We are at the start of a new season. My teams tryouts are already over and many are just starting or are about to start. Some new coaches will end up finding this site in their search for drills or systems. I imagine a lot of coaches who come here wonder what authority this Tom Molloy has to have a hockey site.
Well none really. Just a very long time in the game as a player, student of the game and coach. I will give you some background of each.
Playing Background: Nothing ground breaking. I played outdoor hockey in Calgary and then Jr. A and then college at Bemidji State in Minnesota. After that I played a year of semi-pro in Sioux City, Iowa and some senior in various cities. I still play three times a week in the winter and twice a week in the summer. I think this important for a coach to do. It makes you realize that it isn't as easy as it looks from the bench and every mistake a player makes I can easily recall doing the same thing myself.
Student of the Game:
First I have three Education Degrees and taught for 34 years at all levels of school, elementary, junior high, high school and five years at college.
Starting about 1977 George Kingston who was the head of PE at the U of Calgary and the hockey coach there started bringing in international coaches each summer and he did this for 9 years before moving on to coach internationally and in the NHL. They were high level coaches who coached national teams in the Canada Cup and pro teams. The courses were 40 hours in two weeks and you could take them for credit or just audit them. I took all nine seminars and listened to 3 coaches from Sweden, Kjell Larson, Verner Perrson, Hans Lindberg and Bukac from Czechoslovakia twice, Canadian Olympic coaches King, Drake, Roger Neilson, Kingston taught about Russian hockey and Juhani Wahlsten from Finland. I have attended about 10 international symposiums put on by HC and 5 symposiums at the men's World Championships. I presented with Juuso and Jursinov at the 97 symposium in Finland and at the IIHF women's championships at St. Mary's Univesity in Halifax.
I became good friend with Juhani in 1985 and have worked with him since. He is an IIHF Hall of Fame player/coach and had started his ABC program. This led me to change my entire philosophy of coaching and teaching to be very game centred and focus on the essentials.
Juuso (Juhani) brought me to Finland to do a seminar in 93 and this resulted in me being invited to do a hockey school in Hamar, Norway and at Christmas time to be a guest coach with the TPS Turku pro club who were coached by Vladimir Jursinov another IIHF Hall of Famer and Russian Olympic coach. I met Erkka Westerlund who will coach the Finnish Olympic Team in 2014 (he won a silver with them in 2006) and I met with him many times when Hockey Canada brought him to Calgary for 6 months to be the international chair of hockey and write a manual on Transition. Erkka brought me to Vierumaki, Finland to run the two week hockey school there three years in a row.
I was coaching college when I met Juhani but hadn't implemented his philosophy yet and got fired in 87. At this time I decided that I must either give up coaching or get better at it. This is when I implemented Juuso's methods in both my coaching and physical education classes. It was like night and day.
Coaching Background.
I moved on to be an asst. coach at the U of Calgary where I was lucky enough to coach with some great coaches. Willy Desjardins was the head coach the first 6 seasons. He went to Japan and was successful then and then returned and ran one of the best major junior programs in the country in Medicine Hat. He has been an asst. in the NHL and just won coach of the year in the AHL.
Some other asst. coaches like Terry Johnson played in the NHL and Steve Carlyle played in the WHA. Mike Johnston took his Masters of Coaching there and moved on to help Mark Crawford with a few NHL teams and then to be coach and GM in Portland. Slavomir Lener was brought here from the Czech Republic by Hockey Canada and assigned to be an asst. at the U of C and moved on to be an asst. in the NHL, the head coach of Czech Republic and now is the head of Hockey in that country. Tim Bothwell took over when Willy went to Japan and I was with him for two seasons. He moved on to be asst. coach of Atlanta. So it was a great place to be as far as working with high level coaches.
I coached my son in minor hockey as well for most of the seasons and we were very successful, I also have done lots of spring hockey. In 1988 a team from Korea was practicing without a coach and I asked where the coach was as they were just milling around not really doing anything. The local guy had quit because no one spoke english and he was too frustrated. The fellow I was talking to mentioned his name and I said I had coached against him. When he heard I was a coach he asked me to run the next practice. I agreed and it started eight summers of running 96 hours of practice for various school, university and a pro team. There schedule was 4 weeks, 6 days a week, 2 x 2 hour pratice per day. So close to 800 hours with teams that no one spoke english. I used the international symbols and spoke in one word sentences like skate, shoot, puck, pass. They learned these words and all was good.
I was invited to various places to do hockey camps. In the USA I went to Michigan a few times, to Long Island once, Court Dunn brought me to Penn. to do summer camps five or six times and another group near Philly. I also went to LA once and from there flew down to Guadalajara, Mexico to do a one week camp. Juuso and I wrote the development program for Austria and went to Vienna a few times and spent a week each time teaching the system to Austrian coaches. We wrote their national development program for them. It is on their association website http://www.eishockey.at/aus-und-fortbildung/ (our part is the ABC titles) We also went there one summer to run a camp in Zeltweg.
In 2010 I did a camp in Jihlava, Czech Republic and was offered the position of coach mentor for the club. This summer I was in the Boston area with former NHL player and coach Curtis Brackenbury and ran the on ice practices at his conditioning camp for two weeks. Most of the players are on NCAA men's teams. I do private lessons for players from minor to pro and coach a 12-15 year old school group twice a week. For the last ten years Gaston Schaeffer and I have done our summer skating and hockey camp in Jasper and gone there during Christmas vacation to work with their hockey organization. So I am still very active coaching any age.
In 2003 I resigned from the school system and moved on to coach women's hockey and teach a hockey coaching class at Mount Royal College. I did this 5 seasons and we did very well and were in the finals 4 of the 5 years. I got a call from Red Bull organization in Salzburg, Austria and they said they had done a search and identified me as an elite development coach and offered me a job to work with all of the teams and be head coach of the U17 team. My wife told me to go because I had been offered positions before and my kid's didn't want to leave. Now they are adults. I went by myself as my wife works and didn't want to be away from our 7 grand children. I spent a season there and again I got to work with many elite coaches. Jim Brithen and Anders Melinder from Sweden, Stanislav Medric from Slovakia, Gerri Wimmer an Austrian, Stanislav Barda from Czech Republic, Gene Reilly from the USA, Reijo Routsalainen from Finland and Pierre Page was the head coach from Canada. Canadian Dan Dupuis coached the goalies and I met up with my old friend Vladimir Jursinov of Russia who came one week a month to work with the players on skill development. Not many coaches get to work with this array of talent. We all worked with all of the teams and I sat in the same coaching room with these guys all season. It was very interesting to see how coaches from different countries and philosophies approached teaching the same topics. The common theme was hockey.
I could only be away from my family for a year and I returned. I got asked to coach in the professional women's league the WWHL and I did this for two seasons until the league folded. I got a call while doing our annual Jasper camp and was asked to coach U18 Girls. I agreed and am in my third season of doing this.
The idea of this site is to constantly update the ABC manuals and also to share practice ideas to assist coaches who don't have the same background or access to hockey information that I do. The discussion board used to be a place where coaches shard ideas and I hope it returns to that.
I have been lucky enough to coach a player who was NHL Rookie of the Year and multiple 50 goal seasons, another who has been in a Stanley Cup final and many consider him to be the best skater in the NHL, another who won the Hobey Baker, a few who had a cup of coffee in the NHL and many others who played Jr. A, Major Jr. college and some are still playing pro. I like to think I gave them a little help along their way.
So I hope the coaches who have used this site and who are new to this site benefit from the information here and to tell the truth I would appreciate some discussion on the discussion board so I don't feel like I am sending information into a huge vacuum.
We are at the start of a new season. My teams tryouts are already over and many are just starting or are about to start. Some new coaches will end up finding this site in their search for drills or systems. I imagine a lot of coaches who come here wonder what authority this Tom Molloy has to have a hockey site.
Well none really. Just a very long time in the game as a player, student of the game and coach. I will give you some background of each.
Playing Background:
Nothing ground breaking. I played outdoor hockey in Calgary and then Jr. A and then college at Bemidji State in Minnesota. After that I played a year of semi-pro in Sioux City, Iowa and some senior in various cities. I still play three times a week in the winter and twice a week in the summer. I think this important for a coach to do. It makes you realize that it isn't as easy as it looks from the bench and every mistake a player makes I can easily recall doing the same thing myself.
Student of the Game:
First I have three Education Degrees and taught for 34 years at all levels of school, elementary, junior high, high school and five years at college.
Starting about 1977 George Kingston who was the head of PE at the U of Calgary and the hockey coach there started bringing in international coaches each summer and he did this for 9 years before moving on to coach internationally and in the NHL. They were high level coaches who coached national teams in the Canada Cup and pro teams. The courses were 40 hours in two weeks and you could take them for credit or just audit them. I took all nine seminars and listened to 3 coaches from Sweden, Kjell Larson, Verner Perrson, Hans Lindberg and Bukac from Czechoslovakia twice, Canadian Olympic coaches King, Drake, Roger Neilson, Kingston taught about Russian hockey and Juhani Wahlsten from Finland. I have attended about 10 international symposiums put on by HC and 5 symposiums at the men's World Championships. I presented with Juuso and Jursinov at the 97 symposium in Finland and at the IIHF women's championships at St. Mary's Univesity in Halifax.
I became good friend with Juhani in 1985 and have worked with him since. He is an IIHF Hall of Fame player/coach and had started his ABC program. This led me to change my entire philosophy of coaching and teaching to be very game centred and focus on the essentials.
Juuso (Juhani) brought me to Finland to do a seminar in 93 and this resulted in me being invited to do a hockey school in Hamar, Norway and at Christmas time to be a guest coach with the TPS Turku pro club who were coached by Vladimir Jursinov another IIHF Hall of Famer and Russian Olympic coach. I met Erkka Westerlund who will coach the Finnish Olympic Team in 2014 (he won a silver with them in 2006) and I met with him many times when Hockey Canada brought him to Calgary for 6 months to be the international chair of hockey and write a manual on Transition. Erkka brought me to Vierumaki, Finland to run the two week hockey school there three years in a row.
I was coaching college when I met Juhani but hadn't implemented his philosophy yet and got fired in 87. At this time I decided that I must either give up coaching or get better at it. This is when I implemented Juuso's methods in both my coaching and physical education classes. It was like night and day.
Coaching Background.
I moved on to be an asst. coach at the U of Calgary where I was lucky enough to coach with some great coaches. Willy Desjardins was the head coach the first 6 seasons. He went to Japan and was successful then and then returned and ran one of the best major junior programs in the country in Medicine Hat. He has been an asst. in the NHL and just won coach of the year in the AHL.
Some other asst. coaches like Terry Johnson played in the NHL and Steve Carlyle played in the WHA. Mike Johnston took his Masters of Coaching there and moved on to help Mark Crawford with a few NHL teams and then to be coach and GM in Portland. Slavomir Lener was brought here from the Czech Republic by Hockey Canada and assigned to be an asst. at the U of C and moved on to be an asst. in the NHL, the head coach of Czech Republic and now is the head of Hockey in that country. Tim Bothwell took over when Willy went to Japan and I was with him for two seasons. He moved on to be asst. coach of Atlanta. So it was a great place to be as far as working with high level coaches.
I coached my son in minor hockey as well for most of the seasons and we were very successful, I also have done lots of spring hockey. In 1988 a team from Korea was practicing without a coach and I asked where the coach was as they were just milling around not really doing anything. The local guy had quit because no one spoke english and he was too frustrated. The fellow I was talking to mentioned his name and I said I had coached against him. When he heard I was a coach he asked me to run the next practice. I agreed and it started eight summers of running 96 hours of practice for various school, university and a pro team. There schedule was 4 weeks, 6 days a week, 2 x 2 hour pratice per day. So close to 800 hours with teams that no one spoke english. I used the international symbols and spoke in one word sentences like skate, shoot, puck, pass. They learned these words and all was good.
I was invited to various places to do hockey camps. In the USA I went to Michigan a few times, to Long Island once, Court Dunn brought me to Penn. to do summer camps five or six times and another group near Philly. I also went to LA once and from there flew down to Guadalajara, Mexico to do a one week camp. Juuso and I wrote the development program for Austria and went to Vienna a few times and spent a week each time teaching the system to Austrian coaches. We wrote their national development program for them. It is on their association website http://www.eishockey.at/aus-und-fortbildung/ (our part is the ABC titles) We also went there one summer to run a camp in Zeltweg.
In 2010 I did a camp in Jihlava, Czech Republic and was offered the position of coach mentor for the club. This summer I was in the Boston area with former NHL player and coach Curtis Brackenbury and ran the on ice practices at his conditioning camp for two weeks. Most of the players are on NCAA men's teams. I do private lessons for players from minor to pro and coach a 12-15 year old school group twice a week. For the last ten years Gaston Schaeffer and I have done our summer skating and hockey camp in Jasper and gone there during Christmas vacation to work with their hockey organization. So I am still very active coaching any age.
In 2003 I resigned from the school system and moved on to coach women's hockey and teach a hockey coaching class at Mount Royal College. I did this 5 seasons and we did very well and were in the finals 4 of the 5 years. I got a call from Red Bull organization in Salzburg, Austria and they said they had done a search and identified me as an elite development coach and offered me a job to work with all of the teams and be head coach of the U17 team. My wife told me to go because I had been offered positions before and my kid's didn't want to leave. Now they are adults. I went by myself as my wife works and didn't want to be away from our 7 grand children. I spent a season there and again I got to work with many elite coaches. Jim Brithen and Anders Melinder from Sweden, Stanislav Medric from Slovakia, Gerri Wimmer an Austrian, Stanislav Barda from Czech Republic, Gene Reilly from the USA, Reijo Routsalainen from Finland and Pierre Page was the head coach from Canada. Canadian Dan Dupuis coached the goalies and I met up with my old friend Vladimir Jursinov of Russia who came one week a month to work with the players on skill development. Not many coaches get to work with this array of talent. We all worked with all of the teams and I sat in the same coaching room with these guys all season. It was very interesting to see how coaches from different countries and philosophies approached teaching the same topics. The common theme was hockey.
I could only be away from my family for a year and I returned. I got asked to coach in the professional women's league the WWHL and I did this for two seasons until the league folded. I got a call while doing our annual Jasper camp and was asked to coach U18 Girls. I agreed and am in my third season of doing this.
The idea of this site is to constantly update the ABC manuals and also to share practice ideas to assist coaches who don't have the same background or access to hockey information that I do. The discussion board used to be a place where coaches shard ideas and I hope it returns to that.
I have been lucky enough to coach a player who was NHL Rookie of the Year and multiple 50 goal seasons, another who has been in a Stanley Cup final and many consider him to be the best skater in the NHL, another who won the Hobey Baker, a few who had a cup of coffee in the NHL and many others who played Jr. A, Major Jr. college and some are still playing pro. I like to think I gave them a little help along their way.
So I hope the coaches who have used this site and who are new to this site benefit from the information here and to tell the truth I would appreciate some discussion on the discussion board so I don't feel like I am sending information into a huge vacuum.
Have a good season.
'Enjoy the Game'