Ryan Nugent-Hopkins' competitiveness has him poised to take the next step
By David Staples, Edmonton Journal June 19, 2011
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/Strong+parenting+keeps+prospective+prize+line/4970854/story.html#ixzz1Pk5rWs5u
Keep in mind the principles of the Talent Code when you read this article...
RED DEER - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, the best 18-year-old hockey player in Canada, sits in a Red Deer Boston Pizza eating jambalaya, drinking ice tea, and watching Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.
At a nearby table, two teenage girls melt into puddles of ecstatic admiration at the sight of Nugent-Hopkins. He appears not to notice.
The sharp focus on Nugent-Hopkins, dubbed “Hoppy” by his teammates and as “RNH” by the draftnicks and hockey fanatics who now track his every game and comment, is part of what Red Deer hockey folk jokingly refer to as the Hoparazzi. News reporters and fans have started to buzz around him in recent months as he has climbed the rankings to become the consensus top prospect in next week’s National Hockey League entry draft.
Nugent-Hopkins, the star centre of the Western Hockey League’s Red Deer Rebels, smiles when the subject of the Hoparazzi is raised, but makes little of the attention.
“It’s been good. It’s been fun. I just go in and try to have fun with it, just enjoy it. I don’t like to be cocky and I don’t like when hockey players get cocky and stuff. Some hockey players in the WHL are pretty cocky. I don’t like cocky people in general. I don’t like it when people are very arrogant.”
Cam Moon, who does play-by-play for Red Deer and also handles the team’s media relations, says the hoopla hasn’t changed Nugent-Hopkins. “It’s like it’s nothing. It does not change his personality, demeanour or anything about his day. He’s one of the guys who can do two different pretty big media availabilities on game day to no effect.”
In Canada, we do one thing better than anyone else in the world — churn out world-class hockey players. Nugent-Hopkins is the latest on the assembly line.
Forged in the cauldron of elite Canadian hockey schools, programs and leagues, it’s no surprise that Nugent-Hopkins is now coolly dealing with the pressures and privileges of his top prospect status.
He’s a typical, conventional 18-year-old. He likes playing Halo and listening to Dierks Bentley. He isn’t keen on Lady Gaga.
He’s different in that he has had an agent since he was 14.
He has already represented his country at an international event, a major tournament in Slovakia last summer. As a player, he has drawn comparisons to NHL stars Pavel Datsyuk and Matt Duchene, but the kid doesn’t carry himself like a star.
He is slender and wiry, not a Big Bobby Clobber of a hockey player and not a commanding presence. His manner is modest, but he confidently answers questions about himself. There’s no swagger about the kid, off the ice at least, but there is a calm and a maturity notable for his age and lofty position.
Two weeks ago, Oilers GM Steve Tambellini met for a few hours with John Batchelor, Nugent-Hopkins’ old bantam coach in Burnaby, B.C. Batchelor had once coached Tambellini’s own son at the Burnaby Winter Club, a hockey hothouse.
In the meeting, Tambellini had many questions about Nugent-Hopkins, who most expect the Oilers will take with the first overall pick. “As I said to Steve, if you’re looking for me to say something bad about the kid, you’re looking at the wrong guy, because he is everything you want in a player and in a human being.” Batchelor says. “You could walk into a room of 30 hockey players and you would not pick him out as the guy who is the stud. He doesn’t tell anybody. He does his talking on the ice.”
Nugent-Hopkins is the second of the two sons of Roger Hopkins, a coffee salesman, and Debbie Nugent, a nurse’s aide. Both his brother Adam, who is five years older, and Ryan, were always strong athletically, Roger says, walking at 10 months and running at age one.
But while Adam was a good athlete, Ryan always struck his father as being exceptional, both in terms of his gifts and his commitment. “If you saw Ryan play the outfield in baseball, you’d think he was Willie Mays. The guy is a gifted kid athletically and he’s good at whatever he’s done. On top of that, he’s got this understated drive. If you talk to Ryan, he doesn’t come across as a super aggressive guy. But he’s very, very competitive.”
Roger remembers going out and to hit a baseball to little Ryan. “He just loved doing it. He’d be diving one side, diving the other, over his head, and he’d wear me out. I’d say, ‘I’m going.’ He’d say ‘Oh gosh, you always quit dad.’ ”
As a child, Nugent-Hopkins watched clips of Maurice (Rocket) Richard Rocket’s play and admired his passion. “Every time he has the puck, his eyes are just huge and you can tell he has so much passion in playing. I felt a connection to him in that way. I get very into it. I’ve just always been a very competitive person in everything I’ve ever done.
“I always had a passion for the game. I always loved playing. It’s always been that one thing I’ve just loved doing.”
His parents divorced and the family never had much money, but they managed to join the private Burnaby Winter Club so Adam and Ryan could play elite hockey. There was an extra sheet of ice at the club, so when Adam was playing a game, Ryan would be out on his own, skating for a few hours.
Almost every night he would go down to the unfinished basement in his house to shoot pucks. On the wall, Roger taped targets. Ryan would try to hit them.
Roger would throw out pucks on the floor. Ryan’s task would be to keep his head and eyes up while stickhandling a golf ball around the pucks for 20 minutes.
Roger had all kinds of time and love for his boys, but he also had high standards, as the boys found out one night when Ryan was 12 or 13. “We were spending a lot of time, all of our money, effort and time, our heart and soul, because of their love for it,” Roger says of hockey. “But one night in particular neither of them had done what I thought was good. They just hadn’t put out, and I was always the guy who worked hard, so I wanted that from them. So I got in the car and I reamed them. I said, ‘If you think I’m spending the rest of my life where all we ever do is this and you’re not ready to put out, we’re quitting right now. Either you do it right or you get out of it.’ I was screaming at them.”
The message didn’t need to be repeated.
As Nugent-Hopkins puts it: “I try to be the hardest worker on the ice. That rubbed off from my parents.”
In 2008, Nugent Hopkins was drafted first overall in the WHL’s bantam draft by the Red Deer Rebels.
In his first year, he won the league’s rookie-of-the-year award, scoring 65 points in 67 games.
One setback came when he failed to make Canada’s Under-20 team last December, but he came back from that to increase his scoring at Red Deer, putting up 31 goals and 106 points in 67 games this season.
The challenge of balancing league games, practices, school, travel and tournaments has been good for his him, Roger says. He has matured a lot since he left home at age 15 to billet with a Red Deer family.
“He’s had a real grind and he’s learned how to cope with that,” Roger says. “The Western Hockey League humbles you.”
It’s not easy to play three games in four nights in four cities, get home on the team bus at 3 a.m. and go to school the next morning, Roger says. “You have to learn how to do that mentally.”
More recently, there have been daily requests for interviews, as well as a four-day trip to Toronto so NHL scouts could test his physical fitness and interview him.
At the same time, he has been trying to finish Grade 12. He spent this past week both training and brushing up on 1984, King Lear and Death of a Salesman for his English 30 exam. “Some parts are pretty boring,” he says of 1984, “like when the described everything about Big Brother over 50 pages.”
A month ago, his mom noticed on School-Zone that his mark had dipped below a passing grade, largely because he’d been so busy with the playoffs and road trips. “My mom called. She was not very happy. I just got some extra work and did it.”
He had brought his mark up to 60 heading into the final, he says.
He’s now focused on weight training to build up his body so he’s better able to play the NHL’s fierce checking game. He played last season at 160 to 165 pounds, but is up to 174. His goal is to play next year at 175 to 180 pounds.
In recent years, most top picks in the NHL draft have made the jump to the big league as 18-year-olds. Nugent-Hopkins also has that in mind. “I feel I could make the jump and that’s my goal for next year.”
To succeed in the NHL, he needs to be stronger and bigger, says Batchelor. “He’s probably not ready next year. I think he needs a little bit of maturation in his body. I think another year of junior would do him well.”
On the Boston Pizza TV screen, Bruins goalie Tim Thomas makes another big save.
How would he try to beat Thomas?
“I’d try to get him moving and go upstairs,” Nugent-Hopkins says. “He likes to go down when he gets across. I’d go side to side, either pass across or deke across.”
The Stanley Cup finals are far away from a Red Deer pizza place, but not for the ambitious Nugent-Hopkins. He was just in Boston, a guest of the NHL with other top prospects, where they met broadcaster Don Cherry and attended the first game of the finals.
“It’s pretty crazy to think I could be skating playing there,” Nugent-Hopkins says of the game on the TV screen. “It’s pretty cool to think about. Definitely.”
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/Strong+parenting+keeps+prospective+prize+line/4970854/story.html#ixzz1Pk5OJ4Ws
hockeygod
hockeygod
I just checked his site. Very interesting! I will be following this closely. We had a great discussion about Dan this morning after our ice session. Eric, if you find any other articles, please post them. Thanks!
hockeygod
As the article says... he has a blog. www.thedanplan.com
I visited it last night and shot him an email to which he responded very quickly.
I think the results of his experiment has the potential to really change the way people look at things. For me, when I finished reading Talent Code, not only was I impressed with the content, I was mostly inspired. I felt like I could accomplish anything and my confidence soared. It was the same feeling that we, as coaches, try to instill in players daily.
I will be following The Dan Plan and sharing it with as many people as I know. I'm excited to see the results.
Eric
Eric,
I just started re-reading the Talent Code yesterday... now this really inspires me. That is one impressive article. Thanks! I will be sharing it with several of my colleagues.
hockeygod
http://www.tampabay.com/features/can-a-complete-novice-become-a-golf-pro-with-10000-hours-of-practice/1159357
Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?
By Michael Kruse, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, March 27, 2011
One wet, raw day last April, at the Broadmoor public golf course in Portland, Ore., Dan McLaughlin stood in the center of one of the greens. He wore running shoes, blue jeans and a yellow rubber raincoat. He wrapped his frozen fingers around a two-buck putter and hit one-foot putts, and he did that for two hours straight, stopped for a cup of hot, decaffeinated tea, then did it for two hours more. That's how this started.
On his 30th birthday, June 27, 2009, Dan had decided to quit his job to become a professional golfer.
He had almost no experience and even less interest in the sport.
What he really wanted to do was test the 10,000-hour theory he read about in the Malcolm Gladwell bestseller Outliers. That, Gladwell wrote, is the amount of time it takes to get really good at anything — "the magic number of greatness."
The idea appealed to Dan. His 9-to-5 job as a commercial photographer had become unfulfilling. He didn't want just to pay his bills. He wanted to make a change.
Could he stop being one thing and start being another? Could he, an average man, 5 feet 9 and 155 pounds, become a pro golfer, just by trying? Dan's not doing an experiment. He is the experiment.
The Dan Plan will take six hours a day, six days a week, for six years. He is keeping diligent records of his practice and progress. People who study expertise say no one has done quite what Dan is doing right now.
Dan spent last month in St. Petersburg because winters are winters in the Pacific Northwest. "If I could become a professional golfer," he said one afternoon, "the world is literally open to any options for anybody."
• • •
Dan is the youngest son of a family of high achievers. One of his grandfathers was a career IBM man. The other was a civil engineer. His father is an actuary. So is his brother. Actuaries calculate risk. They make statistical predictions about the future based on past performance. His brother graduated with high honors as a math major from Georgia Tech and then did it again in the divinity program at Boston University and now lives and works in New York City and is married with a young daughter. His sister is a dermatologist in Atlanta and a mother of four. She regularly runs marathons.
Dan? He's the only one of his siblings who wasn't confirmed in the Methodist church in which they grew up. He didn't understand why he had to do this just because everybody else was doing this. He was 12.
Within his immediate family, he said, "I'm definitely the one with the most wander in my heart."
He went to Fiji with no guidebook during a military coup in which he saw men with machine guns at the airport and men with machetes outside. He biked through Thailand and Cambodia. He lived for five months in Australia, where he worked as a waiter because he arrived in the country with no money.
In Portland, throughout his late 20s, he took pictures of dental equipment, which let him buy his own home but also left him with a dissatisfied feeling. There had to be something more.
He started saving money for graduate school. He didn't eat out or go to first-run movies and he rented out rooms in his house. He managed to save $100,000. When it came time to apply to grad school, though, that didn't feel right, either.
Shelves and shelves of self-help books are stocked in America with the canon of the quick fix. The 10,000-hour concept, though, is based on academic research into the idea that success is a choice — made, not born. At first glance, it feels like a very American idea — you can be anything you want to be — but it is an unsentimental view of the world. It helps to be tall in basketball, and it helps to start violin lessons at a young age, but what separates the few truly great from the many merely good is not talent or magic or luck. It's dedication and discipline.
The secret to success isn't a secret. It's work.
Dan played competitive tennis as a boy, and was good at it, and then quit. He ran one year of cross country in high school, and was good at it, and then quit. He wanted to run on his own. He followed his brother to Boston University for a year and was a physics and math major, and then quit. Instead, he traveled, alone. He graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in photojournalism and was a photographer for a newspaper in Chattanooga, Tenn., for a year, and then quit.
He has started five novels.
He took one piano lesson.
• • •
When Dan first told his family about The Dan Plan, his father thought: In 10,000 hours, you could become a doctor. He wondered what to tell his son. Don't quit the job you don't like? Don't gamble with your future? The actuary wanted to tell him those things. The father did not.
But Steve McLaughlin also didn't think his son would take this as far as he has. Neither did his mother. Neither did his brother or his sister or his girlfriend.
"Dan's always been an ideas guy," his brother, Matthew McLaughlin, said. "The fact that he would think of such a thing isn't surprising. But ideas are one thing. Execution is another. He would get frustrated and quit."
At this point, though, more than 1,000 hours and nearly a year into the plan, they're more than surprised. They're impressed.
"He's very driven," said his mother, Susan McLaughlin.
"He seems a little more confident and focused," his father said. "There's not a lot of wasted time."
"I used to think of him as very laid-back, sort of fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants," his sister, Elizabeth Losken, said. "Ever since he started The Dan Plan, I'm seeing his personality is a lot more like mine than I thought possible. I definitely see a kindred spirit in him. I see him being a lot more dedicated to what he's doing."
Both his siblings are also something they didn't expect to be.
"There have been times," his sister said, "when I've been envious."
Said his brother: "I got out of high school, went to college, went to grad school, got a job . . ."
"I think it's the reason he's doing this," said Marijke Dixon, his live-in girlfriend in Portland. "He needs to succeed at something, but it can't be on their terms. I think he's trying to come to terms with it, his need to succeed, but in his own way."
"I think the takeaway for me," his brother said, "would be that you can be a lot more than you are, that there's a lot more room for excellence than we typically admit to ourselves."
• • •
The wind rustled the tops of the palms at the Treasure Bay golf course in Treasure Island. Dan took a practice swing. He took another.
He has three clubs in his bag, a putter, a chipper and a wedge. That's it. That's because of his coach.
Back when he first pitched his idea to Christopher Smith, a Nike-affiliated coach who has written a book about golf, Smith was not just uninterested. He was insulted. Golf is famously frustrating. Smith told Dan it was much harder than he thought. He told him to Google K. Anders Ericsson at Florida State University, a psychology professor and a leading expert on expertise.
Dan Googled him. Then called him. Then read his scholarly work. Smith started to think Dan was more committed than he had originally thought. Perhaps Dan was an opportunity. How would he teach golf to a person who was relatively fit, clearly willing and totally untouched, with no bad habits to undo because there were no habits at all?
Dan persuaded Smith to coach him. He got Nike to give him some free shoes, clothes and clubs. He set up a Twitter account, a Facebook page and a blog at thedanplan.com. By now, on Dan's loose team of interested consultants are Smith, Ericsson, a personal trainer in Portland and a professor of kinesiology at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
Here's how they have Dan trying to learn golf: He couldn't putt from 3 feet until he was good enough at putting from 1 foot. He couldn't putt from 5 feet until he was good enough putting from 3 feet. He's working away from the hole. He didn't get off the green for five months. A putter was the only club in his bag.
Everybody asks him what he shoots for a round. He has no idea. His next drive will be his first.
In his month in Florida, he worked as far as 50 yards away from the hole. He might — might — have a full set of clubs a year from now.
At Treasure Bay, with the Intracoastal and the causeway in the distance, he whacked a sharp low shot into a fence. It skidded into some seashells and crabgrass. He sliced another ball into a lake. A startled duck jerked its head. He lofted a chip toward the hole and the ball rolled toward the cup. And past it. Too long.
To this point, Dan says, he has ended up liking golf more than he thought he would. It feels like a puzzle, he has found, always a challenge, never the same shot twice. It feels good, he says, to work and work and then to finally hit one the way he's supposed to hit it, just right.
He lofted another chip toward the hole.
And almost into it.
"Everybody hits bad shots," he said. "But it's how you recover from those bad shots that matters."
• • •
Late last month Dan drove a small rented Nissan up to Tallahassee for a conference at Florida State on performance and expertise. Ericsson was scheduled to speak. So was Dan. Ericsson invited him.
On the campus, in a classroom, Dan listened to smart people say interesting things about data compiled and experiments done.
Then it was his turn.
"I live in Portland, Oregon, and I'm 31 years old," he said at the start of his presentation.
He showed them his bag with three clubs. He put up PowerPoint graphs charting his gradual improvement in putting and chipping.
There are more than 27 million people in this country who play golf. There are 125 permanent spots on the PGA Tour. Smith has told Dan the odds of him earning one of those spots are astronomically long. He picked golf, Dan says, because he wanted something not impossible but close. He grants that there's a "99 percent chance I'm not going to become a PGA golfer." But that's not the point.
"Basically," he told the people at the conference, "what I'm trying to do with this project is demonstrate how far you're able to go if you're willing to put in the time.
"I'm testing human potential."
Everybody in the classroom clapped for Dan and his plan.
Outside, Ericsson said to Dan, "I'm so intrigued here by your commitment to do this."
People, of course, have become world-class after practicing 10,000 hours, in golf and tennis and violin or anything else. But never, not in anything, according to Ericsson, has anyone done it like this: to start at this age, with no experience, and to keep statistics from the beginning, and to be so self-reflective about it, and to last even this long. Dan, Ericsson says, is "like Columbus here, sailing out in new territory."
Ericsson asked Dan if he had any questions.
Questions?
Sometimes it feels like it's all he has.
How is he doing? What if all he's doing is getting really good at practicing golf and not at playing it? How will he know?
What will success look like?
Failure?
Back in St. Petersburg, he said, "I don't think it can fail, because it's not really about me or what ultimately happens with me. It's about blazing a new path and kind of trying to change the way people see life's possibilities."
On the drive to Tallahassee, he said, "If I put in those 10,000 hours, in my eyes, no matter the outcome, I will have been successful. Because I think I'll be much more in tune with my abilities."
On the drive back, he said, "One of the things I'm learning in this process is the ability to overcome frustrations, and that's a huge part of golf. That's a huge part of anything, I guess, right?"
Maybe he will become a pro golfer. Maybe he will become an excellent golfer. Maybe he will become an average golfer. Maybe he won't.
He's certain, though, that won't be the ultimate measure of success. Success, he has found, is in the sincerity of the pursuit.
"I like where I am in life right now," he said, eyes on the road ahead, 8,803 hours to go.
Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.
[Last modified: Apr 20, 2011 11:02 AM]
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Copyright 2011 St. Petersburg Times
Eric
A Gauge for Measuring Effective Practice
by Daniel Coyle
If you distilled all the new science about talent development into two words of advice, they would be “practice better.”
That’s it. Practice. Better.
Forget everything else about your genes, your potential — it’s all just noise. The most basic truth is that if you practice better, you’ll develop your talent — and you won’t develop your talent unless you practice better. Period.
For most of us, that’s precisely where we bump into a common problem: how? Specifically, which practice method to choose? Do we focus on repeating a skill we’ve got, or do we work on new skills? What kinds of drills work best? What’s the best way to spend the limited time we’ve got?
When it comes to figuring out how to practice better, we often feel like we’re standing in the cereal aisle of the grocery store. There are lots of seemingly attractive choices. But how do we pick the ones that have the most nutrition, and avoid the ones that are empty calories?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’d like to use this blog as a test drive for a new gauge for comparing practice methods. I’m calling it the R.E.P.S. Gauge.
(Okay, acronyms are cheesy, I know. But they’ve been around for a long time because they work.)
R stands for Reaching/Repeating.
E stands for Engagment.
P stands for Purposefulness
S stands for Strong, Direct, Immediate Feedback.
The idea behind the gauge is simple: you should practice methods that contain these key elements, and avoid methods that don’t. Below, you’ll find a description of each element along with a sample choice to illustrate how it works.
Element 1: Reaching and Repeating. Does the practice have you operating on the edge of your ability, reaching and repeating? How many reaches are you making each minute? Each hour?
Scenario: a math teacher trying to teach multiplication tables to 30 students.
• Teacher A selects a single student to write the tables on the board.
• Teacher B creates a “game show” format where a math question is posed verbally to the entire class, then calls on a single student to answer.
Result: Teacher B chose the better option because it creates 30 reaches in the same amount of time. In Classroom A, only one student had to truly stretch — everybody else could lean back and observe. In Classroom B, however, every single member of the class has to stretch (picture the wires of their brains, reaching) in case their name is called. Not a small difference.
Element 2: Engagement. Is the practice immersive? Does it command your attention? Does it use emotion to propel you toward a goal?
Scenario: a violin student trying to perfect a short, tough passage in a song.
• Student A plays the passage 20 times.
• Student B tries to play the passage perfectly — with zero mistakes — five times in a row. If they make any mistake, the count goes back to zero and they start over.
Result: Student B made the better choice, because the method is more engaging. Playing a passage 20 times in a row is boring, a chore where you’re simply counting the reps until you’re done. But playing 5 perfectly, where any mistake sends you back to zero, is intensively engaging. It’s a juicy little game.
Element 3: Purposefulness. Does the task directly connect to the skill you want to build?
Scenario: a basketball team keeps losing games because they’re missing late free-throws.
• Team A practices free throws at the end of a practice, with each player shooting 50 free throws.
• Team B practices free throws during a scrimmage, so each player has to shoot them while exhausted, under pressure.
Result: Team B made the better choice, because their practice connects to the skill you want to build: the ability to make free throws under pressure, while exhausted. (No player ever gets to shoot 50 straight in a game.)
The fourth element: Strong, Direct, Immediate Feedback. In other words, the learner always knows how they’re doing — where they’re making mistakes, where they’re doing well — because the practice is telling them in real time. They don’t need anybody to explain that they need to do X or Y, because it’s clear as a bell.
Scenario: a high school student trying to improve her SAT score.
• Student A spends a Saturday taking a mock version of the entire SAT test, receiving results back one week later.
• Student B spends a Saturday taking a mini-version of each section, self-grading and reviewing each test in detail as soon as it’s completed.
Result: Student B made the better choice, because the feedback is direct and immediate. Learning immediately where she went wrong (and where she went right) will tend to stick, while learning about it in a week will have little effect.
The idea of this gauge is simple: practices that contain all four of these core elements (R.E.P.S.) are the ones you want to choose, because those are the ones that will produce the most progress in the shortest amount of time. Audit your practices and get rid of the methods that have fewer R.E.P.S. and replace them with methods that have lots.
The other takeaway here is that small, strategic changes in practice can produce huge benefits in learning. Making a little tweak to the learning space — for instance, teaching multiplication through a little juicy game that keeps 30 people on their toes — can have big effects on learning velocity. Spending time strategizing your practice is one of the most effective investments you can make in developing talent.
But as I said at the start, this idea is still in the experimental phase. What other elements should we consider including? How do you achieve your best practices? What else should we add here?
As a sidenote, this will be my last blog entry for a little while, as I’m going to take the summer to work on a couple of book projects. I will be checking in periodically, of course, and will start up again in earnest when the school year starts in August. Thanks for reading, for all your insightful and helpful comments, and for making this project so fun and worthwhile.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 at 6:22 am.
hockeygod
http://thetalentcode.com/nightline/ is the link to a good intro to the ideas in the Talent Code.
TomM
Yursi is a great coach. Around 65 players that he coached went to the NHL. I did some seminars with him and Juuso while he was coaching TPS. They are great friends and played against each other for years in world championships and Olympics. In 93 Yursi had me run a practice with the TPS pro's with a focus on body checking. He came one week a month while I was in Salzburg and ran skill sessions in the mornings for all the players. I have posted a puck handling and a skating practice that he did.
(Yursinov played for the Soviet Union then coached for years as the assistant to Tikonov and was head coach of Dynamo. Players like Yashin, Kovalev and most Russian greats played for him. He then coached in Finland and Switzerland and the last years goes around and works with various clubs as a guest coach. He is about seventy now and a really pleasant and funny man who has a passion for the game.)
So it was a combination of great tradition and two coaches who have been inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame. Yursi coached the pro's and Juuso coached the hockey class for 2 sports schools. (Juuso also coached TPS and in Switzerland and Germany)
They both not only coach skills but how to Play the Game.
I have shared there techniques over the years with this website. Juuso and I started communicating with letters in the late 80's, then with faxes and then email and now email and skype. He would share the ideas that him and Yursi were discussing.
I like the direction coaching is starting to take. The focus is going away from strictly skill development using drill after drill to combining skill development with learning how to play using games and trasntion games in practice. So now we are starting to build the toolbox to put the tools in.
I just got home from teaching my last hockey on ice session of the year 13 kid's and 2 goalies. Here the kid's go to school until the end of June 200 days. Good bunch of kid's and some very good players.
TomM
Quote by: TomMDM, I think Turku has a rich hockey tradition and TPS used to be the Canadiens of Finland. Juhani started a lot of youth development and his sports school hockey class had players like Kiprusoff and Koivu in it. After a long hiatus from the top of the league TPS won the Championship this season.
The top goalie coach is from TPS and Finland produces more goalies than anywhere else right now.
I was in Turku last month and there are lots of sports facilities that were well used as I drove and walked around.
So I think they have the tradition and the great coaching that is needed to be a hotbed.
And Yurzinov was the head coach of TPS at that time. 1992-1998
Here are few players that Yurzinov coached:
Saku Koivu (Canadiens, Ducks)
Aki Berg (Kings, Maple Leafs)
Fredrik Norrena (Blue Jackets)
Antti Aalto (Ducks)
Jani Hurme (Senators, Panthers, Ducks)
Sami Salo (Canucks, Senators)
Marko Kiprusoff (Canadiens, Islanders)
Miikka Kiprusoff (Flames, Sharks)
Petteri Nummelin (Blue Jackets, Wild)
Antero Niittymäki (Lighting, Flyers)
Kai K
DM, I think Turku has a rich hockey tradition and TPS used to be the Canadiens of Finland. Juhani started a lot of youth development and his sports school hockey class had players like Kiprusoff and Koivu in it. After a long hiatus from the top of the league TPS won the Championship this season.
The top goalie coach is from TPS and Finland produces more goalies than anywhere else right now.
I was in Turku last month and there are lots of sports facilities that were well used as I drove and walked around.
So I think they have the tradition and the great coaching that is needed to be a hotbed.
TomM
Thanks Tom & Kai,
I appreciate the input and ideas. The correlation between intended length of involvement and rapid learning is very interesting. Not too many people are pushing hockey as a lifetime sport, but I agree it is and should be emphasized as one. I also found it interesting that many of the talent hotbeds were sparse, bare-bones kind of facilities rather than posh & specialized ones.
Here's an older but interesting article on hockey talent hot beds:
http://www.nhl.com/intheslot/read/impact/2003_04/january/top10_spots.html
Tom, some of your videos are from Turku aren't they? What is it that makes these places so much more productive?
DM
DMan
Not size, strength, iq, or any factor was as significant as the answer to the simple question, "How long do you intend to play the sport? (musical instrument, dance etc.)
1. one year.
2. until finished grade school.
3. until finished high school.
4. all my life.
These were broken into, a. short term commitment, b. medium, c. long term.
When someone VIEWS THEMSELVES as a researcher, athlete, musician or whatever then they engage in deep practice and benefit from the time spent practicing or studying. He found that someone with a long term view would benefit as much from 10 min. of practice as someone with a short term commitment got out of 90 min. of practice.
So you need the learner to be totally engaged in the activity along with excellent teaching.
TomM
Few years ago I was at coaching seminar where we played a really funny SAG. you palyed with a partner shoulder to shoulder but just one stick per pair so that you would play lower hand on the stick and your partner would play witk upper hand. With the frre hand you
would hold on to you pair.
We have used tennis balls, we played Ultimate Frisbee on ice. 3 on 3 with 3 pucks ( or e.g.one puck, one tennis ball and one light puck) you're free to score both of the goals. Play just with you fore/back hand etc. Use themed games off-ice too with soccer, basketball and floorball etc.
Then we've used reaction drills where player has two or more options and the have to make quick pass (after deke or under pressure) to right player (e.g. one player plays stick on ice when rest of the target players play stick off the ice).
Kai
Kai K
I think that we have to incorporate practices that are in a tournament format. Play games with modified rules. Overload the players by using a tennis ball, heaviy pucks, light pucks. Sometimes play soccer with a ball or using a puck.
It only takes the willingness to create a practice kit at each arena that has rink dividers, small nets, and various kinds of balls and pucks.
So instead of having the traditional skills practice and full ice games add one dimension. Teams combine every second practice and make 6 or 8 smaller teams and play 3 cross ice or 4 1/4 ice games. Play tournaments in small areas. Keep score. Then play the regular full ice games that they always play. (there is no way parents are ready to give these up)
I would love to get a curling rink and make two smaller rinks for youth hockey. In Calgary they have shut many curling rinks down. One close to me is now part of a school and the Big Four building used to be the largest curling rink in the world. 2 floors with 24 rinks on each level. Just think of how much U10 hockey could have been played there. Easily 5 rinks on each floor. It is also a great 3-3 size for any age.
Just some thoughts.
TomM
Thanks Kai & Tom,
I agree that breaking down or "chunking" a skill into small pieces, doing it slowly and properly, makes all the sense in the world, and the small area game tournament will be a regular feature for me this year. I did this once last year and it worked quite well.
Not to beat a dead horse here, but I'm still stuck on the brilliance of Brazilian "futsal." It has the benefits of a small area game AND increases skill development through modified equipment. It's like the nervous system overload that Tom talks about here:
http://hockeycoachingabcs.com/forum/getattachment.php?id=281
....inserted into a game teaching situation.
The Soviets and 1980 US team used weight vests during practice to increase leg strength, and the US team sometimes practiced with minimal equipment to get comfortable doing things at higher speeds. Futsal uses a smaller (heavier too, I think) ball which requires more exact skill. What can we do to push the skills that small area games teach even further?
Any thoughts?
Thanks again.
DMan
Here is an idea of how to use the ice to play tournaments on one sheet. Incorporate one tournament per week. Two or three teams could share the ice and set up everything before so they don't waste time. I have included a diagram. Use hollow 4x4 boards, hose or rink dividers. Add rule modifications and keep score.
Use foam pads, wooden or thick hoses to divide the rink into three sections and 3 benches. Play 5-5 with 5-7 year olds and 4-4 with 9-10 year olds. A 60 minute ice time could be a 6 team round robin tournament of 10' games. 5 min. warm up and 1 min. between games to switch rinks. Cotinuous. After a goal take the puck out right away and go. Opposition can't pressure until one player crosses the mid line.
Another idea is to divide the rink into 4 areas.
The last 13 years I taught PE we got double classes with 48-60 kid's in a small gym with 3 badminton courts and 6 baskets. We would divide the students into 12 teams and make 6 areas. I added a line between the cross gym badminton courts to make 6 areas for badminton and volleyball and of course 2 groups would be under each basket. I also used a rope instead of nets so it was easy to remove for the 10 minute run at the start of each class. We would do skills in the small groups. (no one sitting out) and then play tournaments with modified rules. The kid's loved pe because it was fun and they also got very fit and learned the skills.
http://hockeycoachingabcs.com/filemgmt/index.php?id=43 is the link to a video of a volleyball and a bball class.
The hockey rink is a big place if coaches open their minds up and think of ways to use the space to teach both the individual and game playing skills.
I am going to upload it again as an example how to use space efficiently.
TomM
To teach a skill and to deep practice I guess we should slow down and break the skill in to chunks like the book says. I think that Coyle meant that kids felt uncomfortable because they practiced slowly and they had (and were demanded) to really concentrate on the practice (to fire the right circuits). But of course add speed when we're learning to give new impulses.
I think it's very important to train and build diverse set of basic skills to kids; agility, coordination, balance etc. (its myelin base to every hockey skill).
To me the most fascinating thing form the book and its website is the game reading and game sense studies and how it can be teached. And I believe that it's in this area where the overspeed training is helpful, But also all the games that you play. Diverse use on different games on and off ice gives to your player more options and (creative) solutions to different game situations.
Kai
Kai K
I just finished The Talent Code, and it was fascinating on many levels. There are so many implications for any coach or teacher of anything....I can't begin to address them all, which is why it's such a valuable book. One of the many concepts that really hit home with me with me though was the concept of "deep practice" being uncomfortable rather than easy repetition of skills or drills. It reminded me of a few hockey books I've picked up in the last year....
After seeing his name in many books (including Tom's) and articles, I tracked down a copy of the out of print Road to Olympus by Anatoly Tarasov, the famous Red Army hockey coach. Tarasov describes how he made the speed and challenge of practices uncomfortable for his players so that game speed would seem like slow motion. In essence they were always in "deep practice" mode on the ice. The Red Army also had the "spark" ignited by national pride and being underdogs when they first came on the international hockey scene.
Herb Brooks did the same thing with the 1980 US Olympic team of "Miracle on Ice" fame. In the book Overspeed Training for Hockey, available for free HERE, trainer Jack Blather describes how the 1980 US team also practiced at speeds that pushed the envelope of comfort, with the goal of being able to match the Red Army team's conditioning level. Again, this sounds very much like the "deep practice" Coyle describes, and the spark was obviously ignited by the challenge and opportunity to represent the country on it's home turf.
Finally, after reading about Brazilian "Futsal" in Coyle's book and the skilled players it helps develop, I'm reminded of the emphasis Tom places on using small area games to teach the bigger game. The Futsal concept fascinates me too in that the smaller ball requires faster and more accurate skills to control and shoot/pass accurately....it's overspeed training for ball handling skills, and I'm left wondering what the hockey equivalent for this might be that could be used on the ice? Tennis ball hockey on ice is a good attempt at this but the bounce of the ball tends to minimize opportunities to handle and control the ball. Any suggestions or ideas?
I've only scratched the surface of the learning concepts presented in the book, but I'm curious what the rest of you think are implications on how we can coach hockey better or differently.
DMan
Math ability pre-destined: Study
Calgary Sun WENN.COM Friday, August 12, 2011
New research suggests that children who struggle with mathematics will always have problems with numbers.
Previous research has indicated that "number sense" is basic to humans but psychologists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have found a different explanation after an intensive study involving 200 four-year-olds.
The youngsters had to sit various tests and the results were compared to their language skills. Dr. Melissa Libertus, who led the study, says, "Previous studies testing older children left open the possibility that maths lessons determined number sense. In other words, some children looked like they had better number sense simply because they had better maths instruction.
"Unlike those studies, this one shows that the link between number sense and maths ability is already present before the beginning of formal maths instruction. One of the most important questions is whether we can train a child’s number sense to improving his future maths ability."
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Not much published here about the study... would be interested to fond out more. However... In other words, some children looked like they had better number sense simply because they had better maths instruction." - So maybe coaching that inspires one to work harder / stick with math problems longer (ala Carol Dweck's findings) might be key to anything? IE: Find someone who supports your endevour and then sparks your passion... have a great coach who continues to inspire / challenge you?
Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."