My "Think 'n Skate" Program

Although I'd pondered something like this for a number of years before, I think my last college team was the real inspiration for this very different kind of training. Here's just one reason why... One freezing cold winter night my team traveled north to New Hampshire to do battle with a very tough opponent. Worse yet, the flu bug had hit my squad, leaving us without several top skaters and my two best goaltenders. Still, my assistant coaches and I concocted a pretty good game plan. We were going to ask our guys to play super-conservatively, and we were going to ask them to do everything smartly. (More on the smartly part in a moment.) As luck (and my players' hard work) would have it, we scored two quick goals that night, and we were limiting our opponents' shots from far out and from bad angles. We even managed to keep that lead -- and that style of play going -- through almost two periods on foreign ice. Now, besides employing a very conservative forecheck, I'd ask my guys to do some other things that were absolutely necessary to the predicament we were in. For example, I suggested that we had to eat at the game clock as much as possible. And I also advised the guys to dump the puck most times, and to only think offense when our opponents made mistakes, or when we had a really good chance of scoring. Actually, by taking a quick lead, we'd created conditions that frustrated our rivals. And they did start making the kinds of mistakes teams make when they can't seem to generate any offense. Sure enough, they started taking chances with the puck, and they forced passes numerous times right to my guys' sticks. Ya, everything was going according to plan, and we'd managed to kill nearly two-thirds of the game while clinging to that slim lead. So, what happens late in that second stanza is that one of my very offensive minded forwards eventually steals the puck in neutral ice, and he starts carrying towards the NH team's zone. We'd been over this situation countless times to this point -- back home in our last practice, in our pre-game talk, and as recently as the last intermission. What my guy had to read was his honest-to-goodness chances of successfully carrying the puck on towards the goal. Darn, but he had to see that there were three enemy defenders in front of him, and that the only sane thing to do was to dump the puck so we could move into our forecheck. Not this time, though... Instead he barged right into those defenders and immediately coughed-up the puck. The opponent who stole the puck relayed it up-ice to a streaking winger who fired a slapshot into our goal. And don't you know that that one goal lit a fire under our rivals, and they managed a 2-2 tie just before the period ended. Oh, and we could hear them hooting and howling in the dressingroom down the hall. They were believing in themselves again, and they were ready to blow our doors off in the final period. Okay, so what did I think really went wrong? In a way, I couldn't fault my young forward. I felt what happened wasn't intentional, but more a difficulty he -- and countless other players -- had developed in their earliest years. I mean, our game is kind of fast, wild and tense (to list just a few adjectives). And just by its very nature, I can appreciate how players can momentarily lose their heads or make a wrong decision in the heat of battle. Still, I couldn't stop thinking about that turning point in our game -- all the bus ride home, and for the days, weeks and months after. You see, although I've coached teams for numerous years, I'm really a skills coach inside. So, when I've seen good and bad plays at the higher levels, I've always felt I could design something for younger guys and gals to help them when they reach those higher levels. And what I thought I'd been seeing with a lot of older players was a difficulty in dealing with a physical challenge while also keeping a clear head and staying with a plan. So, with a summer hockey school starting a few months after that college season ended, I set-out to design a program that would help young players learn to "Skate 'n Think" at the same time. In other words, my idea was to give the kids a simple physical challenge, while also asking them to deal with a mental problem. With that, the following video shows what I've done with my idea through the years since then. (Although I created this form of drilling in the late 1980's, you'll notice that I only produced this video a few years ago.) Once you've watched it, see below, because I have a lot more to add... http://coachchic2.s3.amazonaws.com/Think-n-Skate.mp4 Now that you have an idea of the program I ultimately designed, let me go back to the initial problem -- as I see it... Do you recall those young teenagers hopping across the lawn on large balls? (I also used a photo of it at the top of this page.) Well, one of those kids took a pretty nasty spill halfway through the drill. I just happened to be holding the camera near the end of the course and I was able to see his face as he arrived and readied to give his coach the answer. The fact is, if ever they had to put a "deer caught in the headlights" sample in a dictionary, there would be none better than the look on that poor boy's face. What had happened was that he got messed up by the fall, and he lost all train of thought. Little wonder he'd forgotten the mental problem he was asked to deal with. So, I have to ask you... Do hockey players face similar challenges in their games? You bet. They get spun around, tripped-up, they take awful spills and ferocious body-checks. And, is there a chance they're going to have that deer in the headlights moment, just like my young camp student? Or is there the chance they're going to recover and forget the game plan, the score, the time remaining in a period? Again, you can bet at least some players will. Then a few short asides... Within my other videos, you'll often see my kids tumbling while performing another skill. I have them do it for other purposes too, but one good reason I mix this skill with others is to artificially cause a little confusion. Ironically, as I was doing a little research earlier today, I found an on-line article describing some rather unorthodox methods used by old Soviet coaches. It seems Anatoli Tarasov and other USSR coaches knew their players had to be prepped for the numerous adversities that take place in a game. So, the Russian coaches would actually -- purposely -- trip or otherwise foul players during practices or apply some last minute off-the-wall rules to drills and scrimmages. Finally, I am going to start using this form of drilling again once my players return to The MOTION Lab this spring, and I'll continue it when we later move to the ice. Yet, even though this seems like a team-type activity, a parent could easily create a "Think 'n Skate" set of problems for his or her youngster to do at home. And, an older player could just as easily use some imagination to take advantage of these combined physical and mental challenges.