Reply To: Daily Drill Section Fourteen

[Tom Molloy]

To the Coaches who come to this site.

I posted this ten years ago outlining my coaching experiences. Since then I have attended 3 Coach Site seminars and 5 IIHF symposiums. You get new ideas or learn to 'see old things thru new eyes' attending these. Last ten years I have coached 1 men's college team and 4 women's college teams, 5 years of girls hockey, U13, U15, U18 and one of U15 boy's, so kid's to adults. Every Thursday morning we have a No Dead Sharks coaches discussion, sometimes at a coffee shop and now mostly on Zoom where coaches from around the world join in.
Posted below 10 years ago.
Hockey is the same all over the world but each country has a different way of practicing and coaching. It is interesting to watch how the Czech, Russian, Slovakian, Austrian, American, Canadian, Swiss, Swedes and Women coaches. A lot of the videos are from these practices.

Coaching styles are very different. American coaches are very vocal and give lots of input during the drills, Canadians a little less. European coaches usually don't say much and may start each part of a drill with the whistle but many let the players recognize when it is time to start the next rep and don't use the whistle much.

Russians, Czechs, Finns use a lot of one touch exercises. Swedes do a lot of deliberate practice. North Americans tend to practice defense first and you learn offense playing against the defense and the Europeans are opposite and work on offense a lot more and practice defense playing against the offense.

This is a consistent theme from my 20 plus hockey trips to Europe and travel around Canada and USA. My first coaching trip to Europe was in 1985-86 season when we took a college team to play vs. pro's in Germany and Switzerland (3 ties and one loss). I started going as a guest coach in 1993 to Finland first for seminars with Juhani and Jursinov and a hockey school in Hamar, Norway and I also arranged a 3 week tour of Norway, Sweden, Finland that summer as a recruiting trip for the U of Calgary team where I was an assistant coach for Willy Desjardins. Since then there have been hockey camps in Finland, Norway, Czech Republic (2010) and Austria (coached Red Bulls there the 08-09 season), Korea, around the USA, Mexico and mentored the Turkish national team coach when he cam here a few years ago. So all in all lots of international experiences that gave me a chance to work with coaches from all over the hockey world and also attended 5 IIHF symposiums in Europe, the last one this summer in Prague.

I have done camps in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Wisconsin, New York, California, Boston, Michigan, New Mexico, Guadalajara, Seoul and got to work with many great coaches. The last one was near Boston with former NHL player/coach, Curtis Brackenbury who does a camp for college players (2013). Of course Gaston and I always do our summer camp in Jasper.

I know a lot of the European coaches who were running practices that videos are from. The Finnish U20 coach was my assistant when I was the Head Instructor for 3 summers in Vierumaki, Finland. The U17 coach works with me and Juhani on development of the ABC's. I mentored U17-U20 Czech coach in Jihlava, Czech Republic (2010). I coached with and against, Mike Johnston, with Willy Desjardins, against Mike Babcock, with Tim Bothwell, Canada Olympic W, Wally Kozak, Canada Olympic W,, Slavomir Lener, Czechia Olympic M, Terry Johnson NHL D, Mike Tschumi, Swiss pro, Mike Kennedy NHL,. In Austria I coached with Pierre Page (Canadian), Reijo Routsalainen (Finland), Gene Reilly (American), Vladimir Jursinov (Russia – before Austria, I had done 3 seminars with him and Juhani Wahlsten in Finland and we presented at the Helsinki IIIHF coaching symposium together.) and against Danielle Goyette (Women's hockey). So can see there is a lot of different nationalities represented in the material on the site.

Because Hockey Canada is based in Calgary a lot of international teams come here to train at their 4 rink Winsport complex and it is a great place to get practice ideas.

There are 365 B videos with skill drills vs. no opponents, 214 A-individual skill, 200 D games, 100 DT transition games, 40 E Shootouts, 40 Fitness Skating, 25 Goaltending, 30 Off-ice, 85 T1 Teaching offensive skills, 210 T2-4 Teaching Offensive and Defensive Team Play, 25 T3 Teaching Individual Defensive Skills. (T drills are usually with pro and National teams). Many more have been added.

Thousands or hours gathering and processing this material from around the hockey world and there are over 1600 video clips from practices that are posted in the video sections. About 1050 are in the 14 Daily Drill Forums with diagrams, descriptions and edited video.

Dwight developed this site for me to share the the ideas with other coaches, otherwise it would just be my data base. Another reason for the site is to constantly update the coaching program that Juhani Wahlsten and I prepared for the Austrian association. Everything is coded the same way.

Sorry if I am just babbling here, but the reason is to give coaches who frequent this site an idea of where the ideas come from.

The purpose is to help coaches who haven't had the same opportunities.

'The Game is the Greatest Coach'
'Enjoy the Game'

'The Game is the Greatest Coach'
'Enjoy the Game'