Putting A Hockey Plan Together - 1

I need to apologize for a slight delay in postings here -- what I was doing, though, will ultimately prove very helpful to members.

As for this insertion, yes, it is about time for us to be putting a hockey plan together.

-- Dennis Chighisola

Putting A Hockey Plan Together

Part of the above mentioned delay is because I know I gave members an awful lot of homework to do in gathering information and making scattered plans. In fact, I'm not sure a coach or parent or adult player could adequately be putting a hockey plan together without carrying out most of what I'd outlined in all the July 2016 posts. So, if you haven't yet gone through and accomplished all I've suggested so far, I strongly suggest you go through all of those now. Trying to show members how I've always gone about putting a hockey plan together -- after doing all I've suggested so far, I once again return to my bunker, maybe for the last time for awhile.

Just so members know, my kind of bunker usually disappears once the hockey season gets underway. I mean, whether it was in my cozy backyard setup or at some other comfortable outside place, a new hockey season usually brings about not-so-conducive weather, and it hardly provides me the kind of time I'd devote during the previously described pre-planning stages.

No, I'd usually spend about 45-minutes to an hour preparing for the next team practice, and I'd usually do that -- maybe the night before -- in my downtown or home office.

To some that might sound easy. However... There's still a lot I had to accomplish before I could put together a really effective nightly practice plan... A Year-long Plan

With all the work I've previously outlined, this has to now be spread over the coming season (and maybe the remainder of the current off-season).

Even if member coaches don't have the chance to hold physical workouts for their kids over the off-season months, I'd still fit in a number of combination classroom and outdoor strategy sessions pretty soon. I'd use the idea behind my MP Drill Format as the basis for this, with that video explaining how to teach a team system both off and on the ice. Getting a head start on the X's and O's -- and getting a lot of the talking done off the ice -- will prove super-helpful going into the early on-ice practices.

Really, what the Year-long Plan does is spread the teaching from something like September through March, with that also including all the lead-up skills and knowledge for more advanced skills and tactics. In other words, if I see I want to implement something fairly advanced in my January teaching, I can plot the introductory skills and knowledge to that in the preceding weeks or months.

All the above is easier said than done, of course. But, it's extremely necessary to a fairly smooth and positive season.

Teaching Segments

My next step in putting a hockey plan together always included dividing the coming season into Teaching Segments.

My season was usually broken into three or four of these. And, during the years I was coaching youth hockey, those segments were always dictated by holidays, or the tournaments that came along with those. I mean, I might try to ready my team to be able to do so much by the time we played in a (November) Thanksgiving tournament, I'd try to have them further along when we went to a (late-December) Christmas tournament, have them yet further along for a (February) Valentine's Day tourney, and then have them firing on all cylinders by our season ending playoffs.

Of course, those holidays take place in North America, while the tournament options were always available around the New England area where I coached. Still, those living in other parts of the world where tournaments don't so neatly divide the playing season so neatly, members might find other ways to achieve what I have.

Nightly Practice Plans Again, a lot of work goes into creating the two plans described above. However, once they're accomplished, it becomes much, much easier to arrive at a given night's practice plan. In fact, not only is it easier to select from the way we've drawn things out, but one can be pretty sure every practice will be going in a positive direction...

If you have a neat playbook like I always put together, you can pull that out any time you need to create a nightly practice plan.

The over-sized Year-long Plan was usually unfolded from within my looseleaf notebook for quick browsing. On the opposite page was a display of my Teaching Segments.

A few weeks ago, I provided a rough outline of what I thought to be a solid practice outline. I might suggest that coaches do as I did, making a copy of that, and keeping it handy as you go about designing each given night's practice plan.

Seeing how things should progress from segment to segment over the year-long plan makes it easier to consider where your players are on a given night, and thus select the right progression/s to put into that night's plan.

Pretty sadly, I've known a lot of coaches who basically winged-it when it came to putting a hockey plan together. Oh, they may have hoped their kids would be better by year's end, but they left it to luck just how far their kids did go. I've seen some coaches arrive at the rink with no plan whatsoever -- that when they were about to use hundreds of dollars worth of ice-time. Some did go to the rink with a plan, but that plan might not have really fit into any grander design. I think there's little doubt that what I've described above is the best you'll ever find for putting a hockey plan together. It takes some work, for sure. Yet, the rewards seem better to me than any other method. Lastly, I don't doubt some members would like me to design nightly plans for them. But, really?

A year or more ago, a young coach sent me his design for practice plans not unlike what I just described. He sent those plans in hopes I'd give them a thumbs-up.

I wrote back and explained that teams and players -- and particularly young ones -- go up and down like a thermometer. They progress faster in some areas of play, and they just don't get it when it comes to another area of play. Complicating matters further, is that progressing faster or slower than normal happens to individuals as well as an entire squad.

As an example, perhaps on a given night I'd have to recognize that my team's breakout is really struggling, and that's going to necessitate me putting in some remedial drills. On the other hand, maybe our cycling is progressing ahead of schedule, allowing me to put in a new wrinkle to that play. With that, really good teaching boils down to knowing what to do next.

If you can imagine, then, two teams that start their season at close to the same capabilities can go in drastically different directions. And, while their opening night practices might be exactly the same, it's virtually impossible to believe that their practices months later could be anywhere near alike.

Ya, I said all that to the young coach who sent me those sample practice plans, and guess what... A few days later I saw he still put them up for sale on his website. Ugh.

I hope readers understand, then, why I can't totally do it for you. Parents who are following this series need to note carefully their youngster's progress -- both forward and otherwise. My guess is that member coaches who have been with me for awhile know exactly what I'm saying, and know why they have to take all I've shared in this series and apply it to the specific needs of their players. And, even adult rec players ought to be able to borrow a lot from the process I've put forth over the past month-plus, and continue their growth over the long season ahead.

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Members should look for me to continue on this topic of readying for your coming season several more times over the next week or so. If you have any questions, please get them to me as soon as possible, so that I can answer them within the context of this special series.

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