Skills. Skills. Skills. This has been the mantra repeated since the days of Lloyd Percival, Howie Meeker and the ’72 Summit Series. At the latest World Junior Hockey Championship, it was echoed by Team Canada Head Coach, Brent Sutter: “There’s too much focus on winning and losing at such a young age and not enough about the skill part of it and the skating part of it, because that’s truly where it starts,” he said. “I’d personally like to see more skill, more creativity, because we had to play against it here and we got beat by it some nights. Development starts at bantam age, at pee wee age, development starts at 10 years of age”.
Without question, technical skills provide the foundation for a young player’s ability to play the game and will fuel their continued enjoyment of the game. But, are our players less skilled?
Today, players are exposed to cutting edge training and skills development programs, skating and shooting instruction, and professional goaltending coaches. Without question, players today have been provided an incredible assortment of skill development opportunities.
This is where the gap between Skills and Systems begins (especially when the coach isn’t the one delivering the skills training). We now see teams with players who can all skate, and stickhandle but they play robotic hockey, they don’t use their skill in creative ways – their skill does not link with the ‘system’ the coach has put in place. Dump…chase…change. Dump…chase…change.
“I think one of the concerns that we have with coaching at the lower levels is that too many coaches are coaching to win,” said Paul Carson, vice-president of hockey development for Hockey Canada. “In doing so, they are putting hand-brakes on the offensive side of the game, trying to keep the puck out of the net, and then working for one or two opportunities a game to score.
And the gap continues to grow. “Often times, (coaches) are being measured on wins and losses, they’re not being measured on whether or not their team has great offence or loses one-goal games 5-4 or 9-8,” said Carson.
And it’s also in that gap that lies a term we hear and use all the time … ‘hockey sense’.
Hockey Canada’s Skill Development Pyramid provides a very clear progression starting at the base of the triangle emphasizing the development of fundamental skills. As the pyramid is climbed, a greater emphasis is placed on individual tactics; adding the dimension of ‘hockey sense’ to skill development.