During every hockey season, every hockey coach will experience a period of difficulty, hardship or misfortune. It’s called adversity. It’s completely normal and comes in multiple shapes and sizes, from a bad call from an official or a cold power play, to a player struggling to score or your team on a bad losing streak. Although they all have varying timelines, some basic principles apply to them all.
At TCS Live 2023, San Diego Gulls Head Coach Matt McIlvane gave a rousing 26-minute presentation called The Adversity Survival Guide. Through looking back on his team’s season, McIlvane, who coached EC Red Bull Salzburg Head Coach for three seasons prior, shares his three main pillars for dealing with adversity: planning ahead, being the role model and collaborating your way out.
“If you learn to use adversity the right way, it will buy you a ticket to a place you couldn’t have gone any other way.”
McIlvane doesn’t just talk the talk, over the past two seasons he walked the walk. EC Red Bull Salzburg is fresh off two consecutive win2day ICE Hockey League championships, both featuring their fair share of adversity.
This past season, after going up 3-1 in the final series against the Bolzano Foxes, Red Bull lost Game 5 in triple overtime, Game 6 by one goal and then found itself down 1-0 with 9 minutes to go in the 3rd of Game 7. Salzburg completed the incredible comeback and scored the winning goal with just a minute and a half left, defeating the Foxes 2-1.
For McIlvane, the win boiled down to his team’s ability to stay composed, execute and trust the process.
This was McIlvane’s second consecutive year presenting at TCS Live. Watch his first presentation and find out why “on task, next task” is one of the most important terms you can have as a coach.
Noteworthy timestamps:
- 1:15 What is adversity?
- 3:15 3 keys to surviving adversity
- 4:10 Creating the environment
- 6:10 Planning ahead/knowing your team
- 8:40 Building skillsets
- 11:00 Be the role model
- 13:10 Collaborate your way out
- 15:10 Biggest challenge his team faced last season
- 19:20 Collaboration equals ownership
- 21:10 Andrew Cogliano’s effect in Colorado’s Cup win
- 22:50 Handling adversity in the championship game
