Q. At a recent select tournament for Squirts, I heard U.S. parents, players and even coaches complaining that Canadians learn body checking at age 7, and that’s why they’re “so far ahead” of the United States in hockey. Could that be true?

A. First of all, Canada’s hockey governing body, Hockey Canada, lets provinces determine what age to start body checking and as such it varies throughout Canada. In Quebec, players start at Bantam (13–14) while in Alberta they start at Atom (9–10).

Interestingly enough, Hockey Canada has taken an intensive look at USA Hockey’s recent age change and is considering similar guidance. As important, what separates hockey players at any age is their skating, shooting and puck-handling skills—so isolating a skill like body checking and trying to point to that as a reason players may be ahead makes no sense. That said, it is doubtful players anywhere are focusing on body checking at age 7 in lieu of all-important skating, shooting and puck handling.

In fact, Hockey Canada recently came out with a long-term athlete development document that very much mirrors the ADM, focusing on age-appropriate training that is very much individual skill focused at the younger ages. Most likely, at any age level, the reason a group of players are ahead of another group is because they skate better, handle the puck better—and consequently make more plays that result in the puck ending up in the back of the net more often—not because they are better at body checking. Period.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to USA Hockey ADM Regional Manager Joe Doyle for assistance with this story.

Q.

A. Americans need to quash their “mindset of worrying about the scoreboard,” says Joe Doyle, USA Hockey ADM Regional Manager. This is precisely why the U8 program holds jamborees and does not post the score in games (even if every coach, player and parent knows the score). The point is, according to Doyle, “Do you want your kid to win tournaments at age 8? Or do you want him to be a better player at 12, 14, 16, 18?” The ADM is about long-term athlete development, which emphasizes building skills in the early years—skills that will pay off when emotional and physical maturity hit in the later years.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Joe Doyle for his assistance with this story from Kelly Anton, Managing Editor.

Q. At a recent select tournament for Squirts, I heard U.S. parents, players and even coaches complaining that Canadians learn body checking at age 7, and that’s why they’re “so far ahead” of the United States in hockey. Could that be true?

A. First of all, Canada’s hockey governing body, Hockey Canada, lets each of Canada’s six provinces determine what age to start body checking and as such it varies throughout Canada. In Quebec, players start at Bantam (13–14) while in Alberta they start at Atom (9–10).

Interestingly enough, Hockey Canada has taken an intensive look at USA Hockey’s recent age change and is considering similar guidance. As important, what separates hockey players at any age is their skating, shooting and puck-handling skills—so isolating a skill like body checking and trying to point to that as a reason players may be ahead makes no sense. That said, it is doubtful players anywhere are focusing on body checking at age 7 in lieu of all-important skating, shooting and puck handling.

In fact, Hockey Canada recently came out with a long-term athlete development document that very much mirrors the ADM, focusing on age-appropriate training that is very much individual skill focused at the younger ages. Most likely, at any age level, the reason a group of players are ahead of another group is because they skate better, handle the puck better—and consequently make more plays that result in the puck ending up in the back of the net more often—not because they are better at body checking. Period.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to USA Hockey ADM Regional Manager Joe Doyle for assistance with this story.

Q.

A. Americans need to quash their “mindset of worrying about the scoreboard,” says Joe Doyle, USA Hockey ADM Regional Manager. This is precisely why the U8 program holds jamborees and does not post the score in games (even if every coach, player and parent knows the score). The point is, according to Doyle, “Do you want your kid to win tournaments at age 8? Or do you want him to be a better player at 12, 14, 16, 18?” The ADM is about long-term athlete development, which emphasizes building skills in the early years—skills that will pay off when emotional and physical maturity hit in the later years.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Joe Doyle for his assistance with this story from Kelly Anton, Managing Editor.

To back up this opinion, USA Hockey commissioned a comprehensive study to calculate how much time the best players in the world had the puck on their sticks at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. While most people were glued to the Olympic hockey for pure viewing pleasure, members of USA Hockey’s Coaching Education Program were keeping a closer eye on the action. Perched high above center ice at the E Center in Salt Lake and the Peaks Ice Arena in Provo, coaches paired up to observe and record the action of players competing in 31 men’s and 24 women’s games.

Prior to each game, three players who were expected to be key performers for their teams were selected for the study. The coaches calculated the length of each player’s shift, how long the player had the puck on his or her stick, how many passes were received and made and how many shots on goal he or she attempted. They also counted the number of un-timed touches—those when the puck hit their stick if only for a brief moment.

Top Players Touch the Puck for 1+ Minute in Games

Canada’s Joe Sakic, who dominated play in the gold-medal game, touched the puck for only 1 minute, 19 seconds. In that time, he did tally two goals and two assists along with four shots in Canada’s 5-2 victory.

The purpose of the study was to determine the best way to develop puck possession skills with youth players. It also provided information when it comes to puck possession in checking and non-checking situations. On the women’s side, Cammi Granato slightly outdid her Canadian counterpart Hayley Wickenheiser, touching the puck for a little more than one minute (1:02.2 to 1:00.9) during their gold-medal outing. But when even the best player only touches the puck for one minute, what are other players doing?

When you factor in that we chose the players who handle the puck more than others on the ice, you could argue that the numbers we came up with were inflated compared to the average Olympic level player, said Mark Tabrum, director of USA Hockey’s Coaching Education Program. To follow up the Olympic study, USA Hockey volunteers brought their clipboards and stopwatches to the Youth Hockey Tier I National Championships in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Puck Skills Developed in Practice

While the skill levels varied, the results were pretty much the same. Even the best players, the statistics showed, don’t handle the puck as much as you might think. These studies validate what a lot of people have been advocating for a long time, said Kevin McLaughlin, USA Hockey’s Senior Director of Hockey Development.

The numbers showed that stick and puck skills can’t be developed in a game. It proves you can accomplish a lot more in practice with the puck than in a game. It also showed that you get so few opportunities with the puck in the game that you have to be proficient when it does hit your stick. USA Hockey hopes the results of the Observation Project will serve as a reference for coaches, parents and players as they set up their future practice and game schedules. I think we can safely say that games are not the environment to develop puck skills in our youth players, McLaughlin said.

Obviously, in practice, players will get a lot more ice time, will carry a puck a lot longer than one minute, can give and receive a lot more passes and will take a lot more shots.

Not everyone may agree with the statistical conclusions provided by the study. As Mark Twain once wrote, there are three kinds of fallacies: lies, damned lies and statistics. There will always be those who believe that letting a PeeWee play the equivalent of an 82-game NHL schedule is the best way to develop a hockey player.

The dilemma that virtually every coach of developmental-age hockey players is faced with is: How much ice time does he devote to practice and how much to games? Observation Project Chairman Rob Bruendl addressed this in his final report: Ice time is getting more expensive every year. Parents enjoy watching their children play and urge the coach to schedule more games. So coaches and parents try to convince themselves that their players are learning skills during the games.

Repetition Turns Skill into Instinct

USA Hockey’s National Coach-in-Chief Bob O’Connor disagrees with the idea of using games as a learning tool, and he says the numbers prove it. Having demographics of the Olympics with the best players in the world and then following it up by studying our National Championships just goes to show that you only have limited time to handle the puck and when you have it you better learn to handle it right, said O’Connor.

We’ve been saying this over and over. The more quality repetitions you get with any given skill, the easier it will be to turn that skill into instinct. If you only have the puck two minutes, you’re not going to get that practice of receiving it and controlling it.

George Kingston, a member of the physical education department at the University of Calgary, conducted a similar study back in the 1970s. Kingston looked at skill development in Sweden, Finland, the former Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union and compared their techniques to how players were developed in Canada. According to Kingston, Europeans typically had two to five practices for each game they played, compared to North American players, who played two or three games for each practice. Kingston said that in order to get one hour of quality work in practicing the basic skills of puck control, it would take approximately 180 games.

Our emphasis on a great number of games, in part, reflects the problem faced by minor hockey associations—namely, that they only get a restricted amount of ice that is primarily given to scheduling of games, wrote Kingston, who went on to become an assistant coach with the Florida Panthers. O’Connor has been leading the charge to reverse that trend in this country for an equally long time. We’ve been telling coaches and parents for a long time that the repetition of skills is the foundation of hockey, O’Connor said.

Ice time could be the best coach there is. The more often your son or daughter handles the puck, the more skill and confidence they will have. So what effect will these numbers have on the hockey community in the United States? Armed with this statistical ammunition, USA Hockey will continue advocating a 3-to-1 practice to game ratio in future coaching clinics in hopes of persuading coaches to use their ice time more wisely when it comes to skill development.

We’ll use these figures to preach the importance of skill development and practice-to-game ratios, Tabrum said. I think it’ll grab the attention of some people who have never stopped to think about it. Games are a measuring stick where you evaluate skill development, but its not where you teach it.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Harry Thompson, Editor-in-Chief of USA Hockey Magazine, for this story.

Like ignorance, for example.

I was sent a link to an article that was published last week, in which it was inferred that putting the emphasis on development in youth soccer, as opposed to winning, is a bad thing.

The question was raised, “Isn’t the whole idea in becoming better that you win more than you lose?”

Long-term player development will grow the game

My answer to this is yes, the purpose of becoming better is to win more than you lose. But in youth soccer in Canada, skill development does not happen as a natural extension of the current win-at-all-costs system that is in place.

The question arose because of a decision not to award medals to the winners of the Eastern Ontario District Soccer Association (EODSA) leagues. The justification for this decision was due in part to financial limitations, but also because, as the article quoted, “the presentation of medals is considered to emphasize winning versus player development, which is the new focus of OSA programs.”

The author then made the assumption that winning is no longer considered to be a part of player development, and that winning is a now considered a “bad thing.” The author then questioned the legitimacy of this policy—which is where I took exception. The policy in question is the CSA’s long-term player development plan, or LTPD. It is based on Sport Canada’s long-term athlete development plan, or LTAD.

It wasn’t something created on a whim, nor was it scribbled on the back of a napkin. It is backed by volumes of research on the growth and development of children, the stages of development that they all go through, and the optimal environments in which they flourish. Virtually every sport in the country has a long-term development plan based on LTAD.

Single-minded strategy a ‘mirage’

For years, the competitive structure of youth soccer in Ontario has been based on the “Pyramid for Play,” where teams are rewarded for winning by being promoted to a higher level of competition. The highest level of the pyramid is Level One, represented by the Ontario Youth Soccer League, which comes into play when children are 14 years of age.

The problem with this system of promotion and relegation is that, by its very nature, it forces coaches to “play to win” with children as young as 9 years old. There is no need for them to try to develop players who are technically skilled, because there is a shortcut available to them.

The easiest way to win in youth soccer is to choose the biggest, strongest, fastest kids, and rely on their physical superiority to outmuscle their opponents. In doing this, very little emphasis is placed on teaching kids the fundamental skills of the game—because there is no need to. Generally, the big, strong, fast kid who can “boot it” the hardest can be successful in youth soccer up until about the age of 14.

Unfortunately, this success is all a mirage.

Eventually, the physical advantage of these players levels off, and when it does, the kid who was a star player when he or she was younger—simply because of the physical advantage—is no longer able to compete at a high level.

Why does it even matter, you ask? What difference does it make if that kid can no longer compete? Why don’t we just play to win at all ages, survival of the fittest, so to speak? Because not only are we driving away players who have the potential to be top players simply because they are physically immature for their age, we are also doing a disservice to those kids who are athletically gifted at a young age by not teaching them the skills they need to be successful in the game over the longer term.

We have all seen a kid playing a game and dominating the opposition because they are athletically superior. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t trap a bag of cement, or that their first touch was about as soft as a brick wall—they could run like the wind and kick the ball harder than any of their peers.

Physically dominant kids need skills, too

Now imagine what those kids could do in the game if there were put in an environment where they were taught to control the ball, to have a velvety first touch, to spray passes all over the park. Imagine if they were free to develop those abilities in an environment where they were allowed to make mistakes, without the fear of losing a game and missing out on promotion.

How much better do you think that athletically gifted kid would become?

LTPD puts the emphasis on development because these are children we are dealing with. They all need to be given time to learn the game—not just the ones who finish first because they are physically mature for their age. Ultimately, we play soccer to win the game. That is the goal of all sporting contests. The issue here isn’t about whether or not to give out medals to kids—most would agree that there are life lessons to be learned through winning and losing, and I’m one of them.

The issue is the assumption that because kids are winning, they are developing effectively. I would argue that our lack of depth at the international level suggests otherwise. Our system is broken and needs to be fixed—and no amount of medals is going to do that.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Mike Mullally, President of the Amateur Hockey Association of Illinois, for this story.

1. Your top hand should do most of the work. Beginners tend to use their bottom hand too much and it ends up with choppy stickhandling. Your top hand should be doing most of the work when it comes to moving the puck and pulling moves; your bottom hand is there for support.

2. Don’t hold the stick too tight. Your bottom hand should have a nice loose grip most of the time so the shaft can slide through, allowing the stick to move closer (or further away) from your body.

3. Protect the puck. If you see a defender coming to you, move the puck to the other side of your body and block them from getting it. You can use your feet, hips, leg, arm, back of your hand and body to separate the puck from opposing players.

4. Keep your shoulders and arms loose. Your shoulders and arms should move freely to enable maximum range of motion. Loosen up those shoulders and move the puck around your body.

5. Move the puck around your ENTIRE body. Beginners control the puck in front of them—pros can control the puck anywhere around their body.

6. Practice your reach. To keep the puck you need to keep it away from the defenders. By simply moving the puck from one side of your body to the other side, you can gain 5 to 15 feet of separation.

7. Keep the puck moving. Practice “soft hands” and dribbling the puck so that the puck is almost always moving. By keeping the puck moving you are keeping the opponent thinking and guessing—so they will never know when you are going to pull a move on them, shoot the puck or pass.

8. Practice with your head up. If you have your head down you will miss passes, miss plays or end up laid out on the ice. With practice you can develop a sixth sense and know where the puck is on your blade without looking at it. If you practice with your head down, you will play with your head down. Make sure you are not staring at the puck when you practice.

9. Make your off-ice practice as game-like as possible. Hockey is played with a puck on the ice. If you use a ball on cement you will need to adjust a lot to adapt the skills you learn off the ice to the real game. I recommend a nice smooth surface and the Green Biscuit to make your training more game-like.

10. Practice A LOT. Your muscles have memory, and if you practice enough they can perform things automatically just like tying your shoes or walking. Before you start practicing, you need to know WHAT to practice and HOW to practice.

Now, check out my Complete Guide to Stickhandling, which includes a detailed guide as well as a 30-minute training video. It was written by me, Jeremy, from How To Hockey. I have helped thousands of hockey players improve their game and I want to help you improve your stickhandling. If you don’t learn anything from the guide, you can have it for free!

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Jeremy Rupke with HowToHockey.com for this story.

According to page 67 of the 2011–2013 Official Rules of Ice Hockey, “Up to a maximum of two assists shall be awarded to those player(s) who had possession of the puck immediately prior to the goal being scored. Only one point can be credited to any single player for a goal scored and each goal or assist shall count as one point in the respective player’s record.”

Unfortunately, many players end up wasting these efforts during the season. After all the hard off-season work to get into peak shape, all they end up doing during the season is going to practice, doing some sprints and agility training, mixing in some plyometric exercises and playing games. With this routine, research shows that performance will begin to deteriorate after about four weeks. What good is all of the off-season work if you are going to let any gains decline by mid-season? It is important to make time for in-season strength and conditioning to at least maintain any gains from the off-season. Not only does this improve game performance, it also helps decrease the risk of injury.

Naturally, time is a factor when considering an in-season program. Research does suggest that a two-day per week off-ice training regimen can maintain performance. HockeyOT training—a comprehensive, personalized dryland training program on the web—is an ideal way to develop in-season programs because it creates time-efficient workouts that target specific player needs. Regardless of what system the player or team uses, strength and conditioning should be a priority in-season.

Some key points for in-season training:

• Strength train at least two days per week for no longer than an hour per session
• Decrease volume of exercises in sets and reps vs. intensity
• Continue to target your weaknesses

In summary, in-season training is still a critical part of overall success in hockey. It can help decrease risk of injury, prevent performance deterioration and maintain strength and power gained in the off-season.

Editor’s Note: Thank you to Mike Beckman for this story. Along with working with HockeyOT.com, Mike Beckman is a physical therapist and founder of Valley Rehabilitation Services. He has been in practice since 1986. He has worked with athletes at all levels and sports in both rehab and performance training.