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USA Hockey Scraps the American Development Model (ADM) Following the US Performance at the 2012 World Juniors

01-02-2012

Today, USA Hockey announced a complete overhaul of the recently implemented American Development Model (ADM). Immediately after its one win 2012 World Junior performance, USA Hockey held round the clock meetings with top US coaches across Minnesota in an effort to get the new program implemented before the end of this year's minor hockey season. The result is a new “Play-for-Pay” model based upon the long term international domination by the now defunct Soviet Union.

The proven Play-for-Pay approach is a clear departure from the current acronym based USA development model. Effective today, coaches are not allowed to use the acronyms Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD), small area games (SMAGs), fundamental movement and skills (FMS), and most importantly, using ABC’s for describing agility, balance, coordination and speed. USA Hockey’s Chief Director of Acronyms fired himself over the weekend after hearing a post game interview with an anonymous and confused USA forward saying “Wow, I thought ABC’s meant Avoid Back Checking….”. This comes as a double setback to the US as they had invested significantly into the creation of revenue generating on-line acronym practice and training videos (project CRAPs). Everyone now agrees that acronyms do not create winning hockey teams.

The Play-for-Pay approach will be a complete departure from the existing model, says Reg Dunlop, USA Hockey’s new Director Chief Associate Creator of the Play-for-Pay program. The new program is based on the premises winning is more fun than losing, and the more incentive given to winning the more likely it is to occur. Coach Dunlop goes on to describe several of the immediate changes, including:

Playing full ice games with a functioning scoreboard so kids can learn losing stinks and have a fear of it – the current program has kids, parents and coaches thinking they are all winners

Increasing registration fees for all, and using the proceeds to provide cash rewards for individual hat tricks – the current patches are not enough incentive to drive individual excellence

Encouraging goalie specialization at an early age so they can have more time to adjust to the fact that skaters just tolerate them in hopes they stop pucks – ADM had goalies believing they were a regular member of the team

Encouraging freezing of all pools in hopes to get more ice time for kids – swimming is an individual lane specific sport that teaches kids to keep their heads down, it has no correlation to winning hockey games

Many critics of the ADM program have made accusations that the prorgram was actually a tactic by Hockey Canada to keep USA Hockey down after USA took the Canadians to overtime in the past Olympics. Critics pointed to a long time quote on USA Hockey’s ADM website wherein Brian Burke, General Manager of Canada's Toronto Maple Leafs, is quoted and slipped in saying “The program is absolutely fantastic. I know its implementation will take some time, but the principles are dead…”.

USA hockey will be notifying coaches this week of the new on-line “potential specific coaching modules" that must be completed before the end of the following week. The fee for the 8 hour classes have been increased to $100.

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Nice to see someone at hockeygrinder.com has a sense of humour!

I don't see anything wrong with playing with a scoreclock; in fact, I recommend people keep track of the score in prctice as much as possible – as the game uses one – kids want to know who wins and who loses! We should reward scoring – that's the best part of the game! If you want to be all warm and fuzzy… hug a teddy bear!

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."