It begins with video.

Preparing a national team for an international hockey tournament comes with a lot of challenges, and that’s in a normal year absent the extra stress 2020 has presented.

National team coaches have to put together a roster of players from different club teams and leagues, put a system in place, and then get the team to gel in a short amount of time.

At our Virtual Hockey Summit held last September, Team Sweden head coach Tomas Montén provided great insight into what goes into preparing his team.

Montén has served as Sweden’s head coach in each of the last four World Juniors, but unfortunately isn’t able to attend this year’s tournament in Edmonton. He plans to provide support for the team remotely.

Montén is Sweden’s full-time U20 head coach, meaning he prepares all year for the World Juniors in December. Sweden’s U20 team usually plays four tournaments a year, in addition to the World Juniors. At each of those tournaments, preparation begins with video.

The team’s “playbook” gets sent to players before arrival, so they can hit the ground running. The playbook includes about 50 video clips attached to a document with different instructions about how the team wants to play.

Every practice has a theme (breakouts, regroup, forecheck, etc.) and the team reviews video — the same video from the playbook — before they hit the ice. The video coach then films practice, with players reviewing it as a team or individually later on.