10 years or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice also applies to coaching.
Tex... wow, where should I start? You ask many questions that challenge and stimulate my mind, so thanks for that. I might have to answer this in parts (think about it and come back to it later.)
Recognize that if I had THE ULTIMATE ANSWER to your questions about Life, the Universe and Everything (you Douglas Admas fans will know the answer to that question!), the entrepreneur in me wouldn't be sharing it on Tom's FREE website (donations to Tom, please!!!) for free... I would offer to sell it to you and everybody else! Wink
You say that you want to centre the conversation around team play and coaching, so here goes...
(1) Team Play.
I believe an expert coach (10 years or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice) analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each of his individuals on the team (mental, physical, skills, Decision-Making / Game Sense, etc.); taking into account the dimensions and any peculiarities of his home rink; the most often visited opponent rinks; the typical systems and styles played by his opponents; any tendencies of the opposing coaching staff(s) and opponent player tendencies (much of which is facilitated at the pro level by video and advance scouting!); statistical tendencies in all three zones (0-1-2 situations) which are correlated to teams being successful in the standings AND the playoffs (GF / GA Ratio, possession after face-offs, turnovers, PP, PK, scoring chances for and against (off the rush, 4check, face-off, special teams) - too much to get into here!); schedule (travel and nutrition, fitness and recovery - Yearly Training Plan); any nuances in rules in your particular league. Think about how you can "use" the rules to your advantage (like Roger Neilson... he was a creative genius ahead of his time!)
You should also have a firm grip on your own and your coaching staff abilities (SWOT analysis) to help design their respective job descriptions.
Make a decision to exploit your individual player and overall team strengths while camouflaging your weaknesses. Decisions are also based on risk - reward continuum depending on the time if the game and the score.
So this amounts to a large degree of organization, research, problem-solving, knowledge, experience and wisdom as you work through a very thorough (and usually, fluid) checklist.
(2) Coaching.
The coach is responsible to set up a culture of winning and hold himself, the staff and players accountable. At the pro level, it becomes more about managing egos and personalities; rather than 'coaching.' Plus the hectic schedule (travel, public appearances, media, etc.) conspire against meaningful teaching practices once the season starts. After training camp, 90% of the time is all about maintenance and recovery.
Players (and coaches, GM's, scouts) are nervous creatures, always looking over their shoulders for the next threat - the hungry up-and-comer who is looking for a position in hockey. The ever-increasing money and profile of the game have done this. There is a real lack of trust at the pro level... it is pressure-filled and results-based. You lose too much, or don't perform as well as you should, or become too expensive, and you are gone... or traded, or sent down, or waived, etc. It is a cutthroat BUSINESS. You can't hide in an office cubicle and collect a pay cheque (or not - like Milton in Office Space!)
Overall, I believe good / great players make coaches look good / great... so make your players capable / great! Coaches, you picked them, so make them better... don't *censormode* about how their previous coach(es) didn't do their job!
I remember an older coach who was leading a pure 16 year old team in the Midget AA league (back then it was a 16-17 year old league.) I was coaching a minor bantam team that year (I was only 2 years into my coaching career.) He played the role of the jolly old grandpa... maybe even played a bit 'dumb' (in hindsight, I think he was sly like a fox.) I watched many of his practices that year and all he did was scrimmage - he played A TON of 5 on 5. I don't remember seeing any actual teaching - there certainly weren't any systems practiced (i imagine he told the guys what he wanted them to do?) He also played lots of 5 on 4, 5 on 3, 4 on 3, 4 on 4. Everything was done like a game. I, along with lots of others, thought, "Well, everybody knows he's no coach... he's just a deluded old fool babysitting some snotty-nosed 16-year-olds!" Guess what - his team was the best team that year! He won Minor Hockey Week, the city league, and the provincials. Three of his players played one year of Midget AAA then went straight to Div 1 teams (Ivy league) in the US. This was unheard of back then! Most of the other kids went on to Midget AAA as 17-year-olds and most played Junior A, Major Junior and beyond.
I tried to explain it away because he had good players. I didn't see him do 'regular drills' that taught players, so he must have been delusional. This explanation made me feel good and I took great comfort in it. (After all, that let me off the hook - justifying me using my traditional coaching methods.)The old man got lucky... right time, right place, inherited a good team, coincidence... (Yeah, right... as time and hindsight would lead me to believe...!) This story will come into play later...
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I have continually evolved in my coaching knowledge and my style is a byproduct of who coached me, how my parents raised me, and who I looked up to as role models. I am OPEN-MINDED (critical to success in anything, in my opinion! Read Carol S. Dweck's book: "Mindset" ) and have made a commitment to lifelong curiosity and learning. This has evolved as I matured as a person, because like most young people, I was full of piss and vinegar and saw the coaching world more in black and white. I knew I had to learn, but I was a lot more brash back then. Plus I developed a fondness for Crown Royal / Coke and microbrews - see my avatar (me drinking a big-ass beer in the Hofbräuhaus after making like Lance and riding my mountain bike across the Trans-Alps route in the summer of 2004) - based on my undergraduate studies on creativity, I believe it truly helps with my creative processes!
Back to a more serious vein. For the first 10 years of my coaching / teaching career, I was pretty much finding myself and I coached using the traditional "Whole-Part-Whole" method as that is the only way I knew. When I attended graduate Kinesiology classes and then attended the National Coaching Institute in 1995, one of my profs, Dr. Joan Vickers, really opened my eyes to a 'new' way of coaching and it completely challenged my beliefs. I wasn't as open minded then... what the Hell did an older female prof (who never played hockey) know about coaching? Although my interest in her teachings was piqued, I discounted her methodology because, like 99.9% of the population, IT WAS OUTSIDE MY COMFORT ZONE! I felt I was finally fine-tuning my "traditional" coaching methods, so I filed her coaching effectiveness stuff (based on neuro-motor psychology, quiet eye movements, gaze control and ultimately, Decision-Making) into the back of my mind. (I actually worked as a research instructor for Joan for a year or two after I took her class and learned a ton of stuff that although I doubted that much of it would translate into the "real world" of sports (not a lab setting) at the time, this would become a critical factor in my personal methodological tipping point another 10 years later...)
Another 10 years go by... I had the privilege of working with numerous professional coaches: Dave King, Rob Cookson, Tom Renney, Pierre Page, Dany Dube, Slava Lener, Erkka Westerlund, Mike Johnston, Pat Quinn, Andy Murray, Glen Hanlon, Al Tuer, Tim Bothwell, Willie Desjardins, Joel Otto, etc... so shouldn't I be an expert coach by now? I must be a slow learner as this is now at the end of year 20... ! I still hadn't found the Holy Grail of coaching methodologies... although I had experienced some level of success (numerous playoff appearances, but never won a league championship - I was the "first loser" a few times!) Via introspection, I chalked my success to date up to perseverance, ongoing PD opportunities (good coaches are good thieves!), good players, and a bit of luck! Why couldn't I win consistently like John Wooden?
Fast forward to about 2003 when circumstances conspired to shift me into university level female hockey for three years where I met the person who I now acknowledge as my most important mentor, and now one of my best friends. Nobody in hockey has probably heard of him, but his name is John. He is a Spanish-speaking Colombian who moved to Montreal at 16 and learned French, fell in love with the game of hockey, taught himself how to skate, handle a puck and shoot in one short year, made a Midget AA team by year 2 at 17, then went on to coach at McGill as a goalie coach. He moved west in the later 1990's, learned English and watched the Canadian male and female National Teams train daily prior to the 1998 Olympics. John was / still is a National Level soccer coach but he joined me with the women's hockey team and gradually shared with me his 30 years of coaching experience.
John totally changed my coaching style and all the stuff that I had learned from Dr. Joan Vickers clicked in. I am still in the process of evolving, but it is hard for me to think in "old school methodology" of D-R-I-L-L-S (that's a dirty word for me now!)
To Be Continued...
just getting rid of her spam