Feature Story
Where have all the Hogans
gone?
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
Imagine you’re coaching a young golfer
who’s trying to make a living on the
You’d probably tell him Ben Hogan stories
and suggest he hit balls ‘til his hands bleed. “The answer’s in the dirt,”
Hogan would say. “I don’t care if you started at dawn,
you haven’t even begun to practice if there’s still some daylight.”
Actually, you could skip the stories and
just accompany him to the range, because there isn’t a serious golfer in the
world who needs the Hogan lesson. In fact, if you want to see a look of
amazement, tell them about this hockey tradition — the one where practice means
doing only what your team does — a lot of systems, a couple shots, a quick
skate and pack it in — no extra skill practice on your own.
If a young basketball player has all the
tools but is missing outside shots — a tennis player lacking a killer serve — a
pianist who is one tiny step from stardom — the solution would be the same. Practice, practice, practice.
Not in hockey. If a player can skate like
the wind, has great hands and a competitive mind to go with it, but he just
can’t shoot, we label him a defensive forward or a playmaker who just can’t
score — or better yet, we just send him to the minors. There are no half-hour
shooting sessions before and after team practice as there would be in
basketball.
In hockey, we just don’t practice skills
very well — the way it’s done in other sports. We have this self-defeating
loyalty to previous labels like, “He just can’t shoot a puck,” or,
“Goal-scorers are born, not developed. They have a gift for scoring that just
can’t be taught.”
I’ve got news for those who quote such
labels. It comes straight out of the Biology 101 textbook: there is nothing in
our
Hogan’s right. We’re wrong. The answer is
practice.
Actually, Scott Bjugstad’s
right. As a former goal-scorer himself in college and professional hockey,
Scott learned the value of practice. He runs summer camps to pass on the good
news to kids who learn that the number of goals they will end up scoring in their
lifetime has a much closer relationship to their practice habits than to their
genetic makeup.
Ask Dino Ciccarelli.
With all due respect, there have been very few
Dino was willing to take punishment to
screen the goalkeeper, to score on rebounds, deflections and shots while being
slashed, hooked and cross-checked. When
he had an opportunity from the slot, it wasn’t wasted with a loud blast off the
glass. He hit the target, because that’s what he did in his many hours of
practice.
Watch any basketball team practice, and
you’ll see that team drills are often interrupted for a few minutes of shooting
practice — then back to team drills, and later some more shooting
practice. I guess they think shooting is
important and can be improved. Their genetic makeup — superstar or something
less — doesn’t limit their practice.
In hockey, we could have a dozen targets
on simple steel standards at every rink, kinda like
those extra baskets in their round-ball gyms. Every hockey team that uses the
arena could quickly pull the targets on the ice, organize a pre-determined
shooting routine for every station and kids could get in an extra hundred shots
each practice.
We’d work on wrist shots, slap shots,
deflections, rebounds, top-shelfers and one-timers.
There’d be a station or two for shots from awkward, uncomfortable positions —
just like Kovalchuk did it when he was a kid.
Here’s a wager. I bet that girls could be
just as good at one-timers as boys, but they never practice them. One-timers
are not limited by strength — just by timing and repetition. Nor do the best
girls (or boys for that matter) feel the need to practice them; they just
stickhandle through the defense and deke the goalie —
until they get on the Olympic team and play
If we did have shooting targets at every
Minnesota arena — if we interrupted our system-oriented practices with a few
minutes of individual shooting — if the number of shots by each kid was not limited
by the length of the lines waiting for goalies — if we no longer labeled kids,
but taught them — maybe Minnesota could produce some
And Hogan would look down and say, “Those
hockey coaches are catching on.”
Jack Blatherwick,
Ph.D., is a physiologist for the