Jeff Pimm arrived at coaching the same way so many others have. 

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Growing up, Jeff played AAA hockey in what is now the GTHL, then played Junior A provincially, and discovered he liked teaching the game when he worked at a couple of hockey schools. He moved on to university and business life, still playing as he went, and when his kids started in hockey he decided to get back into coaching. Today he’s the head coach of the Clarington Flames U11 AA Girls team, and we recently got to spend a few minutes talking with him about coaching and communicating.

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What’s your personal coaching philosophy? How do you approach teaching kids to play this sport?   ​First, it's important to get to know them. I mean, they're still nine and ten, so as much as hockey's their passion, so are some TV shows, and so is making slime, and watching YouTube, doing stuff that kids like to do. Getting to know them on a personal level helps a lot when it comes to trying to teach them stuff on the ice. The second they know that you care about them, they kind of give a little bit more, and that's really it for me at this level.

 

We still grind on the basic skills—skating, shooting, puck control—getting that stuff into their heads each time they're on the ice, but always treating them like they deserve to be treated. There's no yelling like there was twenty or thirty years ago. And it's getting them to figure out aspects of the game without me telling them about it. A lot more questions, and getting them to give responses instead of me feeding them answers all the time.

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You're almost getting them to coach themselves?   ​Yes. And that leads into what we can do with Power Player. Now I have a tool that I can use to ask them to watch a video at home—just little things that immerse them in the game for a little bit each day, to try and build more of a passion for it. That's my goal with this.

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How do you feel about the importance of communication from coaches to individual players? The coaching of individuals relative to the coaching of a team?   ​First, the kids love it. They're starting to recognize when things haven't gone well in a shift, and they come to the bench and their shoulders are down, their heads are down. But the second you tell them “you did great” they're back into it. So to have the ability to do that with players when they’re at home—using PowerPlayer—that's the hope of this. That's what we're leaning towards. We want to have a schedule of what we're going to post throughout the month, and make sure the individual coaches who are responsible for forwards, defense, or goalies are sending stuff accordingly.

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You believe positive reinforcement makes a difference?   ​It does. Most of our kids are still geared to wanting to score goals—they’ve got the grandparents paying them five bucks for every goal! So a lot of our focus with positive reinforcement is in things around the game that they might not know they've actually done correctly. For example, a lot of our defensemen were not in the habit of getting in the way of that first forechecker, to give their other D partner time. One game, I saw a girl create a couple of seconds for her D partner, and that led to us getting the puck up the ice and scoring a goal. I made sure to tell her that as much as the player who shot the puck into the net did a great thing, that wouldn't have happened if she hadn’t given her partner those two seconds. That was about getting her to think about the value of everything else in the game other than scoring. That’s the kind of positive communication we try to have with them.

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You mean not everything that matters shows up on the scoresheet?   ​Right! You can only have so many Kendall Coynes or Marie-Philip Poulins on your team. But there's fifteen skaters and two goalies that all serve a purpose. It's not all about putting the puck in the net. Unfortunately, that's the one component they focus on at this age. But if they start understanding that they're contributing in other ways, there’s a huge benefit. There are so many components of the game that happen when you don't have the puck. So that's the primary goal for the next two years in U11—to get them to learn the game properly.

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Does it help that parents are able to see the communication you’re providing to their kids, and to talk with their kids about it?   ​I started sharing practice plans with players last year. A few of the parents said it was nice for them to talk to their kids about hockey that way. They enjoyed going over that stuff with their kids. I know there's sometimes that car ride home that kids don't appreciate—it's mostly what they could have done better. But this was just about what you're going to be doing today. What do you think this drill is? What do you think you should be doing here? And a lot of the parents I spoke to enjoyed that aspect of it. So that's one of the things I've transitioned over to PowerPlayer now, getting them involved that way.

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What do you think better connections between coaches, players and parents does?   ​ It's a great question. When I played growing up, hockey was competitive, but it didn't seem like it was the entire existence of a child. Now you have parents coming to the rink and talking about “the show,” or scholarships. It's like, your kid's still learning multiplication… but I get that they're all coming to it from a good place. 

 

The first thing I'm asked after tryouts is usually “what are you going to do for my kid?” Now I tell parents: this is our program, these are the tools we're using, and this is how you're going to be involved. There's always dialogue in coaching around what’s appropriate as far as interactions with kids, but every kid loves to be tapped on the helmet and asked, “How are you today?” With PowerPlayer we can do that from home too, after a game, or after a practice. Parents see that, and they appreciate it. That stuff's important. 

 

Parents definitely want to be involved—I think that’s just how parents are these days. And most parents only want to know that you care. So the fact that they have a pulse on what I’m sending out has been hugely beneficial.

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