You don’t know what you don’t know, so don’t pretend to.

Panic.

That was my first response when my intelligent (and handsome) editors at The Coaches Site approached me about writing a regular series of articles detailing the ups and downs of kickstarting a brand new junior A hockey team in Niverville, Manitoba. 

I’m too busy.

The work won’t be good.

These seemed like viable excuses.

But then I realized that this series would be different than anything I’ve ever done before. When I came to Niverville, I believed a new team offered the opportunity to do something different. With that in mind, I realized the articles would undoubtedly look different as well. One thing I believe I do well is turning panic into intrigue, and thus my anxiety gave way to curiosity and excitement. 

So this series would be different, just like my current position is different. Which is kinda the whole point. 

But while I was relaxed about the scope of the project, I was still stressed because I wasn’t capable of planning out an entire season’s worth of articles. (Here’s part 1, for anyone interested.)

Again, that’s the point, we agreed. You don’t know what you don’t know, so don’t pretend to. Search for the answers, pay close attention, and write about the lessons you learn along the way. We’re a couple months into the on-ice process here, nine months removed from the day I got hired, and good Gord we’ve learned a lot of lessons. 

Here are the three biggest lessons learned so far:

Don’t Fix Everything Today

Don’t even try. The only reason I’m including this section is because I learned this the hard way. I wanted to bring my staff together quickly, I wanted to bridge the gaps in the new relationships we were forming, I wanted our online presence to be immaculate, I wanted our players to take care of themselves properly – and three quarters of our guys have never washed their hockey laundry. Oh, and I had to get a washer and dryer installed at the rink. And find a laundry tub. And, and, and…

I wanted all of these things instantly and it overwhelmed me. During my playing days, as well as my coaching career, I’ve learned that you should dictate the play rather than react to it. I don’t think I believe that any more. Sure, we set lofty standards for our players and our staff and I was well-prepared to teach our team team how I wanted to play, but I was naive to think we’d achieve perfection early on. And then I realized that perfection can be the enemy of good, so instead of trying to be perfect every day, we switched to trying to be better today than we were yesterday. 

For example, on our power play we have talented players with tier 2 and major junior experience. I introduced what I thought was a simple power play scheme, but it required a lot of trust within the unit, trust which is difficult to attain when no one knows each other. Based on the overwhelming evidence in front of my face, it didn’t work. We made a switch (probably a period too late) and things started to click.

I reacted to what I saw in front of my face. I wasn’t disappointed in the struggles of the special teams because I saw those challenges as an opportunity to work with some talented players. Don’t get me wrong, we’re early on in the season and we’re still not good enough, but the potential is exciting. 

Reacting is just another way to say adapting. One thing I’ve learned that’s true of both coaching and writing is sometimes it’s necessary to kill your darlings. Get over yourself and cut out the ideas, paragraphs, line combinations, systems, and sentences that don’t work or don’t fit and move on. 

Ask Questions

I believe I was successful in landing my last two jobs because I made it clear that my strength is in asking questions. This comes from writing. For five years at The Coaches Site I interviewed smart coaches with unique styles and approaches and I learned more than I currently remember. From position-less hockey with Rikard Gronborg on Glass & Out to creativity in practice with Amy De Bree to connecting centremen with their wingers with Todd Woodcroft, I described my obsession with knowledge acquisition, and it worked because it was the truth. 

Asking questions and making decisions is who I am. Sometimes it’s exhausting, I’ll grant that, especially when you receive as many questions as you ask, but for me it’s the best way to build a culture of curiosity where coaches and players are on the same side of centre ice. We’re skating towards a common goal. There is so much we don’t know early on in a season that we can figure out if we’re constantly asking questions. 

One of those goals was accomplished recently from an unlikely source. And I only say unlikely because I didn’t know this source existed six moths ago. 

This is Rob Pambrun. Rob phoned me in February and wanted to be involved with our new team in some capacity. At the time I didn’t know what that would look like, or even if there was a fit whatsoever. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Then I met Rob and began to collect evidence. Watching Rob interact with players and our growing staff was inspirational to say the least. We created a role in which Rob would become our Player Development and Sport Science Coach. I sat back and let him do his thing, which included a recent presentation to our players about game-day habits on and off the ice. Sure enough, two nights later we played our most complete game of the season with more than one player attributing their strong personal performance to coach Rob and the lessons he taught them. It started with a question that Rob has been asking in his career as a bodybuilding coach, and he delivered that answer to the players just in time to avoid an ugly losing streak. 

We ask questions because we don’t know the answers, but when we find them together, we’re all a lot stronger because of that process. 

Embrace the Chaos

It’s hard for a firefighter to collect evidence in the middle of a house-fire, but that doesn’t mean they panic and run away screaming. Even on days where you have 42 separate phone conversations (not made up), a practice, a couple special teams meetings, a 5on5 video session, kids switching billet houses, a Dogge accident, and you try to mix in an hour of exercise.

I forget what my point was. I didn’t know where that sentence was going when I started it. You know, sometimes you feel like you’re ok with not knowing all the answers, and sometimes you feel like you really know sweet f%$k-all about hockey or sports or anything. 

Anyways, I think the point is that it’s ok to take on these tasks as long as you’re prepared to grind your way through it. For the players, it’s important to show grace under fire. It’s not their problem everything away from the rink feels like it’s on fire, but how they’re being treated and coached is very much your problem. Not problem, responsibility. Everything we do here is for our players and I refuse to let anything get in the way of that. We don’t always know the clearest way to achieving that goal, but we know we want to avoid decision paralysis during challenging moments, so we prepare as best we can and we move forward with the evidence we’ve collected. Each moment builds on the one previous, much like the flow of the game. A defensive zone face off win can set the table for three offensive zone shifts and an eventual goal or power play. Everything matters, and how we do anything is how we do everything. 

It’s important to follow that flow while allowing for some innovation at the same time. I don’t want a brand new player I’ve just met to stay on the same wing on the same line for an entire season just because it worked relatively well once or twice. What if we’re missing something? What if we can do something better? What if we can ask a question and find an answer that nobody knows in the moment? 

We embrace the chaos and collect powerful evidence in the form of positive video clips, purposeful conversations, and dedicated practices. We learn something new every day, and while I don’t know what it will look like three weeks from now let alone three months from now, I can say with confidence that we’ll know a lot more at both points in time.