How do you know where to focus your time and the team practice time to provide the best change for growth of individual players and your team?

1) What do your players want out the experience playing on your team?

As coaches or parents we want wins. Wins make us feel good. It also leads to short benches and transactional coaching. Being a transformational coach is more rewarding for players and coaches and in most instances will result in more wins and more fun for players and coaches alike. 

The best way I have found is to assess the skill levels of the players and then look back at their collective performance history as a group. Next have a conversation with the team and together come up with a stretch goal that is acheivable and that everybody buys into. For instance when I was rehired at a high school program after retireing at the end of  the first 8 years of the program I had goals for the team.. I had been elsewhere for three years and in those three years they only won a few games each year. The seniors were miserable and unhappy. We had a pretty good group and I thought 18 wins was aceivable in our 25 game season before playoffs. I made a big mistake. I forgot to ask the players what they wanted. We won 14 of 25 games that year, 4-5 fewer than I thought we could win. During exit interviews with the seniors they each in their own way told me that their goal was to be respectable and have a record over .500. Once they acheived that they were satisfied and felt that they accomplished their goals for the seaason. If I had known this before the season I might have approached the season differently and encouraged them to reach a bit higher- and reset goals as theiy achieved shorter term goals. .

Have this conversation early in the season to make sure everyone is  realistic about the  expectations and on the same page. 

2) Focus on the 3 or 4 most impactful skills you team needs to improve as individuals and Team skills. 

After a few weeks replace one or two of the focus points  based on obseerving them in games. We are currently focusing on puck reitrieval  off the wall, passsing hard and catching, and blocking shots. U14 (BANTAM A). As they improve I will layer more complexity into the drills and r3eplace one or two with new skills to master.

3) Focus Practices on Individual Positions

GOALIES, DEFENSE, CENTERS AND WINGS all need different game skills to master and stitch into their overall play as a team. Take time to drill defensemen in puck retrieval, partner support, net front sklils, gap control, and offensive blue line skills. 

Do the same with forwards - break it down and then put it all back together. 

There are thousands of cool drills on sites like this, ICS and other drill resources . They are all pretty good but rarely simulate the chaos of the game. By refining player skills and their understanding of the game you should be able to acheive the agreed on goals for the season and have a lot of along the way.