quality isn’t great or the camera is sometimes not focused on the puck, in general it is one of the most consistent sources of footage that you can use.
The second most popular game streaming available is from HockeyTV. Depending on the event and/or rink, the service has a very good browsing capability to find specific games and navigating within games. The big drawback for HockeyTV is that you need to pay an extra fee to download specific games – which makes it expensive to use for editing full games. My trick is to just use my phone’s camera to record specific highlights from of the HockeyTV screen.
Additional Streaming Services
There are also other hockey streaming services available in specific regions or events. For example, in Minnesota there are rink-specific feeds that you can pay to watch games. And there is also the GameOn streaming service in Canada that is available for major events and specific rinks. Once again, the fees vary either by one-time access to events (e.g. tournament or showcase) or subscriptions.
Recoding Games Yourself (or by someone on your team)
At almost every rink, you will find at least one parent with either an iPad or video camera on a tripod recording or streaming a game. The quality is usually very good and as long as they camera person pays attention the entire game, there is usually some great footage.
In addition, I consistently see at least one parent along the glass takes out their phone every time their kid is on the ice and start the recording their shifts.
One more method is to use GoPro cameras. This is my personal favorite source of game footage as a supplement to LiveBarn. It is especially good for goalies. While you only need one camera and you can decide which end is more appropriate to record based on your player and period, I like to use two cameras at both ends of the rink behind the goalies. The only challenge with using GoPros is that it is a lot of work. Beyond shelling out ~$200 or more for a camera, memory card and necessary accessories to stick it to the glass, you also need to make sure you have enough power to last the entire game. This can be through charging the in-camera batteries or connecting an external battery pack. And remembering to charge the batteries and empty the memory cards before/after games is another chore. However, the payoff is that the quality of the video for offensive plays and goalie footage is about as good as it gets. I can’t tell you how many goalies (and their parents) have asked me to send them video of their end when they know that I recorded their game.
OTHER FOOTAGE SOURCES
Sometimes a game or a highlight is available from some third party that I have seen on social media or know about from our team chat.
Many games are live broadcast or posted to YouTube either by the opposing team or a tournament/showcase organizer (e.g. NAHA Winterhawks games and more). You may be able to find game footage just by doing a search on YouTube. If you have a premium YouTube subscription you can download videos with your account. There are also “free” websites to download YouTube videos, but since many of the sites are filled with suspicious ads and potential malware, I won’t link to any of them here. I would just suggest you use caution when using one of these services.
Similar to YouTube, many parents live stream games using their personal social media accounts. I have used footage from Faceboook Live and SeasonCast . You may not be able to download the full game video, but you can use your phone to capture short highlights.
Social Media
Every once in a while I will find a short highlight I want to use on Twitter or Instagram. Usually someone else posted a great play from an angle or a shot that is better than what I have on my footage, so I find a way to capture or download it.
One more trick I use is a screen recording software (sometimes I use Screencast – but you can also just use Zoom to record your screen) to capture and download video from a 3rd party source that is not available for easy download.
I am sure I am missing some additional sources of footage and other methods of capturing game video, so please feel free to send us your methods and we can add them to this post.
One of my biggest frustrations over the last 18 months or so has been about providing feedback to players. Across many different playing environments I have been consistently disappointed in the lack of sophistication and priority on giving insightful, actionable feedback to players. This post discusses the good and bad of hockey coach feedback to players.
Here is what I’ve seen what most coaches are good at:
1. In-game feedback
For the most part, coaches have no problem talking to players after a shift and have a conversation about what just happened. Some coaches are more positive and constructive than others (e.g. “What did you see?” rather than “Here is what you did wrong…”). I doubt there are many coaches who last a reasonable amount of time without providing this basic level of constructive player feedback.
2. Overall team style of play / team concepts
I won’t say systems – because some youth coaches do play systems and others have a type of hockey they want to play which focuses more on skills rather than set plays and rules. In general, coaches know how to set theses expectations and work on the in practice. Thus it can be pretty easy to give this kind of feedback either on the bench or in the locker room.
However, here’s what coaches generally aren’t good at:
A. Having position-specific, age and level appropriate development framework
What are the prioritized skills and attributes a player should be competent in? What are their biggest strengths that they can leverage? What areas do they need to level up so that they can minimize those attributes being exposed. For example, skating, puck handling, shot strength and accuracy. From what I’ve seen, it is usually one-off feedback with the player having to work on it with by themselves or with their own skills development coach.
Having a coach show personalized clips to an individual player is very rare. Many coaches do not have the time or resources to provide player-specific reviews. However, it can be a shared responsibility between player, coach and parent to clip together game footage and to discuss together.
B. In-season feedback
Providing individual report cards or interim check-ins throughout the season on what strengths and development opportunities like skills and/or concepts for a player. For example, Darryl Belfry likes to look at players over a 3 or 4 game segment and track with video and basic stats (e.g. how many puck touches turn into a positive or negative play) and then discuss them with a player. Some coaches give mid-year reviews for their players and in my experience it looks like a bullet list of 3 or items for the player to work on. However, the onus is then on the player to figure out how to get better at those items on their own.
C. Holistic, high level feedback
This is a tough one.
Being candid with a player about where they are with their game at the moment can be a very tough conversation regardless of the players abilities. All players are an unfinished product. And in youth hockey they are still a long way from their peak potential – so providing the appropriate context and perspective is not always easy.
Why don’t all coaches provide holistic feedback? Some…
Just aren’t good coaches (or at least not as good as they think they are)
Don’t have a long-term development framework for players at each level
Don’t know how to provide feedback effectively
Don’t invest the time in the process (don’t have time)
It is not a priority for them
Don’t have an incentive to put in the time
Don’t have a framework
Fear of parent/player reaction
Politics
Unfortunately, I have seen the above at almost every level, but most disappointing has been seeing it at the highest levels of hockey. For example, in a rare instance of this being done well…one player who was in consideration for a national team, received lots of feedback and what the coaches wanted to them do this season. However, what was more common are the many examples where other players attending national camps received little to no meaningful feedback, even when requested. It seems that unless a coach or organization has a vested, long-term interest in a player or team, they will not put in the time or effort that most players need.
As a parent or a youth player, it is important to be realistic on the types of feedback to expect from your team coach based on the level of play and the club/program you signed up for. In most situations, you will likely have to go beyond the basic feedback practices of your coach and find ways to supplement them with other experts you trust.
(Note to my kids current coaches: I am not referring to you – this post was mostly written over the past summer and incorporates conversations I’ve had with parents from all over the country).
As the new hockey season begins, many girls and their parents will begin the process of looking at hockey academies for next fall. We went through this process last year with the schools most folks would consider the top three girls hockey academies in the U.S. Here are some of the key learnings from our experience and how our daughter made her decision on which one was right for her.
This post is less about the specific hockey academy my daughter chose to attend this year, and more about the various factors that went into her decision that anyone considering going to a female hockey academy should consider.
In addition, this isn’t meant as a critique of any program – each program has their pros and cons – which is why none of the programs are specifically mentioned. And while there were significant differences in the “candidate experience” for how my daughter was treated by each school during the process, that topic won’t be covered here.
Context: Factors schools look at to be interested in your player
Just like in the work world, recruiting is a two-way street. One of the first items to consider is how good is your player? Being a very good player is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for admission and selection. In addition schools also look at the following:
Grades and academic recommendations
Year/grade of entry into the program
Personality fit with the program
Long term player goals
The application process and essay questions helps schools with assessing many of these factors.
Each player’s journey is unique
Each application is unique because there are a number of attributes that are distinct for the school and the student-athlete. As an example, my daughter was already a sophomore when applying to these schools, and therefore the number of openings for a player who would only attend 2 (or possibly 3) years at the school did indeed impact her consideration. Specifically, the number of spots open for her position (defense) and her age varied by program, since the school needs to have the right balance of ages across both the 16U and 19Uteams. They can’t have 10 D with the same graduation year.
Priorities for Parents & Players:
Here are the 8 factors that we considered for evaluating the three hockey academies (in priority order):
Coaching
Academics
Team Culture
Hockey Facilities
Boarding facilities
Location (distance from home and amenities)
Cost
Recruiting visibility
All the school players get great exposure to college coaches. And while many players play college hockey, not all of them play DI – so it is no guarantee that getting into a hockey academy will mean a DI scholarship or playing in the Ivy League.
Breaking Down the Eight Factors in Evaluating Hockey Academies
1. Coaching
The most important factor was clearly player development. Where did we think our daughter would be the best she could be? And since coaches and skill development are critical to her success, over the two or three years should would be attending, we did back-channel references on all the coaches she would likely be interacting with from current parents and alumni players from each program.
A few questions that you should ask the coaches:
a) Will there be a coach who knows how to coach my player’s specific position? This is even more important for goaltenders.
b) What is the coach’s philosophy about ice time during the season and playoffs? How do you trade off winning vs development?
c) If the player is not on the top line, will they still develop by getting game ice time and receiving productive feedback from the coaching staff (not just being criticized for errors)?
There were indeed significant differences for these answers across programs.
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2. Academics
Getting a solid education while playing hockey is obviously quite important. And while all the hockey academies send players to top schools, it seemed that some were better than others at actually preparing students for the next level in their education. I have no doubt most girls will rise to the occasion when they get to college, but we definitely saw big variation in our perception on how well our daughter would be prepared for university level courses.
Note: If academics were the #1 priority for a player, they should probably consider a New England prep school.
3. Team Culture
At most of the hockey academies, players come from all over the country and were typically the best players on their team prior to arrival. As a result, their attitude towards their teammates and the camaraderie seemed to differ across schools. Some were more humble and accessible, while at others, a sense of superiority, entitlement and cliques were more obvious. If you are going to spend 24 hours a day with your teammates, you will want to make sure you really like spending time with them.
4. Hockey Facilities
Candidly, some of the hockey and training infrastructure available at one of the schools is significantly better than the others. Having 24 hour access to ice time is definitely an advantage for some academies. As well, off-ice training facilities and rehab resources can make a difference. The key is knowing what some of the trade-offs are between programs and which are “must-haves” vs. “nice-to-haves”. It is similar to women’s college teams, some have pro-level facilities, while other top name programs aren’t as lavish, but still consistently are Top 10 teams on the ice.
5. Boarding Facilities
Factors like room size, number of roommates, access to kitchens and food can make a difference to the player. Four people to room is different than two to a room. Meals are obviously a big deal and getting the high quality meals at the right time of day is very important. Other small amenities can matter too, for example, my daughter likes to bake – so that was one of the factors that was a positive for her in her choice.
6. Location
Depending on where you live and how independent your player is, location can matter. Distance from home and the amenities surrounding the school may impact your experience. For us, we would be travelling from the west coast, so it was less important from a parent point of view since all of them were far from home.
7. Cost
Obviously this varies by school and your specific needs. This would include tuition, boarding, hockey and travel costs. Not just the player costs, but also the cost for the parents to travel to games and to the school. There are differences between schools, but you would need to assess the difference in value to you individually for your specific situation.
8. Recruiting Visibility
While this is very important, the reality is that all the U.S. hockey academies are highly scouted and have the top coaches watching many of their games in-person and online. If your player is good enough for their school, they will get seen. Even more importantly, your player’s coaches will have existing relationships with almost all DI and top DIII schools. This is a major asset the academies provide and will certainly give your player access that many other club programs probably don’t have.
Summary
As mentioned above, every player’s path is different, but these were the key themes and factors that drove our daughters decision. If you had a different experience, additional thoughts or questions. Feel free to reach out on social media or here to share your experience.
Last week, I started to explore new teams for my 14-year old son to play on next season. He has played AA hockey the last four seasons, but is ready to play AAA. At the same time, as a family we are considering moving to a new city so both our kids are playing hockey in the same area (my daughter just committed to play at a hockey academy this fall). So I looked at MyHockeyRankings to see which AAA teams were nearby and found a highly rated team.
I then visited the team’s website and found the name and email of the coach for my son’s age group. I immediately cold-emailed the coach, asking if there might be spots open on the team next year. I included a link to my son’s Champs App profile which included his personal and athletic profile. And most importantly, I had 5 videos included on the page. One 2.5 minute video of his hockey highlights from the past season and 4 recent playoff games from LiveBarn which were edited down to just his shifts (so, about 16 minutes each).
Here are a couple of sample profiles to see what a Champs App profile looks like: Girl’s Profile – Boy’s Profile
I was lucky that the coach was very responsive. Later that day the coach emailed me back and said he would take a look. A couple of days later, we scheduled a phone call.
What happened next surprised me a little bit…
To start the call, I joked with the coach that he must be getting hundreds of inquiries from parents saying their kid is the next Connor McDavid and they want their player to try out for his team. He then shared that, yes indeed, he was getting many tryout requests, but none of the parents were sending him all the information and video about their kid like I did. He had even forwarded the profile link to a couple of other coaches to get their opinion. The coach had no idea that I helped build Champs App, but what mattered was that he had all the information he needed (similar to a resume for a job interview) to invite my son to come tryout.
While all the profile information was helpful in getting the coach up-to-speed, it was the videos that were critical to him seeing my son’s level of play. There was enough in the video for him to recognize my son’s strengths as a hockey player and overall skills were at least in the same ballpark as the current players on the team.
Needless to say, the coach just made my day. Not only was my son going to tryout but it was great to see how effective his Champs App profile was in helping him and could help others.
Create your Champs App Profile
We did a lot of research asking college coaches what they wanted to see in a player’s profile for Champs App and now we are seeing it pay off. Now we are starting to spread the word – so feel free to create a Champs App Profile for your player here and share the app with coaches and teammates.
I was doing some research over the holidays to understand the state of women’s hockey in North America and found a few interesting insights between the U.S. and Canadian female hockey participation and coaching at the university level. Here they are:
Overall Female Participation
1. Total hockey participation is about 8% more in Canada over the U.S., but female participation in Canada is 21% more than in the U.S.
Male to Female Participation
2. The ratio of Male to Female hockey players in the U.S. is ~6:1. In other words, female hockey players only make up 15% of all players in the U.S. While in Canada the ratio is ~5:1 while female players represent 17% of all players in Canada.
Under 18 Girls in Canada vs U.S.A.
3. While female hockey players in both the U.S. and Canada grew by a little more than 2% in 2019-20 (compared to male player which had declines in both countries), there are still about 25% more female players under 18 in Canada compared to the U.S.
Female U.S. Division I Women’s Hockey Coaches
4. Only 33% of U.S. Division I women’s hockey coaches are female, while 67% of their assistant/associate coaches are female
Female Canadian U Sports Women’s Hockey Coaches
5. 46% of U Sports Head Coaches in Canada are women while 54% of their Assistant/Associates Coaches are female.
Here is my interpretation of the data:
The U.S. still has some work to do to catch up to Canada on female participation in the sport. “Girls Give Hockey a Try” is a phenomenal start, but I think there is even more that can be done.
I suspect it will take a major change in one of the countries development programs before one will be the dominant hockey power. Due to density issues in the States with less players distributed in more metropolitan areas than Canada, it would take a significant commitment/investment to build a sizeable lead over Canada.
I was expecting to see more female head coaches in both Canada and the U.S.. However, given the male to female ratio of participation in both countries, the male coaching advantage in women’s college hockey is not a complete surprise. I would suspect that these numbers will flip to favor female head coaches over the coming years as they are given more opportunity and the recent generation of women players move into and up the coaching ranks.
I loved Darryl Belfry’s bookBelfry Hockey, but I don’t believe I was Darryl Belfry’s target audience, because I am neither a hockey coach nor a skills instructor. As I mentioned in my first post, I’m just a hockey dad. I do not profess to be a hockey expert, but I do have a deep passion for helping my two kids who currently play 14U AA youth hockey. Thus, as a parent, what did I hope to learn from Darryl Belfry’s book Belfry Hockey? And how could I help apply these lessons?
My goals when reading Belfry Hockey:
An understanding of which skills are important for my kids to develop (i.e. “Skills That Separate”)
See which skills aren’t getting developed with their current coaches
Figure out my options on how they can fill in the skills gap
One of Darryl’s key training objectives is to help a player learn a skill they can use “tomorrow”. Therefore, given Covid’s impact on our season, I took on the challenge of applying these insights immediately with my kids. Here are the takeaways from Belfry Hockey that I have recently tried to implement with my kids.
Teaching my son the concept of Platform Skills vs. Placeholder Skills
Is the skill you’re using a placeholder skill or a platform skill? There’s a big difference between the two.
Page 122 – Chapter 11: Skill Continuum
My son is both a late birthday and not an early-developer like several of his teammates. Therefore, there are times when he has seen less ice time due to his physical development. At the same time, Belfry perfectly describes some of the placeholder skills that my kids have seen from teammates in peewee and bantam hockey who would be considered the top players on their teams getting those additional minutes.
Examples of placeholder skills:
Slap shots off the rush
Using straight-line speed to rush by defensemen along the boards
Banging in rebounds in front of the net
Explaining to a 13-year old that he is building better skills so that two or three years from now he will have more translatable skills to the next level is not simple to understand. But having a framework of “platform vs. placeholder skills” is a simple concept to continually reference until his physical development catches up to his peers.
Tracking High-Frequency Events and Success Rates Using Video
When you’re working with video, you have to be very careful that every player in a game is a like a fingerprint. What we want to see is the detail inside of each fingerprint
Page 162 – Chapter 13 – Video-to-Game Transfer
I record almost every game that my kids play. I use two GoPros to video the game from behind the nets and some rinks also have LiveBarn to provide a third angle. As a result, I have a pretty good asset to begin my analysis with. I used to just look at the quality of each shift individually, but thanks to Darryl Belfry I track the game in a whole new way.
Since reading the book, I have created a spreadsheet to do the following:
Track event frequency and success rates
Edit clips together from 3-4 games by event/game situation so my player can see all the same event-types in a single video (typically 60 – 90 seconds of clips).
Here is a partial summary of an “instance list” from a recent weekend of games for my daughter (who plays defense):
Transfer Tracking: Problem Solving Frequency and Success Rates
Our standard is we want to try and get as many high-frequency elements as possible to be an 8 out of 10 success rate
Page 155 – Chapter 10: Triple Helix: Awareness
Using the metrics from the games, my daughter and I were able to watch each clip and the specific situational context for success & failure. As a result, we were able to see certain patterns emerge that could immediately be worked on, here are a couple of examples:
Trouble when playing the off wing
One pattern we identified right away was that she wasn’t recognizing the handedness of the puck carrier which caused her to attack from a poor angle. This insight was helped by remembering an article about the 88 Summit with Patrick Kane from a couple of years ago.
2. Linear entry vs. change in angle when carrying the puck in across the blue line.
We are now working on way to cross the blue line to get into the “hot zone” with time and space.
Creating Multiple Options for Specific Situations
We want to make sure as part of the Category 1 skills that once the player has established body position and encounters contact, he’s able to use the contact as an asset – an accelerant or an ability to create separation
Page 145 – Chapter 11: Skill Continuum
With my son, one area we have spent a lot of time working on is in the corner or along the wall in the offensive zone. We have been focused on adding multiple options for him to have in his toolkit for these situations, specifically:
a. The Kane Push:
b. Reverse Hits
c. Skating through the hands:
d. Using the trap door:
e. The Chuck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwe_vkUdt34
We shall see if he is able to apply any of these new skills into a game situation, but at least I know he has them as potential tools in his toolkit.
As I used to write in my Grade 5 book reviews, I really liked Belfry Hockey and I recommend it to all my hockey friends and coaches. I plan to write one more post about Belfry Hockey so that a few more concepts are brought to life via visuals and video that are a little hard to digest from just reading the book.
In this final post about how to develop a great hockey player, we discuss grit. Grit is the ability for a player to demonstrate focus and determination to overcome the inevitable challenges that come with high-level hockey.
Overcoming Adversity
In hockey, many “early bloomers” don’t face adversity at a young age. If your player is lucky enough to be the best player on their team when they are 12, 13, 14 or even 15, their world will likely change when they start playing against the best players in their age group. This can come from peers starting to catch up via size and speed. Or it can come from playing against better players by moving from being a “big fish in a small pond” to being a “small fish in a big pond”.
I have seen firsthand how learning from failure early on in my kids’ hockey development has helped them become more resilient, focused and competitive. One of the biggest drivers of my their developing some grit was them not making the team they wanted to when one was 10 and the other was 11 years old.
Being Coachable
While grit is about handling adversity, players also need to be able to handle feedback and being coachable. Every coach is different so being able to adapt to situations where the player-coach relationship is not ideal is another challenge that will likely need to be overcome. How is your player’s body language when hearing constructive feedback? A player’s ability to “learn how to learn” is a secret weapon that can be one the primary factors in their success. It is what Sidney Crosby considers one of his greatest assets.
Learning to Compete
For some players being competitive is in their DNA, for others it is a learned skill. How driven are you to “be the best you can be” while still being a good teammate? Specifically, how do you handle yourself both on and off the ice. Keeping in mind the ups and down of a game and a season. As mentioned in my first post in this series, hockey development is a marathon not a sprint.
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
If your player is old enough (>12 years old) then I would strongly recommend having them read Angela Duckworth’s Grit. The book details why naturally talented people many times fail to succeed, but others with less obvious skill have the tenacity to persevere and overcome challenges to develop into leaders in their fields. Finding a way for your player to have a passionate persistence to get better every day is the last ingredient needed to develop a great hockey player.
In this fifth post about how to develop a great hockey player, we discus how talent, natural gifts and luck play a key role in hockey development. While it is possible to consider these attributes out of a player’s or parent’s control, they can certainly be influenced.
Natural Gifts
Let’s be candid, being blessed with size and/or speed gives a young player an advantage. Combine that with the luck of being born in the first 3 months of the year and basically they are born on first or second base (to mix our sports metaphors). They are given a lead over their peers that combined with the other factors that contribute to being a great player can be hard to catch-up to. In addition, natural talent also helps. If you just don’t have the coordination or adeptness for the game it can be hard to come. I was at a game recently, where the natural build of one of players was just not a “hockey body”, short legs big trunk, so not matter how hard this player tried, they just couldn’t keep up with the top players on the ice and likely would never will. However, having natural gifts, while necessary are not sufficient for greatness.
Talent
The one attribute which you may not be born with but can develop is talent. Hard work is essential. Getting better every day. Because even if you were born with talent you have to continue to improve, otherwise others will pass you over time. There is a long list of talented players whose NHL careers didn’t appear to achieve their full potential (names who come to mind are Rob Schremp, Josh Ho Hsiang and Nail Yakapov) despite being having tremendous natural talent. These types of players struggled to sustain lengthy careers because they were not able to fill in gaps in their game. As you make it to each new level, players can’t just continue to rely on just their natural gifts they need a work ethic and a continuous improvement mindset.
Luck
Yes, luck plays a role in hockey. And not just puck luck. For example, I know of a youth player who didn’t make a team they tried out for and then ended up playing for a fantastic coach that changed the trajectory of the player’s hockey development. In another instance, a player was able to get more power-play and penalty-kill time because a teammate broke their leg (well, not so lucky for the teammate). Even at the pros, whether it is a scout who just happens to be in the stands for a game, finding the right coach or team situation, luck can certainly play a role in which path a player follows and can accelerate their road to greatness.
