Unfocused development

Article From: www.letsplayhockey.com
Exact link: http://www.letsplayhockey.com/953blatherwick.html 

By Jack Blatherwick

Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

Picture a Detroit assembly line where thousands of workers contribute in their own area of expertise, but no one has been told what the final product should look like. Is it a truck, a sports car or a luxury sedan? Without leadership, each assembly line worker might be the best in the world, but the result is chaos.

That’s where we are in hockey right now — chaos. North American coaches have turned the project of offseason development over to outside experts, most of whom are knowledgable in their own special area. But they do not have the broader perspective of the hockey coach to know what the final product is supposed to look like — perhaps a Sidney Crosby with Alexander Ovechkin power, driving for a goal.

If we were to ask college hockey coaches, for example, what assets they look for in prospective recruits — what it takes to be a dominant college hockey player, what it takes to win — the list might go something like this: competitiveness, rink sense, skating skill, speed, agility,stickhandling, shooting, passing. Some would include strength in this list, others might not — certainly not the first thing on the list.

Given this, why does so much of the offseason development of a youngster who wants to play college hockey take place in the weight room? And assuming the college coach believes some of his current players don’t shoot well enough and some need help with their skating, why does he just send them off to the strength coach for six months of the offseason?

In Russia and Europe, it isn’t this way. Hockey coaches are in charge of the development of skills and athleticism year-round — because they know what the final product is supposed to be. They train with a plan, focused on that objective.

Much of their strength training is geared toward skating. Much of ours is geared toward building nose tackles. Europeans have this belief — strange as it might seem to an American — that shooting practice can improve shooting skill — on-ice or off. Russian hockey coaches are like basketball coaches in our country: they teach athletes how to practice skills.

Actually, American hockey might be the only sport that doesn’t believe in skill practice for all ages. If a prospect doesn’t shoot very well at 17 years of age, we send him to the weight room to get bigger, so he can play like a goon. 

While watching the Masters golf tournament and the NCAA Basketball Final Fours for men and women, did you think those sports require more skill than hockey? Of course not — especially when you consider the difficulty of performing hockey skills on skates at super-fast speed, against the best defenders in the world.

For some reason, however, we have a tradition in American hockey that after a certain age — perhaps 10 years old — we just work on team skills and do not encourage players to practice individual skills. High school and college coaches rarely send kids away for the summer with a book (or a DVD) with drills for improving skating, stickhandling and shooting. But every college player gets an elaborate book for strength workouts.

Ironic, isn’t it, when you consider the list of assets needed to win.

Players could practice awkward one-timers or off-balance wrist shots — or shooting the way Russian forwards do when they skate parallel to (or away from) the goal line rather than toward it. Defensemen could practice moving sideways down the blue line to avoid getting shots blocked next winter.

We must also change the tradition that the only time we practice skating is with a skating instructor. After all, once a golfer has worked with the pro, there will be hours and hours of individual practice.

None of this is meant to diminish the importance of strength training. It is an integral part of skating development and overall hockey performance as well as injury prevention. But it is certainly not more important than skating itself, not more important than sprinting or agility drills or skating-specific jumps. It’s just one piece of the puzzle.

Until we focus on the entire puzzle — making sure that all the pieces point toward that finished product we have pictured — our offseasontraining is unlikely to produce the results that the effort should demand.

Given the seasons Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin have had, it is worthwhile to consider how they were developed. As you watch them in the playoffs, understand that their youth and junior coaches knew exactly what they were trying to build. Training was planned and focused on that objective at all times, whether off-ice or on.

No one said, “Go to the weight room. Work hard. I don’t know if it has anything to do with hockey — just give it 100 percent.”

Jack Blatherwick, Ph.D., is a physiologist for the Washington Capitals.

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