5 Tips for Hockey Coaches on How to Play a Full 60

As a coach you want your team to give their best effort for the full game.

You want them to have confidence with the puck and play in attack mode offensively.

But you also want them to be committed to the details defensively – playing with grit and tenacity.

You have probably seen glimpses of it – for a period or two – which makes it that much more frustrating when they don’t play the way you know they can.

Unfortunately, coaches often resort to these ineffective strategies to get their team to play a full 60:

• Dictating the Desired Outcomes.
  Telling your players to toughen up, be confident, work hard, and stay focused does not give them the strategies to achieve those outcomes. It is not a ‘how to.’ Likewise it doesn’t help to say stop doubting yourself, forget about, and don’t be soft. This is not effective coaching and guidance.
• Over Indexing on Threats.
  For example, if you don’t get it deep you sit. It is important to strategically manage playing time at different levels. And it can help shape behaviour, but if it is your primary strategy it will likely instill a fear mindset in your athletes and have the opposite effect then you intended.
• Label & Let Go.
  The worst strategy is not a strategy at all really. It’s when a coach doesn’t know what to do or say, so they just label players as soft or lack confidence. They may hope the players can figure it out but they are pretty much giving up on the player.

Instead, here are 5 steps to create your team scorecard so that your players can stay focused and push the pace, shift in and shift out, for the whole game.

• More stories on The Coaches Site:
  •  Hockey Factories Podcast Ep. 1 and 2: Youth Development and Coaching
  •  Developing the Modern Defenceman, presented by Brendan Taylor (VIDEO)
  •  Beyond the X’s and O’s Podcast: Creating a Culture of Accountability
  • 3 Hockey Practice Drills to Teach a Complex Defensive System