Reply To: Good Habits at Practice? The Art of Coaching!

[Eric Fink]

DMan,

Good question. I think that the habits will be different with each age group it I'll give it a whirl.

I have 16-20 year olds. It's pretty hard to narrow it down to three things but these are the most common that we repeat on a regular basis.

Forwards:
1. Keeping their feet moving on the forecheck… especially the last 15 feet before making contact.
2. Eliminate looking down at the puck before shooting.
3. Communicating.

Defense:
1. Keeping puck off backhand and not stickhandling.
2. Shoulder check while retrieving dumped pucks.
3. Stick on puck in D-zone coverage.

We get a lot of practice time but we remind players on a regular basis before every drill when their trying to accomplish. Finding a different way to say the same thing is one of the biggest challenges we face. We read books, watch tv shows and movies on coaching, etc.

We talk about competing hard and battling all over the ice in every meeting, every on-ice discussion, before every drill so that it becomes part of them. We even started "priming" this year, which is a psychological term for trying to get a specific message across subconsciously through sensory images, sounds, and/or smells.