Have you ever had a skilled player who showed limited effort and intensity in games or practice but seemingly doesn't perceive effort as a problem?
Maybe you have some lesser-skilled players, but they tend to overestimate their depth placement with the team because they bring intensity.
This matrix grid allows you and your staff to rank players in effort and skill on a 2 by 2 table.
Simply place the player's numbers on the chart based on their relative skill and effort. Players demonstrating the optimal effort and top skill are placed towards the top left of the grid. Ideally, you want most players clustering on top of the grid and/or towards the top left.
This grid creates a good visual measure of team needs. Used well, the Effort Skill Matrix motivates and adds a mixed method evaluation to other player evaluation analytics.
In episode #238 of the Glass and Out Podcast, our team at The Coaches Site had the chance to visit the OHL's Kitchener Rangers facilities and sit down with Head Coach Jussi Ahokas.
Ahokas is currently in his first season in North America after spending the past four seasons as the Head Coach of TPS in the Liga, Finland’s top Professional league. During that time, he was named the Alliance of European Hockey Club’s Coach of the Year, the equivalent of the Jack Adams Award across all of Europe's top professional leagues.
Listen as he shares he shares the Finnish concept of "Sisu," why you'll always get better results when people enjoy the environment and why positionless hockey is the future of the game.
Player must receive that "bad pass" in motion with two lateral weight shifts driving low. When no option to drive the net or pass is presented, player drives inside off the wall for the shot opportunity.
With lateral weight shifts being used more and more for deception and receptions, working on these has become a favorite for myself and the players.
When you're about to shoot, what you see with your own eyes is very different from what the stick sees with its eyes.
As a right handed shot, if I am about to shoot a wrist shot on my forehand side, the blade of my stick is at least 1 to 2 feet to the right of where eyes are and about 5.5 feet lower. So when I look at the spaces to shoot past the goalie, I must remember that the puck isn't being shot from where my eyes are, but from over 5 feet away where the eyes of my stick are.
These two goals by Brianne Jenner in the gold medal win by Canada at the World Championships illustrate shooting through the eyes of the stick perfectly.
Jenner is a right handed shot skating on the left side of the ice on both these goals (ie her off wing). On both goals, she takes an extra step to cut towards the middle of the ice before shooting. This changes the shot angle slightly, and gives the eyes of her right handed stick more room to shoot at on the far side.
Jenner probably can't see the far side as being open with her own eyes, but she has practiced shooting from the off wing through the eyes of her stick so often that she knows the eyes of her stick are seeing space on the far side.
Two world class shots by a world class player for sure, but shooting through the eyes of your stick is a concept that players at all ages can use to score more goals this season.
Work Hard. Dream BIG.
Shoot More, Score More.
If you want even more great stuff from Coach Kim, join The Orange Machine! The Orange Machine is an exclusive HOW TO, NO FLUFF weekly newsletter created by world-renowned development coach Kim McCullough. Each week, Coach Kim will give you the exact tools you need to take your skills, team play, hockey IQ and mental game to the next level AND show you exactly how to use them in a step-by-step, easy to understand way. With over 30+ years experience playing & coaching at all levels of the game from U9 to the national teams, you can be sure Coach Kim is giving you the tools that are right for you and your game, no matter your current age group or level. If you want to dramatically transform your game, then The Orange Machine is right for you!CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE
Coach preparation involves planning for safe outcomes. Do this by defining your outcomes early and linking them to your yearly plan (YP), quarterly objectives and most importantly your player's physical, mental and social needs. Research and consider the long-term player development needs of your players. Customize and consider scheduling parameters and other non-sport needs like school, family and other pursuits. By matching your practices, games, competitions and events to your athletes, you will ensure safety and performance.
The best coaches establish the importance of ancillary skills for their players. Of these physical fitness and the capacities developed through physical training are vital for both performance potential and safe outcomes. A fit athlete is a resilient athlete. Promote and establish fitness standards, do some fit testing and measurement and use training to develop the various capacities of health. Strength, speed, flexibility and stamina benchmarks, monitoring and improvements are a component that all players can demonstrate effort, resistance and improvement. These sport building blocks and team activities will create countless benefits for your team.
With playoff season here, parents and players are well established in their routines and hockey schedules at this point of the year. However, no matter how much time before heading to the rink, busy hockey families always need to find time to have the right pre-game meal to be able to fuel performance on the ice.
While understandably in a time crunch at times, the more preparation you can put into meal planning, the better it can serve your schedules and athletes.
“It’s really about balance. It’s not about cutting things out. It’s really about the timing. If you’re in a tournament, it’s about fueling your body like athletes,” said Seanna Thomas on Breakaway, the Minor Hockey Podcast.
Thomas is a Nutrition Consultant and hockey mom who works with young athletes, sports teams, families, and organizations to provides nutrition information.
She suggests it’s about determining what works for your family for the timing of meals and snacks, understanding that everyone’s schedules and bodies are different. Parents can plan ahead based on the typical levels of hunger at that point in the day and how much time you have before going to the rink. They know their kids best.
3-4 Hours Before a Game Your body has time to digest proteins, fats and fibres before hitting the ice. This is the time for the spaghetti and meatballs, chicken and broccoli and rice or even breakfast for dinner. Eggs don’t need that three to four hours to digest like the other meals but can are a great source of protein.
“Keep the yolk in. Don’t go all egg white. There’s actually a lot of protein in the yolk. All the vitamins and minerals are in there,” said Thomas.
Closer to the Game This is the time to focus more on the carbohydrates. It takes about one hour for your body to digest it and use it as fuel. Be careful with your timing – a heavy meal closer to puck drop can confuse your body whether to focus on digestion or performance and end up hindering both.
Early Hockey Mornings We’ve all been at the rink for those 7 am practices. Players (and parents!) can still feel half-asleep at early morning and not everyone may be in the mood to eat. Thomas recommends to still give them something to digest, even as simple as a piece of fruit or simple carbs like a piece of toast cereal or even a handful of dry cereal.
“They’ve got to have something in their bellies. Even if it is just a glass of milk. You can do a pre-game smoothie. A piece of fruit is the ultimate pre-game meal. Especially if you have less than an hour. A banana is my favourite – pre-portioned, prepackaged, it’s ready to go. Your body recognizes it instantly, digests it quickly and can utilize that energy really fast.”
After a Game This is the key time to focus on nutrition. That’s when you can give everything – protein for muscle recovery and carbs to replace the energy you just used. Your body is expecting nutrition to help itself regroup after being on the ice.
One of Thomas’s top tips in helping to ease the stress of meal planning is to get the kids involved. Bring them into the kitchen and let them help cut up parts of the meal or package the portions. They will learn about the responsibility that goes into their food and can take pride in the fact they helped make their own meals.
“If you can get your kids in and make them responsible for their pre-game snack or their post-game recovery snack… get them to make their trail mix… the ownership it gives them, and how proud they are, is fantastic.”
For teams that bring snacks or lunches on a rotational basis, work together as a parent group with the coaches to make sure everyone is aligned on nutritional focus and allergy considerations.
Elite performance comes from being fully immersed in process; It’s what we call being in the moment, dialed in, or in the zone. But the challenge is that the external scoreboards of sport and life can consume our focus and distract our attention from the process.
We all know the cliché, “focus on what you can control,” but the problem is that it is a lot easier said than done. In fact, the root cause for most mental blocks stems from getting caught up in society’s definition of success – the external scoreboards.
For example:
Struggle with confidence? Then you probably tie your confidence to results.
Get nervous & tense? Then you are probably worried about results.
Struggle with resilience? Then you probably beat yourself up after negative results.
To make matters worse, it’s hard to escape the external scoreboards. There are literally massive signs with bright lights in your face all game.
Follow these 3 steps to develop your own personal scorecard and you will learn to focus on the things within your control, be immersed in the process, and achieve Consistent Elite Performance.
STEP 1: What to Score
The key here is clearly identifying what matters to you. These should be highly within your control and meaningful to your performance.
The two main categories you should include are:
Mental State
Process
STEP 2: How to Score It
For mental state, we encourage using a percentage based on a contrast.
For example, 70% attack vs. 30% fear mindset.
The goal should be to hit 95%+. This is not about perfection, but doing your best to be fully committed to the mental state that matters to you.
When measuring your process, you can use percentages as well, but the key here is that it depends on the standards you set for yourself. We call this EPS: Executing my Process to my Standard.
We recommend using a three tier system to measure your EPS:
Well: At or above you standard
Meh: Close but not at your standard
No: Not even close and was likely a mental mistake
What most people get wrong here is that they start tracking the result, like successful plays made. This is not what we want to track here.
Instead, it’s about how you actually executed your process. You could execute your process well but get an unlucky result, or execute poorly but get a lucky result.
So on your personal scorecard, we want how you executed your process to your standard, not results.
STEP 3: Get the Most Out of It
All of this can be ruined if you don’t stop checking, let alone obsessing over, your stats or results.
What we look at and focus on matters.
That’s the whole point of the personal scorecard. So you can thwart the main purpose of it if you keep going online and filling your mind with external scoreboards and comparisons.
On the flip side, it’s really helpful to add a column for 5 things you did well each day. This helps keep you focused on the little wins and not overly focused on the mistakes.
You can also use your personal scorecard as a type of checklist to ensure you are using some of your other mental tools or keys to performance:
10 Sec Reset Routine
Detailed Imagery Script
Getting 9+ hours of Quality Sleep
Nutrition or any other healthy habits
Connecting to an Intrinsic Why (i.e., the love of the game)
Your personal scorecard is something you will continue to iterate and adjust. Finding someone you trust to give helpful feedback can greatly improve the impact.
The bottom line and the paradox of the whole thing is:
Your personal scorecard is something you will continue to iterate and adjust – finding someone you trust to give helpful feedback can greatly improve the impact.
The bottom line and the paradox of the whole thing is:
If you follow the above steps and consistently use your personal scorecard, then you will see the results on the external scoreboard – although you shouldn’t be looking!
