Feature Story

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Too much of a good thing?

By Jack Blatherwick

Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

Consider a team effort in a tug of war. If some team members are pulling north, some south, and the objective is to pull the opponents to the east, effort is obviously wasted. There is no synergy; the result is certainly not greater than the sum of the individual parts. In fact, it is far less.

Teaching X’s and O’s is too easy. For the coach of a Tug-of-War team, just point all the arrows to the east. Teaching creativity – teaching read-and-react hockey — is not so easy.

The real question for a coaching staff is … to what extent systems, rather than creativity, should guide team play with the puck. At higher levels of play, it is not necessary – and often highly counterproductive – to tell players what to do on an offensive attack. Not that it is unnecessary to practice attacks, repeating them hundreds of times, so players have the opportunity to find creative opportunities.

In college or NHL hockey, some players are drafted/recruited for their brilliance and creative decision-making. To restrict these abilities would reduce the player to a robot, and robots are a dime a dozen. Coaching at this level involves guiding these young geniuses – and convincing fourth line grinders they aren’t Wayne Gretzky.

The second one isn’t too difficult – just send ‘em to the minors.

But at the other end of the spectrum – in youth hockey – the question needs to be asked: how much potential creativity might be lost if we insist that offensive attack must be done by a team system?

Notice this is a question about insistence, not about teaching. Creativity is never stifled by teaching and practicing new methods of attack. Even the most brilliant young talent will learn and add to the arsenal, things that are picked up in team practices. It doesn’t have to be an unstructured game on the pond.

The problem isn’t one of teaching, it’s one of patience. Coaches never second- guess a player who tries a creative new play in an important game – provided the outcome is favorable. The real test of patience comes when the outcome hurts the team – or simply scares the coach. This invariably brings out the old line, “I told you not to try that.”

When a player chooses not to dump the puck in deep, but tries a creative attack against an opposition in good defensive position – now, we have a debate as to whether or not the coach should second-guess. There are superstars in the NHL who never dump the puck in – no matter what the situation – and they never did when they were nine years old. That’s why they became great.

They make their coaches nervous today, and they did 20 years ago.

There are also superstars who dump it deep in certain situations, allowing the coach’s blood pressure to drop toward normal. But, there are no superstars who dump it in every time the coach would like. That’s why they’re superstars.

The word creativity would be defined in hockey partly by plays the coach has never seen before – and the player never tried before. It just came to him/her in the split second it took for his computer to respond to the defensive setup.

Young players who make the most creative decisions – and have the skill to back it up – might become superstars. Those who aren’t allowed to try will not.

One problem at the youth level is convincing kids with awesome skills that creativity means finding ways to use ALL the tools available. They often have the ability to get it done by themselves, and haven’t faced enough situations yet where this doesn’t work.

But they will face those situations someday or some year, of course, and a good coach should prepare them as much for the future as for the present. This is not an easy job when the player can skate and stickhandle through the opposition at will.

The youth coach also faces a difficult task when a player lacking average skills tries to be creative without using team-mates. In both of these situations, we invoke the word “selfish” where it doesn’t really fit. Kids are not doing this because they’re selfish – they simply have much to learn about the best way to get the job done. They’re kids.

And if coaches have been promoting creativity on the attack, of course it will fail many times in youth hockey games. It’s much simpler – and there will be many more wins – if we just chip it out of the zone, if defensemen throw it on the glass to break out, if we dump it in every time in the neutral zone, forecheck like heck and let the other team make mistakes.

At this point the coaching staff has to be committed to its basic mission: helping kids get better. Sound simple? Try it when you’re losing.

So, let’s review in case this article had some conclusions, not just questions. The only conclusion I see is this: NHL coaches have it made compared to youth coaches. If you want to be the coach of a future Gretzky or Crosby – it ain’t easy.

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