Feature Story
Does our system encourage creative play?
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
“The art of creativity means you
sometimes surprise yourself.”
— Michael Jordan
“…and surprise the coach.”
— Cardiac Jack
Henrik Zetterberg was not only the best offensive player in the
recent Stanley Cup final series, but he was also the best defensive player —
and the most creative — at both ends of the ice. That’s right – just as
creative on defense as he was in making brilliant offensive plays out of
nowhere.
Do you ever wonder if there’s something
about the genetic makeup of Europeans and Russians that allows them to turn out
so many creative hockey players? Or — lest we sink into a debate about whether
European genes are the product of evolutionary chance or intelligent design —
perhaps it would be more productive to consider the difference between their
development programs for young players and ours.
Do our manuals and seminars — the ones
that prepare us for certification as coaches — do these educational vehicles
help us develop the next Henrik Zetterberg?
Honestly, I don’t know if they do or not.
When I began this coaching adventure, certification hadn’t been invented yet.
No one paid fees to governing bodies — perhaps we were naïve, and hadn’t
considered the benefits of being governed on the hockey rink by people living a
thousand miles away.
We hadn’t thought of insurance in case we
slipped through a deep crack in the ice, and we wore stocking caps on cold
days, not helmets. Players learned to make creative plays on the outside pond,
and coaches needed on-the-job education for building and maintaining those
rinks.
So how far have we come in 50 years?
Sports science has produced money-hungry
fitness gurus who speak Latin instead of English. A leg is not a leg; it’s a femur. Being
in “hockey shape” isn’t technical enough; it’s about aerobic and anaerobic
endurance, as if for one period of the game you play at a jogging pace and
another where you sprint. But any player knows what “hockey shape” means: you
can play just as fast and just as skillfully at the end of the game as at the
beginning.
No one thought balancing on a physio-ball was more important than stick-handling and
shooting — or that you couldn’t attempt either one before training the
Transverse Abdominus and other core muscles. We
weren’t aware there was any other way to skate but on the edges of the blades.
“Exposure” meant playing outside in the elements, not playing in front of
scouts and agents who might determine the future for a 14 year old.
It was likely that a game of hockey would
be a contest to see who could get to 20 goals before the snow piled up too
high. Today a youth hockey game can’t be played without three refs, two
timekeepers, an arena full of cheerleaders and a trophy for each team.
Today, a “smart player” is one who does
exactly what the coach diagrams on the board — “sticks to the system.” A “smart player” used to be one who made
brilliant, creative plays — things the coach had never seen before.
That’s Henrik
Zetterberg, 2008. He was raised in a Swedish program that taught everyone to
play defense as passionately as offense. It taught them to respect the
importance of a team system, but encouraged creativity within that framework.
For example, when the Red Wings were down
3-on-5 for an extended time, they had Zetterberg on the ice as much as
possible. The coach knew that in desperate situations — ones where it is not
possible to draw up a system for three X’s to stop five O’s — the players would
simply have to come up with a way to overachieve. Zetterberg found those undiagrammed solutions for desperate moments, and
This was a lot like the last Super bowl,
where the winning play was actually a broken play, and the QB and receiver just
did what needed to be done. If they hadn’t come up with something out of the
ordinary the game would have had a different outcome.
Winston Churchill hated to have his
quotes changed in any way, but I’ll take the liberty. His thoughts about
winning a war might be a good lesson for coaches who think their “system” is
the answer to all situations. Churchill might have advised coaches, “Sometimes
in war (or a hockey game) it may not be good enough to do your job. You simply
have to do whatever it takes.”
Bud Grant coached the Vikings to a
position of dominance in the NFL with a philosophy that the “system” is not
enough. Sometimes players must come up with creative plays outside the norm. So
the Vikings practiced picking up fumbles and running for touchdowns, rather
than simply falling on them as most teams would. He encouraged Fran Tarkenton to accentuate his personal best style — the greatest
scrambling quarterback in history — rather than making him throw from the
pocket, the way it was outlined on the blackboard.
Those are two valuable lessons for youth
coaches who want to allow a little Zetterberg to grow in each player. Practice
creativity. Incorporate scrimmages — big and small games
without scoreboards, not high-stakes contests where parents and friends might
criticize mistakes. Without the scoreboard, players will try creative
new tricks. Some work. Some don’t, but no one learns creativity if they’re
intimidated by the scoreboard into playing it safe — by the book — all the
time.
Herb Brooks often said, “If we want
creative hockey players in the
Jack Blatherwick,
Ph.D., is a physiologist for the