This article is the first part of the article titled Ten Steps Towards Advancing Hockey in Illinois.
Over the last few years, our Chicago Blackhawks have emerged from professional hockey’s scrapheap and are just now beginning to poise themselves for National Hockey League immortality. Since they have brought professional hockey’s version of the Holy Grail back to Chicago, are we ready for the biggest youth hockey boom to hit this area since the late 1960s and 70s?
But, before it happens, shouldn't our entire hockey community be asking some serious questions?
- Will our youth hockey organizations have enough experienced coaches to effectively train the massive influx of an entirely new generation of young hockey players that will inevitably follow the Blackhawks World Championship?
- Or, will we allow history to repeat itself, and let the second chance of a hockey lifetime elude us, as it did 40 years ago and which prevented us from reaching greater levels of youth hockey respectability back then?
Hopefully, the movers and shakers who make all the decisions in our hockey community are pondering these issues as we speak.
I would like to give all of you my own, simple outline for youth hockey success. In this article, I’ll start by introducing the first five of my ten common sense solutions towards improving youth hockey.
1. Implement more effective training procedures for all our players at the Learn to Skate level.
I think we could all agree on the premise that receiving proper hockey skills training as early as possible during a player’ s development is a lot easier than having to break bad habits later on. In USA hockey’ s American Developmental Model (ADM) they suggests that our best coaches should be training our least experienced players. But a crucial question is is: How do we get our most experienced coaches, those who have the skills and knowledge, to perform this crucial task effectively?
But, even if we could entice our area’ s best and brightest hockey minds to participate, would it really be a good utilization of our human resources? Wouldn’ t it be far better to have our top coaches begin developing an entirely new and cutting edge method of training to an entirely new generation of young and willing coaching applicants who could learn and accomplish this task almost as well?
While this may seem like a daunting task, the model that could be used is already in place. For many years referees have been trained and have been compensated through a very successful structure which can be a template for learn to skate coaching applicants who are just beginning to develop a passion for coaching. Many of you reading this are probably thinking: “Sounds great but who’ s going to pay for these applicants” ?
I propose a Learn to Skate fund from which those learn to skate coaches are compensated; perhaps a $5 fee at the beginning of the year contributed by house and travel parents alike. The simple fact is that we would all reap the benefits that would be produced by developing a higher standard of training during the most crucial phase of a player’ s development.
If our youth hockey community did nothing else but alter our approach to learn to skate training it could deliver significant dividends in our players’ development.
2. Establish a hockey skills rating system for players at the Mite and Squirt levels.
The criteria for advancing a player to a more difficult level of youth hockey shouldn’ t be whether there’ s an open roster spot available or if a parent happens to be drinking buddy of one of the coaches. Why we simply can’ t fathom the idea of establishing simple guidelines for skating and stickhandling proficiency after four decades of youth hockey in our state is beyond me. There is no reasonable excuse why we shouldn’ t be able to begin establishing the groundwork for such a system in the very near future. It seems to work pretty well for the figure skating side.
3. Completely reorganize House League hockey at the Mite level.
How many of you reading this article right now have ever considered the prospect of taking up hockey as an adult? What if, instead of playing in a hockey league with players of the same caliber as yourself, you were faced with the daunting prospect of playing with and competing against skaters with a wide range of physical skills and abilities?
I’ m sure just the thought of trying keep up with the most experienced players in this fictitious league wouldn’ t sound that appealing to many. While, I think many of us would agree that this prospect doesn’ t sound very enjoyable, why do we force our newest players to endure this very same scenario?
I doubt, many would disagree with me if I said that during full ice games probably 20% of the players who compete at this level probably perform 80% of all the puckhandling duties. During this crucial phase of their development these young skaters want to be participating in real hockey league games just like every other youth hockey player. But, without the puck “ touches” where’ s the enjoyment; indeed, where’ s the skill training? For those who aren’ t one of the “ elite” 20%, we’ re wasting time and resources playing on full ice.?
According to USA Hockey estimates, over 43% of all youth hockey players quit the game by the time they’ re 9 years old. If we ever hope to reduce this alarming attrition rate we’ re going to have to find new and innovative ways to train and retain our youngest talent.
Instead of playing full ice games, why not throw the bumpers out at the redline and put the clock on “ buzzer time.” Get rid of the icings, the offsides and everything else that impedes creativity and most of all fun at this age bracket.
This type of small games format, without all of the ridged rules of league play that these very young player will be facing soon enough, could still be considered league competition and would count in the standings as real games.
At this stage of their development, these players don’ t care about things like offsides, icing or even face-offs. All they really want to do is have a chance of bumping into the puck every once in a while or even have the exciting possibility of scoring their first goal.
Are these very young hockey players really playing this rigidly structured league hockey in the name of hockey development or to provide a “show” for mom and dad?
Think of all the savings in maximizing the utilization of valuable ice slots. You could easily have two half-ice games going at once or have one game and one practice going at the same time. Wouldn’ t you agree with me that this would be a much better utilization of ice time resources than the way our system is currently structured?
4. Split travel house league teams into multiple divisions by ability.
Many people in our hockey community are under the impression that coaching at the travel house level, the way it is currently structured, is a fairly easy coaching proposition. While not everyone will agree with me on this point this perception couldn’ t be more wrong. If anything, with the possible exception of coaching learn to skate players, this level is by far the most difficult training challenge that a coach ever faces. The problem that travel house coaches are confronted with annually isn’ t the physical skills or abilities of these hockey players, it’ s the wide range of physical skill and abilities that coaches are faced with every season.
If anything, travel coaches actually have it a lot easier with respect to their team’ s training regimen and development of the players. This is because travel coaches have the luxury of picking and choosing the players they want through their tryouts. With few exceptions the skills and abilities of almost all of a travel coach’ s team members will always be much closer to each other in skill level than a travel house team. Travel house programs don’ t have tryouts or cuts, they have evaluations and drafts that decide which players are going to be on what teams.
While I have no problem with the no –cut system that is currently in place, the process of team selection and the league structure the way it is now, creates a difficult conundrum for coaches to overcome. Trying to establish an effective training regimen, as well as satisfying all of their players developmental needs throughout the season, can be a difficult proposition. Let me explain myself a little further.
As I stated before, your average house league team during any given year is made up of players with a wide variety of skills and abilities. If we were to rate every player on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the team’ s most skilled player and 1 being the least experienced players, because of the lack of ice time resources, a travel house coach is forced to find a happy medium somewhere in between what will satisfy all of his player’ s developmental needs as equitably as possible. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the time there is no happy
medium.
Usually the players who suffer the most are the ones on either end of the hockey skills spectrum. If the coach’ s attempt to design his training is for the players who are rated 5, then the 1’s become overwhelmed and the 10’s become bored. The result is that some players receive better training than others because there just aren’ t enough coaches or resources to sufficiently train all of their players equally.
Coaches, in league play, will usually sprinkle the least experienced players into the lineup with their better players in order to bolster their teams’ lineup and hide the weaker kids’ deficiencies.
There is a simple and easy solution to this issue. Identify the better and the developing players and separate them before teams are formed. Then Create teams of individuals with equal or fairly equal abilities and will allow coaches to establish uniform and appropriate training regimens that will focus on all the teams developmental needs. The Northwest Hockey League has recognized the need to do this at the team level and thus, its seeding round. The same should be done at the individual level.
5. Abolish rules that inhibit or prevent excellence.
Most of the time new rulings by our governing bodies will tend to have positive effects on our hockey community. Take for instance, the 7-Up-7 down rule for high school. For those who are not familiar with this rule, it allows high school coaches to move players up or down between the varsity and JV levels, allowing individual players participate in seven league games before they’ re locked into one particular level for the rest of the season.
This is a good rule. It sends a clear message to all players at both levels; that excellence and hard work will be rewarded and underachievement or laziness have consequences.
Unfortunately, there are those times when bureaucracies have a way of interfering with progress in the name of fairness or political correctness. I think we’ ve all been put in the position, one time or another during our lives of relenting under pressure and making shortsighted decisions, not realizing their full impact later on down the road. And while there have been several rulings through the years that I believe should be altered, there’ s one in particular that bothers me to no end.
I’ m speaking about AHAI’ s policy of forbidding park district programs to develop, or even apply for, travel program status. I know I am going to take a lot of heat for this statement – but here it goes.
The only organizations that benefit from this ruling are underachieving hockey programs that consistently hire less qualified coaches; those who make little or no attempt to properly coordinate skills and development training between the different teams, levels and age brackets.
Why flourishing park district programs should be forced to end their successful development of players whom they have nurtured since the very beginning, makes absolutely no sense? There are reasons why these programs are succeeding – and it’ s not because there are roster spot openings. Many of these programs have highly skilled and knowledgeable hockey directors and coaches who understand the nuances of hockey as well as the proper way to develop young hockey talent. It should make no difference whether the hockey director is getting paid by a municipality or a private organization; if they’ re doing it right – who cares?
AHAI’ s policy was ostensibly made in the name of fairness; to even the playing field between public and private organizations? Does it promote fairness, or does it merely prop up struggling or even dysfunctional travel organizations that can’ t compete with the excellence in training that many of these municipal programs consistently offer?
Travel organizations that are struggling should not be allowed to even the playing field by avoiding the necessity of improving their methods of skills development training In the name of evening the playing field. They ought to be required to raise their standards. Let the strong programs survive and the weak ones go away quietly; if nothing else it will free up a few more ice slots that could be put to better use.
Much of the time the reason that these organizations struggle is not because of a lack of player talent, but because of a lack of coaching talent and boards of directors that ignore the need to coordinate the development between age levels. How many of us, as parents, would pay for or even consider allowing our children in to go to a school where there were no short, medium, and long-term goals for their students; or even reasonable expectations of what the students will be accomplishing until they graduate? But it seems as if parents are more than willing to belly up to the bar, shelling out thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars every year with hockey organizations that give little or no recognition to whether their player has been sufficiently developed to transition to the next level.
This article is continued in Advancing Youth Hockey in Illinois Part 2, which will appear on this blog tomorrow.
About the Author
Paul O’Donnell writes a syndicated column called Hockey from the Neck up for Chicagoland’s Hockey Stop Magazine and is currently coaches for Robert Morris University in Chicago. If you wish to read more of Paul’s articles, you can find them on his website.
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