Reply To: Daily Drills Part 10 – International

[Tom Molloy]

Observations of International Hockey

I am working with younger players this spring; so I am going to focus on the individual skills from the Swedish site to see if there are any new ideas there from our Scandanavian friends. The Swedes have great individual technique.

I took my college women's team to Stockholm and played some games about 5 years ago. Verner Persson, Kjell Larsen, Hans Lindberg were three of the coaches who George Kingston brought here to give two week coaching courses in the 80;s. They were all very good. When I was at the World Youth conference in Heidelberg, Germany two years ago the Swedes had a bus load of over 50 youth coaches in attendance. They really focused on improving the coaching for youth hockey.

Three springs ago the Swedish Women's Olympic Team came here to train. I watched a lot of their practices and since I know a few of the coaches I invited the staff to my house and we had a barbecue before they left for some exhibition games. There were two Swedish coaches on the Red Bull staff when I was working with them in Salzburg, Austria the 08-09 season.

So I have had quite a lot of exposure to the Swedish view of how to coach and how to play the game and have always been impressed by how thoroughly they prepare.

The Swedes, Finns, Czechs and other hockey countries have to be very good at developing players. Canada and the USA have over a half million players each. We can afford to waste players and have poor development programs because of the power of numbers. Erkka Westerlund, who was the head of Finnish Hockey, told me, 'we don't have that many players, so we can't cut a player at 12 because he is small, we have to develop everyone and give them good technique.

When I was in the Czech Republic two years ago Slavamir Lener, the head of their hockey, told me that when it was Czechoslovakia they had 82 000 players and now the two countries combined have only 32 000 players. I was offered a coaching position in Jihlava last season to be the assistant to the only english speaking coach of the U20 team (former NHL player) and coach mentor for the other coaches in the club. (they liked what I did at the hockey school and mentoring the U20 coach). They didn't get the grant from the city to pay the contract; so it didn't happen.

So it is very worthwhile to pay attention to what the other countries are doing to develop players. By the numbers they shouldn't be able to compete with Canada and the USA but last year the Finns won the IIHF worlds and the Swedes won the World U20.
They are having a coaching symposium in Stockholm during the IIHF World's but it looks like it is directed at Swedish coaches. It is posted on the same website as the drills.

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