During this 19-minute presentation, you’ll learn how to build up solid tendencies & habits in your structure on your power play.
Mike Babcock needs no introduction. The former Head Coach spent 17 seasons in the NHL, including guiding the Detroit Red Wings to the Stanley Cup championship in 2008 and coaching Canada to back-to-back Olympic gold medals in 2010 and 2014. Babcock is the only coach in hockey history to have won the Stanley Cup, Olympic gold, the World Cup, the World Hockey Championship and the World Junior Championship.
Michael Babcock, Mike’s son, is still working on his hockey resume. He is currently an Assistant Coach at the University of Saskatchewan, where his dad Mike was Head Coach during the 2021-22 season. Prior to coaching, Michael’s playing career consisted of four years in the USHL with the Fargo Force and Cedar Rapid Roughriders before he served as team captain of Merrimack College, where he was a three-time honouree of the Hockey East All-Academic Team.
When the Babcock’s pitched speaking together at TCS Live in 2022, it was a no-brainer. Unique opportunities to hear from an established hockey mind and an up-and-coming one don’t come along every day, especially not when the Babcocks spoke on how to implement NHL power play exactisms. Exactisms? What are exactisms? Great question.
“When you come to the Babcock family household and you talk about exactisms, it’s knowing exactly your job and your skillset in any certain moment. We’re doing this in the O-zone, D-zone and on special teams; we’re trying to simplify things as much as possible because the simpler the job you have, the more your skillset gets to shine.”
Babcock wants your players playing free and loose, reacting to situations rather than thinking what they should be doing. This takes a solid foundation of muscle memory, which they implement during training camp at the University of Saskatchewan. The structure of their season and how they’ll play is based off the previous season’s NHL playoffs, as Babcock explains.
Teaching exactisms comes down to communication and a coach’s ability to teach quickly. Coaches may review a video clip 50 or 60 times to see exactly what happened, why and what to learn from it, whereas players will only watch it once. This means immediately drawing your players to exactly what you need them to see – that’s comprehension.
During this 19-minute presentation, you’ll learn how to build up solid tendencies & habits in your structure on your power play.
