The skills and abilities you looking for vary from level to level.

Training camp can be a stressful time of the season. For some, this comes post tryouts and you’re getting your players ready, for others it’s a further evaluation to see who plays on your Varsity or Junior Varsity, or even up and down your A/B or AA/AAA system. 

The real question, regardless of your scenario, is what skills and abilities are you looking for, and that can vary from level to level. Regardless of the drills, you’re looking for certain characteristics of a player. Some of these will be skill based, and some will simply be character based. For the even younger groups, it can even be based on the player’s parents.

Picking Parents

Before we jump into players, let’s quickly pause and talk about parents. If you’re selecting from the 8U – 14U levels, I cannot stress the importance of getting to know the parents. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to at the 14U+ levels, but as these players age up, they become more in control of their futures and ability to talk to the coaches. That said, these same ideas apply to all ages.

Talk to the parents of the players you’re working with and see what the parents goals for their kids are, their own philosophy and what makes a good player, team, and even coach. Be up front with them about your own philosophy. Do you sit kids for behaviour, merit, skill, or do you roll lines no matter what and ensure no one is shorted a shift? Communicate with parents.

If a parent gives you serious red flags, remember you could be answering to them all season. Make sure it’s worth it.

8 and Under

I have attended a lot of U8 tryouts and camps and one mistake I see a lot are coaches trying to pick the next Sidney Crosby. The truth is, you should be picking 8U players based on a few factors.

Age – Keep the first and second year together as much as possible. This allows the group to age up together and can help prepare second year players for moving to full ice. 

Skill – While age is important, so is the ability to stop, turn, and control the puck. If your program has an A/B level for U8, you don’t want someone who is just starting to be on a team that almost guarantees they never see the puck and spend the whole time skating in circles. Ensure teams are balanced skill wise so that like-skilled players are together so they can develop with each other.

That’s it. Other than that, you just want to make sure the kids all make a team and have fun every single time they touch the ice. 

10 and Under

I will say here, age still does play a factor. Birth years can play a big role in development, with exceptions, but allows kids to continue to thrive together and develop with each other.

Next, at this age I start to look at commitment. Hockey doesn’t need to be their only sport, but I want to get a sense if they are playing hockey for themselves, or because mom and dad are making them. This translates often to their work ethic. Trying hard in games or practices, or just enough so they don’t hear about it on the ride home. 

I prefer the kid with enough skill to compete that never stops smiling, to the one that might have the best skill on the ice, but complains the whole time and then often only gives 70% when they don’t feel like playing. 

From there, skill begins to be broken down into categories. Scoring on a scale of 1 – 5, 5 being the highest. You want to start seeing where kids fall on these scales overall. 

Skating

• Edges
• Stride
• Speed
• Turns
• Pivots
• Crossovers
• Backwards

Stick Handling

• Puck control
• Puck protections
• Linear Crossovers with puck
• Backwards with puck
• Heads up skating

Passing

• Strength
• Accuracy

Hockey IQ

• Aware of surroundings
• Heads up passes
• Positional awareness
• Play without puck

12 and Under

Taking from the above, it’s now time to start looking towards a player’s overall work ethic, commitment to making the games and practices (while understanding at this age, they are often left to hoping their parents aren’t running late), and this is where the hockey IQ really starts to show. 

This is a drop-off year for a lot of programs, so the players that are there are either ones that have decided they want to continue playing, but on the other side, for many this is an entry year. A lot of kids have decided on their own they want to try hockey, and I know our program sees an uptick in new signups at the 12U level.

With drills designed to be more open ended, you can really test decision making skills in many situations and see if their IQ has developed beyond the 10U evaluation.

Hockey IQ

• Evaluates options?
• Continues playing after mistakes?
• Is vocal with teammates about options?

Coming out of 8U and 10U, a lot of players punish themselves for mistakes immediately after making them. At 12U, their maturity should be catching up and it’s more easily coachable to remind them that smacking their stick on the ice or giving up after a bad shot or play won’t accomplish anything.

Creativity

• Can they get around obstacles with the puck creatively?
• Are they naturally finding creative ways to find passes and shots?

This is the age to allow a player to get fancy and make mistakes. Everyone thinks the between the legs shot looks cool on TV, but do they know when it’s an appropriate time to use that skill? What about the drop pass or a blind pass to what they hope is a teammate?

Don’t crush creativity, foster it, but also look for those who show the signs of having it and wanting to find unique ways to better their game.

14 and Under

This year, kids are deciding on what sport(s) they want to commit to. The level of which team they play for will be better determined by this, as some will decide to commit to playing another sport, while still wanting to play hockey, and others will want to commit to hockey with their eye on playing AAA and starting down the path to see what options might look like post high school.

There is a place for both of these players, but if you’re at training camp, you’re looking for the ones who are committing to hockey. 

At this age, you’re now looking for the ability to listen, act, and understand different aspects of the game. Their ability to play a systems based game and learn and adjust on the fly is important. If they don’t understand something, are they willing to ask for more clarification? I’d rather answer a few questions before running a drill rather than stopping it every few minutes to explain it again.

Attentiveness

• Do they ask for clarification?
• Are they paying attention?
• Do they understand complex drills?

And then, you’re back to the basics here because they should be able to check off much higher numbers for their age group in the same abilities they had at 10U, but more advanced.

Until now, a bad skater can often get by with good hands, and vice versa, but now they need to come as a total package. The size and speed of other players will make a slower skater easy to stop, and a fast skater who can’t protect the puck easy to strip. 

Passes must be more crisp and on target, and while moving at greater speeds.

Camps get more complex with age and skill, but one thing should remain a constant for every age level. Pick the kids who want to be there. 

When we advance to the U16+ levels, you’re looking at the above evaluations, and their own personal maturity, how they behave in the locker room, and how they conduct themselves in public. You’re looking to find kids at the top of their game who exude professionalism. 

At the end of the day, we want to reward the players who put the work in, even at the top of their game. Kids at U10-14 can get away relying on a few abilities without putting in the work, but once puberty hits and other kids start to take it more seriously, you’ll realize the best player you’ve ever seen at 10U might not even be a blip on the radar at U14. 

Also, be flexible with the players you choose. Some may score in the middle against others, but if they show a willingness to learn, to get better, and strive to be a greater version of themselves each time they take a step onto the ice, they could be the better choice.

Finally, challenge them. At tryouts you’re not looking at development, you’re looking at ability. At training camps, you’re doing a little of each. Find drills that make them uncomfortable and force them to do things out of their wheelhouse, and put them in game-like situations as much as possible to see how they naturally react. 

You’ll quickly find those who have a natural ability and those who cut corners.