Reply To: Discussion – “The Talent Code”

[Tom Molloy]

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.

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