Instilling Heart and Desire in a Hockey Player

This topic really isn’t a new one.  Still, the way a former pro player phrased the question (or his statement) sent me right to typing a pretty long, detailed reply.

How it started was that the guy Messaged me through Facebook, suggesting that, “The hockey invention no one has come up with yet would be priceless.”  That new invention, gleaned from his having watched his favorite team win the Stanley Cup, was something that would “instill heart and desire in a player…”  He ended with, “Someone could make millions!”

Okay, if you know this old coach by now, you know that got me going.  And, when I was done answering my friend, I just knew I had to share my thoughts with my CoachChic.com friends.

Now, believing in myself as I do, I wrote back to say that I see it as relatively easy to accomplish — with a couple of IFs.   Ya, a couple of dawgoned IFs…

My first need would be to get the players rather early, or while still young and mold-able.  (No way could I change the playing personality of a kid who is 10 or 12 or 15 or older.)

Secondly, I’d need the parents to be a help and not a hindrance.  (You don’t think that matters?  Well, one time not long ago — while I tried to enhance certain skills with a group of Mites, I had three sets of parents tell me they didn’t like the way I prodded their kids to try harder.   Now, to survive all these years as a coach, I have to be a pretty compassionate guy, and a pretty good teacher.  So the real problem, I’ll suggest, is that the boys’ moms were bothered a whole lot more by my methods than their kids.   My prediction:  all three boys will be out of the game within a few years — or at least out of very competitive levels, IF they’re not allowed to grow with their teammates.)

Okay, so I’m boasting a bit as I write back to the former pro, telling him I know exactly how I’ve always liked to start infusing a little heart or desire into the young players in my charge. And, reverting back to a few drills I’ve mentioned previously in these pages, I suggested that I’d do it with some combative-type games…

I always began with 1 on 1 keepaway.  Hey, how much closer to real game conditions can you get than to ask two youngsters to compete against each other for possession of the puck?

The second game I like to play is very similar to keepaway, except I’ll send two young players into a corner after a dumped puck, and ask the kid who gains the puck to as quickly as possible put a good pass right onto my stick.

As you should appreciate, 1 against 1 games — of any kind — tend to really magnify the participants’ desire for the puck. Oh, sure, it can boil down to skills, too. So, I have an answer for that…

Although every player on a roster should be able to ultimately do well against most teammates, I think we both know that the best skilled players will win most of the earliest contests.

This in mind, I’ll suggest that it would be a good idea to purposely arrange match-ups in the early going.  Picture it, for example, that we pit the weakest two players against each other.  Both should feel they have a chance at winning, and both are more likely to give their all than if either was matched against a far more talented player.  At the other end of our roster, I’ll suggest that the two best players probably won’t act lazily if paired in such a matchup.  Ya, the last thing I want is for a player to either just go through the motions or totally give-up before the drill even starts.

As I intimated earlier, my friend was writing me with some favorite NHL-ers in mind.   So I suggested to him that such guys — having reached that level of play, had had lots of successes as they climbed the hockey ladder.  In other words, it’s pretty likely they won lots of battles along the way, many of them just like I’ve described above.

I raise that point to suggest that no one learns from failing more than they succeed.

I also felt the need to mention the numbers game that tends to take place in sport.  I mean, for every player we see competing at a high level, there were literally thousands of others he or she passed by.  The reasons athletes drop by the wayside can be pretty varied.  But, my thinking is that a lot of kids drop-out once they feel they can’t compete anymore.  And, once again, we’re talking about the kind of competing that takes place in my little 1 against 1 games.

Now, although I probably should have addressed a couple terms from the outset, I purposely decided to handle them at the end.

Actually, we in sport tend to toss terms around rather loosely, perhaps not exactly using the right words, or not explaining ourselves as well as we should.  Anyway, with that…

I think we all have a sense of what my young friend meant when he cited the importance of “desire”.  In other words, he (and I) feel that it’s extremely important for a player to want the puck — badly, or to desperately want a certain valuable position on the ice surface, etc.

All I’ve suggested above is that we can start relatively young players on a path towards believing in themselves when it comes to battling opposition players.  And, to accomplish that, tasks must be do-able, at least in the start.  (If I challenge you to jump the Grand Canyon, you’re going to walk away, and I haven’t done a thing to help your self-confidence.)  Fairly even match-ups like I’ve described above give at least half a roster the chance to be successful, and it’s quite likely even more than half of the kids will win some of those battles.

Along the way, even young players will start to sense that they accomplish more with added effort, and that the occasional extra grunt often spells victory.  At least that’s what we should be hoping as we supervise those little battles.

I’m also going to suggest that even a single season spent doing these types of combative drills can stick with individual players for a very long time.  Little by little, the lessons learned mount-up, as does the confidence.  And, it will take a lot of setbacks in subsequent years to undo the belief a kid has in himself or herself.

Oh, ya, there’s one more term to address here.  And that’s the matter of “heart”.   Hmmmmmm…

I know my friend at the other end of this discussion had the best of intentions when he used that word.   And, it might even be appropriate to use if we’re discussing professional players (although I even doubt that).  For my money, every youngster who goes out to try his or her hand at the game has heart.   I dare anyone to argue with me on that.

As a matter of fact, I’m guessing most kids also initially take to the ice with a batch of desire.

If there’s anything that can go wrong with all this, it’s probably that we adults — we parents and coaches — too often leave the kids to their own devices, and don’t use methods that enhance their skills and confidence.