Coach Chic's Rules for Winners

The idea for my "Rules for Winners" probably arose some 35 or more years ago. The way it started was that far back then, I'd started jotting some thoughts on things I believed made a difference in my team's games.

Anyway, at some point -- when I decided to collect all those ideas, print them, and then distribute them to my players, I realized I didn't have a title for the top of the page. So, while I'm not sure that my "Rules for Winners" is the best idea for a title, maybe I can at least explain my reasoning a little more down below.

-- Dennis Chighisola

Coach Chic's Rules for Winners

Okay, although I'd started gather my list of smart playing principles during the early-1970's, here's how things really got going... I purchased my first video unit in 1979 (can you believe that?), which was the same year I'd gone to study in the former Soviet Union. Both things tended to put me quite a ways ahead of other coaches of that time, but owning that video gear gave me the chance to study the game in a way that few of us from that era had ever been able to before.

If you think about it, all any coaches had ever been able to do before video came along was to think they saw something, or think something had a certain kind of impact on the game. Actually, I probably became an immediate bore once I got that gear, because I spent countless hours with it -- gathering footage, and then viewing it (over and over and over again). I could see stuff that was hard to spot with the naked eye, though. And, although I'd sometimes notice an occurrence on tape that I'd never have spotted otherwise, I could just as often go looking for plays that I suspected were causing my players some problems.

I was coaching a small high school program back then. And, despite the fact that we sometimes struggled to compete with several wealthier towns, gaining access to videos of those matchups was one of the best things that ever happened to my coaching career. I mean, just think about it: I was able to spend countless hours studying what was going right and (too often) wrong for my guys.

I actually took one game-tape and studied it to death, running and rerunning every single event, and listing on a deep stack of paper all the things that made a difference in that loss. And, let me tell you, that I gained a new respect for passing and pass receiving over that long week or so. As a matter of fact, I believe I listed something like in the high 200's for the number of mistakes that had been made in that area of our game.

So did some other things jump out and hit me between the eyes... I'm talking missed checks here -- some of them purely mental mistakes, and a number of problems on transition that ultimately led me to design a drill that even NHL coaches would use a few years later.

As you may have surmised from that last paragraph, the kinds of notes I was amassing were both physical and mental. Of course, the physical ones had to be addressed in drills -- whether they were for enhancing our skating, our puckhandling, our passing and receiving, our shooting, or our checking skills. If you haven't guessed it by now, though, the mental problems were the ones that I had started gathering as something like my "Rules for Winners". That list didn't grow as quickly as you might think, however. A few were almost automatic, because they were long-standing beliefs that probably went back to before I was born. In other words, I had to remind my kids that it's not a good thing to go off-side when on the powerplay, and it's as important to not turn your back on the puck.

Where things got tricky was when I picked up something on video that I'd not previously heard other coaches say. I mean, there I was, a pretty young coach, and I'm wondering to myself why I'm seeing things that maybe my idols in higher levels hadn't ever mentioned -- in seminars or writings. Ya, talk about being a little nervous.

Still, all I could do was to keep watching my players, local college teams, and even the pros, and all I could do was keep studying videos until it became obvious that I was right. As a matter of fact, I started noticing that my ways of viewing the game -- and those things I was amassing as my Rules for Winners -- were obvious in tapes I'd even gathered from NHL games.

A lot of years have passed since '79, and my list of Rules has grown from just a few to about 20-ish. It's never been my aim to gather too many, though. For, what I'd really like is to list only those things that could make the greatest impact on a player's (or team's) game. How have I used my Rules for Winners so far through the years? I'd say the best has been as part of a weekly off-ice session I held for my old HS Prep and Jr HS Teams. There, we'd sit and relax on a gym floor after a pretty good physical workout, and just shoot the bull about one of those Rules.

My kids and I might gather on the gym floor, oftentimes around one of my Model Rinks. With that, I might toss out something like, "Hey, guys... Rule number six says we should try to avoid turning our back on the puck. Who can explain what's really meant by that?"

I'm really hoping more than just a couple of kids will jump in on that. And, I don't even mind if someone goes off on a slight tangent, so long as it's making all my guys think, and as long as it's helping ingrain that day's topic. I might grab a stick and walk through a pattern where I do and then don't turn my back on the puck, and I won't mind if one of my kids offers to do the same.

Anyway, "Coach Chic's Rules for Winners" is not carved in stone. In fact, I would love if others jump in here, to offer something they see as having a big impact on game results. Sometime shortly, I hope to publish a really good list, including my ideas and the best from others. So...

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