Game Intelligence / Decision Training

[RookieCoach]

HockeyGod ,

I would agree with your comments about how practise's are run these days. Last year with Atom age kids , I added games with accountability , and it was surprising how the level of play in that game picked up.

I ran a practise for a Bantam age group on the weekend , and during the game that I was running I over heard one of the players saying , " i love this game , this is fun " . The winning team cheered as the other team did lap at the end and picked up the pucks.

But here is my question for you and Tom .

Say you have a team that is weak backchecking. Always getting out numbered at your blue line and D are backing in too far as a result. This is happening time and time again.

So for a 50 min practise how would you correct this using the ABC method ?

What kind of games would you use.?

Or would you use drills with accountability to reinforce your theme of the practice.?

Most coaches would do drills with no accountability I'm sure. Players might get yelled at if they don't pick up their man , but that would be as far as it goes.

Teaching the game with games is something most coaches don't understand , as you stated in post post earlier. But I think most coaches would;d be open to giving it a try if they understood how it works.

Keep up the great posts , I'm sure yourself and Tom are getting many coaches to at least thing about an different form of teaching the game.

Thanks
RookieCoach

[hockeygod]

Rookie Coach,

Thanks for the kudos.

Regarding your question: How capable are your D regarding gap control? Where are their shortcomings? They must be able to play a 1 v 1 extremely well before you progress to a 2 v 1 (with or without a backchecker). In my skill academies, I spend an inordinate amount of time on the 1 v 1 for the first month or two to create a solid base. Then, I move into 2 v 2 for a month then 3 v 3 for a month. I work odd man rushes afterwards.

I don't know the age, level or league of your team, so this is a general answer. In a team setting you must take into account which forecheck you use as this will influence your backcheck. If you look at Tom's book, page 250, Card 238, this is a transition game where the defending team gets support from the backcheckers. Page 252, Card 241, is the ultimate transition game and can be set up to your needs (odd man rush).

I would certainly use accountability at all times! Have two colours and keep score – a coach watching each end. Score being how successful the D is at breaking up the rush… points awarded for no shot off the rush; no second scoring chance; backchecker getting back by a certain place (ringette line?) or before a shot is taken; breaking out or clearing the zone. Offensively: points scored for a shot on net off the rush; a secondary scoring chance; a goal scored, etc. You determine the scenario and points awarded. Divide into two teams and compete.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

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

[Tom Molloy]

Rookie Coach, there are a few reasons why a team gives too big of a gap. The main reason is that in the forecheck the D are passive and simply back up. When your team is forechecking the D should be locking on attackers inside the opponents blue line and defending that blue line, the red line and your blue line.

You can play passively and wait in the nzone with a 1-4 like Edmonton and Calgary did at the game I went to last night. Awful to watch and I imagine awful way to play. But that is a story for another day. Who wants to play this way and who wants to watch it. Renney and Sutter should both be fined for making a travesty of the game.

If you watch Boston play (the champs) you see an aggressive forecheck and hard back checking that creates back pressure on the puck carrier and a defensive 2 on 1.

In the video section under transition games there are many games that require back checking and the players joining the play must identify who they must pick up and cover in the zone. The same titles should take you to a description in this section.

D100 x 2 Backchecking Transition – Dukla (I was teaching former Toronto D Petr Svoboda how to use transition games with his Czech U20 team. We met and planned the practices and he ran them on the ice while I watched and then we talked about them after. It was early season and he had a lot of goalies, so we ran two at once sometimes. there are quite a few videos from Dukla.

D100 Transition Game 3-2 to 3-3. In Salzburg they had F1 to come deep in the zone and play the low 3-3 while F2 and F3 were passive waiting for the breakout pass to attack the 2 waiting D and F1 joined them to make it a 3-2 the other way.

DT100 Examples of Sequence 1-1 to 3-2. This is a general description of the continuous flow.

D100 Transition Game with both the Forward and Defenseman joining the Attack. This is a great game.

DT100 Back Checking Game – this was demonstrated by my college women's team. It requires a breakout pass and the attackers have to be quick to beat the back checkers who identify who they are covering and tie up the sticks.

I don't keep track of all of the little details but instead talk to players as they return to the line or else follow the play and shout out key words. We keep score and the loser usually does something. As Juhani says in our book ' the answer is whether the puck is in the net or not.' Once in a while the winner does push ups etc. as winning is a reward in itself. I like intrinsic motivation. My motto is 'It doesn't matter whether you win or lose; just how much you win by.'

Sometimes we play tournaments and I keep track of the score in all the games and at the end the losing team skates, does exercises, or picks up the pucks. I am not saying this is right or wrong. It is my philosophy that I need to pay attention to the details during practice and the score is the outcome which is rewarded or punished.
Philosophically I am a Deductive Thinker (I work with the whole and identify the particulars) so we work on all the situations. Inductive Thinking is the opposite where you build the little pieces (like building a house) and end up with the Whole. Using 'Games to Teach The Game' is Deductive Thinking. I always used to get a kick out of the coaching clinics that would teach the "Whole part whole" method. You would expect that they would start with the game and then a detail of the game and then back to the game. Instead they would start with a drill, then a detail of a drill and then back to the whole drill.

Juuso has been promoting using games to teach the game since he retired from playing. Now that the Games Philosophy is taking hold i.e. at the 2010 conference in Germany they stressed using games. He has finally got his due and the Finnish association nominated him and he was inducted to the IIHF Hall of Fame about 5 years ago along with Kent Nilsson and Petrov from Russia.

So I have been pushing this idea with Juuso since we met in 1985 and he has been promoting the concept of games to teach the game since 74 when he finished playing for Finland and started coaching. I started this site because HC and the Provincial associations just pumped out drills. I had the same battles teaching PE in high school when I would use the F word (FUN) and say it was important that the students had a lot of game situations and have FUN in class. I ended up going back to Jr. High so I could run my own program. (it is always nice to have former students come up to me and thank me for getting them the fittest they ever have been in their life and the fun they had.)

Sorry for this long winded diatribe. I am just trying to point out that it isn't easy to fight against Conventional Wisdom. In two hours I will be playing +55 with a bunch of former pro's, police, fireman, teachers and farmers who played a high level of hockey – all who get good pensions or the crops are in. We play for FUN. Pick new teams every day, play games to 5 and it is very competitive. I think that is what it is all about. I play with this group M-W and a younger group on Friday. My Sunday hockey is impossible to make as the team I am coaching plays every Sunday morning.

We have three groups going at this arena that are age and ability grouped. I was talking to Mario the oldest player and he was telling me about a line he played on in a tournament this summer. Mario – 89 at centre and his wingers were 90 and 86. Maybe the oldest line ever. He came to Canada to work from Italy and fell in love with the game and plays it whenever he gets a chance. Hockey is easy on the knees and a great lifetime sport.

Tonight we have a team play scrimmage vs another Calgary team in our league and next week with a different team. We keep score on the time clock. If you can get a team that is a similar level to yours to do these team play scrimmages it is a great way to review everything in a competitive atmosphere.

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

[DaveM]

Rookie Coach – Tom and Dean have many more ideas than I do, but I thought I'd mention one thing……When I was a player, I really didn't understand good gap control until someone made me follow the play out of the zone ("seal the zone") as closely as possible. Is it possible your D are not doing this? One game modification that focuses on this is to require all players to be over the offensive blue line before a goal can be scored. Your forwards will let your D know pretty quickly if they are being lazy! Your D will also find themselves more involved in the offense, which is a big plus.

Hope this helps,
Dave
———————————

Dave, your suggestions are just as valid as mine or Dean's or anyones are. There are no guarantees any of the ideas will work. they are just our opinions based on our experience. So keep giving your ideas and I hope other coaches do the same.

[hockeygod]

DaveM,

Tom is right on the money. Don't sell yourself short. Everyone is welcome to share their experience so we all get better.

I like your 'sealing the zone' idea. I have never heard it called that; I was taught to always have the 5 players within the same zone on the attack – which aids in short passes (support) and outnumbering the opponents. (It also helps reduce the early gaps when a turnover / transition against you occurs… or if you have a lazy D Man!) It doesn't account for stretch plays; but this was back in the Mesozoic Era… before you could legally make a 2-line pass!

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

[RookieCoach]

Tom , Dean and Dave ,

Thanks for all the information you guys post . I read all the posts daily.
Dean I will check out those pages in Tom's 2 nd book ( Hockey Coaching ABC's) again. As you told me once before you went over the book many times picking up new information.
Tom – Great post also. Yes I have gone over those D-100 Transition games a number of times. I think I have most of them memorized by now. But you don't do a game or a drill just to fill time. The coach must have an understanding of the game before he passes it on to the players at practise. I have watched a number of coaches try an figure out a game or drill when they get on the ice. Also it's the little parts such as accountability as Dean says that can really add the learning part. Keeps players from just going through the motions making the same mistakes.
Dave you have a great insight into the game also. Keep up the good work.

While I currently don't coach a team as head coach , I get asked to help run practise's for different age groups. Last year I helped with three separate teams and age groups. I seem to be asking a number questions on these posts ,( hope you guys don't mind) but I want a different type or add a new look to my practise's. I like to be totally prepared when I hit the ice. The one thing I do know is the players pick up on how well a coach is prepared for each practise very quickly.

I have been running practise's for 20 years now the old traditional way. But I seen to be cracking the past few years , adding more games etc. I wil;l get there sometime Dean.
I ask some questions that all coaches can get the answer too. Where else can you ask questions and get friendly professional advice from. Coaches helping coaches only in the long run helps players.
I am still learning new things as a coach everyday .
Thanks
RookieCoach

[hockeygod]

You are more than welcome, RookieCoach. This is a great forum to read, learn, post with questions or comments… it is a form of professional development that more coaches should take advantage of!

Tom's book continues to produce 'golden nuggets' whenever I read it. You are right, a coach should understand the game and his own team's needs; then implement an accountable plan (games!) to help improve those aspects. Accountability accelerates and cements learning!

By having to help with different teams at different levels (and ages), this helps make you a better coach. It helps put things into perspective for sure. After coaching Pro, Junior and University for 2/3 of my coaching career, it is a real eye opener to come back to minor hockey. The best coaches should be at the youngest levels as these require the most teaching ability. Sad to see our culture is upside down… only the coaches at the top of the pyramid typically get paid (and they seem to be the 'weakest' coaches); whereas we should be paying the coaches developing our kids (as players and people) at the grassroots up to Midget levels. These coaches have the most impact (for better of for worse).

I agree with your comment on preparation. Kids can tell who comes prepared and who 'wings it'! They respect the preparation and coaches should take this professional obligation personally.

I will keep working on you, RookieCoach, to change your old-school ways! My first suggestion to any coach is to take out a regular 'drill' practice and challenge yourself to re-write it such that you have two teams (two colours; goalies compete against each other) and you can make each of your 'old' drills into a competition somehow (measure time, shots on net, goals, etc. – you set the parameters and the 'scoring' system / keep track of the accountability), determine where the AC's stand and what they do (keep track of the score at their end, etc.) and spell out what the HC needs to do to keep the drill running. Then I will ask the coach to start implementing some of Tom's games, or the Smart Transitional Games developed by John and ! (I am still working on the book – I will announce it when it is ready – maybe Tom can put it up for sale on the site?) Then I will ask the coach to throw away the drills and play games that help simulate the game… and ask the coaches what these games teach.

I am a lifelong learner and I see you (and many others on this site) are as well. Nice to see! Keep it up. I look forward to your future posts!

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

[hockeygod]

Why hockey is the smartest game in the world:
And how a good mind can turn the game upside down

by Adam Gopnik in MacLeans Magazine, Tuesday, September 27, 2011

***EXCERPT***

It seems to me there are two things that make hockey the greatest of all games. One is rooted in what it gives to the players and the other in what it gives to its fans. For the player—and for us as vicarious players—it offers the finest theatre in the world to display the power of spatial intelligence and situational awareness. “Spatial intelligence” is a term that the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner was the first to popularize. His point was that body is inseparable from mind, attitude from analysis, and that there are many kinds of smartness. There is the familiar IQ-test analytic intelligence, but there are also emotional intelligence, social intelligence and spatial intelligence: the ability to grasp a changing whole and anticipate its next stage. It’s the ability to make quick decisions, to size up all the relationships in a fast-changing array and understand them. A related notion is that of situational awareness: a heightened consciousness of your surroundings and both the intentions of the people around you and their anticipated actions.

Well, hockey, obviously, which is played at incredibly high speed, reveals and rewards situational and spatial intelligence at a degree of difficulty that no other sport possesses. So much so that the greatest of all hockey players, Wayne Gretzky, had, besides his other significant skill as a fine-edge skater, almost nothing else that he was specifically good at. That’s his gift—the gift of spatial and situational intelligence: knowing what’s going to happen in three seconds, anticipating the pattern approaching by seeing the pattern now, sussing out the goalie’s next decision and Jari Kurri’s or Luc Robitaille’s eventual trajectory in what would be a single glance if a glance were even taken. Gretzky is the extreme expression of the common skill the game demands.

To watch him behind the net was to see stasis rooted in smarts. I recall games (one in particular, late in his career, against the Canadiens stands out; you can still find it on YouTube) in which he would position himself there, waiting for the other team to make a move. If you went after him he would put the puck perfectly on the stick of the open man. If you left him there he would wait, and perhaps try a wraparound or find a free winger as the patterns of the power play wove and unwove in front of him. It depended on supreme skill held in tactful abeyance—and it was a demonstration that he also scores who only stands and waits.

Anyone who has kids who play hockey knows the phenomenon: there are big, strong kids and smaller, weaker kids—and then there is always one kid who “sees the ice,” who, in the midst of all the flubbed passes and scraped shins and sudden falls, grasps where the play is going next. Hockey is the one game in which, as a hockey-playing savant of my acquaintance says, a good mind can turn a game upside down.

In no other sport can a quality of mind so dominate as in the supposedly brutal game of ice hockey. Hockey is the one game where an intelligence can completely overthrow expectations. (When Gretzky recognized his successor in the still-adolescent Sidney Crosby, it was exactly that quality he was recognizing: not athleticism, but insight.) Yes, no doubt soccer rewards similar skills. A Johan Cruyff or an Eric Cantona has similar situational awareness and spatial intelligence, while we grow disgusted with superior players—like the shoulda-been-great Brazilian Ronaldo—who lack it; but there are 11 men on a soccer pitch and maybe two goals in a game, and the whole thing, despite the sporadic show of “pace,” proceeds at a walk, sometimes accelerating to a jog.

All sports entertain us in part because of the thrill of watching a great athlete do what we can’t, even if what he or she’s doing is in part a mental exercise. Our empathetic engagement—what a close female friend of mine (whose great-uncle is actually in the Hockey Hall of Fame) calls “pitiful vicarious identification” or “the sad armchair act of pretending you’re doing what you’re actually watching”—with the players is key. But sports also entertain us as forms of drama. We get engaged, even in the absence of a single great player or performance, with the way the game tells a thrilling and unpredictable narrative woven by 10 or 20 players at once. A great game is a great show, and it’s also a great story. What makes those stories great is when they’re unpredictable but not unjust—uncharted enough that there’s no certainty of the result but organized enough that the result does not seem to be pure chance.

I think by now most of us have heard, however vaguely, something about the branch of mathematics called game theory. It’s a way of understanding competitions that began with the great mathematician John von Neumann at the end of the 1940s and has since spread and conquered the world, or at least many academic disciplines, particularly economics and some of the more hard-ass parts of political science. Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behaviour in strategic situations, games, in which an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others. Anyone who has seen the movie A Beautiful Mind knows about John Nash and his equilibrium, and the more general notion that you can understand many social phenomena in the world if you see them as simple games rooted in guessing and outguessing your opponent’s plans.

The funny thing about game theory is that, though it has been used to explain everything from economics to nuclear warfare, it’s very rarely used to explain games—or at least not sports. And yet when you think about it, part of the pleasure we take in sports has everything to do with game theory, which has exactly to do with questions of how much we know, how much our opponents know, how much they know of what we know, and so on.

I am far too innumerate to even attempt a rigorous analysis of this sort, but I do think it can be enlightening to play with a few of its key concepts. One concept opposes open-information (or perfect-information) games against ones with closed, or imperfect, information. Chess is probably the most famous instance of an open-information game. When you’re playing chess, you have all the information the other player has; nothing is concealed from you, and so there are truly never any surprises in the strategic sense. There are no hidden rooks. On the other hand, old-fashioned five-card draw poker is a completely hidden or closed-information game. You don’t know what’s in your opponent’s hand, so you have to guess on the basis of their behaviour and your knowledge of their past playing patterns what they might be holding in their hand right now. It’s a game of deduced intention but also of inferred information. The best games—the games that people seem to enjoy most—offer some kind of equilibrium between a small sum of hidden information and a larger sum of open information held in tension. In Texas Hold ’em, the most popular of poker games, there are five shared cards—a lot of open information—and a crucial two cards’ worth of closed information.

Team sports, which are both athletic contests and strategic ones, can be ranked along the same dimensions. Basketball, for instance, in some ways comes closest to being an open-information sport. Plays are limited, surprises are unimportant—no one basket is so significant that it is worth over-planning to achieve it, and even if you could, it wouldn’t matter that much. What matters are trends, tendencies and small tactical victories—real strategic surprise is relatively limited. The great basketball coach Phil Jackson ran his famous triangle offence with the Lakers, and with the Bulls before them. It requires tactical discipline, but the other team always knows what he’s doing; it’s a question of whether they can do it more efficiently and consistently than you can defence it. (The key event in basketball, foul shooting, is purely mechanical, and a matter, not trivial, of consistency alone.)

Pro football, on the other hand, is a good example of something closer to a closed-information sport: you have a series of particular strategic plans that you invent in secret and that you then spring on your opponent. That’s why football rewards coaches like the great Bill Walsh, whose genius was not for tactical stability but for strategic innovation and surprise—half the playing time is actually spent watching people plan in secret. In the ’89 Super Bowl, Walsh pulled a single play, designed to freeze a Bengals linebacker, from his script for a winning touchdown. That he had a script is proof of the partly closed nature of the game. And baseball is more like Hold ’em poker: everything’s evident except the hole card of the pitch that’s about to be thrown.

Now, hockey looks, when you watch it with an unpractised eye, like an open-information sport. It looks like wild improvisation with no strategic plan underneath—a series of instinctive reactions to bouncing pucks and sliding players. (When people say they can’t see the puck, I think what they really mean is that they can see it but they just can’t see its point, its purpose in travelling. The game appears to be simply a brutal series of random collisions in which the invisible puck somehow sporadically ends up in the net.) But the more closely you observe the game, the more you see that it’s kind of the Texas Hold ’em of the world’s spectator sports: there’s a great deal that’s open, but crucial elements are buried or cloaked and are revealed only afterwards to the eye of experience and deeper knowledge. There are hole cards in hockey, and some of the fun of being a fan is learning to look for them.

Some of this is plain in the inordinate effect a man with a plan can have on a hockey team; the defensive system that Jacques Lemaire installed with the Devils could take a mediocre team and make it into a champion. The trap, or shell, is tedious but it’s wonderfully effective, and unlike the triangle offence it’s hidden, in the sense that it takes place so quickly, and demands so many rapid adjustments, that I have found even experienced hockey fans have a hard time describing the way it works. The tension between the obvious givens and hidden hole cards is true as well at a more granular level of the game.

Just think about the difference between taking a penalty in soccer and the shootout in hockey. The penalty in soccer is something that academic game theorists have actually looked at in detail: what’s the best technique, they ask, the optimal strategy for the shooter in soccer to pursue when he’s got a penalty shot to take? It’s a play of minds, because the goalkeeper has to anticipate what the shooter will do, and the shooter, the goalkeeper. Shoot left? Shoot right? High? Low? And the theorists have discovered that the optimal strategy is . . . just to blast away. The goal is so big and the goalkeeper so small that the shooter is much better off just blasting to the middle rather than trying to pick a corner.

So, predictably, the optimal strategy for the goalkeeper in the soccer shootout is just to stay in place, not dive to either corner—though it’s very hard for a goalkeeper to summon the discipline to do that. And so you have this situation in soccer where basically any kind of strategic planning doesn’t pay. In the shootout in hockey, you have exactly the same confrontation between shooter and goalkeeper, but the shooter just blasting away or the goalie staying in place is never going to work. There are just too many dimensions in play—the shot takes place in depth and in motion, not from a fixed spot—and the odds between goalie and shooter are too closely matched. The shootout in hockey puts a premium on having a hole card: an idea, a strategy, a plan in advance, unknown to the opposition. And the goalie needs to respond to that kind of strategic initiative, that kind of creativity, with aggressive anticipation. The obvious play, which benefits you in a sport such as soccer, penalizes you in hockey.

Though it may seem as if the great goals in hockey history were chance events, stray moments seized by opportunistic players, the truth is that as you understand the sport more deeply you can see that there is a kind of hidden strategic reservoir, almost a morality play, a history, behind every great goal in the game. When I think about the great goals that have been scored in hockey, the famous goals in my own lifetime, I see an element of historical pattern and strategic consequence in each of them. I think, for instance, of probably the most famous goal in my own fanship, the goal that Guy Lafleur scored in 1979 in the famous “too many men on the ice” game, the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup semifinals. What’s remarkable about that goal, if you watch it now, is not only that Lafleur takes a terrific shot but also how much else is going on around it, pointing toward past and future alike. Seeing it now, we’re stunned by the sheer incompetence of Gilles Gilbert, the Boston goalie, who is playing a stand-up-and-kick style that now looks antediluvian—a very old-fashioned kind of upright goaltending whose futility, so evident on this shot, would make it extinct within a decade. The shot invalidates a style, not just a moment.

But one also notices that the man actually carrying the puck is Jacques Lemaire, Lafleur’s centre, and that Lemaire draws the defence toward him before he makes a quiet drop pass to set up the shot. Now, Lemaire was only promoted to the top line after an up-and-down career as a one-dimensional player, famous for his heavy shot. (He in effect won the Stanley Cup eight years before, by taking a more or less random shot from centre ice that happened to stun and elude the Chicago Blackhawks goalie Tony Esposito.) But in this case Lemaire doesn’t take the shot, and we’re reminded that Lemaire was schooled for five years by Scotty Bowman, the Canadiens coach, who patiently transformed him from an offensive-minded player into a defensive-minded player, first demoting him to the second line, then eventually putting him back on the first line after he understood the virtues of an all-over game. And it’s Lemaire, as we’ve seen, who then takes Bowman’s regimen and, in his years with the dull but effective New Jersey Devils, turns it into the modern trap, an ice-clogging reactive defensive game plan that demands more self-discipline than style. So the pass, in a sense, is more potent than the goal. What Lemaire has learned matters as much as what Lafleur has done—a whole history compressed into a back pass and a shot.

Part of the joy of understanding the game is being able to read it well enough to spot when those pivotal moments take place. The fine hockey writer Michael Farber has analyzed Sidney Crosby’s goal in the most recent Olympics in that spirit: six seconds that subsume 20 years. One could do the same with Mario Lemieux’s great goal in the ’87 Canada Cup—seeing, for instance, how in that goal Gretzky identified himself as primarily a playmaker, not a scorer—but it’s enough to say for now that each of these goals is the result of a plan and history unknown to or beyond the control of the opposition, shared among the players through their common spatial intelligence, each taking place at such high speed that the plan is invisible to all but the tutored eye. Each is crucially significant to the outcome of the contest but is not the only such moment in the contest, and each has long-term consequences for the way the sport evolves.

Hockey approaches a more perfect balance between planning and reading, idea and improvisation, than any other sport. Runs in baseball are information; in basketball, baskets are events; in soccer, goals are exclamations. But goals in hockey are punctuation—they end sentences that can be traced through phrases to make long chains of meaning. And so great goals, like great aphorisms, repay any amount of after-the-fact analysis. How did so much get packed into one phrase, or play? Ice hockey looks like a reflex, rapture sport but is really a rational, reasoned one. Spotting the patterns amid the quick plunges is part of the fun. I often go to sleep at night running through great goals I have seen—there is a weighting toward the seventies Habs, but only because they were the greatest team of all time, not because I was a teenager then—and what astonishes me is that, no matter how often you rewind them, they still play back beautifully, and in your mind’s eye (or on the YouTube screen) you always see more. Hockey offers drama at first viewing, meaning on the second, and learning on the third and fourth, even 40 years on. The tradition that began a hundred years ago in Montreal—when the English university idea of “rugby on ice” met the evolving French-Canadian idea of a high-skilled performance—of a game that combined the collisions of rugby with the beauty of ice-skating, has, if only for a moment, been realized, and it lingers in your head.

—–

This article, although 'flowery', speaks to the importance of understanding the game – Game Intelligence.

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

[hockeygod]

http://www.Ted.com

If you haven't seen these videos, or visited this site, you must! You can browse topics that are pertinent to you. It has been mentioned on here before, but I thought it should be revisited. They give me a shot in the arm!

—–

2006

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes — including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

2010

In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning — creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

—–

2001

With profound simplicity, Coach John Wooden redefines success and urges us all to pursue the best in ourselves. In this inspiring talk he shares the advice he gave his players at UCLA, quotes poetry and remembers his father's wisdom.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/john_wooden_on_the_difference_between_winning_and_success.html

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

[hockeygod]

RookieCoach wrote:
HockeyGod ,

I would agree with your comments about how practise's are run these days. Last year with Atom age kids , I added games with accountability , and it was surprising how the level of play in that game picked up.

I ran a practise for a Bantam age group on the weekend , and during the game that I was running I over heard one of the players saying , " i love this game , this is fun " . The winning team cheered as the other team did lap at the end and picked up the pucks.

But here is my question for you and Tom .

Say you have a team that is weak backchecking. Always getting out numbered at your blue line and D are backing in too far as a result. This is happening time and time again.

So for a 50 min practise how would you correct this using the ABC method ?

What kind of games would you use.?

Or would you use drills with accountability to reinforce your theme of the practice.?

Most coaches would do drills with no accountability I'm sure. Players might get yelled at if they don't pick up their man , but that would be as far as it goes.

Teaching the game with games is something most coaches don't understand , as you stated in post post earlier. But I think most coaches would;d be open to giving it a try if they understood how it works.

Keep up the great posts , I'm sure yourself and Tom are getting many coaches to at least thing about an different form of teaching the game.

Thanks
RookieCoach

RookieCoach,

In addition to the previous comments we made about this post, Tom posted this drill today… would be worth a look as you wanted some backchecking stuff… this is a 2 vs 2 with 2 extra people applying backpressure. Let me know if it helps!

http://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/forum/getattachment.php?id=866

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

[RookieCoach]

Thanks Dean, . I just added it to my Drill Draw . Looks like a great transition game. I tried th DT100 1-1 with support game on the weekend. Also the 2on2 with backcheck. Worked well. Short of players at practice , so I ran it one way 2/3's ice. Finished with a 2on2 with jokers at the blueline. Players battled for a puck and rule was they had to pass it to their player at the blueline before they could attack. Made it a 3on 2 at that point. or 3on3.

I also like the Dt400 Support-Hinge-Attack-defend game that Tom posted. Hits a lot of game situation roles.

Keep up the great posts. I read them all ..

Thanks Again

RookieCoach.

[Tom Molloy]

Rookie Coach, the transition games have a lot of advantages and they are not understood by many coaches and I hardly ever see them used. Even in Austria where I coached with elite coaches from every major hockey nation I saw very few transition games. they were still stuck in the whistle and drills Pavlov era. (I just heard a bell and can't figure out why I am salivating)

– players change on the go and there are no whistles; so the coach is free to coach and not be a traffic cop.
– you can vary the number of players joining the play which creates any numerical situation you want the players to work on. Talk to them when they return to the line-up about their decisions in that situation.
– add variations such as dump-ins or regroups to replicate real game situations.
– transition games can be played in any area; one zone, cross ice, half the rink, 2/3 of the rink etc.
– you can vary between passive support, active support or some players active and some players passive when they join the play.
– both offense and defense can get support.
– another benefit is that the transition games are so intense that you DON'T NEED TO DO CONDITIONING SKATING; your players will be doing GAMELIKE SKATING at high intensity which is much better than skating in directions you don't skate in games (straight up and back, stop and starting, around nets)
————-

In the DT400 (game on one goal with extra players waiting for their turn) you can vary the number of supporting players from 1-to 3. If you have passive support from 3 players then everyone works on the 3 on 3 attack, cycle and low dzone coverage.

In the DT400 2-2 game with back pressure that I posted yesterday the closest supporting player gives back pressure on the puck carrier and pushes him/her into the defender in a defensive 2-1. My team always back pressures and that player stays low in the zone; so it is a great way to practice this skill and also forces the attackers to go to the net quickly or they won't have a play.

In the DT400 2-2 with a regroup everyone learns how to hinge and the regrouping attackers must give wall and middle support. The defenders must gap up and take away ice. These are all things that are important habits especially if you want your team to play TOTAL HOCKEY like we are attempting to do.

Next practice we will do a DT100 (full ice with new players rotating in) transition game with the defenders getting passive support from the point, i.e. the defenders will just keep the puck in and defend vs the original defensive players who will attack the other way. This will have everyone practice a full ice 2 on 2 and low zone play. I will then add that the 2 players at the point are actice, i.e. you can pass to them as jokers, they can shoot or pass right away but can't go in. This causes the 2 low attackers to get open for a pass and tip, screen, rebound, while the defenders must stay dside and cover one each, box out, seal sticks to the outside and breakout. You can vary the number of supporting players as well.

I belive that transition games are the logical progression from situation drills and require a lot more GAME INTELLIGENCE. Many times we play a certain situation to something like 3 goals and then change the amount of players supporting.

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

[RookieCoach]

Tom, Thanks for the variation given in regards to the transition games you posted. The passion and how much you believe in this teaching method is shown in every post.
Dean mentioned to me about trying the transition game Card 241 and 238. of your book ((Hockey Coaching ABC's.) For the first time it went very well and the players quickly picked the games up.I was limited to one goalie and short on players so it was played out of one end 2/3's ice with a regroup. It was nice to see a defender have to battle instead of giving up after a shot on net. They had to quickly breakout the other way hitting his support players with a pass.The players controlled the flow and how they reacted to each situation. It was different every time. I like the variations that could could be added. Now that the players understand the basic flow of the game , variations could be added for a new look..

Sorry Dean , I don't mean to get off topic on your post .
Thanks

RookieCoach

[hockeygod]

All's good RookieCoach… not really a thread hijack… just trying to help a fellow coach – to help enable smarter coaches and in turn, smarter players; which is the goal of Game Intelligence!

The Colombian and I had a solid 2.5 hour meeting today with one of the top superintendent's in the Catholic School Board. This fellow is in charge of the Hockey Canada Skills Academy hockey program in all 14 schools that host it.

We explained our philosophy and approach, and look forward to further discussions on improving the state of the game in the local schools… should prove interesting!

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

[DaveM]

Quick question for you guys – Does anyone recall the video Kai posted of Detroit and Pittsburgh (I think) playing with a red, rellow, and green indicator on the screen to indicate transition from defense to offense? I'd really like to show our guys this. If you remember the link please share it here.

Thanks in advance,
Dave

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