Subject: Books for coaches to read

This is a letter that Dean Holden sent this morning with suggestions for coach reading. Dean coaches at a Junior High School Hockey Canada Skills Academy, runs his own High School Sports Performance program, does coach development / evaluation for Hockey Alberta and private mentoring.

“I thought I would some of the book titles I am reading this month. There may be some possible Christmas gifts here!

"The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle. "Talent is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin. Both are easy and enjoyable to read with some real-life examples that make you say ‘wow.’ Pop culture meets science. Both books get you thinking…

"Coaching Champions - Soccer Coaching in Italy" by Frank Dunne. It is an interesting coaching perspective with interviews with top age-group coaches from U11 to U21, in the Italian Azzurri club. There are some developmental / leadership lessons that can apply to hockey. It details how the best coaches in Italy run their club program. We should take the positives from their experiences and bring these back into our own programs.

"Whose Puck is it Anyway?" by Ed Arnold. Forward by Bob Gainey and Afterward by Steve Larmer. Should be a ‘must read’ for Minor Hockey coaches and those who care about the game. Real life chronicles from a minor hockey league season in Ontario.

"I'd Trade Him Again" by Peter Pocklington, Terry McConne and J'Lyn Nye. The history behind the decision that signalled the beginning of the dismantling of the Oilers core and ultimately helped enhance interest in hockey in California (and some say, the USA in general.)

"Leafs Abomination" by Dave Feschuk and Michael Grange and "Why the Leafs Suck" by Al Strachan. Both are timely titles for an Original Six franchise that has clearly lost its way. Reading between the lines, one can clearly see ‘what NOT to do’ and hopefully this advice can be put to use in a positive fashion. It remains to be seen if Brian Burke can turn things around.

'When the Lights Went Out" by Gare Joyce. An account of the 1987 Punch-up in Piestany. This one is more for pure enjoyment / hockey history. Timely as New Years means it’s time yet again for the World Junior Championships!

I also highly recommend another of Joyce’s books, "Future Greats and Heartbreaks”. One of my fascinations is with Talent ID and how can we do a better job of detecting it? It is the Billion Dollar Question! Here is one reader's comment on "Future Greats”: The reader is “... taken along in the Blue Jackets' war room for the 2006 NHL Draft and travels the junior hockey scouting world through the 2006-2007 NHL season. There are tons of interesting inside information, including a different view on Phil Kessel, the Russian prospects' situation and Akim Aliu."

"Think like a Champion" by Donald Trump, Meredith McIver and "Trump - the Way to the Top. The Best Business Advice I Ever Received" by Donald Trump. Any time you can gain insight into an entrepreneur like Trump, it is time well spent.

"Reallionaire" by Farrah Gray and Fran Harris. Truly an amazing story... a particularly good read if you need to be inspired. Gives you an appreciation for the ability of young kids to learn and understand; especially when they are motivated!

"Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Good stuff. Turn the business angle into a coaching perspective for your players.

These books are best to get from a library (free) or order online through Indigo. It's way cheaper than buying them for full price from a Chapters store!

Finally, my highest recommendation goes to "Hockey Coaching ABC's: A program to develop the complete player" (BOOK 2) by Juhani Wahlsten and Tom Molloy. Tom gave me a copy a few years ago and I have read it cover-to-cover several times. It is the one book I consistently carry with me in my coaching bag. It has been highlighted, underlined and written in – something I don’t do in lesser tomes. This is the BEST hockey coaching book I have read to date. I consider it the modern Bible of hockey coaching; much like Anatolyi Tarasov considered “The Hockey Handbook” by Lloyd Percival (published in the 1951.)

“Originally published in 1951, and rejected at the time by one NHL coach as “the product of a three-year-old mind,” Lloyd Percival’s The Hockey Handbook went on to become an internationally recognized classic. Russian and European coaches seized on the book as the first authoritative, analytical treatment of hockey fundamentals and based their training regimes on the principles Percival described. The father of Russian hockey, Anatoli Tarasov, wrote to Percival: “Your wonderful book which introduced us to the mysteries of Canadian hockey, I have read like a schoolboy.” Now, nearly half a century later, The Hockey Handbook remains in a class by itself. It is the first book required by players or coaches at all levels of proficiency who are setting out to develop their own or their team’s hockey skills.”


Although I am friends with Tom, he didn't ask me to PR his book; nor am I receiving any kickbacks from recommending his book. This is an unsolicited comment. I have read thousands of books since I started coaching in 1986 and I truly believe it is THAT good! In my opinion, the use of small area games help players discover the right decisions to make in game-like conditions (random situations and under pressure.) This is the absolute best way to allow the players to develop their hockey sense; as opposed to ‘patterned drills’ which deny creativity and independent problem-solving. I have recommended to Hockey Alberta that this book should be part of the future curriculum manuals we hand out for our Development 1, Development 2 and High Performance 1 coaching courses.

Amazon has Book 1, but you want to order Book 2 directly from Tom as it has more information, drills and games than it’s predecessor (it has a black spiral-bound cover, not red like BOOK 1). It can be ordered from Tom's website (which is also full of good info) at: http://hockeycoachingabcs.com.
Tom can be reached at tommolly@hotmail.com

As a close second recommendation to Tom's book, I also highly recommend Bruce Brown's work (he has a number of CD's / DVD's / coaching pamphlets and does public speaking). Bruce is a former coach and Athletic Director in the Pacific Northwest. Bruce is all about teaching life lessons through sport and in my mind, that's what it should be all about. I HIGHLY recommend this stuff. I bought a bunch of it. It is great to be able to listen to one of his CD’s while you are driving. Bruce’s site is located at http://www.proactivecoaching.info/


Enjoy your holidays.

Dean

Re: Books for coaches to read

Dean,

I share your zeal for talent ID and would recommend for anyone else that is these.

This is a good article by Malcom Gladwell. I enjoy his writing style and this article he discusses why football QBs are so difficult to rate in the NFL.

http://www.gladwell.com/2008/2008_12_15_a_teacher.html


I also recommend the book that was talked about in "Future Greats and Heartbreaks" about famous baseball scout Tony Lucadello titled, "prohet of the Sandlots" by Mark Winegardner.


Any other books that people have read since this I would love to hear about them.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Eric,

Thanks for your article by Gladwell. I will check it out. I too enjoy his writing. I will also look for the "Prophets of the Sandlots" at the library.

"Moneyball" by Michael Lewis (2003) is a baseball book that discusses the use of statistics and the predictors of success. (I admit I had to slog through it as I am not a baseball fan; nor a big fan of statistics, in the slightest!)

If memory serves me right, one of the most important stats is about 'getting on base'. I know the NY Rangers used this book as inspiration to redesign their scouting system. Their operating procedures are a closely guarded secret and I am not privy to all the details. However, it will be interesting to see how they do in the draft over the next 5-10 years.

I have read another 75+ books since I posted this initial list. If I can find some time to list the best ones around Christmas again this year, I will do so.

I encourage other people to post their favourite books. Also, check out the "Articles" thread for some more good ones...

Re: Books for coaches to read

Just bought The Talent Code. Its a good book huh? Is this a book you would recommend 1st or is ther another one thats just as good?

Re: Books for coaches to read

Aberdeen,

"The Talent Code" is a great place to start!

I would recommend "Talent is Overrated" as a second book - Geoff Colvin.

Third, I would read "Bounce" by Matthew Syad.

With Malcolm Gladwell's trio of books ("The Tipping Point" and "Blink" ), "Outliers" is the one most closely related to expertise and would be a good fourth book to read.

Enjoy!

Re: Books for coaches to read

Thanks, Whats weird is this is the 1st year Im not coaching yet bought this book to help continue my coaching skills. Whatever “coaching” means.

Re: Books for coaches to read

I have thought about "Moneyball" as a book to try to relate hockey too, but haven't been able to muster up the will to read it. It was discussed in "Three Nights in August", another baseball book that follows the Cardinals skipper around for a big series late in the year. Lou was the anti-moneyball according to the book.

"Drive" by Daniel Pink talks about motivation. Although you can probably save yourself a decent amount of time and just watch the video of his presentation on it.

It's not a book but www.ted.com is a fantastic website for people from all different backgrounds discuss the latest "ideas" and theories. Each presenter is limited to 15 minutes so you they pack it full of information. You can get lost on that site for weeks and learn so much. Great thinkers.

"The five dysfuntions of a team" is a good read as well that is in fable form.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Quote by: Aberdeen

Thanks, Whats weird is this is the 1st year Im not coaching yet bought this book to help continue my coaching skills. Whatever “coaching” means.

I suspect you have the "coaching disease". It is blood born and usually genetically inherited. I promised my dad on his deathbed that I would leave coaching and get a "real job"... I tried to get treatment and get away from the game to detox, but after two years, I had to go back. It's like an addiction. I haven't done Meth, but I suspect coaching / hockey is THAT addictive.

Now I don't "coach a team" per se; but through my work in the skill academies; my work with Hockey Canada and Hockey Alberta; all my reading and researching; my involvement with my mentor coaches; my evaluation and mentoring of other coaches... I am still very active in the trenches and in the pursuit of coaching / leadership knowledge. I have an open Mindset; am a student of the game; and know I am a lifelong learner!

I made a conscious decision to step away from the "team coaching" commitment and travel once we started to raise a family. It has been a great time to refresh my passion for coaching and one day when the kids get older, I hope to return to Major Junior or else go back to Europe...!

Enjoy your time away Aberdeen and continue to fuel your passion! You will be a better coach / person when you return! This time off is all about finding and replenishing balance... because at the higher levels, when you are coaching a team, it is tough to find balance of any kind...if you can find it, you are a better man than I!

Speaking of balance.... Friday night with a Blue Monk Barley Wine - able to watch the Flames (Shames) and the BlackHawks on HD... rather than on the road... I guess it is the next best thing... for now, this is balance... until I pull out the rye and get unbalanced!

Re: Books for coaches to read

Quote by: Eric

I have thought about "Moneyball" as a book to try to relate hockey too, but haven't been able to muster up the will to read it. It was discussed in "Three Nights in August", another baseball book that follows the Cardinals skipper around for a big series late in the year. Lou was the anti-moneyball according to the book.

"Drive" by Daniel Pink talks about motivation. Although you can probably save yourself a decent amount of time and just watch the video of his presentation on it.

It's not a book but www.ted.com is a fantastic website for people from all different backgrounds discuss the latest "ideas" and theories. Each presenter is limited to 15 minutes so you they pack it full of information. You can get lost on that site for weeks and learn so much. Great thinkers.

"The five dysfunctions of a team" is a good read as well that is in fable form.

Eric, Thanks for sharing. Moneyball was (for me - a person totally uninterested in baseball, even though I played it until grade 7) a tough slog. Learned a few things though... Can't say I will read "Three nights in August" - a baseball book - unless you HIGHLY recommend it. I would rather... drink beer and think deep thoughts. Or clean out the kitty litter. Hmmmm... something smells....

Check out "Win Forever" by Pete Carroll - the new Seattle NFL coach. (I would rather read a book from an NBA or NFL coach than baseball... other than freaky eye/hand coordination, it ain't a sport... when you can drink beer WHILE PLAYING and effectively play at a weight of 250+ lbs (right Cecil Fielder?), then it's a hobby... right darts?)

I will look up the Drive video to save myself some time as it is indeed precious with two kids, a wife and way too many other things going on (teaching hockey, reading, motorbikes, bicycles, beer, rye, etc!)

I will also check out this TED site you mention. Never heard of it but it sounds like another thing that warrants my attention.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Some "fun" books to read over Christmas:

The Final Call by Kerry Fraser.

Tough Guy by Bob Probert.

The Making of Slapshot by Jonathon Jackson

The Day I (almost) Killed Two Gretzky's by James Duthie

Don Cherry Part 2 by the MAN himself!

They Call Me Killer by Brian Kilrea and James Duthie

Re: Books for coaches to read

I'll have to check out some of these...

I would not highly recommend the "Three Nights in August." It is a good read and I have a better understanding of baseball and more respect for what the skipper in baseball actually does after reading it. But, you probably won't take a lot back to the rink with you after reading it.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Thanks for the review Eric. I probably will take a pass on this one after reading your comments. Blah is all I can say about baseball. Too slow moving for my liking!

I just picked up "The Genius in All of Us" by David Shenk (2010). Looks like a good one...!

Re: Books for coaches to read

I bought The Talent Code. There is an issue with it. They talk about myelin a lot and how deep practice can build more of it. “Nerve firings grow myelin, myelin controls impulse speed, and impulse speed is skill”.
But that’s not true. Myelin is created during fetal development and continues rapidly until age two which is why babies require high fat diet. Myelination continues more slowly through adolescence but there is nothing to be done to control it. And myelination has nothing to do with skill beyond the fact that it facilitates nerve communication which allows movement.


Neural firing has nothing to do with myelination. Neural firing is the electrical and chemical impulses jumping the synapse from one nerve cell to another. Schwann cells supply the myelin for peripheral neurons (arms, legs, etc.) and oligodendrocytes myelinate the CNS (brain, spinal cord).

The other side is there are diseases caused from a lack of myelin. If you could just grow it then there wouldn’t be diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

My wife is a medical writer and has case studies about this very topic.
-----------------------------
Aberdeen, interesting insight. You should write Daniel Coyle about this on his website and see what he has to say. I thought he explained how deep practice thickened the myelin. Ask him. I would be interested in the response.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Interesting x 2. I never thought to question the science but I should have. Would be interesting to hear Coyle and a medical professional discuss this...

Re: Books for coaches to read

Isn't here something about myelination ( my english is not for this kind of text)? At least he's the expert that Coyle uses in the Talent Code.

http://2007annualreport.nichd.nih.gov/snsdp.htm

And here's he's book:
http://theotherbrainbook.com/about.php

Re: Books for coaches to read

Since Christmas, I have finished reading several books on my reading list, started a few more and sourced out some additional books that interest me in the future.

Read:

Presentation Zen
Garr Reynolds

Creating Extra-Ordinary Teachers: Multiple Intelligences for the Classroom and Beyond
Branton Shearer

Tough Guy: My Life on the Edge
Bob Probert, Kirstie McLellan Day

The Making of Slap Shot : Behind the Scenes of the Greatest Hockey Movie
Jonathon Jackson

The Score Takes Care of itself: My Philosophy on Leadership (Bill Walsh)
Steve Jamison and Craig Walsh.

Win Forever: Live, Work and Play like a Champion
Pete Carroll, Yogi Roth, Kristoffer A. Garin

Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar
James Marcus Bach

The Dirty Truth:
T. J. Anderson

Always compete : an Inside Look at Pete Carroll and the USC Football Juggernaut
Steve Bisheff


Reading:

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Lou Aronica, Sir Ken Robinson

The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent and IQ is Wrong
David Shenk

Think Smart
Richard Restak

Herb Brooks
John Gilbert

A Game Plan for Life : the Power of Mentoring
John Wooden

Urban's Way: Urban Meyer, the Florida Gators and his Plan to Win
Buddy Martin

Scorecasting : the Hidden Influences Behind how Sports are Played and Games are Won
Tobias J. Moskowitz


To Read:

The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success
Jeff Brown, Mark Fenske

The Mentor Leader
Tony Dungey

Gabby: Confessions of a Hockey Lifer
Bruce Boudreau and Tim Leone

Eddie Shore and that Old Time Hockey
Michael C. Hiam

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
John C. Maxwell

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovations
Steven Johnson

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Daniel H. Pink

Selected: Why Some People Lead, Why Others Follow, and Why it Matters
Anjana Ahula, Mark Van Vugt

The Psychology of Abilities, Competencies and Expertise
Robert Sternberg, Elena L. Grigorenko

Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers
Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanufo

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
Kathryn Schulz

The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Applied Intelligence
Robert J. Sternberg, James C. Kaufman, Elena L. Grigorenko

Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative
Sir Ken Robinson

Re: Books for coaches to read

I just heard of a new book. "The Art of Scouting" Shane Malloy

I ordered it and it is on the way so I'll update more later. It's about the scouting process and what and how a NHL scout looks for and does. The author has a website and there are reviews listed if you simply google the name.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Quote by: Eric

I just heard of a new book. "The Art of Scouting" Shane Malloy

I ordered it and it is on the way so I'll update more later. It's about the scouting process and what and how a NHL scout looks for and does. The author has a website and there are reviews listed if you simply google the name.

I want this too. I messaged Tom on Facebook asking Shane was related. He isnt

Re: Books for coaches to read

Shane was on a local Calgary radio show (FAN 960) last week promoting his new book. I have read the first chapter and look forward to getting into the 'meat' of the content.

Not sure if you have read Gare Joyce's "Future Greats and Heartbreaks" book about scouting - it came out a few years ago. He also wrote a blog for some time afterwards that he updated with some of his thoughts.

(PS Tom spells his last name with an "o", not an "a"!)

My experience mirrors what numerous pro coaches and scouts say - some of the qualities that are placed in high demand (after skillset) are competitiveness, work ethic and passion for the game. Maybe we should start a new topic for this? ("Player Qualities in Demand?)
-----------------------------
The Finnish association held a symposium for the IIHF about 4 years ago because the Russians didn't put one on while hosting the World Championships. I went and Kai was there as well.
It came down to raknkings like this.
1. Game intelligence.
2. Competitiveness.
3. Skating
4. Skill sets.
These were tought to predict the players success along with adequate size..

Re: Books for coaches to read

I just received an email from a company (PHE Canada) that I order books from. I just received this one about a month ago and it looks good. For any coaches looking to gain further insight on the "Game Sense" methodology, I would recommend you take a look at this book. The title is TGfU - Simply Good Pedagogy: Understanding a Complex Challenge. It is normally $49.95 but is on sale for $32.18 - I think it may have a time limit - check the site.

http://www.phecanada.ca/store/tgfu-simply-good-pedagogy-understanding-a-complex-challenge.html

The description is as follows:

A product of the 4th Annual International TGfU Conference
An ideal text for preservice teacher education programs!
This Canadian TGfU resource brings together the ideas and perspectives of leading global TGfU proponents as presented at the 4th International TGfU conference held in Canada. This text highlights the current research and practice from around the world in games teaching/coaching as inspired by the TGfU approach. A selection of accepted papers form the basis of the texts:

Learning to play games as a complex challenge
TGfU generating new ideas in the PE curriculum
Coaching approaches for developing game senses in novice and expert players
Worth the work: Lessons learned from implementing TGfU

This book includes a detailed introduction of the TGfU long term planning approach and outlines how TGfU promotes problem solving, critical thinking, decision making and overall better games players. This resource will help teachers to understand and apply the concept and implementation of quality physical education programs.

Re: Books for coaches to read

I have added yet another item to my 'to do' list this summer - update the book list with those I have read this year or so... There have been some good ones! (Summer's are time to do some PD and prepare for next year!)

Re: Books for coaches to read

Dean,

Lucky me! I purchased Book 2 from Tom's website the day before they went on mail strike , so it couldn't be mailed. I will be like a little kid checking the mail everyday , hoping that the book arrives soon.

Purchasing the book is the least that I could do for Tom , as I feel I have gained so much knowledge from his website and all the time Tom puts in each day with the drills (Games) etc.

I haven't coached a team for years , but still run and help with practices of different levels each year.
I have a passion too find and gain knowledge of the game of hockey , which I can pass on to young players today.

Coaching seems to be something you can't let go . I t always draws you back in.

The best part is , parents can't complain (sorry,Don't complain as much) when you are a NON parent coach.

I will give my feed back after going over the book when it arrives.

RookieCoach

Re: Books for coaches to read

Quote by: RookieCoach

Dean,

Lucky me! I purchased Book 2 from Tom's website the day before they went on mail strike , so it couldn't be mailed. I will be like a little kid checking the mail everyday , hoping that the book arrives soon.

I haven't coached a team for years , but still run and help with practices of different levels each year.
I have a passion too find and gain knowledge of the game of hockey , which I can pass on to young players today.
Coaching seems to be something you can't let go . I t always draws you back in.

The best part is, parents can't complain (sorry,Don't complain as much) when you are a NON parent coach.

I will give my feed back after going over the book when it arrives.

RookieCoach

RK,

I consider Tom's book the 'bible' of coaching! I hope you like it and will be curious to hear what you think.

When Tom first gave me a copy of Book 1 late in the 1990's, I wasn't advanced enough in my thinking to understand or like it. I got overwhelmed by all the coding and practice setups. So I threw it on my bookshelf and ignored it (like any good Neanderthal, old-school hockey coach. After all, if I don't understand it, there must be something wrong with the book - it couldn't be me!)

Anyways, fast forward to 2007 when Tom gave me Book 2. The light bulb had been clicking since 2003 and voila - "the bible" appeared! WOW! It actually was epiphanic when I read it. I have highlighted the entire thing and made notes in the margin. It is well worn and well used. I have promoted it to many people and have been helping sell them for Tom. It is well worth the $25!

Tom can correct me on this, but I don't think there is much difference between books in content - rather he has a much better format and binding for Book 2. (Tom - feel free to chip in here!)

I am writing a new coaching 'bible' based on the activities and philosophies I have learned from John "The Colombian" Castrillon that will continue to shed light on Game Intelligence Training. Once we get it done, perhaps Tom will advertise it on his site. I will probably have to buy him a couple of beers for that...! (Had a great lunch today with Tom, Dan MacDonald and "The Colombian". Tom used his RIM Playbook to video some of our conversation and diagrams; he said he might put it onto this site if it turns out OK.)

I agree about coaching - it is a 'sickness' that once it gets in your blood, you can't get rid of it! There is no cure!

Parents - in Russia, after about age 8, they are not allowed into the rink for practice.

Regards,

Book 1 compared to Book 2

Rookie Coach, I put the book in the mail a few days ago when they took the lock of the mailbox. It should get there next week. I look forward to your comments.

Dean you are right and wrong about the similarities of book 1 and book 2.

Book 1 has 80 pages of text that describes the coaching philosophy, using games to teach the game, the coding system and finishes with removable coaching cards for the beginning levels 0-1-2. These 55 coaching module cards are double sided with 110 modules and are thick enough to stay rigid and can be carried in a pocket. The idea is for a coach to move through the levels taking skating, skills and game cards as his practice plan. If you go through all of the cards by the end of level 2 the players will have practiced a lot of skating, learned to shoot and carry the puck as well as how to pass. Each one of these skills has games that use these skills under game condition as well as games to teach good playing habits.

Book 2 has the same first 80 pages in the first 86 pages. The game table on page 77 in book 1 is better than the one in book 2. Page 87 is new and it is about Playing Principles and has 8 pages written by Juhani on how game situations teach the game. It finishes with a page describing the international playing symbols.

Page 97 starts the section on How to Play in Various Offensive and Defensive Situations and I go over each situation starting with a 1-1 and progress to team play including specialty teams finishing with how to practice specialty team play on page 147.

We had to put the practice modules on regular sized paper instead of the thicker removable coaching cards because the book would be too thick.

The first three beginning levels 0-1-2 are the same as book 1 and are followed by more advanced levels 3-4-5-6. Levels 5-6 are transition games.

Level 3
Level 3 focuses on game playing roles 1-3, the player with the puck and the player checking the puck carrier as well as more advanced skating exercises and routines. It has an exstensive body checking section as well as a large games section. Most exercises are from the B formations. The games focus on using individual skills within a game situation.

Level 4
Level 4 uses more advanced flow drills which are coded C and use the length of the ice and focus more on teaching game play situations and team play. So game situations 2 and 4. Offensive and defensive support. The games focus on Learning to Play the Game more than on individual skills.

The system has a total of 295 cards. So the last 185 are only in book 2. In book 1 the cards are numbered 1a - 1b because they are double sided. Levels 3-6 there is only one number.

Book 1 is for the first 2 or so years of hockey and book two is for after that. Juhani and I are both PE teacher/hockey coaches and it is written following a Progressive Scope and Sequence.

The videos Cancoach did that are on this site are all from book one.

The levels are only and example of how to use the system and were prepared for the Austrian Ice Hockey Federation. It is there official national program in the Geman version.

I started this site to compliment the book much like Daniel Coyle has his site about the Talent Code. Once you have written a book it is written and the purpose of this site is to answer questions about the coaching method and to keep up to date with the changes in the game. When I see a new drill or think of something new I code them within the ABC system, so they can be found easily and add them to our data base.

I learn new things all the time and am happy that organizations like USA hockey and German hockey are finally seeing the benefits of using games. It is too bad that they have to go through the whole process and try to re invent the wheel instead of acknowledging that a lot of work has already been done and then adding to the existing body of work. They are still in the infant stages of understanding how to use games in practice and how to progress from situation drills to Transition Games. But that is a topic for another day. (not only our method by Bill Beaney and others have been using games for years)

Probably not too exciting of a posting but I thought I should explain how Book 1 and Book 2 differ.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Tom,

This is a great overview of how your Books 1 and 2 are similar and different. Thanks for taking the time to explain. Suggestion: you might want to link this (or a shortened point form brief) to your message on the home page under your books for sale - so coaches know the similarities and differences.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Thought I would cross-post these comments about two good books... they were under another thread "Tarasov leading training with music"


Last week I finally started reading "Russian Hockey Secrets" (Pocket Books / Simon & Schuster) - otherwise known as "The Road to Olympus" (Griffin Press, 1969) by Anatoli Tarasov - (Standard Book Number 671-78619-9 / SBN 88760-002-6). This is a very hard book to find - I had to go online and search used bookstores to find it. It was $1.25 new back in the day - I spent $30 plus shipping for a decent used copy. Well worth the money - I am up to page 50 and it is excellent. He provides great descriptions about the evolution of Russian hockey on and off the ice. Particularly interesting are the off-ice exercises and games he played.

The North American 'experts' at the time (1950's and 1960's) thought that Canadian Lloyd Percival was insane, ridiculing him about his beliefs about hockey and how one should train. (I recommend picking up his original book, "The Hockey Handbook" 1960 SBN 498-08846-4 A.S. Barnes and Co., Inc South Brunswick and New York). It is another tough book to find... again I had to search online for a decent used book. I ended up buying three for my collection as they are significant works. One to use as a working copy; the other two are for display!

Anyway, the Russians used Percival's book as their guiding light to design their hockey system - to outstanding results. Obviously, the cultural differences between Communism and Democracy allowed the Russians to have quicker results in a top-down system. "Tarasov's way or the highway" - and hockey provided a better lifestyle than strictly a military life - so the same ideas would germinate differently and have different results in the two widely opposite cultures.

Re: Books for coaches to read

I finally finished "The Genius in all of Us" by David Shenk. Well worth the read!

"... David Shenk debunks the long-standing notion of genetic "giftedness." We are not prisoners of our DNA, and greatness is in the reach of every individual."

"Forget everything you think you know about genes, talent and intelligence. In recent years, a mountain of scientific evidence has emerged suggesting a new paradigm; not talent scarcity, but latent talent abundance."


He mentions similar stuff to the "Talent Code", "Mindset", etc.

Half the book is his consolidation of recent research, stating that the equation to predict one's potential for greatness is G x E... not the Mendelian belief of G + E - a critical distinction. The other half he uses to provide a detailed reference on his sources... also interesting to those who want to learn more about expertise, etc.

I was taught Gregor Mendal's genetic's in Junior and senior high... and it was accepted that Genes were the primary component to what we would become... we had very limited influence on them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel

Shenk, using the research of others, says that while Genes play a role, they are not nearly as significant as previously thought. The Environment has a much larger role - fortunately! And we can all choose to impact our own environments! I look at it as a philospohical difference between Determinism (Genes) and Freewill (Environment)...

Re: Books for coaches to read

Tom,

I received Book 2 Hockey Coaching ABC's today in the mail.
I had the book in one hand , the tongs in the other hand , and the glasses on the end of my nose while attending too the BBQ.

Being a new viewer or user of your website , I never really thought about the meaning of the book. I figured it was something about teaching the game , but never thought about the ABC part.

I understand that the A or
A formation drills are for the individual skill.
B formation- are for the partner skills .
C - formation exercises use the skills learned in A and B in a game like situation .

I will go back over this again I'm sure , so I totally understand the coding or formations.
Understanding these formations will help with drills or games selected from your library to fit the theme of the practice.

Being a bench coach for a game really means nothing too me. But teaching the young players skills for the game and for the coaches, then watching them apply the skills in a game is what I enjoy most. Seeing a young player gain confidence from practice , and not hating going to practice is the best reward.

I have been coaching for over 20 years now (at a different level than yourself ,Dean ,obviously) , and the one thing I always believe is that as a coach ,/ mentor ./ instructor / if I can gain the respect for young players by showing that I am organized and am there to help them get better and enjoy the game , they will always give a great effort regardless of their ability.
I don't know what it is , but I keeping coming back too this site daily looking for new things.
As said to Hockeygod the other day ," coaching keeping pulling you back in, it's in your blood I guess"
Thanks
Tom

Organization of material

Rookie Coach, I am glad you got the book and have had a chance to go through it.
When I first met Juhani and he explained the system and how it is organized I didn't realize how logical the system is and it took me a few years to really implement the ideas.

I taught my Physical Education classes using lots of games and tournaments but I coached hockey like everyone else. So I implemented the method more in my classes than on the ice and slowly adapted so that all of my instruction on and off the ice followed the ABC philosophy. This made me a much more organized teacher and a coach who won almost all of the time and not just when I had a lot of really good players but most importantly my practices really improved for effectiveness and enjoyment.

I am in this group called 'Drill of the Week' which consists of coaches all over the world in pro, jr. and college who take turns contributing drills and other practice activities. I find it very difficult to understand most of the diagrams. Some use international symbols and some don't. Without a coding system like the ABC's it is hard to figure out just where the drill fits into the larger scheme of things. They are great drills but if everyone used the international symbols and coded 1-the starting formation, 2-drill focus it would make it a lot easier. Right now I have to go through all of the drills to find anything instead of just looking for C2 and knowing it is a games situation drill starting from a lineup on one side of the ice in the nzone, or D4 and knowing it is a game in one zone.

My practice plans are usually on the back of a business card from places I used to coach. It will look something like A3 - 2 puck overload 5', B6-3pass,3 lanes, 3 shots 5', D4 - 2 pass x 2 x 5"-10', C2 - 1-0,2-0,3-0 4-0,5-0 -10'. B600 - 2-2, 2-1 Regroup with D-10'. DT 1-1, 2-1, add regroup-15', E1-2 shot S.O 5'. The code eliminates the need for a diagram because it tells where the drill starts and flows to and I name the drills.
The drills and games in the seven progressive levels at the back of the book are only examples of how to organize a program and can easily be added to.

I plan on eventually coding the material I have but a consistent international language of letters and numbers would make it easier for coaches who use the same alphabet and would be easy for nations like Russia to adapt to their alphabet.

The coding is only part of it because the two themes of the program are: "Enjoy the Game" and "The Game is the Great Coach"

Re: Books for coaches to read

Tom &Dean ,

Day 2 - of reading Hockey Coaching ABC's Book 2.

The first day I made it through the first 86 pages.

Day 2- I started in with the Playing Principals and Team Play. I found myself in this section reading one page then going back to the section with the 3 Phases and 4 Roles.
The book would talk about ex; creating a 1on1 situation then the playing roles and game phases. Well I guess I didn't read that section well enough so I had too back pedal a bit. Now I wrote out a book mark with the phases and playing roles on it so I could keep with the page i am reading for reference.
Dean , now i see why you used a high light for everything.
It is kind of a different language for coaches , something that we are not used too. I guess i;'m not anyways.
I am finding a different view point on coaching so I seem to be taking more time with each page. Kind of studying each page as I go.
I totally understand most structures,, zones , plays in the game of hockey but i' am trying to see it from this new view point.
I am enjoying the book so for , and it is making me think things over trying to find a balance .

I will report back when I get another moment to read. Going to be a while though 1 page at a time.

RookieCoach

ABC book 2

Rockie Coach,
Once you start to conceptualize the game and look at it as three game playing situtations where the players are always in one of the four game playing roles, it then becomes easier to plan you season and your practices.

When I coached college we had 4 practices a week. Each week I rotated through the 4 game playing roles and made sure we practiced loose puck, offensive and defensive situations. It went like this.
Day 1- Individual offensive skills - role one. A-B-D-DT-E
Day 2- individual defensive skills - role three A-B-D-DT-E
Day 3- team offensive skills - role two B-C-D-DT-T-E
Day 4- team defensive skills - role four B-C-D-DT-T-E
(I added DT for transition games and T for controlled coach led games and drills and team play focus.)

We had 75 minute practices and the first 30 minutes we worked on individual offensive skills in drills and games and always had some scoring drills to get the goalie shots. The last 45 minutes we focused on the role we were working one and used games, drills and controlled situations to accomplish this.

This method helps you focus on the process and make sure you cover the individual and team skills in a progressive manner.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Rookie Coach,

I have gone through the book numerous times and still find "new" things every time... or I begin to understand and see things differently.

It is highlighted, underlined, stickied, and has notes written in the columns.

I find I re-read sections based on the ages and skills of the kids I am coaching. I am all about games and letting them teach the game; so I love Tom's games that he has in the book.

Don't get too overwhelmed the first time. Get through it once, mark it up, and then go back to the sections you want to re-read. My understanding of it is a work in progress... and that is after five years of first reading it!

Enjoy!

Re: Books for coaches to read

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

by Christopher McDougall (2009)

ISBN 978-0-307-26630-7 $29.95 CDN

Just completed this book on the weekend. Not about hockey, but about ultra endurance running and the Tarahumara Indians of Copper Canyon Mexico. Lots of useful (for me at least!) philosophy inside. I found it quite compelling reading and couldn't put it down until I was done! The parts about the extremes that Dr. Joe Vigil, a US cross-country coach, would go to gain more knowledge, even at the age of 65, was very inspiring to me. This fellow certainly seems to be passionate about his work and a life-long learner! This book really spoke to me on a deep level. I have included several excerpts that really hit home for me. They might not hit home for you, but if you read the book, perhaps they will have much more meaning to you! Change the words "running" to "coaching" and see what they mean to you. Enjoy the read!


Dr. Vigil can be read about from Chapter 13 (pp77) through to the end of Chapter 18 (pp 120) of the hardcover version of the book. Sounds like a master coach or a 'coach whisperer' to me!

pp 77 Intro to Dr. Vigil and his sense of drive:

The secret to Vigil's success was spelled right out in his name: no other coach was more vigilant about detecting the crucial little details that everyone else missed... he out-scienced them; he studied the tricks... He'd tracked down the old masters and picked their brains, vacuuming up their secrets before they disappeared into the grave. His head was a Library of Congress of running lore, much of it vanished from every place on the planet except his memory. His research paid off sensationally.

pp 85 On creativity, curiosity and possible solutions:

Coach Vigil was a hard - data freak, but... he loved the fact that ultra running had no science, no playbook, no training manual, no conventional wisdom. That kind of freewheeling self-invention is where the big breakthroughs come from, as Vigil knew...

pp 90 During part of the1994 Leadville (Colorado) running race - 100 miles... some observations of the top runners:

"Everybody else walks up that hill," Ken Chlouber though, as Juan and Martimano churned up the slope like kids playing in a leaf pile. "Everybody. And they sure as Hell ain't laughin' about it." ... "Such a sense of joy!" marveled Coach Vigil, who'd never seen anything like it, either. "It was quite remarkable." Glee and determination are usually antagonistic emotions, yet the Tarahumara were brimming with both at once, as if running to the death made them feel alive. Vigil had been furiously taking mental notes... but it was the smiles that really jolted him. "That's it! Vigil thought, ecstatic. I've found it!" Except that he wasn't sure what "it" was...

The revelation he was hoping for was right in front of his eyes... Over the previous few years, Vigil had become convinced that the next leap forward in human endurance would come from a dimension he dreaded getting into: character... not ... "grit" or "hunger" or "the size of the fight in the dog." In fact, he meant the exact opposite. Vigil's notion of character wasn't toughness. It was compassion. Kindness. Love...

Vigil knew it sounded like hippy-dippy drivel... but after spending nearly fifty years researching performance physiology, Vigil had reached the uncomfortable conclusion that all the easy questions had been answered; he was now learning more and more about less and less. He'd figured out the body, so now it was on to the brain. Specifically: How do you make anyone actually want to do any of this stuff? How do you flip the internal switch...That was the real secret of the Tarahumera: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running... But the American approach - ugh. Rotten at its core. It was too artificial and grabby, Vigil believed, too much about getting stuff and getting it now: medals, Nike deals, a cute butt. It wasn't art; it was business...

pp 94 Dr. Vigil's philosophy:

Vigil could smell the apocalypse coming, and he'd tried hard to tell his runners. "There are two goddesses in your heart," he told them. "The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you." Ask nothing from your running, in other words, and you'll get more than imagined... All he wanted was to find one Natural Born Runner - someone who ran for sheer joy, like an artist in the grip of inspiration - and study how he or she trained, lived, and thought.

pp 98 On Emil Zatopek, Czech long distance runner, winner of 3 gold medals in 1952 Olympics, and The Answer:

"His enthusiasm, his friendliness, his love of life, shone through every moment," an overcome Ron Clarke said later. "There is not, and never was, a greater man than Emil Zatopek." So here's what Coach Vigil was trying to figure out: was Zatopek a great man who happened to run or a great man because he ran? Vigil couldn't quite put his finger on it, but his gut kept telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love running... Maybe Ron Clarke wasn't being poetic in his description of Zatopek - maybe his expert eye was being clinically precise: His love of life shone through at every moment. Yes! Love of life! Exactly! ... He'd found his Natural Born Runner. He'd found an entire tribe of Natural Born Runners, and from what he'd seen so far, they were as joyful and magnificent as he'd hoped. Vigil, an old man alone in the woods, suddenly felt a burst of immortality. He was onto something. Something huge. It wasn't just how to run; it was how to live, the essence of who we are as a species and what we're meant to be... But there has to be transferable skills, right? Basic Tarahumara principles that could survive and take root in American soil? ... He didn't have all the answers yet - but watching the Tarahumara whisk past... he knew where he could find them.

pp 118 On Dr. Vigil's methodology of training:

What Vigil had going was real Spartan warrior stuff - a survival of the fittest program that combined a killer workload with the freezing, windswept Colorado mountains." ... He was about living lean and building ones soul as much as ones strength.

"Practice abundance by giving back".

"Improve personal relationships".

"Show integrity to your value system".

"Eat as though you were a poor person".

-----
Like I said, taken as excerpts, these lose a lot of their meaning if you haven't read the book... if anybody else has read the book, or want to chime in with their thoughts, feel free.

Re: Books for coaches to read

I think these statements came from Marcus Luttrells' Lone Survivor book... awesome stuff!

They are filming a movie this year, based on his the true story in his book. It is supposed to come out in 2013.


1. We cannot fight evil with evil.

2. Right is right and wrong s wrong.

3. Relativism is a lie. Wrong cannot be justified.

4. Never compromise your values.

5. Silence in the presence of wrongdoing is complicity.

6. We all make mistakes. Don't make excuses; make corrections.

7. It's never too late to do the right thing.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Taking Note: No Guarantees

Gregg Drinnan, Wednesday, October 5, 2011


First off, a disclaimer. I was working at the Brandon Sun and covering the Brandon Wheat Kings when Don Dietrich was a defenceman on their roster.

Over the last few years, we have communicated infrequently, but often enough that I consider him a friend.
Now . . . let’s get on to the book.

While attending the 2010 Memorial Cup in Brandon, I picked up a copy of Dietrich’s book. And then, foolishly, I put it on the next-to-read pile and it got forgotten.

I rediscovered it recently and have since read it.

If you are a hockey fan, you absolutely have to get a copy of this book. Why? Because it will make you giggle. It will make you howl with laughter. And it will make you weep. You can't ask for anything more than that.

It is titled No Guarantees, with this subtitle: An Inspiring Story of Struggle and Success in Professional Sport and with Parkinson’s and Cancer.

Written by Dietrich, with his wife, Nadine, and journalist Brad Bird, this is an account of Dietrich’s hockey career and his personal battle with Parkinson’s Disease and a particularly lethal kind of cancer.

Understand that this isn’t a weepy biography by some old beaten up hockey player who feels life owes him something.

No, it isn’t.

Rather, it is a terrific read about a boy’s journey to manhood, about a young hockey player’s travels to retirement and beyond. It’s about a man who married a Penthouse Pet and, with her, raised three sons, two of whom went on to play in the WHL.

Dietrich provides a realistic look at life in the WHL, from the travel to the fighting and beyond.

But it is the tales he tells of his days in the AHL, the NHL and Europe that are so wonderful and often so hilarious.

Dietrich’s writing on being a rookie in the training camp of the Chicago Blackhawks — and also of being a young man from smalltown Manitoba (Deloraine) thrown into Chicago — is priceless.

———

At one point, the night before the first on-ice session of training camp, a group including Doug Wilson, Terry Ruskowski, Steve Larmer and Dietrich is about to order dinner in a Chicago restaurant.

Dietrich tells the story . . .

I’m looking at this menu and I see it’s stuff that I don’t know — and then I see, sirloin steak. That’s what I’m going to take. And I’m paranoid, because I’m looking around and trying to watch what other guys are doing and I’m trying to play the part. I’m sitting with four NHL guys and three or four future NHLers, and I’m just pumped. I’m just above everything. I’m sitting there and the girl comes up and she says, “So what’ll you have?” And she’s looking right at me.

I’m thinking, Why me? So I said, “I’ll have the sirloin steak.”

She said, “How would you like it done?”

Well, all my life it just came to me on the plate. At home, Dad cooked it on the barbecue and put it on the plate. At my billets, Ma Muirhead and Marnocks in Brandon, I came to the table and it was on the plate. Every Saturday night we had steak at home, it was on the plate.

I’m sitting there thinking, what does she want? I know Mom puts it in the oven. They don’t boil steak. I’m sitting there and I’m starting to sweat and the guys are looking as if to say, “C’mon, we want to order.” So I sat there and said, “Cook it.”

The table erupted in laughter.

———

Later, in an episode you may recall, Dietrich ended up at the 1994 Olympic Winter Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. He was to have played for Team Canada, however the Americans protested the inclusion of Dietrich, who had played six NHL games, and Mark Morrison, who had played two. The IOC upheld the protest, so Dietrich headed for home.

His retelling of his time in Sarajevo is an incredible story, and his journey home is even beyond that. You will read this part of the book and wonder how it was that the kid from Deloraine didn’t disappear forever somewhere in that European winter.

This is a soft cover book that is 200 pages in length. The writing is a little rough around the edges, which only adds to its authenticity. There are some incorrect spellings — Chris Nilan is Chris Nyland, Steve Yzerman is Steve Izerman, Pelle Lindbergh is Pelle Lindburgh — but they don’t ruin what is a great read.

There are marvellous stories from his days playing in Europe and a lot of insight into what a fringe NHLer goes through when he realizes his career is over.

And then, on Page 175, Dietrich is diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. On Page 184, he finds out he has leiomyo sarcoma, which his doctor tells him is “one of the most active and deadly cancers there is.”

That was late in 1999.

In recent times, Dietrich has discovered that “at my home rink in Deloraine when my old pal (Parkinson’s) leaves me alone, I just go out on the ice.”

He helps everyone from six-year-olds to oldtimers, he told me in an email on Tuesday.

“You see,” he added, “Kelly McCrimmon told me one time, ‘Dieter, you have a wealth of knowledge in that noggin up there . . . why don't you start friggin sharing it’.

“SO I DO. LOL.”

Dietrich closed the email with this:

“So I have been doing good my friend thanks to hockey, the greatest game there is!!”

———

You can find No Guarantees at amazon.com ($20.87) or at trafford.com (also for $20.87).

Order a copy today. You won't be disappointed. I guarantee it.

-----

Earlier this week, I offered up a review of a book written by Don Dietrich, a former defenceman with the Brandon Wheat Kings.

I was remiss in not mentioning that Dietrich spent part of last weekend in Winnipeg, where he was inducted into the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame . . . not as a player, but as a builder.

Here, from the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame newsletter, is Dietrich’s bio:

“Don Dietrich of Deloraine, a former defenseman and captain of the Brandon Wheat Kings, soaked up a lot of knowledge as a player in the AHL, NHL, East Coast League, with Team Canada and in Germany and Switzerland. He has passed on this knowledge as an assistant coach in Switzerland and, after returning home, as a coach with the Southwest Cougar midgets, the SWHL Deloraine Royals and as a scout for the Spokane Chiefs. Dietrich has been an active member of Canada’s national coach mentorship program, doing ‘one-on-one’ mentoring, as well as clinics. Despite personal health problems, he was instrumental in developing the Breakfast Club where young players have come out twice a week to practise their skill development.”

Hockey in our countries needs more Don Dietrichs. And if you missed it scroll further down on this blog and read all about his book. Then get on the Internet and order one. You won't be sorry.

Gregg Drinnan

Re: Books for coaches to read

The Lost Dream: Book on Frost, Danton disturbing

JOE WARMINGTON, QMI Agency, Oct 5 2011



TORONTO - "OPP detectives are currently reading the book with interest." — an OPP source.

The book is called The Lost Dream but perhaps The Lost Opportunity would have been an appropriate title, too.

The lost opportunity to prosecute.

The allegations in this new book about the bizarre Mike Danton and Dave Frost circus not only bring to the surface freakish allegations of abuse but also raise questions into the effectiveness and capability of the Ontario’s Crown attorney’s office.

Award-winning Sun Media sports columnist Steve Simmons’ new book on the sad but riveting story of a hockey agent and of his client — a relationship that ended with Danton behind bars for trying to hire someone to kill Frost — is now available.

It’s the stuff of movies.

But for Danton’s younger brother, Tom Jefferson, himself once a promising hockey star with the Oshawa Generals, the story is not only non-fiction but a real life nightmare.

It turns out not only was one son involved in this horror show but two, if Tom’s story is to be believed.

“This man destroyed an entire family,” Danton’s father Steve Jefferson, told me at Simmons’ book launch Tuesday at Betty’s. “It’s just not right.”

Chapter 4 of the The Lost Dream, published by Viking Canada, is a description of an all-out, heinous and horrific sexual, physical, mental and emotional assault on a 13-year-old boy with Frost in supervision.

The now 24-year-old Tom Jefferson tells Simmons that in the summer of 2000, when he was 13-years-old, he was taped up, sexually assaulted, forced to dance on a table naked and shot at while his brother and others looked on in hysterics at Dave Frost’s cottage near Kingston.

If you have a weak stomach, stop reading now because what comes next is as shocking as it is appalling.

The younger Jefferson describes a scenario where he was climbing a tree on the shores of Loughborough Lake when “all of a sudden, Dave pulls out a rifle and points it at me. The tree is wobbling and I’m getting nervous about it and he tells me to keep climbing across or he’s going to shoot me. He took a couple of shots (with a pellet rifle) and missed me. He took another shot that hit the branch right in front of my face. So I’m hanging on as best I can and trying to follow along all the way to the end, and he’s got this gun pointed at me, and I held on to the branch as long as I could before falling into the shallow water.”

Frightening. It gets even worse.

Jefferson describes one evening where Frost said to him “‘I bet you have a small d--- like your brother, eh?...Before I could do anything he pulled me by my shorts over to him, and reached his hands down my pants and grabbed a hold of a d--- and just held on to it.”

He alleges Frost then said: “Well, Sheldon (Keefe) has a pretty big c---. Why don’t you pull it out and show Tommy what a real d--- looks like.”

As difficult as it is to imagine it deteriorates even further when young Tom says he was forcefully confined.

“They tape my legs to the bunk bed,” Jefferson is quoted in The Lost Dream. “I’m pulling away and trying to get loosen it and Frost is slapping me...Then Frost grabbed my penis and taped it around and around. Everyone was laughing, taking pictures — and I know that because the pictures were later found (at Sheldon Keefe’s parents house).”

The OPP still have these photographs.

So I know what you are thinking. Why the hell was none of this put before a judge and jury?

Frost says it’s because “it’s all ridiculous” and that “I wasn’t even there for a lot of what was alleged.”

In an e-mail Wednesday Frost said that the whole book is one-sided — Simmons didn’t talk to him or any of the other principals involved.

“Everyone who was present at the cottage was interviewed during the investigation,” Frost wrote. “They all cooperated with police.”

And as he points out, there were no charges laid against anyone present at the cottage.

“This is significant in itself but this (book) was born out of hatred and money from the side of Steve Jefferson,” Frost writes. “It’s really that simple.”

It’s the million dollar question and raises the idea that perhaps not only should there be further investigation into these allegations but also into what transpired.

“It should have been (brought up in court),” said several OPP detectives who know the case well. “Simmons describes a heated argument with the Crown (over) why it wasn’t and I confirm...it was bloody heated. The thing is not only did police believe Tom’s story, we also had photographs of the dancing on the table and of the incident with the gun. It was evidence backed up with photographs that was our point of view to the Crown.”

In the end, however, the prosecutors, believing there was no reasonable prospect for a conviction, decided not to pursue this avenue.

“It was my word against theirs,” Tom tells Simmons.

Now his father Steve and mother Sue are hoping that perhaps there will be a change of heart in the Crown’s office and Tom’s story can be presented in open court. “I don’t see why not,” Steve said. It was an assault on a 13-year-old. What else do you call it? I would just like it put before a jury to see what they think. That’s not asking too much. I want to ruin his life, just like he ruined mine.”

In order for it to end up back in a courtroom one of the witnesses, including Mike Danton now playing hockey in Sweden, would have to change his or her story, my OPP sources tell me.

Stay tuned because in this sick but real life drama, who knows what could happen next.

-----

REVIEW: The lost dream: The story of Mike Danton, David Frost, and a broken Canadian family

Book by Steve Simmons

Reviewed by Michael Friscolanti on Wednesday, October 5, 2011


Mike Danton tried to hire two different people to murder his agent, David Frost. The first, a strip club bouncer, ignored the hockey player’s frantic phone messages. (“Help me out any way you can, please,” Danton said in one voice mail. “It’s a matter of life and death.”) The second would-be hit man—a police dispatcher, of all things—tipped off the FBI. Danton was arrested on April 16, 2004, just three days after scoring his first and only NHL playoff goal.

Behind bars and on the brink of suicide, the St. Louis Blues forward spent hours on the prison telephone, talking to the one man who had always been in his corner: David Frost, the same person he conspired to kill.

“Do I have to worry about my safety anymore?” Frost asked during one conversation, recorded by authorities.

“No you don’t,” Danton answered. “I gotta go.”

“Okay, do you love me?” Frost asked.

“Yes,” Danton whispered.

“Say it.”

“I love you.”

How Mike Danton arrived at that moment—professing love for a man he desperately wanted dead—is a mystery many journalists have tried to unravel over the past seven years. The Lost Dream, by Toronto Sun columnist Simmons, is the most exhaustive attempt yet. Based on dozens of interviews, court transcripts—and a few wild rumours—Simmons crafts a chilling account of how a 12-year-old budding hockey star from Brampton, Ont., fell so deep under David Frost’s spell that homicide became his only escape.

Neither Frost nor Danton agreed to speak to Simmons, and both have repeatedly refuted the U.S. government’s version of events. (They now claim that the real target of Danton’s murder-for-hire plot was his estranged father, not Frost.) The truth, of course, is obvious to anyone who reads the court file—or listens to those prison recordings. But as the book makes clear, in David Frost’s world, only one opinion matters.

Re: Books for coaches to read

http://nhlgms.com/index.php


I haven't read this but I keep getting it sent to my email.... "Behind the Moves" NHL GM's tell how winners are built. I'm curious to see how it is.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Quote by: Eric

http://nhlgms.com/index.php


I haven't read this but I keep getting it sent to my email.... "Behind the Moves" NHL GM's tell how winners are built. I'm curious to see how it is.

Thanks Eric. I am going to search it out! Hadn't heard of it before now... release date is "Autumn, 2011" and the cost is $100.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Back in the Bigs - Book Review

Gregg Drinnan, Kamloops Daily News, October 13, 2011


Yes, they're back . . .

If you’re a hockey fan, chances are you were in front of a TV set on Sunday and watched at least part of the game from the MTS Centre in Winnipeg.

This was the regular-season return of the Jets to Winnipeg and not even a 5-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens could ruin the atmosphere.

And if you’re a hockey fan chances are pretty good that you really will enjoy Back in the Bigs, a book loaded with photos and the story of the Jets as written by Randy Turner of the Winnipeg Free Press.

Turner and the photographs tell the story of the Jets, going all the way back to the days of Ben Hatskin — was he, you know, connected? — and the Junior Jets.

Turner tells the complete story, too.

When you think of the Winnipeg Jets, chances are you think immediately of the big line — Ulf Nilsson between Bobby Hull and Anders Hedberg — or maybe Dale Hawerchuk.

It’s true that time and distance make the heart grow fonder, so you may have forgotten that despite the presence of the likes of the four aforementioned players, the Jets never were a rip-roaring success in Winnipeg.

Oh, the fans loved the Jets the day it all ended — the Detroit Red Wings beat the host Jets 4-1 in a playoff game on April 28, 1996. The Winnipeg franchise was then relocated to Phoenix.

But travel back in time with Turner and read about how the Jets, featuring Hull, Hedberg and Nilsson, rarely sold out the Winnipeg Arena when they played in the now-defunct World Hockey Association.

And things didn’t get much better when the NHL ended the war between the leagues by begrudgingly accepting four teams, including the Jets.

Turner touches on all of that and, by the time Winnipeg is gearing up to welcome back the second-coming of its Jets, you are wondering how a team that struggled for acceptance as a WHA team and later as an NHL entry can make a go of it this time around?

More than anything, though, there are great hockey stories in this book. Stories of how Hatskin landed Hull and how Hedberg and Nilsson came to play in Winnipeg, even though neither player had even visited North America. Remember, too, that the Jets had more Europeans on their roster than just those two skaters.

There is lots here, too, on the fiery John Ferguson, who during his stint as general manager was the face of the Jets.

Turner also delves into Winnipeg’s lengthy stay in the American Hockey League — its franchise was the Manitoba Moose, an affiliate of the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks. If you are wondering how it is that Craig Heisinger, a former trainer with the Brandon Wheat Kings, moved from the Moose, where he started as the trainer, to the Jets, where he now is director of player operations, you need only read about his going nose-to-nose with Brian Burke, then the Canucks’ GM.

Through the pages of this book you will get a look at Mark Chipman and David Thomson, the two men most responsible for the Jets’ return to Winnipeg. And you’ll read all about how it happened.

There also are a whole lot of terrific photos and it’s great to see some of the older ones from the archives of the late, great Winnipeg Tribune, most from the always capable camera of Jon Thordarson.

(Hard cover, Viking Canada/Winnipeg Free Press, 208 pages, $35)

Re: Books for coaches to read

Ron MacLean shares opinions on hockey and details life with Grapes

The Canadian Press, 2011-10-16

"Cornered: "Hijinks, Highlights, Late Nights and Insights," Ron MacLean with Kirstie McLellan Day, HarperCollins Canada, 307 pages, $33.99.


TORONTO - He doesn't like the salary cap, thinks the ice surface is too small, and believes a string of rule changes have "put hockey on a road to hell paved with good intentions."

Ron MacLean may be thought of as Don Cherry's setup man in some quarters but the veteran "Hockey Night in Canada" host is not short of his own opinions.

MacLean gives his side of the story in "Cornered," co-written with Kirstie McLellan Day. The book is subtitled "Hijinks, Highlights, Late Nights and Insights."

"Cornered" is a lot like MacLean himself—entertaining, erudite and all over the place.

Comfortable in his own skin, the 51-year-old native of Red Deer, Alta., has no problems in opening up, from what his house cost to not having kids with wife Cari.

"I sometime feel that without children to sort of rein me in and give me responsibility, I've never really grown up," MacLean writes. "I've been able to play hockey, go out with my buddies and become obsessive about work. I'm selfish in a way that children don't allow you to be. I'm not saying that is a good thing or a bad thing, It's just the way it is."

MacLean literally opens the book on his life, detailing what he makes throughout his career although he doesn't share his current salary. He does acknowledge making $475,000 going into the contentious 2002 contract negotiations that triggered a flurry of public support for him.

"I think I end up in the book around a half-million and I'm not far off that now," he said in an interview.

"I've always believed in transparency," he said by way of explanation. "That book isn't me totally laid bare but it's very close. ... People have this perception that Ron's this saint sitting next to Don, getting bullied. Well it's often the other way around, of course."

"Cornered" does lift the cover on the MacLean-Cherry dynamic—a life built "around conversations over beers at night."

The two like to throw some light beers into a bucket filled with ice and cold water—"You have to have a lot of water so the cold transfers quickly," he explains—and decide what to talk about on "Hockey Night."

"That's our favourite time," MacLean said. "And it's probably a favourite time on Wednesday night when I play beer-league hockey, go back to the pub afterwards and just talk about everything under the sun."

In his foreword, Cherry credits MacLean for him lasting 25 years on TV.

"I feel he is like my defence partner on the Rochester Americans, Darryl Sly," Cherry writes. "He carried me on the ice for years. I had my strengths—tough in front of the net, I could fight and hit. But Darryl did all the legwork for me."

From a man who admits he is not giving of compliments, it is the highest praise. And when raised, it clearly pleases MacLean.

Cherry, he says, is misunderstood and his "smarts" underrated. There is far more than garish suits, high collars, and endless bluster.

"A lot of depth in Don," MacLean said. "Extremely well read, extremely bright.

"It's so nice to be with somebody that is so quick-witted," he added. "As I always say he's little quicker because he doesn't weigh the consequences the way I might. But that's a joy in our business, because everything else is so scripted and so structured. It's lovely to see someone live by their wits."

Cherry may not mince words, but he usually thinks ahead, MacLean added.

"He works at it," he said. "He doesn't just shoot from the hip. He sits and stews about what he's going to say for days on end."

Interestingly, the book comes out in the midst of yet another Cherry controversy. "Coach's Corner" came with an apology Saturday night as Cherry backed off comments made during the season opener about a trio of former tough guys.

On the issue of hockey, MacLean worries that the game has become too much about "the instant gratification of the goal."

"To quote U.S. founding father Thomas Paine, 'Be careful not to admire the plumage and ignore the dying bird,' " he writes.

On the subject of "Coach's Corner," MacLean details the many missteps but also his dissatisfaction at times when he saw unwarranted interference from the CBC higher-ups.

"It's a very tricky dance," he said of the network's journalistic-rights-holder dichotomy, a tangle complicated by the CBC's role as public broadcaster.

He also shines a spotlight on his much publicized contract dispute, calling it "a three-day circus."

"It was like a car accident for me and I was glad to be done with it," he said. "Grateful for the process and grateful for the support, obviously, but clearly glad to get through it."

Readers will leave "Cornered" with a better handle on the author.

MacLean's unfettered enthusiasm for events like "Hockey Day in Canada" makes far more sense when one reads about a youth that saw multiple stops across the country.

"Two things shaped me: the rink rat and air force brat," he explained. "And being an only child ... All those friendships, all those invitations you got were such a huge relief because you were so lonely when you moved into each new location.

"So it's just such a joy to go do 'Hockey Day' and know that you're giving those folks a chance to be recognized the way I felt I needed when I was a kid and pretty vulnerable."

MacLean says he had past offers to write a book but cites McLellan Day, a friend, as the one who convinced him to finally take the plunge.

"I'm really grateful I did, in hindsight," he said. "We all find navel-gazing and that kind of thing a little bit awkward. I think when you do this for a living, you get so much blame and acclaim that you had enough of it. But I'm glad I did it."

Adds MacLean: "It gives you an idea of what to hate about me and what to like about me."

Re: Books for coaches to read

Gerry James did it all in storied sports career:

Gerry James, A.K.A. Kid Dynamite, was a rare breed of athlete who played for both the Blue Bombers and the Maple Leafs.

JIM BENDER, QMI Agency, Oct 20 2011


WINNIPEG - The first reaction to a book just released about CFL legend Gerry James is that it came out about 40 years too late.

After all, he starred at running back, kick returner and placekicker during the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ glory years back in the 1950s and early ‘60s.

Yet, his biography still resonates today and Kid Dynamite, The Gerry James Story (Oolichan Books, $35) by Ron Smith is a must-read for both diehard Bombers and CFL fans, and even some NHL observers.

James is one of only two players to ever play pro football in the CFL and pro hockey in the NHL playoffs. Lionel (Big Train) Conacher was the first. James is the only one to win the Grey Cup back in 1959, then play in the Stanley Cup final in the same season, 1959-60. He played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, who were swept by the powerful Montreal Canadiens.

James, who became the youngest lad to ever play in the CFL at 17, also became the very first recipient of the Schenley Award for Most Outstanding Canadian in 1954, and won it again in 1957. He would also become the first to follow his father, Eddie (Dynamite) James into the CFL Hall of Fame.

James not only set a number of CFL records, he was also such a good hockey player that there was a tug-of-war for his services. He would play both for a while, then stuck with football.

After his two-sport career was over, James became a successful junior hockey coach.

“It (the book) was Ron’s idea,” said James, who will be the Bombers honourary captain when they play the Montreal Alouettes on Saturday, his 77th birthday.

“I decided it was important to start celebrating people who had excelled in sport in Canada,” said Smith, who golfs with James on the West Coast where they live.

“We thought this would be a good time to bring forth a number of things in the book in regards to my career and what kind of influence I’ve had with people in regards to hockey and coaching hockey and that kind of stuff,” said James, who will be at the Bomber Store to sign his book on Friday, 5-7 p.m.

The book reveals some rather surprising details of both his careers, the relationship with his dad and the fact so few knew he played with almost no sight in one eye after getting hit with a puck. And he still resents the way Bombers head coach/GM Bud Grant released him in 1963.

“A highlight was running back a kickoff (for a TD) in 1957 in the Western Final against Edmonton,” said James, who suffered the broken hand in that match. “We went to the Grey Cup Game and we were bruised, battered and broken pretty much.”

James, who was born in Regina but spent his teenage years in Winnipeg, will never forget his NHL highlights.

“Just playing in that 1960 final against such a great Montreal Canadiens team,” he said. “The other one is the first game I played in the NHL. It was in Montreal when I was still playing junior in Toronto (1954-55). Eric Nesterenko got hurt and I was called up to play on a line with Ted Kennedy and Sid Smith which, of course, was a top line with the Leafs at the time. To go into the Montreal Forum and play against all those greats was just a great thrill.”

The most embarrassing moment of his Bombers’ career came when he missed a convert twice, but got a third chance due to Lions’ penalties.

“Finally, (receiver) Farrell Funston comes into the huddle and says, ‘I’m open for the pass.’ I was laughing so hard that I kicked it right into (centre George) Druxman’s butt,” he said.

Re: Books for coaches to read

I pre-ordered Game Sense Through Tactical Learning: A Resource for Teachers and Coaches

Re: Books for coaches to read

Looks good Kai. I am going to try to source it too. Also, waiting for the release of "Behind the Moves" where NHL GM's tell how winners are built.

You will have to do a quick review once you have a chance to read it!

Re: Books for coaches to read

Book Review: Behind the Moves: NHL General Managers Tell how Winners are Built

www.hockeynow.ca, Posted in BC Edition, Alberta Edition, Ontario Edition, Product Reviews, October 19, 2011

Review by Brian Burke, President & General Manager, Toronto Maple Leafs


By now you've already heard about a book that I am truly excited about, Behind the Moves: NHL General Managers Tell how Winners are Built. Finally, a book has been compiled about the National Hockey League's general managers, and by an author for whom I have great respect.

Behind the Moves is part encyclopedia, part history book, part manual for would-be managers. And it's your ticket to the general manager's office, where you'll find out all about the trades, the championships, the negotiations with agents, and the day-to-day dealing with owners and the media. You'll enjoy it, and you'll learn a lot, too.

NHL GMs are busy guys, but I and 34 of the top GMs all-time have personally invested significant time, energy, and materials into the making of this book, giving you totally unique insight into pro hockey. Behind the Moves is not an outsiders account, it's an insider's view of what's truly involved in being an NHL GM! For me, it has been a true honor to be associated with so many iconic hockey personalities through the making of Behind the Moves; friends and colleagues like Glen Sather, Pat Quinn, and George McPhee, but also legends whom I was fortunate enough to overlap with like Bill Torrey, Emile Francis, and Sam Pollock. Like each of them, I am proud of our game's history and tradition and the men who shaped the teams that have excited fans over the years. And because I was so impressed with the concept of Behind the Moves, I jumped in and wrote the book's Foreword.

I believe that the NHL's general managers have been the brains and the conscience of the game since the league opened for business in 1917. Yet, surprisingly, little has been written about them. But is there a more important job on the team than the guy who puts the team together?

Like you, I've always been interested in knowing what other managers thought, so I could maybe learn to emulate certain types and avoid the other kinds. Behind the Moves is that playbook for all managers and those aspiring to get into, or move up in, the game. You'll hear directly from the GMs who all share an undying passion for the game; past managers, current managers, champions, tenured veterans, innovators, old-schoolers, educated men and men with diplomas marked "Original Six."

If you're looking for the plays and strategies to cultivate winners, Behind the Moves is the guidebook, Go buy it now at www.nhlgms.com

Re: Books for coaches to read

The Lost Dream - Review

TAKING NOTE, Gregg Drinnan, Oct 30 2011

Every hockey parent should read The Lost Dream, a book written by Toronto Sun sports columnist Steve Simmons. The book’s subtitle is The Story of Mike Danton, David Frost, and a Broken Canadian Family. . . . This book tells an ugly, ugly story, one with which you may be familiar as Danton — he was Mike Jefferson before changing his name. . . . There are so many angles to this story that it is impossible to list them all there. . . . Just read the book if you get the opportunity. . . . My only real quibble is with the book’s title. It should be: The Lost Family.

Re: Books for coaches to read

From a Volleyball Coaches blog whom I follow (I've put the link below to the blog should you want to also follow along) come a book recommendation that I think would interest some on the site.

I have not read it as I just read the blog but the review is listed at the link as well if you want to read it.

The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Anyone Else
By: George Anders

I've added it to my wish list so if someone reads it, please post a review.


http://usavolleyball.org/blogs/growing-the-game-together-blog/posts/3344-the-rare-find

Re: Books for coaches to read

Thanks Eric. Looks good. I have it on hold at the public library and might try to order it from Amazon too. I also enjoyed the Volleyball blog. I bookmarked it myself! I will let you know my thoughts once I read it.

Interesting enough, I have always thought perseverance / resiliency is one of the most critical factors, if not THE most critical factors, in becoming successful... I look back at all the trials and tribulations I had as a person who wanted to coach hockey at the highest levels... and had I given up on my dream too early, I would have never achieved them! This is what I tell the coaches I mentor. Without playing pro, it is tough to rise to the highest levels... and it is getting harder all the time with former pros populating major junior, Tier 2 junior, etc...

The Navy Seals have a saying, "Not Dead, Can't Quit".

-----

Here is an overview:

The Rare Find
by George Anders

Portfolio | October 18, 2011 | Hardcover

One of the nation's biggest music labels briefly signed Taylor Swift to a contract but let her go because she didn't seem worth more than $15,000 a year. At least four book publishers passed on the first Harry Potter novel rather than pay J. K. Rowling a $5,000 advance. And the same pattern happens in nearly every business.

Anyone who recruits talent faces the same basic challenge, whether we work for a big company, a new start-up, a Hollywood studio, a hospital, or the Green Berets. We all wonder how to tell the really outstanding prospects from the ones who look great on paper but then fail on the job. Or, equally important, how to spot the ones who don't look so good on paper but might still deliver extraordinary performance.

Over the past few decades, technology has made recruiting in all fields vastly more sophisticated. Gut instincts have yielded to benchmarks. If we want elaborate dossiers on candidates, we can gather facts (and video) by the gigabyte. And yet the results are just as spotty as they were in the age of the rotary phone.

George Anders sought out the world's savviest talent judges to see what they do differently from the rest of us. He reveals how the U.S. Army finds soldiers with the character to be in Special Forces without asking them to fire a single bullet. He takes us to an elite basketball tournament in South Carolina, where the best scouts watch the game in a radically different way from the casual fan. He talks to researchers who are reinventing the process of hiring Fortune 500 CEOs.

Drawing on the best advice of these and other talent masters, Anders reveals powerful ideas you can apply to your own hiring. For instance:

* Don't ignore "the jagged r?sum?"-people whose background appears to teeter on the edge between success and failure. Such people can do spectacular work in the right settings, where their strengths dramatically outweigh their flaws.

* Look extra hard for "talent that whispers"- the obscure, out-of-the- way candidates who most scouting systems overlook.

* Be careful with "talent that shouts"-the spectacular but brash candidates who might have trouble with loyalty, motivation, and team spirit.

Each field that Anders explores has its own lingo, customs, and history. But the specific stories fit together into a bigger mosaic. In any field, there's an art to clearing away the clutter and focusing on what matters most. It's not necessarily hard, but it requires the courage to take a different approach in pursuit of the rare find.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Cornered: Hijinks, Highlights, late Nights and Insights
Ron MacLean

I just picked this one up. I believe Tom coaches Kirstie McLellan Day's daughter... a goalie(?) on his girls Midget AAA team. Looking forward to being entertained!



From the Publisher

Ron MacLean has been a Saturday night tradition for twenty-five years. Known for his quick wit, arched eyebrows and encyclopedic hockey knowledge, MacLean is the skilled ringmaster of Canada's most watched weekly program. He has interviewed the greatest players, coaches and personalities of an era. He is a master of seeking the best in substance and entertainment from his guests, as well as from his opinionated and often irascible co-host, Don Cherry, on "Coach's Corner."

And he has never written a book, until now. Cornered is packed with inside accounts - some inspiring, many hilarious - from his early days as a part-time radio announcer and weather forecaster in Red Deer, Alberta, to his time hosting Hockey Night in Canada and the Olympics. Perhaps no other journalist has witnessed first-hand more Canadian sports milestones in the past quarter century. From Gretzky to Catriona, Mario to SalÉ and Pelletier, MacLean has been there with an eye for detail and an appreciation for what makes a great story.



About the Author

RON MacLEAN, host of CBC's Hockey Night in Canada for twenty-five years, began his broadcasting career in 1978 as an all-night DJ in Red Deer, Alberta. In 1984, he moved to Calgary to host Flames telecasts on Channels 2 and 7. MacLean joined CBC in 1986, where he hosted the Toronto Maple Leafs' telecasts on HNIC, before becoming the full-time national host in 1987. He has also hosted CBC's coverage of the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, World Cup Hockey, the Calgary Stampede and Battle of the Blades. MacLean has been recognized with ten Gemini Awards, including Best Host in 2004 and 2006. He and his wife, Cari, live in Oakville, Ontario.

KIRSTIE McLELLAN DAY has written five other books, including the #1 bestselling memoir of Theo Fleury, Playing with Fire, and the bestselling memoir of Bob Probert, Tough Guy, as well as Above and Beyond, a biography of cable magnate JR Shaw, Under the Mat, a memoir with Diana Hart of the Hart wrestling family, and No Remorse, a true-crime story. The mother of five lives with her husband, broadcaster Larry Day, in Calgary, Alberta.

Format:Hardcover

Dimensions:336 Pages, 6.5 x 9.5 x 1.2 in

Published:October 3, 2011

Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Language:English

The following ISBNs are associated with this title:
ISBN - 10:1554689740
ISBN - 13:9781554689743

Re: Books for coaches to read

This is an interview with the author of the book I posted earlier. Daniel Pink was the author of "Drive" a book on motivation that is a good read. You are better served however watching the www.ted.com video instead as it will save you lots of time.


How to find great talent: 4 questions for Bloomberg View’s George Anders
from Daniel Pink by Dan Pink

Here’s a question that bedevils everyone from Fortune 500 boards seeking a replacement CEO to school principals hiring a new algebra teacher, from families looking for a great electrician to baseball teams searching for a better shortstop:

How do you find extraordinary, game-changing talent?

George Anders is a top-shelf business journalist, a veteran of the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and now Bloomberg View. For the last couple of years, he’s tried to answer that question by hanging out with the best talent spotters in the world – the U.S. Army’s Special Forces, a squadron of basketball scouts, the folks at Facebook, and many more.

The result is The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else, which hits stores today. (Buy it from Indie Bound, BN.com, Amazon.com or 8CR.) I had a chance to read the galleys several months ago – and I enjoyed it so much I asked George if he’d do a short interview explaining some of the core concepts for PinkBlog readers.

***

You looked at talent both widely and deeply. What’s the big insight you had after completing this book that you didn’t have when you began it?

Everybody should be searching for resilience, and hardly anyone does. Being able to bounce back from adversity is crucial in just about every field I examined. You need resilience to be a great CEO, a great teacher, soldier, investor, etc., etc. But when we hire, we’re taught to regard setbacks — regardless of what came next — as flaws in a candidate. So when we prepare our own resumes, we hide our stumbles. That’s wrong! We should cherish people who have extricated themselves from trouble in the past.

I was especially intrigued by your idea of the “jagged resume” in part because I realized that I myself sorta had one of these way back when. Tell us what you mean by that term and why it matters.

Steve Jobs is a perfect example. Both in the 1970s and the 1990s, his life was a wild blend of great strengths and apparent failures. He had this awesome imagination, persuasiveness, ambition and design aesthetic. But he was a college dropout who later got forced out of one company (Apple) and couldn’t make a success of another (NeXT.) You could come up with lots of reasons why his resume was too erratic — too jagged — to make him a good bet. But to appreciate someone like that, you need to see why his strengths matter so much, and why his apparent flaws aren’t important.

You also write about “talent that whispers” — and why it’s sometimes undervalued. Give us an example and explain why we should notice this expression of ability.

Look at the amateur baseball draft, where some teams stop picking after 30 rounds because they assume all the good players have already been grabbed. Every year or two, a future All-Star sits unclaimed. Mike Piazza, the great catcher, was a 62nd round pick. Weird but true. Especially when you’re dealing with young, unproven people, some candidates show just a glimmer of promise. Their talent whispers. Don’t scoff at them. Look to open the door, just a crack, so that when long shots come of age, they’re more likely to be working for you than for the competition.

Let’s say a PinkBlog reader wants to be a “rare find” him or herself. What are some specific things he or she should be doing to stand out from the crowd?

Find the frontier. If you want to be extraordinary, restlessness is a virtue. It’s also a great traveling companion for resilience; if you can combine the two of them, your chances of finding society’s greatest opportunities in any particular decade are huge. Hang out with people just as driven and passionate as you. The great hotbeds of talent are self-sustaining because competitive internal friendships guide rapid progress. When in doubt, come back to autonomy, mastery and purpose. Those are keepers!

Re: Books for coaches to read

The Story of the NHL's Unlikeliest Tough Guy

Canadian Press, Nov 5 2011


A new book by retired hockey player Georges Laraque suggests the NHL has a problem with performance-enhancing drugs.

Laraque says in the book that he knew a lot of players — both talented players and tough guys — who used steroids while he was on the ice.

He says players used different drugs to get stronger and to stop feeling the pain.

Laraque says the league began to tackle the problem in his final years in the league by setting clear rules against performance-enhancing drugs.

But he says that hockey now needs to take action against human growth hormone that players have started using in recent years.

The NHL and its players' association have not yet responded to Laraque's claims.

The former enforcer last played in the NHL in 2010 with the Montreal Canadiens.

His new book, published by Viking Canada, is called "The Story of the NHL's Unlikeliest Tough Guy."

Testing for performance enhancing substances was included in the collective bargaining agreement reached by the NHL and the NHL Players' Association in 2005.

Under that agreement, every player in the league is subject to three "no-notice" tests from the start of training camp through the end of the regular season.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Unlikeliest Tough Guy
Georges Laraque

Calgary Sun TV interview.

"Gretzky was the worst coach I ever had..."

The English version comes out Wed Nov 8.

http://www .calgarysun .com/2011/11/07/laraque-gretzky-worst-coach-i-ever-had

Re: Books for coaches to read

West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life
West's book pulls no punches

Kerry Eggers, The Portland Tribune, Nov 10 2011


“West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life,” is not so much an autobiography as a confessional.

Jerry West bares his soul in the book recently released (Little, Brown and Co.). And if I tell you it’s a good read, I’m not doing it justice.

At 73, the Hall of Fame basketball legend reveals the inner demons that have left him feeling both cursed and blessed in his time on the planet.

As he looks back at a wildly successful life, West describes himself as a “tormented, defiant figure who carries an angry, emotional chip on his shoulder and has a hole in his heart that nothing can ultimately fill.”

That’s pretty heavy stuff, but West pulls no punches.

“It’s a very honest book,” the man whose silhouette serves as the NBA’s logo told me in an interview last weekend.

Boy, is it.

It’s a stream-of-consciousness piece of work, bouncing from time to time and subject to subject, including his rather unhappy childhood as the fifth of six children of Howard and Cecile West in backwoods Chelyan, W.Va.

He offers a glimpse of those early years, when he enjoyed solo hikes in the Alleghenies with his Daisy Red Ryder BB gun, and later a Remington shotgun, in tow. Of shooting baskets on a makeshift hoop in a neighbor’s dirt yard. Of leading the East Bank High Pioneers to the state championship in 1956.

The dark times, though, tell the overriding story. Howard – for 27 years a machine operator for an oil company – was and continues to be the bane of Jerry’s existence, long after the father’s death.

The senior West was physically abusive to all in the household, particularly Jerry. It left him scarred for life.

“I’d go into my room after being beaten – not hit, but beaten – and I remember just sitting there, filled with every disgusting thought, hating the mere sight of him,” West writes.

Finally, after one beating, West pulled out a gun and challenged his father: “If you ever do this again, something ugly is going to happen.”

“I had a fear of going home,” West writes, “and when you’re little, it’s a helpless feeling.”

The bitter relationship with his father left West less than affectionate with his own five sons, which sadly remains the case today.

“There’s a barrier there,” he writes, “that I seem unable to remove.”

(Though I should say, I’ll wager his kids love him dearly, and he them.)

The other childhood tragedy that left an indelible mark was the death of his older brother, David, in the Korean War at age 21. Jerry idolized David – who had plans to become a Methodist minister – and often wondered why he wasn’t the one to die far too young. The impact on the family was enormous.

“My mother was never the same after David’s death,” West writes.

West’s solace as a boy, as you might guess, was spending hour upon hour shooting baskets or playing the game. He describes his affinity for basketball as “an addiction,” with an unhealthy win-at-all-costs mentality that brought him to some of the greatest heights in the sport’s history, yet left him feeling unfulfilled.

West led West Virginia to the 1959 NCAA finals, losing by a point to California (he was the tournament’s most valuable player). He won one NBA championship as a player with the Lakers but lost six times to Boston in the finals, including 1969, when he won the finals MVP award – the only member of a losing team ever to be so honored. The prize was a Dodge Charger, and “I felt like putting a stick of dynamite in it and blowing it up.”

“Not only do I not think of myself as a hero,” he writes, “I actually think of myself as someone who had come in second more times than he cared to remember, who was a prince far more often than a king.”

I don’t want to give the impression that the book focuses entirely on West’s depression. Though there is little play-by-play or self-gloating about his enormous accomplishments, he modestly covers his ascension from small-town star to professional superstar to big-time executive with just the right touch of accuracy and sentimentality.

I’ve interviewed West a few times over the years and found him accommodating, revealing and eminently likable. Though I’m doubtful he recognized the name when I left a voice message, he returned my call within a day – not because an interview would help him sell the book, I’m sure, but because he is a decent sort who felt it was the right thing to do.

When I asked him what convinced him to sit down with Jonathan Coleman and write the book – a project that took three years to complete – the answer was basically to set the record straight.

“People want to praise athletes for a lot of different things,” he said. “I have had some wonderful things said about me, and some personal, ugly things said about me that are less than who I am.

“I always felt there was a balance. I never once believed I was as good as people thought I was, or that I was something other than what I was.”

Since the book was published, West told me, “I’ve received letters and notes and telephone calls from people thanking me for writing a book like this. They said it will help me cope with their own situations. I hoped it would be a book that would (emphasize) that you can live a productive life, even though you have crazy stuff inside that never seems to go away.”

While West is a learned man, a voracious reader and a bit of a Renaissance man, basketball is at the core of his being. It has caused him, at once, great joy and great pain.

“So much of my angst was caused by basketball,” he said. “And that’s the only thing in my life I have had some success at.

“I didn’t want this book to be pointing fingers or be critical. Reliving these things hasn’t been very pleasurable at some times. But maybe it will help people live through some awkward times and, at the same time, understand this was my life.”

West walked away from the Lakers front office after the team won the 2000 NBA championship. At the time, there was simply no more to give. He didn’t attend Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference finals game between the Lakers and Blazers, because he couldn’t bear to watch.

“It was ridiculous what I was doing,” he told me. “I was getting no joy out of it. My relationship with (Laker owner) Jerry Buss, for instance, was incredible. He was so encouraging to me, somebody really special in my life. But it got to the point where it wasn’t right for (the Lakers) and it was terrible for me.

“It’s just who I am. The only thing I care about is winning. When you put so much of yourself into it, sooner or later you’re going to burn out. It was unhealthy for me, and unhealthy for the Lakers. I became so obsessed with trying to be perfect, to have perfect teams, to have players everyone would respect. It was a sickness to some degree.”

West later spent five years as president/general manager of the Memphis Grizzlies – a move endorsed by his second wife, Karen, as a better place to raise their two children. He left that franchise in a much better situation than when he arrived, but seems to reflect more on the failures than the successes.

I asked West if writing the book has been cathartic for him.

“Sometimes it has been,” he said, “and sometimes not. In the last week or so, I started thinking again about my relationship with my father. Thinking about the things I’d have wanted to ask him. ‘Why me? What did I do wrong?’

“It’s a part of an insecurity that I’m not very proud of. And really, I’m not a victim. I learned so much growing up about how to be responsible, and to have a big imagination.”

After last season ended, West accepted a position as advisor and member of the executive board with the Golden State Warriors. He will continue to live in Los Angeles, but will offer his wealth of knowledge and experience as a talent evaluator – “I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes,” he said – as well as provide guidance for the club’s business model.

“They need to build a better corporate base to allow them more financial freedom,” he said. “These are very bright people. I’ve already learned a lot by being around them.

“It’s going to be fun. Hopefully I can help make a little difference.”

West makes this observation:

“I’d rather have had the career I did than have the peace of mind. I couldn’t have had both. I’ll take the trade. At times I felt special.”

In the years he has left, here’s hoping he’ll dwell more on the charm than the torment.

Re: Books for coaches to read

The Ri9ht Decision: A Mathematician Reveals How the Secrets of Decision Theory Can Help You Make the Right Decision Every Time

by James Stein, Ph.D. - McGraw Hill, 2010

About the book

When it comes to making the right decision, don’t leave it up to chance

Professor and mathematician James Stein demystifies Decision Theory and shows you how you can apply the principles of this exciting new field of mathematics to help you make the right decisions in all areas of your life. The Right Decision is peppered with intriguing ‘Decision Exercises’ to make complicated ideas seem simple, revolutionizing the way you think and make choices.

Stay in a predictable job with little advancement or take a riskier one with more money? Have surgery or wait? Remain in a current relationship or take a chance on another person? Author James Stein argues that there is a right decision to these and all other questions and he gives you the tools you need to make the right one no matter what.

-----

I absolutely hated math in school and university, (the author didn't really talk much about math at all - good!) but I finished it in one sitting and it made me think a lot - exhausting, really. It requires lots of logic, and although I thought I possessed some, I doubt it now!

He provides lots of historical / real life case studies where he sets up a scenario and provides three possible action steps... then provides a relative 'score' for each of the three and an explanation on which one works best; given the setup.

I was actually quite brutal in my choices - kind of discouraging.... He has a group of exercises at the end of the book; I am going to re-read some if the book, then try these exercises to see if I can get better!

I initially tried to put this stuff into a coaching / philosophical framework (Decision Theory - how does this relate to decision training in sports?), but had to give up as I couldn't relate many of the case studies to sports / coaching. However, I really liked the preface as this was the easiest to put into coaching terms.

It is written in an easy-to-read manner, but because most of it really makes me think, I have to re-read things twice or three times sometimes. So not a 'leisure' book but a 'learning' book. Don't try this one on a tired brain... and it will take some time to get through it... thinking is hard work!!!

Re: Books for coaches to read

Former NHL heavyweight Laraque shows softer side in new biography

NHL player Georges Laraque jokes around with a Haitian boy outside Grace Children's Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, June 8, 2010. During a NHL career that lasted more than a decade, Georges Laraque was almost exclusively known for how well he could use his fists. But the former heavyweight opens up in a new biography and shows there's a lot more to him than fighting and hockey.

The Canadian Press, 2011-11-28


TORONTO - While overcoming the odds to carve out a NHL career that lasted more than a decade, Georges Laraque was known almost exclusively for how well he could use his fists.

But there's a lot more to the former heavyweight than fighting and hockey.

Laraque opens up and tells his own side of the story in "Georges Laraque," co-written with Pierre Thibeault. The book is subtitled "The Story of the NHL's Unlikeliest Tough Guy."

It takes readers from Laraque's difficult upbringing in Montreal through his career in the NHL while touching on subjects ranging from racism to Laraque's humanitarian trips to Haiti and Tanzania and his decision to become a vegan.

"I break stereotypes in that book," he said in a recent interview. "The vision that people have is of this black tough guy and all he did was fight for a living. I try to show more than that."

Laraque also manages to sprinkle in enough anecdotes to satisfy the hockey fan. A skilled forward in his minor hockey days, he began fighting in the QMJHL in an effort to realize his dream of playing in the NHL.

When first presented with that opportunity by former Edmonton Oilers coach Ron Low in 1995, Laraque turned him down and asked to be sent back to junior instead.

"All the things I told him to justify myself were in fact pure lies to hide the real truth," Laraque writes. "There was only one reason I wasn't going to play in the NHL that year and it had nothing to do with the excuses I gave him.

"That reason? Fear."

Laraque eventually overcame his fear and developed into arguably the best fighter of his era. Over time, he also gained a reputation as a straight shooter who enjoyed speaking to reporters.

However, some of those relationships were challenged shortly after the release of his book when media outlets, including The Canadian Press, focused on passages where he claimed steroids had been a problem in the sport and called Wayne Gretzky "the worst coach I've ever played for."

After those stories were written, Laraque was asked about little else while promoting the book.

"If you read the entire book, those two little things are outdone by so many other things that I'm talking about," he said. "The goal of the book is not even to talk about hockey, it's to talk about other stuff."

He was concerned his message would get lost.

Laraque embarked on the project with hopes that his story could serve as inspiration to others. Growing up to immigrant parents and playing a predominantly white sport, he was a longshot to ever see the bright lights of the NHL—yet he managed nearly 700 career games with Edmonton, Phoenix, Pittsburgh and Montreal.

He truly is the "NHL's Unlikeliest Tough Guy."

In retirement, he's continued to passionately pursue other interests and become the unlikeliest deputy leader of the Green Party, the unlikeliest vegan and the unlikeliest environmental activist, among other things.

Laraque is comfortable in his own skin. That much is clear after reading about his life.

"If I started to live my life by worrying about what people thought of me, I would live in a bubble on the moon," he said. "When I joined politics and the Green Party, I got criticized. Once I became vegan, I got criticized. When I started defending animals, I got criticized.

"Everything I do I get criticized, but I don't care because that's the stuff I believe in and put my heart in to."

Re: Books for coaches to read

It has been mentioned on here before and many have talked about Malcolm Gladwell. Well, this article is an interview with him in which he discusses the theme of his next book.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2877

I'll save you the time if you want though, here is the part that discusses it in the article.

Cappelli: Tell us about your book in progress.

Gladwell: I am interested in power and looking at relationships between the powerful and the powerless. But I'm still at a very early stage of feeling it out, so I don't have much to report.... It's a bunch of different ideas that I'm pursuing to try to understand [what happens] when someone weak confronts someone strong.

Cappelli: Was there an example that you saw that kicked it off for you, the equivalent of the lawyers in the New York firms?

Gladwell: Well, Arab Spring, obviously. I'm not using that example in my book, but that got me thinking. These are ideas I've been playing with in some of my articles in The New Yorker for the last couple of years, and so it's been in the back of my mind. It just took a while to figure out how I wanted to attack the book.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Another blog that has a book for free to download if you choose is listed below.

http://practicetowin.com/

Good for any teacher. It is about how to learn from a Professor from UCLA. He just finished a book that is available to download for free via the site. You can also buy it on amazon.com and all proceeds go to charity.

It is geared towards golf so aside from picking up some tips in regards to coaching, hopefully we can all improve our handicap!

Re: Books for coaches to read

Playing against Bobby Orr
(From The Last Season, Roy MacGregor’s 1983 novel on the life and times of NHL enforcer Felix Batterinski):

Roy MacGregor, Globe and Mail, Nov. 29, 2011



… Bobby Orr would get the cover of Maclean’s. I almost got the cover of Police Gazette after the Billings incident. My rep was made. The North Bay Nugget’s nickname for me, Frankenstein, spread throughout the league. I had my own posters in Kitchener; there were threats in Kingston and spray-paint messages on our bus in Sault Ste. Marie; late, frantic calls at the Demers house from squeaky young things wanting to speak to the “monster!” They didn’t know me. I didn’t know myself. But I loved being talked about in the same conversations as the white brushcut from Parry Sound. … We met Oshawa Generals in that year’s playoffs, and the papers in Oshawa and Sudbury played up the Batterinski-Orr side of it. “Beauty and the Beast,” the Oshawa Times had it. The Star countered with “Batterinski’s Blockade,” pointing out that the Hardrocks’ strategy was to have Batterinski make sure Orr never got near the net, though no one ever spoke to me about it. I presume it was understood.

On March 28 we met on their home ice, the advantage going to them by virtue of a better record throughout the season. I said not a single word on the bus ride down, refusing to join Torchy in his dumb-ass Beatle songs, refusing even to get up and wade back to the can, though I’d had to go since Orillia. My purpose was to exhibit strength and I could not afford the slightest opening. I had to appear superhuman to the rest of the team: not needing words, nor food, nor bodily functions.

If I could have ridden down in the equipment box I would have, letting the trainer unfold me and tighten my skates just before the warm-up, sitting silent as a puck, resilient as my shin pads, dangerous as the blades. The ultimate equipment: me.

I maintained silence through the “Queen” and allowed myself but one chop at Frog Larocque’s goal pads, then set up. Orr and I were like reflections, he standing solid and staring up at the clock from one corner, me doing the same at the other, both looking at time, both thinking of each other. We were the only ones in the arena, the crowd’s noise simply the casing in which we would move, the other players simply the setting to force the crowd’s focus to us. Gus Demers had advised me to level Orr early, to establish myself. Coach Therrian wanted me to wait for Orr, keep him guessing. I ignored them all. They weren’t involved. Just Orr and me.

His style had changed little since bantam. Where all the other players seemed bent over, concentrating on something taking place below them, Orr still seemed to be sitting at a table as he played, eyes as alert as a poker player, not interested in his own hands or feet or where the object of the game was. What made Orr effective was that he had somehow shifted the main matter of the game from the puck to him. By anticipating, he had our centers looking for him, not their wingers, and passes were directed away from him, not to someone on our team. By doing this, and by knowing this himself, he had assumed control of the Hardrocks as well as the Generals.

…[But] I had seen how to deal with Orr. If the object of the game had become him, not the puck, I would simply put Orr through his own net….

… I felt my left blade slip and my legs stutter. I saw him slipping farther and farther out of reach, my strides choppy and ineffective, his brief, effortless and amazingly successful. I swung with my stick at his back, causing the noise to rise. I dug in but he was gone, a silent, blond brushcut out for a skate in an empty arena.

I dove, but it was no use. My swinging stick rattled off his ankle guards and I turned in my spill in time to see the referee’s hand raise for a delayed penalty. I was already caught so I figured I might as well make it worthwhile. I regained my feet and rose just as Orr came in on Larocque, did something with his stick and shoulder that turned Frog into a lifesize cardboard poster of a goaltender, and neatly tucked the puck into the corner of the net.

The crowd roared, four thousand jack-in-the-boxes suddenly sprung, all of them laughing at me. Orr raised his hands in salute and turned, just as I hit him.

It was quiet again, quiet as quickly as the noise had first burst through. I felt him against me, shorter but probably as solid. I smelled him, not skunky the way I got myself, but the smell of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. I gathered him in my arms, both of us motionless but for the soar of our skates, and I aimed him carefully and deliberately straight through the boards at the goal judge.

Orr did not even bother to look at me. It was like the theory you read about car accidents, that the best thing you can do is relax. Orr rode in my arms contentedly, acceptingly, neither angry, nor afraid, nor surprised. We moved slowly, deliberately, together. I could see the goal judge leaping, open-mouthed, back from the boards. I saw his coffee burst through the air as we hit, the gray-brown circles slowly rising up and away and straight into his khaki coat. The boards gave; they seemed to give forever, folding back toward the goal judge, then groaning, then snapping us out and down in a heap as the referee’s whistle shrieked in praise.

I landed happy, my knee rising into his leg as hard as I could manage, the soft grunt of expelled air telling me I had finally made contact with the only person in the building who would truly understand. …


Excerpted from Wayne Gretzky’s Ghost: And Other Tales from a Lifetime in Hockey. Copyright © 2011 Roy MacGregor. Published by Random House Canada. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved

Re: Books for coaches to read

Books, books and more books

TAKING NOTE, Gregg Drinnan, Kamloops Daily News, Dec 1 2011


The calendar has turned to December. Which means that it won’t be long before panic sets in. What to buy so-and-so for Christmas?

Well, if you happen to be shopping for a book lover or two, here is a brief look at some of the books I have read in 2011, and, no, they aren’t all sports-related:

———

Back in the Bigs: The subtitle is How Winnipeg won, lost and regained its place in the NHL, and the subtitle pretty much sums it up. This is an over-sized book — although not quite coffee-table size — written by Randy Turner of the Winnipeg Free Press. It is loaded with anecdotes involving the Jets, going back to the days of Ben Hatskin and the Junior Jets and taking you through the times in the WHA with Hull, Hedberg and Nilsson, to the NHL with Hawerchuk and onto the AHL and the Manitoba Moose. Turner spins some fine stories and the photos are awesome. If you look closely enough, you will even find F Jordan DePape of the Kamloops Blazers in one of the photos taken at The Forks. (Viking Canada/Winnipeg Free Press, hard cover, 208 pages, Cdn$35)

———

The Big Short (Inside the Doomsday Machine) — Written by Michael Lewis, who also wrote Moneyball and The Blind Side, this is the story of the fall (?) of Wall Street in 2008. Upon finishing this book, you will pause and say to yourself: “This is a work of fiction, isn’t it?” . . . Unfortunately, it isn’t. And, as a result, you will never look on politicians or Wall Street-types the same way again. (Norton, soft cover, 291 pages, US$15.95, Cdn$20.00)

———

Blood, Sweat and Chalk — If you are a football fan, you won’t want to miss this one. Written by Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated, it is subtitled The Ultimate Football Playbook: How the Great Coaches Built Today’s Game. Layden visited with a number of football’s most influential coaches and numerous other footballers and produced a real gem. It will help you understand the genesis of such things as the Wildcat, the Wishbone, Air Coryell, the West Coast Offense, the Zone Blitz, the BYU Air Raid and on and on. Layden does it in layman’s terms, too, so it’s a fun and easy read. (Sports Illustrated Books, hard cover, 255 pages, Cdn$31.95)

———

The Devil and Bobby Hull — Long-time hockey fans think of Bobby Hull and see him, adorned in a Chicago Black Hawks’ sweater, swooping down the left side of an NHL ice surface and firing a slapshot from the top of the circle. Or playing tic-tac-toe with Ulf Nilsson and Anders Hedberg while with the Winnipeg Jets. Author Gare Joyce, however, knew there was a lot more to Hull’s story than that, and he tells that story right here. Subtitled How Hockey’s Original Million-Dollar Man Became the Game’s Lost Legend, this is the mostly sad story of a one-time hockey superstar. Upon reading Chapter 11 – there are 12 chapters – you will have tears in your eyes as Joyce draws obvious inferences between Hull’s inability to maintain some thoughts and the possibility that he may have suffered an untold number of concussions during his playing days. (Wiley, hard cover, 274 pages, US$26.95, Cdn$32.95)

———

Eight Million Ways to Die — Written by Lawrence Block, this book won the Shamus Award and was short listed for the Edgar. It was first published in 1982 and introduced private eye Matthew Scudder to the masses. You can’t lose with this one. Awesome. I stumbled on it on a discount shelf somewhere; see if you can do the same. (William Morrow, hard cover, 318 pages, Cdn$23.50)

———

Evel (The High-Flying Life of Evel Knievel: American Showman, Daredevil, and Legend) — No less an authority than the late Jimmy (The Greek) Snider once said of Evel Knievel that the odds were about “three-to-one this guy is crazy.” Veteran writer Leith Montville proves it in this book. When I started reading this book, I wondered why I was bothering. But it quickly became a page-turner. Why? Because it was amazing what Knievel, who wasn’t something of an oaf and a boor, was able to accomplish simply with his overly abrasive personality and perhaps the biggest set of cojones in American history. By the way, when you get to the end of this one you realize Jimmy The Greek was wrong. The man was crazy. Period. (Doubleday, hard cover, 398 pages, Cdn$31.00, US$27.50)

———

I Am Not Making This Up — Al Strachan covered the NHL and its teams for almost 40 years. He was on the Montreal Canadiens beat for a time, but he made his name in Toronto where he wrote for The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Sun. He also was a regular on Hockey Night in Canada’s Hot Stove Lounge – it hasn’t been the same since he departed – and a regular thorn in the side of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. You can bet, then, that Strachan has lots and lots and lots of stories, some of which are related here. At 224 pages, this is a quick, light read, one that will keep you enthralled if you are a veteran hockey fan. It also leaves you wanting more and thinking that there just might be a sequel or two or three or four to come. And a recent visit to a bookstore did indeed find a new Strachan book. (Fenn Publishing Company, soft cover, 224 pages, Cdn$22.95)

———

Junior Hockey’s Royal Franchise: The Regina Pats: If you’re a fan of junior hockey, you won’t want to miss out on this one. It was written by Darrell Davis, a veteran Regina Leader-Post sports writer whose late father, Lorne, once coached the Pats and later scouted for the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers, and Ron (Scoreboard) Johnston, who knows everything there is to know about this team. Johnston spent the better part of 13 years doing the research; Davis later supplied the words. This book is loaded with anecdotes and lots of terrific photos. There aren’t a whole lot of really good books out there that involve major junior hockey or its teams. This is one of them. If you‘re interested in this one, contact the Regina Pats at their office. (Published by The Leader-Post Carrier Foundation Inc., hard cover, 272 pages, Cdn$49.95)

———

The Last Boy — Subtitled Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, this is one of the two best books I read in 2011. I finished it in mid-February and knew then that I wouldn’t read a better one during the calendar year (although, as you will see further into this piece, I later declared a tie). The Last Boy was written by Jane Leavy, who also wrote the terrific Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy. Unlike the book on the Los Angeles Dodgers’ left-hander, though, this is a devastating book if you are of a certain age. If you grew up as a fan of the M and M boys (Mantle and Roger Maris), this will destroy the myth of Mickey Mantle, All-American boy, moreso than did Jim Bouton’s groundbreaking Ball Four. Mickey Mantle, it turns out, was a tortured soul — oh, was he! — and a prime example of why we shouldn’t put our athletic heroes on pedestals. . . . There also is a lot of neat baseball stuff here, and Leavy’s research and writing on some of Mantle’s tape-measure homers is exceptional. The work she did in tracking down Donald Dunaway, the man who as a boy got the ball that Mantle hit out of Washington, D.C.’s Griffith Stadium on April 17, 1953, and the resulting chapter helps make this an exceptional book. (Did you know that Roy Clark, later to become a country music star and a friend of The Mick’s, and his father were seated along the first-base line when Mantle went so deep?) . . . (HarperCollins, hard cover, 456 pages, US$27.99, Cdn$32.99)

———

The Lost Dream — Written by Toronto Sun sports columnist Steve Simmons and subtitled The Story of Mike Danton, David Frost, and a Broken Canadian Family, this should be a must read for every parent whose has even one son playing minor hockey anywhere in North America. This is the horrible story of what happened to one family when its hockey-playing son got tangled up with David Frost, a minor hockey coach who later became a player agent. There is a tangled web here and you will be stunned at some of the names that became entangled in it. Danton, of course, later went to jail after a failed attempt to have Frost assassinated. My only real quibble with the book is its title; it should have been The Lost Family. (Viking Canada, hard cover, 255 pages, Cdn$32.00)

———

The Man from Beijing — The Los Angeles Times refers to author Henning Mankell as “Sweden’s greatest living mystery writer.” This book is a prime example as to why that very well may be true. Yes, this is a novel and, yes, it is a mystery. However, it is anything but your average who done it. This one involves a Swedish judge, the changing times in China and how that country’s government is/was impacted and a whole lot more. A perfect read for a couple of wintery evenings. . . . (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, soft cover, 454 pages, US$15.00)

———

Never Look Away — If you’re into beach/cabin fiction, here’s one you’ll quite enjoy. Author Linwood Barclay, a former Toronto Star columnist, tosses twist after twist at you in the story of David Harwood, a small-town newspaper reporter, in what is a satisfying read. There might be one twist too many near the end, but that really is nit-picking. Great for a rainy day because you won’t put it down. (Seal Books, soft cover, 496 pages, Cdn$10.99)

———

No Guarantees — Subtitled An Inspiring Story of Struggle and Success in Professional Sport and with Parkinson’s and Cancer, this is Don Dietrich’s story. From the farming community of Deloraine, Man., Dietrich played for the WHL’s Brandon Wheat Kings before moving on to play in the AHL, NHL (with the Chicago Blackhawks) and in Europe. He tells some hilarious stories as he wanders through hockey’s hinterlands and, in the end, you will weep as he comes face-to-face with Parkinson’s Disease and cancer. When others wanted to give up on him in hockey and in life, he chose to move forward. Get this book and read it; you won’t be disappointed. (Trafford Publishing, soft cover, 200 pages, Cdn$20.87)

———

Playing With Fire — This is Theo Fleury’s story in all its blazing colours. Finish this book and you will wonder how it is that Fleury still is alive. It is absolutely mind-numbing all that he has gone through since he left a rocky childhood life in Russell, Man., to play hockey in Winnipeg for Graham James. The abuse, the alcohol, the drugs . . . something should have killed him. Fleury doesn’t pull any punches here, and he throws a lot of hockey players under the bus. He bares his soul and admits to his mistakes, but doesn’t preach. This book should have come with a language warning. It’s interesting that Kirstie McLellan Day helped Fleury with this book and then moved on to write the late Bob Probert’s book, Tough Guy, which also is freely littered with hockey talk. (HarperCollins, soft cover, 350 pages, Cdn$19.99)

———

The Rebel League — Subtitled The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association, this is that story. “No one seems to remember the WHA wrestled the game away from a handful of NHL owners and took it to new markets,” writes author Ed Willes, a sports columnist with the Vancouver Province, “that I opened the door for Europeans, and that it offered a generation of players their first chance at a real payday.” Willes tells that story here and, yes, there are assorted anecdotes, some hilarious, some funny and others unbelievable. If you are a hockey fan, you will enjoy this one. (McClelland & Stewart, soft cover, 277 pages, US$17.95, Cdn$22.99)

———

Roger Maris (Baseball’s Reluctant Hero) — Authors Tom Clavin and Danny Peary do a masterful job of portraying Roger Maris, the man who wasn’t sure how badly he wanted to break Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. This follows Maris from his early years in Hibbing, Minn., to his formative years in Fargo, N.D., from Roger Maras to Roger Maris and beyond. The writers paint a picture of a tortured man, especially in 1961 as he hit 61 home runs, but one whose family meant everything to him. It also is an honest and ugly portrayal of baseball when the owners were the lords of the diamond. For example, the way the New York Yankees treated Maris in 1965 as he struggled with a hand injury was criminal. Front and centre, too, is Maris’s relationship, or lack of same, with the New York media, something the authors claim may well be the reason that Maris isn’t a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Read this book and hear what former teammates have to say and you will reach the same conclusion. (Touchstone, soft cover, 430 pages, Cdn$18.99, US$15.99)

———

The Snowman — One of the benefits of the Stieg Larsson trilogy — The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo et al — having been such a raging success in North America is that book nooks have been all but inundated by works from other Scandinavian writers. Jo Nesbø, a Norwegian, is one of those writers. While I had heard of his work, I had never picked up one of his novels until coming across The Snowman. This book involves Harry Hole, a hard-bitten cop who is involved in a number of Nesbø books. But this work has an edge to it that not a lot of other writers are able to capture. I definitely will be reading more about Det. Hole. (Vintage Canada, soft cover, 454 pages, Cdn$19.95)

———

The Third Rail — Michael Kelly is a private investigator. He used to be a cop. In this first-rate detective novel, Kelly ends up in the middle of a really messy situation in Chicago. It involves cops and shooters and a female judge. You knew there had to be a love interest. Right? The best part of this novel, however, is author Michael Harvey’s style. Back in the day, Mickey Spillane was the man. With his writing, Harvey has torn a page out of Spillane’s book . . . (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, soft cover, 281 pages, US$14.95, Cdn$16.95)

———

Unbroken (A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption) — This was the other best book I read in 2011. Written by Lauren Hillenbrand, the author of Seabiscuit, it tells the story of Louis Zamperini, who may have been the first person to run a four-minute mile had the Second World War not gotten in the way. He ended up on a life raft in the South Pacific and then in Japanese POW camps. His story -- from brawling, thieving youngster to world-class runner to airman to prisoner of war to Christian – is emotionally draining and terrifically uplifting. Don’t miss this one; it was named 2010’s top book by Time magazine. (Random House, hard cover, 473 pages, US$27, Cdn$31)

———

War Without Death (A Year of Extreme Competition in Pro Football) — I love nonfiction books that are basically diaries, written in chronological order. This one, by Mark Maske of the Washington Post, is a terrific look inside the NFC East during the 2006 NFL season, providing great insight into how the big boys operate. The contrast in operating styles between the likes of owners Daniel Snyder (Washington Redskins), Jerry Jones (Dallas Cowboys) and Jeffrey Lurie (Philadelphia Eagles) is striking. This really is a great sports book. (Penguin, soft cover,393 pages, US$16.00, Cdn$17.50.)

———

Willie Mays (The Life, The Legend) — Willie Mays deserves this book. Written by James S. Hirsch. a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal reporter, it was written with Mays’ authorization. This is a long, well-written book that details Mays’ life and career, from his days as a youngster growing up in Birmingham, Ala., through his major league life and beyond. The best thing about this book, and there are many, is that it clears up the misconception that continues to hang in the air, like fog at Candlestick Park, about the last days of Mays’ career. He didn’t finish up as a bumbling, stumbling outfielder; he really didn’t. But he didn’t finish with the New York Mets, who had a manager, Yogi Berra, who, for whatever reason, chose to forget about him. (Scribner, hard cover, 628 pages, US$30, Cdn$$36)

Re: Books for coaches to read

Here are two outstanding books about coaching. I highly suggest you take a look at them!

1) InsideOut Coaching: How sports can transform lives - Joe Ehrmann

2) The Double-Goal Coach - Positive coaching tools for honouring the game and developing winners in sports and life - Jim Thompson

Re: Books for coaches to read

For Christmas, I ordered a bunch of books... not all about coaching but a wide variety as I enjoy many different topics! Here they are:


1) The Man Watching: Anson Dorrance and the University of North Carolina Women's Soccer Dynasty - Tim Crothers

2) The Boys of Winter - Wayne Coffey

3) Herb Brooks: The Inside Story of a Hockey Mastermind - John Gilbert

4) A Passion to Win - Lou Nanne with Jim Bruton

5) The Game - Ken Dryden

6) Georges Laraque: The Story of the NHL's Unlikeliest Tough Guy - with Pierre Thibeault

7) Cornered - Ron MacLean and Kirstoe McLellan Day

8) Hat Trick - Harley Hotchkiss

9) Ice Warriors: The Pacific Coast / Western Hockey League 1948-1974 - Jon C. Stott

10) Idea Mapping: How to Access your Hidden Brain Power, Learn Faster, Remember More, and Achieve Success in Business - Jamie Nast

11) 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in our Times - Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel

12) Becoming a Coach - Thomas J. Leonard

13) Marva Collins Way: Returning to Excellence in Education - Marva Collins and Civia Tamarkin

14) Creating Competitive Advantage - Jaynie L. Smith

15) The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else - George Anders

16) Talent Identification and Development in Sport: International perspectives - edited by Joseph Baker, Steve Cobley and Jorg Schorer

17) Play - Stuart Brown

18) Just Let the Kids Play - Bob Bigelow, Tom Moroney and Linda Hall

19) The Myth of Ability: Nurturing Mathematical Ability in Every Child - John Mighton

20) Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards

21) How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci - Michael J. Gelb

22) Innovate Like Edison - Sarah Miller Caldicott

23) With Three Dollars to a Millionaire - Markus Scheu

24) Heart Zones Cycling - Sally Edwards and Sally Reed

25) The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Cycling, 2nd Edition - Robert G. Price

26) The Man Who Cycled the Americas - Mark Beaumont

27) The Man Who Cycled the World - Mark Beaumont

28) Tour De Lance - Bill Strickland

29) Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival - T.S.Wiley

30) The Paleo Diet for Athletes: A Nutritional Formula for Peak Athletic Performances - Loren Cordain and Joe Friel

31) Persuasion: A New Approach to Changing Minds - Alene Dickinson

32) Roman Empire - Nigel Rodgers

That ought to keep me going through... February 2012!


Plus I just received a $150 gift certificate today from some kids I coach... next stop - Human Kinetics website!

I love December!

Re: Books for coaches to read

NHL General Managers Tell how Winners are Built

Dec 28 2011


I received a lot of books this Christmas! I am partway through "The Rare Find" and really enjoyed Georges Laraque's book. Today I started reading the NHL GM book (thanks mom!) and love it! I highly recommend it!

This article below ties in with the book...

-----

Flames GM doesn’t have time to mark anniversary

Scott Cruickshank, Calgary Herald, December 28, 2011


COLUMBUS, OHIO

Jay Feaster insists that he never thought about it.

It simply did not occur to him.

That if any date had been stuck in his head lately, it was Tuesday’s — the day of son Ryan’s 11th birthday.

Today, however, marks the first anniversary of Feaster’s occupation of the Calgary Flames general manager’s throne.

Not that it’s a big deal to the man. Apparently.

“The job is such, that once you’re into it, it’s every day, it’s constant,” Feaster is saying outside the visitors quarters at Nationwide Arena. “You don’t take time to sit back and think, ‘Gee, it was just a year ago.’ And it’s a situation where we’re not where we want to be . . . and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.

“That’s the focus all the time.”

Under his 12-month watch — exactly 82 games, including Tuesday’s 2-1 shootout win in Columbus — the Flames have compiled a 43-26-13 log (and 99 points).

Which, over a single winter, would be enough to cinch a playoff berth.

Nevertheless, the Flames finished 10th last season in the Western Conference. And, because of early-season sluggishness, they have spent this campaign gawking up at the eighth rung.

And this happens to be precisely how Feaster assesses his program.

Not for bite-size improvement.

Not for better salary-cap use.

Not for flashes of competence.

But, plain and simple, for post-season entrance.

“Be clear about this — there is only one measure of success for the Calgary Flames,” says Feaster. “It’s the playoffs. Then, once in the playoffs, it’s about playoff success. There’s a lot of work that goes on with the organization, there’s a lot of good things we’re doing. I’m happy and proud of the things we’re doing. But, at the end of the day, the measure of success is the playoffs.

“We went into this season believing we had a team that should make the playoffs. To be sitting five points ahead of last year’s pace? That’s just not good enough. Yeah, it’s better to be where we are now than where we were a week ago . . . yet it’s not where we should be.

“There’s still a big road ahead of us.”

Since Feaster took over from Darryl Sutter, much deadwood has been cut adrift.

Ales Kotalik and Niklas Hagman, for instance. First-round flops Matt Pelech and Kris Chucko.

Then again, Feaster has orchestrated his own snarls — giving up a seventh-round pick for swaybacked winger Freddy Modin; giving up a fifth-round pick for Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond, currently toiling in the minors.

“For me, it never was my guys, their guys, his guys,” says Feaster. “This is our team. These are our guys — and they’re our guys till they’re not here. I don’t go down the roster, ‘Oh, that player was Darryl’s. That player was Craig Button’s guy. Or who drafted him?’ There’s none of that for me.

“They’re our guys. This is our team.”

And should he ever be at a loss, Calgarians, ever helpful, will happily provide all the advice he needs. After all, Feaster is one of only 1.1 million general managers in the city.

“I would rather have the sport-talk radio filled with whatever they want to say about me, about us,” he says. “I’d rather have people talking (about the Flames) than having to convince people to become passionate about the game. That’s an incredible advantage we have in Calgary — people care.”

Re: Books for coaches to read

Let me know what you think of The Rare Find. That is in transit as I type.

I am not sure I want to fork over the money for the GM book. I am curious to see if you think it is a true insiders look.

I got these for Christmas:

Keenan - Jeff Gordon

A Passion to WIn - Lou Nanne

Coaching the Mental Game - Dorfman

Coachisms - Howe

On Becomming a Leader - Bennis

Wisdom for the Busy Coach - Zonars

Building a Champion - Bill Walsh

The Rare Find - Anders

Thinking Fast and Slow - Kahneman

Re: Books for coaches to read

Quote by: Eric

Let me know what you think of The Rare Find. That is in transit as I type.

I am not sure I want to fork over the money for the GM book. I am curious to see if you think it is a true insiders look.

I think it is very worth it. I haven't been able to put it down! (Since I know some of these people, I find it interesting some of the things that were published...some things contradict what I know of them... still lots of things 'not' said on the record!!) I think it really gives one a good 'feel' of some of the pressures these guys operate under. It is interesting to read about how the game has changed... and in some circumstances, how it hasn't. I had a great discussion today with a Junior Coach / GM about several of the issues commented on in the book and he thought it was fascinating... he is going to buy the book for himself.

I got these for Christmas:

Keenan - Jeff Gordon

(I got this for a former player of Mike's - I read it too and he said the book was a pretty accurate reflection. Lots of the 'crazy' stuff was left out!)

A Passion to WIn - Lou Nanne

Got it; haven't yet read it...

Coaching the Mental Game - Dorfman

???

Coachisms - Howe

???

On Becomming a Leader - Bennis

Think I read it a long time ago - at least it was a book by Bennis?

Wisdom for the Busy Coach - Zonars

Building a Champion - Bill Walsh

Great book!

The Rare Find - Anders

Reading it - like it! Will write something more once I'm done...

Thinking Fast and Slow - Kahneman

???

Re: Books for coaches to read

Sudden Death: The Incredible Saga of the 1986 Swift Current Broncos
Tragedy to triumph - 1986 Broncos one of hockey's greatest stories of survival

ROBERT KOOPMANS, Kamloops Daily New Staff Reporter, December 29, 2011


There is little doubt in Gregg Drinnan's mind, the tale of the Swift Current Broncos' path to Memorial Cup victory in 1989 is one of hockey's greatest stories of survival.

Just three years before its victory in Saskatoon, the team suffered a tragic bus accident that killed four key players. Through the same period - and not known until many years later - the team was coached by sexual predator Graham James, who victimized at least two of them.

Despite all the adversity, the determined crew persevered and won the Canadian Hockey League's greatest prize, Drinnan said.

The team's comeback is the subject of Drinnan's soon-to-be published book entitled Sudden Death: The Incredible Saga of the 1986 Swift Current Broncos. The book, to be published by Dundurn Press, is expected on Canadian bookshelves in September.

Drinnan, now sports editor at The Daily News, was assistant sports editor at the Regina Leader-Post at the time of the accident. There was no denying the impact the crash had in Swift Current, the province and the Western Hockey League, he said.

"It was huge. Three of the kids were from Saskatchewan," he said.

The crash caused changes to WHL travel policies, for example, that gave team drivers the ability to cut short travel if weather conditions were too severe. It also cast watchful eyes on the young team as it moved forward.

Little was spoken publicly about the crash as the team played on, he noted. While it's clear, based on after-the-fact interviews, that the players on the team played for their dead teammates, none spoke it at the time for fear the mention of that might somehow jinx their effort.

It wasn't until the Cup was in hand that the emotional nature of the victory become apparent. The players talked of their lost teammates and how they felt them watching from above. To this day, the Broncos wear special shoulder patches on their team jerseys - a four-leaf clover with the numbers of the killed players - in memorial to them.

Drinnan said he was approached last year by two people and asked if he would help put together the book. They had assembled a rough manuscript. He read through it and agreed to assist.

He said the team's passage through an extremely dark period and its eventual Memorial Cup victory is a testament to the inner strength of that young squad.

They survived events that might have crushed others, especially since their coach - a man who was later convicted of molesting two of the boys on that very squad, including Sheldon Kennedy - offered them so little support. James refused to allow the team to speak with grief counsellors, likely to keep his own activity from being discovered.

"It's a story about survival first, and then comeback. They were kids at the time, many of them away from home for the first time," Drinnan said. "It's an amazing story."

-----

Gregg Drinnan, Taking Note, Dec 30 2011

Sudden Death: Book to be published in September


It was 25 years ago today when the Swift Current Broncos boarded their bus and headed to Regina for a scheduled game against the Pats. It was to be the Broncos’ first game following the 1986-87 Christmas break. This also was their first season back in Swift Current, having moved from Lethbridge over the summer.

The Broncos’ bus, of course, never made it to Regina on that stormy evening in 1986. It crashed just east of Swift Current and four players – Scott Kruger, Trent Kresse, Chris Mantyka and Brent Ruff – were killed.

Tonight, the Broncos are again scheduled to play in Regina and the Pats will honour the memories of Kruger, Kresse, Mantyka and Ruff in a small pregame ceremony.

Tim Tisdale, who was in his first season with the Broncos in 1986-87 and who lives and works in Swift Current, will be on hand to take part in a ceremonial faceoff. Tisdale played with the Broncos through the 1989 Memorial Cup, in which he scored the OT goal in a 4-3 championship-game victory over the host Saskatoon Blades. He later went on to a coaching career that included a two-season stint with the Pats.

The pregame ceremony, which is to begin at 7 p.m., also will include Darren McKechnie, who was a 19-year-old forward with the Pats in 1987-88.

---

More than two years ago, two people – Leesa Culp and Bob Wilkie – approached me about a project on which they were working.
They had prepared a short manuscript about the crash of the Swift Current Broncos’ bus that they were wanting to turn into a book.
At the time of the accident, Culp was in a big rig that had slowed down to allow the Broncos’ bus to pull onto the Trans-Canada Highway at Swift Current. Wilkie was a defenceman in his first season with the Broncos, who had acquired him from the Calgary Wranglers earlier in the season.

Culp and Wilkie both felt there was a story to be told.

More than two years later, the manuscript has been worked and reworked, interviews have been conducted, and out of it all has come a book.

Sudden Death: The Incredible Saga of the 1986 Swift Current Broncos is to be published by Dundurn Press in September.

This is the story of the Broncos, primarily from Dec. 30, 1986, through the end of the 1989 Memorial Cup.

---

You already are able to pre-order this book from Amazon and from McNally Robinson.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Fighting the Good Fight: Why On-Ice Violence Is Killing Hockey
Adam Proteau

John Wiley & Sons, 2011-12-01 - Sports & Recreation - 384 pages


"A veteran hockey writer takes on hockey culture and the NHL--addressing the game's most controversial issue

Whether it's on-ice fist fights or head shots into the glass, hockey has become a nightly news spectacle--with players pummeling and bashing each other across the ice like drunken gladiators. And while the NHL may actually condone on-ice violence as a ticket draw, diehard hockey fan and expert Adam Proteau argues against hockey's transformation into a thuggish blood sport. In "Fighting the Good Fight, " Proteau sheds light on the many perspectives of those in and around the game, with interviews of current and former NHL stars, coaches, general managers, and league executives, as well as medical experts.

One of the most well-known media figures on the hockey scene today, famous for his funny, feisty observations as a writer for the "Toronto Star" and "The Hockey News" and commentator on CBC radio and TV, Adam Proteau is also one of the few mainstream media voices who is vehemently anti-fighting in hockey. Not only is his book a plea to the game's gatekeepers to finally clamp down on the runaway violence that permeates the sport even at its highest level, he offers realistic suggestions on ways to finally clean the game up.Includes interviews with medical experts on head injuries and concussions, as well as with other members of the mediaThe author not only wages an attack on the value of fighting in hockey--but also on the establishment hockey culture

Covering the most polarizing issue in hockey today, "Fighting the Good Fight" gives hockey fans and sports lovers everywhere a reason to stamp their feet and whistle--at a rare display of eloquence and common sense."

Re: Books for coaches to read

Commitment

Proactive Coaching LLC Newsletter #44
www.proactivecoaching.info
Facebook – Proactive Coaching LLC
Bruce Brown – Bruce@proactivecoaching.info

Convenient, Compliant, Conditional or Full Commitment?

This information is taken from our new book, Proactive Leadership – Empowering Team Leaders, only available on our website.

Commitment is usually one of the things that successful teams attribute to their success. Lack of commitment is usually one of the things identified in teams that fail.

Convenient – This person will do the job when I feel good or feel like doing it. They will often start toward a goal but quit if it gets too difficult. These people are comfortable contributing to an apathetic culture.

Compliant – This person will do the job if it is required for them to be part of the team. They will do what is asked and little more. Compliance is watered down commitment and they will be happy in a culture that is happy with being good (not great).

Conditional Commitment – This person is selfish and will do the job if it benefits their personal agenda. They filter everything through what they are personally gaining. They will be committed as long as they get their own way, (their points, getting to play the position they want, their playing time, their attention and their goals). They will be on board as long as things are going well and the team is winning. They will demonstrate committed behaviors as long as it doesn’t get to difficult or they are expected to practice too hard. They will turn on the team when things get tough. You cannot count on them and unless they change and buy in they are capable of damaging even the strongest team culture. Do not sacrifice your team covenants for these selfish individuals regardless of how talented they are.

Committed – This person will do whatever is needed whenever it is needed. They live the team’s core covenants with a full heart. They don’t care if it requires extra effort, time, energy or personal sacrifice, they will pay the price. They don’t need to talk about it; you’ll be able to see it in their actions. They will not only do it, they’ll embrace it. They are compelled and focused. They go all out all the time. They are all in. They are committed. These people are the foundation on which great team cultures are built.

Commitment opens the door to reaching potential for individuals and teams. Full commitment reduces your options and keeps you on a consistent, predictable path. There will be tough times where commitment is the only thing carrying you forward. It provides the burning desire to keep focused on your core covenants and goals. Commitment allows people to do the tough jobs, to keep moving forward, to work long hours. It allows a team to persevere through difficult times with strength and resiliency.

It is essential in the best team cultures that leadership demonstrates full and unconditional commitment. Before people buy into the team culture they must buy into the leader(s). A leaders commitment will be tested by their actions, not their talk. The people you want to follow you will hear what you say but they will believe what you do. True commitment demonstrated in a leader's actions inspires and attracts people to a cause bigger than themselves. Strong leaders have a level of commitment that cannot be questioned.

Video Recommendation

During this year's bowl season, one of the best games was Michigan State vs. Georgia. You might have heard Mike Trico during the game talk about the speech Kirk Cousins gave at the Big Ten Media Day. We saw this late this summer and have shown it to many young student athletes as he does a great job talking about the privilege of playing athletics and the responsibility that comes with that privilege. Take a look and see if you think your players could benefit from this 7 minute clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp15N9BbYgY

Re: Books for coaches to read

Seeing "Building a Champion" in that list reminded me of perhaps my favorite coaching book, "Finding the Winning Edge" by Walsh and Brian Billick. It literally is a blueprint of building an NFL franchise.

While the chapters on offense, blitz protections and quarterback footwork, etc. don't apply to hockey there is so much else worthwhile. There's chapters on dealing with the media, hiring assistants, managing a salary cap, job descriptions and team/staff meeting talking points.

Here's a column on the book's influence on Bill Belichick. http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=cr-walshinfluence073007

Unfortunately, there was only a print run of 36,000 copies so they go for around $150 now online. I'm so glad I found it in an airport bookstore when it first came out.

Re: Books for coaches to read

KevinC,

I have it on my wish list on amazon.com and am hoping I run into a less expensive copy somewhere.... although I fear that might be next to impossible.


I am half way through "The Rare Find" and it has been a good read so far. I really enjoy the pursuit of talent and finding qualities in people that lead to success in sport and other areas as well.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Good stuff KevinC! Thanks for sharing!

I will have to look to see if I have this one in my library!

Here is the article to which you are referring:

------

Unlikely influence

Charles Robinson, Yahoo! Sports, July 30, 2007


If Bill Belichick were to loosen his cerebral grip, ever were going to empty out the folds of gray matter hidden under that gray hoody, he'd do it the way Bill Walsh did.

He'd teach. He'd write a book explaining it all. He'd spin the game of football forward by giving it all away. He looks at how Walsh did it, and out of admiration, it has become one of Belichick's hidden desires, too.

Walsh, who passed away Monday after a lengthy battle with leukemia, left an indelible impression on the man who has taken his place as the NFL's reigning genius.

To this day, Belichick insists Bill Walsh: Finding the Winning Edge is the greatest piece of football literature regarding a franchise blueprint ever written. Belichick read the book in the nuclear winter of his own coaching career, between the disaster with the Cleveland Browns and resurrection with the New England Patriots. At a time in his life time when Belichick was forced to re-examine his basic truths about team building, he wrapped his hands around the second of several books by Walsh.

When he was finished, Belichick's philosophical foundation as a coach had once again solidified beneath his feet.

"Saying it was outstanding wouldn't do it justice. For a coach, it's a Bible," Belichick said. "That book reinforced most of what I thought as a coach. I was glad to see Bill write it and say the things he did because a lot of it was either what I was trying to do or what I believed in. Between the book, the clinics, talking to Bill and picking things up from the (San Francisco) 49ers organization, there was certainly a confirmation in my mind that this is the way to do it."

They are words of deep respect, born of a relationship that few have known about over the years. Unbeknownst to most, Walsh has been one of the men who helped Belichick hone his coaching compass over the years. Separated by coasts, specialties and maybe even social personalities, Walsh somehow became a beacon, a sounding board and a geographically distant friend to the man who has authored the league's latest dynasty.

"Even though we never worked together and were really rivals in the 1980s – myself as a defensive coach and Bill as an offensive coach – and even with a lot of distance between us, we've had a very good relationship," Belichick said.

You wouldn't have made the match, with the two seeming so different. Even with the often tribal relationship of coaches, Walsh seemed more of the philosopher poet while Belichick has seemed cut from the cloth of a Cold War scientist. But their mutual knowledge and abilities as thinkers created the bridge. Much in the way that Miles Davis found inspiration in the styling of Charlie Parker and Vincent Van Gogh found motivation in the artistic kinship of Paul Gauguin, Belichick discovered a bond with Walsh through ideologies.

It wasn't always that way, of course. Belichick spent the greater part of the '80s playing Walsh's foil as a linebackers coach and defensive coordinator for the New York Giants. It was Belichick who spent his nights burning through film of Walsh's West Coast offense, tinkering with defensive game plans that often meant the difference between a run at the Super Bowl or heading home for the season.

It was during that time that Belichick's appreciation for Walsh took root. His players were disciplined. His system was painstakingly precise and well-practiced. And his players fit

"(Walsh) did such a good job of getting Roger Craig and Wendell Tyler and the tight ends, Russ Francis and John Frank and Brent Jones, … to execute that offense," Belichick said.

Even now, so many years later, he feels the pangs of satisfaction from his lone playoff victory over Walsh – the 49-3 bludgeoning in 1986 which arguably is the best game Belichick ever has called as a defensive coordinator.

Years later, when Walsh had retired and Belichick became coach of the Browns, the respect for Walsh developed into a bona fide friendship. Belichick sought to understand more about the San Francisco 49ers as an organization and the West Coast offense as a system. Phone calls on strategy and personnel became a staple. At one point, Belichick dispatched an assistant coach to spend time with Walsh at a coaching seminar. When the assistant returned, he carried with him 30 pages of Walsh's personal insights.

Eventually, the days in Cleveland went bad, and Belichick was left in the years that followed to dissect what went wrong. He's not particularly fond of the topic even now but allows that when he read Finding the Winning Edge, it armed him with renewed conviction.

Released in 1997 and written with the help of current Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick, the 550-page book is classic Walshian theory. While most coaches were penning lyrical accounts of players and teams and Super Bowl victories, Walsh enlisted Billick to help him write a how-to manual on building a franchise. And when it was finished, it was as complete as any outline ever has been.

From how to hire and fire coaches and scouts to refining a quarterback's footwork, the book dissects every nook of an NFL team. Taking all his notes, thoughts, clinics and even vital portions of his playbook, Walsh laid bare all that amounted to San Francisco's greatness in the '80s. And with a touch of his own personal teachings, he laced it with nuggets on leadership from presidents, generals, coaches, philosophers and theologians. In the chapter on designing a winning game plan, Walsh draws from Sun-Tzu's The Art of War:

"Rapidity is the essence of war; take advantage of the enemies' unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots."

Boiled into offensive terms: Keep your opponents on their heels and throw the ball to the open spot.

"If I were an owner, first of all, I would read that book," Belichick said. "Then I would make that book required reading for my head coach, general manager or any other key executive in my football operation."

That's with the assumption an owner could find enough copies. The book sold out all of its 36,000 copies. Now, securing one at vintage bookstores or on the Internet costs anywhere from $90 to $180 (more than six times its original price of $29.99). There even is a leather-bound edition, autographed by Walsh and limited to 300 copies, that fetches anywhere from $600 to $1,000. And on the rare occasion that several copies pop up at a bookstore, they typically are scooped up in an instant by coaching staffs.

Over the years, Billick has been approached by businessmen who have used the book as a business model, professors who have used it as a textbook in sports management, and, of course, coaches like Belichick who leaned on it to shape the principals of their own teams.

"Bill envisioned it as something on every coach's desk that he could refer back to," said Billick, the 49ers assistant director of public relations from 1979-80. "And I think he did that. Some people might say that it was a self-ingratiating concept, this whole 'the world according to Bill Walsh' thing. But Bill genuinely just wanted to put into print his observations about this league. And there really is no other book out there like it."

In that vein – the proliferation of ideas – there have been few like Walsh.

"Most of us are kind of private and aren't too helpful to outsiders – I guess that's a nice way of putting it," Belichick said. "But Bill was kind of like Johnny Appleseed. He was throwing those seeds out there in a helpful way to anyone who was interested."

And though Bill Walsh is gone, it's the seeds he bestowed on others that will keep him from ever being forgotten.

Re: Books for coaches to read

An inside look at life as an NHL GM

Published Monday, Feb. 20, 2012


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/an-inside-look-at-life-as-an-nhl-gm/article2343920/

Author Jason Farris joins the Hockey Roundtable to talk about his book Behind the Moves. The 252 page coffee-table book is based on in-person interviews with all but one of the 35 living GMs who have led a team to the Stanley Cup final. More information on the book is available here: http://www.nhlgms.com/


Podcast

http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01376/Behind_the_Moves_1376246a.mp3

Re: Books for coaches to read

You read this book right? What did you think? Did you learn a lot from it?

Just want to make sure before I drop a $100 spot on it!

Re: Books for coaches to read

Eric,

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I have only read about 1/2 of it. Looking forward to finishing it. (Finishing Ron MacLean's Biography right now. A 'light' read but interesting. The author (Kirstie McClelland-Day) has a daughter who plays goal on Tom's Midget AAA girl's team.

The NHL GM book is a 'big' book in size / weight. Glossy paper, lots of interesting stuff!

I received it as a Christmas present from my mom (Thanks Mom!); but I would drop the $100 on it myself!

I hope you enjoy it.

Did anybody else read it? Thoughts?
--------------------------------------------------
Dean, Lundy played for me last year with the Rockies in the WWHL pro league that folded. She now plays for Team Alberta in the CWHL. She played 4 years on a scholarship in the NCAA.
Tom

Re: Books for coaches to read

Continuing a discussion on Books For Coaches - moving a couple of posts forward from Developing a Season Plan:


By: Aberdeen on Wed February 22, 10:39

Whats the name of Fred Shero's book? Would love to get that??
http://www.amazon.com/Shero-Man-Behind- ... 498&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Hockey-Coach-Play ... 498&sr=8-3

both these look awesome

-----

By: hockeygod on Wed February 22, 11:32


Aberdeen,

I have his first one (1975) Shero: The Man Behind the System. I bought it at a local second hand bookstore for $20 last year.

Check http://www.abebooks.com/ to source out hard to find books. Also check your local second hand book stores. Sometimes they have an online search; other times, you have to ask them to do a search at the store in their computer; sometimes,it's old school - go to the sports section and look for yourself!

Dean

-----

By: Aberdeen on Thu February 23, 11:48


Dean that website has both books for $1!! awesome. Im going to get those and the scouting book by Gare Joyce.

I love books like these. Its so hard to find them because there arent many. Gil stein wrote a great behind the scenes book called Power Play. Game Misconduct: Alan Eagleson and the Corruption of Hockey
is another good one.

money Players is good

and of course the best of the best fo coaches are Ryan Walters books

any other suggestions?

-----

By: hockeygod on Thu February 23, 12:53


Aberdeen,

I just ordered another whack of books from ABE Books yesterday - 17 of them - including the one Shero book I didn't yet have. Total was approx $138 - most books were under $4 (with a couple of exceptions) and it cost $3.02 per book for shipping (from the US to Canada). Buying second hand through these online retailers is cheaper than buying them second hand in person - depending on shipping costs, of course. I also bought a couple of books on my Kindle yesterday. $9.99 each (no shipping!) and immediate delivery. It pays to shop around and compare prices between the booksellers on ABE, your local second hand sellers and the 'big box' online sellers.

We should continue the book discussion on the appropriate thread "Books for coaches to read" (I will post this over there) to keep this thread focussed on Developing a Seasonal Plan.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Aberdeen,

What 'kind' of books are you looking for? Any specific topics? I read about 12-15 books per month and might be able to make some suggestions. Also, check previous posts in this thread as I have listed numerous books.

Re: Books for coaches to read

what books you buy?

Re: Books for coaches to read

Some books I bought over the last ten months (not including gifts)... no way to track my library reading list. I am a voracious and quick reader; I try to read 15+ books / month - after the kids go to bed!


Hockey: For the Coach, the Player and the Fan

The Bowden Way: 50 Years of Leadership Wisdom

Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

Game Plan for Life: Your Personal Playbook for Success

We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance

Whose Game Is It, Anyway?: A Guide to Helping Your Child Get the Most from Sports, Organized by Age and Stage

Win Forever: Live, Work, and Play Like a Champion

The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success

Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life

Game On: How the Pressure to Win at All Costs Endangers Youth Sports and What Parents Can Do About It

How Lance Does It: Put the Success Formula of a Champion into Everything You Do

What It Takes To Be Number #1: Vince Lombardi on Leadership

Positive Coaching: Building Character and Self-Esteem Through Youth Sports

Ordinary Children Extraordinary Teacher

The High School Sports Parent: Developing Triple-Impact Competitors

Positive Sports Parenting: How Second-Goal Parents Raise Winners in Life Through Sports

Herb Brooks Motivational Biography: "America's Coach" & "Remembering Herbie"

Behind the Iron Curtain: Tears in the Perfect Hockey ''GULAG''

The Mentor Leader: Secrets to Building People and Teams That Win Consistently

InSideOut Coaching: How Sports Can Transform Lives

Soccer Awareness

The Rare Find

The Paleo Diet for Athletes: A Nutritional Formula For Peak Athletic Performance

Passion to Win, A

Heart Zones Cycling: The Avid Cyclist's Guide to Riding Faster and Farther

The Man Watching: Anson Dorrance and the University of North Carolina Women's Soccer Dynasty

21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times

Idea Mapping: How to Access Your Hidden Brain Power, Learn Faster, Remember More, and Achieve Succes

The Double-goal Coach: Positive Coaching Tools for Honoring the Game and Developing Winners in Sport

Herb Brooks: The Inside Story of a Hockey Mastermind

Marva Collins Way Updated Edition

Developing Game Sense Through Tactical Learning

Play

Whole New Mind

The Genius In All Of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, And IQ

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

Bounce

TGfU - Simply Good Pedagogy: Understanding a Complex Challenge

Transforming Play

Teaching Sport Concepts and Skills-2nd Edition

Sport Progressions

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Succeed

Out Of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas On Presentation Design And Delivery

The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need

The Art Of Scouting: How The Hockey Experts Really Watch The Game and Decide Who Makes It

The 7 Secrets of World Class Athletes

101 ways to be a terrific sports parent : making athletics a positive experience for your child

Game Over : Penn State, Jerry Sandusky, and the culture of silence

One on one : behind the scenes with the greats in the game

Why Johnny hates sports : [why organized youth sports are failing our children and what we can do about it]

The checklist manifesto : how to get things right

Steve Jobs (Biography)

Deep survival : who lives, who dies, and why : true stories of miraculous endurance and sudden death

Dean and Aberdeen conversation

This is the topic for this discussion.
-------------------
Dean,
Whats the name of Fred Shero's book? Would love to get that

??
http://www.amazon.com/Shero-Man-Behind- ... 498&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Hockey-Coach-Play ... 498&sr=8-3

both these look awesome
Aberdeen,
Aberdeen,

I have his first one (1975) Shero: The Man Behind the System. I bought it at a local second hand bookstore for $20 last year.

Check http://www.abebooks.com/ to source out hard to find books. Also check your local second hand book stores. Sometimes they have an online search; other times, you have to ask them to do a search at the store in their computer; sometimes,it's old school - go to the sports section and look for yourself!
Dean,

Re: Books for coaches to read

Dean I dont see any John Wooden books in there. You already read them all?

Re: Books for coaches to read

Aberdeen,

I have bought / read my fair share of Coach Wooden books; haven't seen any recent releases that interest me. Most are a re-hash of his coaching pyramid with different 'spins' aimed to sell those particular books. (I did order one of his three books aimed at children but didn't include it in the list becasue nobody would care!)

"They Call Me Coach" was one of his earliest works I received and I re-read it once every year or two as I truly believe in his message and his pyramid. If people haven't read it - do it now! This would be an excellent first book to read to help identify, develop and highlight our personal coaching philosophy... an area that is the cornerstone to our coaching that (sadly) gets little attention in coaching clinics. Without a strong, identifiable coaching philosophy, you are toast. Amazingly, few coaches I speak with are able to verbalize theirs... and even fewer can show me a personal philosophy that is written!

http://www.amazon.ca/They-Call-Coach-John-Wooden/dp/0809245914

I have also read many of Coach Holtz's books - I even own an autographed copy of one - and other football / basketball / soccer coaches' books. Many take on a leadership / business / self-improvement guise. The Harvard Business Review can sometimes provide good reading too.

I also read many biographies / autobiographies and books on military leadership. Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" is a classic.

A few days per year, I will hit the University of Calgary library and spend hours reviewing research literature that I can't access from home; since I am merely an alumnus, I can't gain online access to the entire articles - only the title and abstract. So I go there to read and download articles for later use!

Yup, I am passionately curious and a bit of a learning geek! If I am not thinking, analyzing, questioning, reading, writing, coaching / teaching / parenting... I must be asleep (for only a few hours per night!)

Re: Books for coaches to read

I'm looking for "Road To Olympus" by Anatoli Tarasov.
I can't find it for less than $75! Anyone have a copy they would like to sell? Shot in a dark but thought I'd ask

Re: Books for coaches to read

Aberdeen,

Check online once / week on ABE Books for the Tarasov book. Look at the Canadian / Eastern US sellers as hockey books are more prevalent there.

Have you checked your local library? It's a longshot, but who knows...

Do you have any local 2nd hand shops? That is where I got mine... only 5 minutes from my house. The fellow lists his inventory on ABE, so I picked my book up to save the $20 on shipping. It is a fascinating read and I learned a lot from it.

It was like Christmas here in March today! I received 9 books from my earleir posted list (the first portion of my latest ABE order) from USPS; another one from Eastern Canada (the Shero book) and FINALLY, the "Developing Game Sense Through Tactical Learning" - Ray Breed and Michael Spittle (from Australia). I am expecting the second portion of the ABE order in the next day or two... also purchased a few off my above list for my Kindle.

The Aussie Game Sense book is terrific. Just reading it now. Check it out at www.cambridge.org

ISBN 978-1-107-60044-7

It cost me about $120 CDN, including shipping. No tax. Well worth it - so far!

Re: Books for coaches to read

this one sounds good!
Developing Game Sense Through Tactical Learning

Re: Books for coaches to read

Aberdeen,

"Developing Game Sense Through Tactical Learning" is probably the best one I have read (yet) on the subject. I recommend it highly to those who want a comprehensive look at 'what' is Game Sense and 'how' to use it in your coaching. It isn't too scientific but paints a complete picture for the reader.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Cold a Long Time: An Alpine Mystery by John Leake



Austria's 'Graveyard silence' greets book

Kevin Mitchell, StarPhoenix Sports Editor, March 22, 2012


Since writing his shocking book about the death of hockey player Duncan MacPherson and an alleged coverup, John Leake has met with icy silence from authorities in Austria.

"Graveyard silence," says Leake, author of Cold a Long Time: An Alpine Mystery.

MacPherson, a Saskatoon native who played with his hometown Blades and was a first-round draft pick of the New York Islanders, disappeared in August 1989 while travelling in Europe.

Fourteen years later, melting ice at a resort on the Stubai Glacier in Austria released MacPherson's body from its icy tomb.

And it quickly became apparent to MacPherson's parents Lynda and Bob that their son hadn't fallen down an out-of-bounds crevasse, as the authorities suggested. Their feeling - backed by compelling evidence laid out in the book - is that he was hit by a snow-grooming machine while snowboarding, severing three of his limbs, then thrown into a chasm to conceal the tragedy.

They strongly suspected a path of deception and coverup from a wide range of authority figures and medical people in Austria, and after extensive research, Leake came to share their viewpoint. The result is a scathing book that's drawn strong praise from those who have read it, but complete silence from those closest to the scene of MacPherson's disappearance.

"I believe that for the ski resort and for the Innsbruck authorities, the best strategy for them is not to stir the pot and just hope it goes away," says Leake, who is in Saskatoon for a reading at McNally Robinson tonight at 7: 30 p.m. "I was actually expecting that. I believe we have sufficient evidence to support all the conclusions I make in the book, and I don't think they can contend otherwise and get anywhere. The best strategy for them is to keep quiet and hope the whole thing just blows over."

Leake says his next step is to try and get the book published in the German language so that people who live in Austria can follow the web of lies and obfuscations the MacPhersons feel they've been subjected to since Duncan disappeared.

The case he lays out is strong and compelling. It starts with an attempt by employees at the ski resort to cover up a terrible accident, incompetence and passivity from investigating police, and a series of lies that stretched over two decades.

Leake noted Wednesday that there was no diligent investigation of MacPherson's disappearance, and no witness testimony recorded. After his body emerged, police did not attend the recovery - leaving that task to resort employees - and the body was released for burial without determining the cause of death.

When Leake presented evidence, skeletal and otherwise, to forensic specialists and medical people on this side of the ocean, they concluded that Duncan bore all the marks of being hit by a grooming tiller. That ran contrary to the dubious - or, as the book argues more bluntly, fictitious - story told by authorities in Austria.

At the heart of the tale are Duncan's parents, who made repeated trips to Europe in search of answers and stubbornly refused to give up the fight to learn exactly what happened to their son.

"It's that strange thought that in some ways, fact can be stranger than fiction," Leake said. "That's the dominant response people have to this story - it almost seems like a crazy movie or something. But it's true.

"It should have been, and could have been, very easy to solve the case of what happened to Duncan. With some very basic police work, they could have gotten to the bottom of it. The mystery was created by this refusal of the authorities in Austria to investigate it. What the police could have quickly discovered, it's entirely left to Lynda and Bob to discover. One afternoon of police work in Austria turns into, literally, two decades of frustration for the parents. For me, it was stunning to contemplate that.

"People think, 'they should have just given up.' At a certain point, one just has to resign oneself to the fact that you'll never really know, and this will be a mystery until your dying day. It's been frustrating for the MacPhersons, but I think it's to their credit that they kept slugging away at it until they finally got a clear picture of what happened.

"But a bit of old-fashioned detective work would have solved this in '89."

Leake says he had to suspend his own disbelief when he first immersed himself in the case. It seemed too improbable, but he soon realized that it was, in fact, not improbable at all.

"I haven't seen any evidence of malice (the day MacPherson died)," Leake says. "I just think they really screwed up, were negligent in terms of safety procedures, a dreadful accident came about as a result of it, and their instinct was to conceal it.

"People screw up, but once Duncan is dead, you have 20 years of a family putting their time, their effort, all their spirit, their energy, their savings, into trying to get to the bottom of this. To me, the concealment is the real crime in this story.

"It's that old Walter Scott quote: What a tangled web we weave when we endeavour to deceive. At each step in the story, you get the feeling that these people think they're just going to have to tell a couple of lies and the MacPhersons will go away. What the people who are committing these acts of deception didn't understand was that the MacPhersons aren't going to give up, so you're going to be obliged to tell more lies.

"That's the moral theme of the story, is the conflict between our value of the truth, and the way, in order to avoid trouble, we tell lies. That tension goes throughout the entire story."

The MacPhersons used up much of their life savings travelling back and forth from Saskatoon to Austria while trying, almost singlehandedly, to unravel the mystery behind their son's death and disappearance.

Leake says that 25 per cent of proceeds from books ordered off his website, www.coldalongtime.com, will go to Duncan's parents.

And, in the final accounting, both he and the MacPhersons feel it was a fight well worth waging.

"It was a very, very difficult project," says Leake, an American-born writer who lived in Austria for more than 10 years. "I was sucked into the mystery of it, but I didn't want to write anything I didn't feel 100 per cent confident was true. So much about it was ambiguous, initially. I thought it was just a horrible situation to be in, and will we ever manage to figure this out?

"Until I hired the ski-accident investigator, I really felt like we may never cut through the ambiguity of this. That was the big breakthrough, where I began to feel like now we were getting somewhere. I could feel comfortable in writing this and publishing this, because we were getting a clear sense of what happened.

"But for a long time, I was like a private investigator, slugging away at this, and lord knows if we'll ever really know. It was tough not knowing if we'd ever bring the project to fruition. I'm a freelancer, not making any money, but I really got sucked into it. But you make your own bed, this is the project I chose, and I kept moving forward with it."

Re: Books for coaches to read

Learning How to Be an NHL General Manager

Alan Bass • Blogger • "The Psychology of Hockey" • April 24, 2012

When young hockey fans realize that they are not going to be NHL superstars one day, the majority of fans suddenly develop an urge to become an NHL General Manager – the man in charge of the hockey side of an organization. What better way to learn the art of becoming one of the 30 men that control an NHL franchise than by hearing it from one of the men that has been in that position.

That is precisely what Jason Farris’ groundbreaking new book, Behind the Moves: NHL General Managers Tell How Winners Are Built, accomplishes. Farris, who is currently the Executive Vice President of Business Operations and Development for the Dallas Stars, explains purpose of his book in his introduction: “paint the picture of what it’s like to be a part of, and operate within, the community of NHL general managers.” And he does that just perfectly.

Unfortunately, many people see the title of the publication and assume that the book, which sells for $99.95 (and $139.95 for the deluxe version) only at NHLGMs.com, is the recipe for how to build a Stanley Cup champion. But fortunately for Farris and his readers, he paints a beautiful picture, showing that building a successful NHL team is not simply a recipe that involves a trade, a draft pick, and a free agent signing. It varies per team, person, and situation, and the magic of the book is his ability to present so many different views of the GM position, without ever claiming that any way is right or wrong. Through his five-part book, he runs through every General Manager that has led a team to the Stanley Cup final since 1967, including Serge Savard, Pierre Lacroix, Brian Burke, Stan Bowman, and Ken Holland, along with many others in the industry that have been involved in the sport for decades.

The book’s five parts include two-to-four page features on each of the aforementioned GMs, armed with hilarious anecdotes about our favorite players and coaches; challenges of being a GM (including getting hired, dealing with players, coaches, ownership, agents, and the media, building a team, making trades, and even some espionage); an all-time NHL GM roster, and 16 pages of statistical charts that would make any scholar proud.

Many hockey fans have barked at the pricey-ness of the book, as it runs for five times what a normal book would cost. However, the work took many years to put together, with Farris travelling over 60,000 miles, recording over 120 hours of interviews with scores of hockey men. It is a work that, when read straight through, will occupy hours of your day in a blink of an eye.

The meat of the book is made up of a collection of quotes from the men interviewed, and only a small part of the book is written in typical narration form. Personally, this was more favorable, as you felt the GM was speaking directly to you, rather than a diluted collection of article that many books such as this can become. Farris does an incredible job of organizing the book so that you feel you are sitting one-on-one with each mastermind, picking their brain as he did.

I would recommend this book to everyone, but with the price so high, many would be unwilling to do so. If you’re just looking for a casual hockey read, the price sticker might be the reason that you stay away. But with the price in mind, I would especially recommend this book to those that are very serious about their knowledge of the NHL industry, those in the media, or even those that have a serious dream of entering NHL management one day. If it’s something you have a serious interest in, I can guarantee that there will never be another book like it.

Get more information on the book: http://nhlgms.com
Buy the book at http://www.circanow.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ID=115

Re: Books for coaches to read

Cold A Long Time: An Alpine Mystery:
Whatever happened to Duncan MacPherson?

Gregg Drinnan, Taking Note, Sunday, May 13, 2012


When author John Leake set out to tell the story of the disappearance of Duncan MacPherson, it is doubtful that his intention was to write a love story.

But that is exactly what he penned with Cold A Long Time: An Alpine Mystery.

Oh, this isn’t a love story of the Erich Segal or Harlequin Romance variety.

Rather, it is the story of the love between a mother and her son, and it is unlike any such story you will have read before now.

MacPherson, a native of Saskatoon, was a terrific defenceman through three seasons (1983-86) with his hometown Blades. In his third season, he had 64 points and 147 penalty minutes in 70 games. Yes, he could play on the power play; yes, he had his teammates’ backs.

The New York Islanders liked this good, honest hockey player enough that they took him with the 20th overall selection in the NHL’s 1984 draft.

MacPherson never got to the NHL, however, and after four mostly injury-plagued seasons in the minors, his contract wasn’t renewed and he looked overseas.

In the early summer of 1989, MacPherson agreed to coach the Dundee Tigers, a team in Scotland owned by Ron Dixon, a big talker who also had ties to the WHL (he had been involved in the ownership of the New Westminster Bruins and Tri-City Americans).

However, before reporting to the Tigers, MacPherson chose to do some travelling in Europe.

On Aug. 4, 1989, MacPherson visited George Pesut, a former Blades star, who was in Nuremberg, Germany. MacPherson called home and said he would phone again in 10 days.

That phone call never came.

On Aug. 8, 1989, MacPherson left the home of Roger Kortko, another former Blades star, in Fuessen, Germany, and headed south into Austria.

None of his friends or family heard from him again.

In Saskatoon, Lynda MacPherson, Duncan’s mother, felt something was wrong as early as Aug. 11, 1989. That was the night she awoke from a deep sleep and found herself screaming.

She and her husband, Bob, driven by Lynda’s undying love for her son, would spend the next 14 years working to find out what had happened.

Duncan’s corpse was discovered on July 18, 2003.

Even after that, the MacPhersons, spearheaded by Lynda’s bulldogedness and her driving need to learn what had happened, spent another seven-plus years pushing, pulling and grinding away as they attempted to get to the truth.

All told, the MacPhersons would spend more than 20 years on the trail of what had happened. They used up a lot of their retirement savings, most of their energy and about a third of their lives as they fought to find out what had happened to their son, who was 23 years of age that summer of 1989.

Duncan, as it turned out, had stopped at the Stubai Glacier, a major recreation area outside Innsbruck, Austria, for a snowboarding experience. It was there that he was last seen and where the car he had been driving was found on Sept. 20, 1989. The car, a red Opel, had been sitting in a parking lot at the glacier for about six weeks without anyone noticing it or, at least, without anyone reporting it to the authorities.

Strange?

That was only the beginning of the story, one that would be filled with untruths and obfuscation and a whole lot of people talking in circles for a long, long time.

At one point, before even the red Opel had been discovered, the MacPhersons visited the Canadian Consulate in Munich in the hopes of getting some help. An official there told a receptionist: “I don’t care how you do it, just get rid of those people.”

And then there was the official at the Canadian Embassy in Vienna who told them: “I think you and your family should get on with your lives. Life is for the living.”

That was just as the MacPherson’s odyssey was beginning, about 14 years before their son's body was even found.
Little did authorities in Austria and in various Canadian government agencies understand that you simply could not get between this mother and her need to find out what had happened to her son.

Leake is an American writer who lived in Austria for 10 years. It was that connection that attracted the MacPhersons to him when they were looking for someone they hoped would investigate their story and then turn it into a book.

Through Leake, the MacPhersons came to understand the importance of the Stubai Glacier to the economic viability of that area of Austria and how there would seem to have been a coverup involving the death of their son.

To provide more details, would be to spoil what is a solid and heart-breaking read. But here is a hint of what went on — authorities indicated to the MacPhersons that Duncan’s body had been found in a crevasse in an area that was out of bounds to area skiers and snowboarders; in truth, the body was found in the middle of a ski slope, about 25 metres from a tow lift.

Near the end of this book, Lynda tells Leake: “You may think I’m boasting, John. But I’m not afraid of anyone.”

It turns out that Duncan once suggested to Lynda, a smallish woman, that because of her size, or lack of it, she should perhaps work at being a little less confrontational.

“And I told him that size doesn’t make the man,” Lynda said.

Or, in this case, the woman.

Because as much as this book details the quest to learn what happened to Duncan MacPherson, it is just as much the story of Lynda’s love for her son, and how that love kept driving her on a search for the truth.

“To cease looking for him seemed like abandoning him, which was unspeakable,” Leake notes, adding “ ‘Don’t give up mom,’ she imagined him saying, and she knew that if it had been the other way around, he would never have given up trying to find her.”

———

Leake has said that 25 per cent of the proceeds from the sale of the book will go to Lynda and Bob MacPherson. The book is available right here.

http://www.coldalongtime.com/products/cold-a-long-time-an-alpine-mystery

It’s worth noting that Cold A Long Time won a bronze medal in the True Crime category of the 16th annual Independent Publisher Book Awards.

And right here is a trailer for Cold A Long Time, as narrated by Bill Paxton.

http://vimeo.com/41506266

As well, there is a website right here that is dedicated to Cold A Long Time.

http://www.coldalongtime.com/

I guarantee that two things will happen as you read this book — you will shake your head in disbelief on more than one occasion, and you will wipe more than one tear off your cheeks.

This is a memorable book.

Re: Books for coaches to read

Good Books

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code blog, May 10th, 2012


I was flipping through The Art of Fielding the other day (which is super-great, and just out in paperback). It’s about a few seasons in the life of a small-college baseball team and its unlikely star, Henry Skrimshander.

I was struck by how accurately and beautifully author Chad Harbach depicts the way a person grows their skills: the mix of obsession and focus and crazy love, the immeasurable power of deep repetition, how people really think and act as they work together to develop their talents.

For instance:

Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn’t matter how beautifully you performed SOMETIMES, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren’t a painter or a writer–you didn’t work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn’t just your masterpieces that counted.

Or this:

He already knew he could coach. All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story.

You get the idea. The point is that The Art of Fielding takes us deep inside the process of growing talent in the same way that Moby Dick takes us deep inside the process of 19th-century whaling.

The other point is that, a lot of other books do the same. I think it’d be interesting, and maybe useful, to see if we could compile a running list — call it the “Talent Code Book Club.” The books could be fiction or nonfiction, about music or business or chess or painting; they could be written from a coach or teacher’s point of view or that of a kid — it doesn’t matter, so long as it takes us inside and leaves us with some fresh insights about what it means to try to get better.

A few that come to mind:

Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin
The Game, by Ken Dryden
On Writing, by Stephen King
Practicing, by Glenn Kurtz
Life, by Keith Richards
Among Schoolchildren, by Tracy Kidder

What other books — or even movies — should be on this list? I’d love to hear your suggestions.

-----


Nice post,after all books are a mans best friends …

1)Jonathan Livingston Seagull
2)Lance Armstrong Biography
3)coach carter (movie)
4)The Power of a habit

I’d say “the Art of Learning” by Josh Waitzkin, and “Mastery” by George Leonard.

Movies – “Chariots of Fire” immediately comes to mind.

I will also suggest The Art of Learning and Mastery. Especially the latter.

The Inner Game of Tennis, by Timothy Gallwey

My Favourites
Movies
Dragon-The Bruce Lee Story
Coach Carter.
Tennis-Winning Ugly Brad Gilbert

Glad to see The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin is already there.
Two other favorites of mine from teacher’s perspective is is Marval Collins Way – Marval Collins and Civia Tamarkin and You have’t taught until they’ve learnt – Swen Nater & Ronal Gallimore.
Born to Run – Christopher McDougall is beautiful and poetic in it’s recognition of what it takes to be an unbelievable distance runner.
Great by Choice – Jim Collins for business.
Mindset – Carol S. Dweck is a must as it really does break-down the mindset needed to approach mistakes, learning and life if you’re going to develop talent.
Two other books that for me have helped guide me closer to my goal of self-mastery. Which I sort of think of as the talent of being human. Is the Art of Possibility – Rosmund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander and takes us inside the world of music and people. Benjamin is a conductor. Another one is Switch – Chip & Dan Heath. So excited to see other’s suggestions. Movies that I think of immediately are Mr Holland’s Opus and The Greatest Game Ever Played (a 2005 biographical sports film based on the early life of golf champion Francis Ouimet.).

How could I forget… Teach like your hairs on Fire – Ralf Esquith.

Love this topic too and agree about The art of fielding, having just finished it I thought many times about deliberate practice etc. A few books that I enjoyed relating to this are:
The gift of speed by Steven Carroll. Being an aussie this book about a young boys obsession with cricket and the visiting west Indian cricket is beautiful.
Better by Atul Gwande a surgeons notes on performance.
Dream golf by Stephen Goodwin. The making of Brandon dunes. A man and his teams obsession with completing a masterpiece.

Movie – Bobbie Ficher against the world

Outliers (malcom gladwell)
Rafa. My Story (John Carlin)
Wooden. A lifetime of observations and reflections on and off The court. (John Wooden and Steve Jamison)

Bounce – Matthew Syed
8 To Be Great – Richard St John
Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

My offering would be Jim Collins’ Great by Choice. Nine years of research went into finding the common elements of seven different companies from seven different industries who thrived despite great uncertainty, chaos and luck–some good, some bad for their peer companies but not for them. The principles they had in common work superbly for both organizations and individuals.

The Servant, by James C. Hunter, is a gem on leadership. It should be part of any collection.

Two to Start… The Music Lesson By: Victor Wooten and Imagine: How Creativity Works By: Jonah Lehrer

The Way of Baseball by Shawn Green

Re: Books for coaches to read

Inning by Inning: A Portrait of a Coach

http://www.amazon.com/Inning-A-Portrait-Coach/dp/B004QFSKRU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337727344&sr=8-1

Profile of University of Texas baseball coach Augie Garrido, the winningest coach in NCAA history.

Warning: Does contain strong language

Re: Books for coaches to read

Thanks to everyone for your contributions. I've been following for a couple years and well, just became a member today.

I just finished Leave No Doubt by Mike Babcock. A little bummed when it arrived at the size of the book, a short 137 small pages. BUT, I really enjoyed the content. Short and straight on, just like the he speaks on the bench with Pierre.

Erik

Re: Books for coaches to read

I am waiting to read Mike's book - still hasn't come into the library yet!

Thanks for the recommendation Eanderson!

Re: Books for coaches to read

Sudden Death: The Incredible Story of the 1986 Swift Current Broncos

Leesa Culp, Bob Wilkie and Gregg Drinnan

...tells a tale of triumph after tragedy, though its book trailer (below) makes clear that the whole story is more complicated than that.

http://youtu.be/og-onMx_8?hd=1

Hockey Coaching ABCs - Forum
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=307