If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, or maybe even if you haven’t, you might be familiar with the 10,000 hour concept, which postulates that it takes that minimum number of hours of ‘deliberate practice’ (when psychologists talk about deliberate practice they mean practicing in a way that pushes your skill set as much as possible) to become ‘expert’ at something. Like chess, piano, ballet. Or hockey.
Hmm.
While 10,000 (or more) hours of practice may be possible for some pursuits, let’s break that down for hockey. My son is 21. He’s been playing hockey for about 16 years. I can only base this on personal experience, but I’d guess that the average duration of a practice for him during that time was probably about an hour. So let’s do some math.
Not cutting it. What about throwing games in there?
Getting desperate here.
Dang. At this pace, my son cannot become an ‘expert’ at hockey unless he continues to practice and play until he’s about 57 years old. That’s some serious men’s league action!
But the real question is: what constitutes ‘practice’?
If my son had stuck with his piano lessons (hahahaha!), I think I’d probably have considered ‘practice’ to include actually activating the keys on a piano. Not to minimize the importance of off-ice fitness and skills development efforts, but apply that thinking to hockey and I think I’d consider ‘practice’ to include actually skating and / or puck handling and / or on-ice strategy and tactics instruction. Which means my previous numbers are flawed. Because games are not ‘practice’.
Even if we consider that the best players might actually be on the ice for 15 or 20 minutes per game, that reduces the effective ‘practice’ time of a one hour game by about 66%, which drops my son’s total ‘practice’ numbers considerably. More telling, a 2002 USA Hockey study conducted during the Salt Lake Winter Olympics and the USA Hockey Tier I Youth National Championships tracked how much time the best players had the puck on their sticks during games. At the Olympic level, superstars like Tony Amonte, Joe Sakic and Mike Modano averaged one minute and seven seconds of puck possession per game. At the youth level, the best players, including Zach Parise and Phil Kessel, possessed the puck an average of one minute and six seconds.
Even NHL veterans with 1,200 games on their resumés can’t boast that many hours of ‘deliberate practice’. The late, great Gordie Howe—who played more than 3,000 pro games—has to come closest, but even he likely maxed out at about 7-8,000 hours. What this means is that going by the 10,000 hour rule, we’ve never seen an ‘expert’ hockey player. And we probably never will.
Simply put, we need to find smarter ways to help players become ‘experts’ before their time on the ice runs out.
Practice design has come a long way in the last few years. Smart, station-based drills provide kids with repetitions and potential for corrective instruction while they move from skill to skill within a short practice window. Small area games provide kids with a greater number of puck touches and teach them to pass and stickhandle ‘in a phone booth’. But what about finding ways to increase effort / compete level? I personally despise running on a treadmill for even 20 minutes, but put me on the ice chasing a puck and I’ll skate as hard as I can for as long as I can. Competition drives effort because it introduces an element of fun. That’s why we all love to play the games!
So maybe, when it comes to hockey, one hour of smart, intense, competitive and fun practice can have the same effect as eight hours of unmotivated, grinding work. And maybe that can free kids up to spend more time reading or swimming, doing homework or playing the piano, or playing baseball, soccer, lacrosse, tennis, basketball, volleyball or golf, or doing any one of a thousand other things that might ultimately make them more multidimensional as athletes and as people.
We believe that by making practices more fun, and by introducing elements of ‘scoring’ in the form of PowerPlayer ratings for Practice and Custom Tracking dimensions, we can help young players unconsciously elevate their intensity, develop strong habits, and reach their peak hockey proficiency levels long before they reach their 57th birthdays.
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If I coach the way I was coached, and my coaches were coached the way they were coached, and so on, then I’m coaching like someone from the 1800s.
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There’s no question that baseball is a numbers game. So when we hear coaches and managers get excited about bringing PowerPlayer Baseball to their athletes, we know we’re onto something.
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For the last 19 years, I was a competitive hockey player, so I haven’t really looked at the sport through a purely coaching lens too often. But I’ve seen a lot of coaches.
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“We thought we couldn’t ask for anything more, but then the club really out-did themselves by adding PowerPlayer. We’re extremely excited that Pineville Ice House is implementing this. To me it really proves that they have the players’ best interests at heart.”
Read Post07.24.19
It was 92 degrees F / 33 degrees C in Toronto last weekend, so naturally hundreds of hockey coaches converged on Ryerson University to immerse themselves in three days of knowledge, insight, innovation, and storytelling at the 2019 TeamSnap Coaches Site Hockey Coaches Conference.
Read Post07.08.19
It must be that time of year. Hockey-centric social media is jammed with posts exhorting people to ‘do the work,’ ‘embrace the grind,’ and to be sure to take ‘no days off.’
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Kids do best when they instinctively know that the adults they rely on to guide them through life are in alignment. A coach who is backed up by a parent is a more effective coach, and frequent communication goes a long way toward making that possible.
Read Post05.01.19
First, if you want to make your life better as a coach, focus on becoming a better communicator. PowerPlayer definitely helps with that. And second, PowerPlayer ignites kids. It just fires them up.
Read Post04.08.19
In case you haven’t noticed, we love feedback. So we asked a whole bunch of hockey parents — our users (parents of hockey players whose coaches use PowerPlayer) and non-users (hockey parents in general) — for their thoughts about feedback, as it pertains to them and their young athletes.
Read Post03.11.19
I recently posted an article to a Facebook group in which the author explores the highly divisive topic of ice time, arguing both for and against the idea that ‘shortening the bench’ is a net positive for young hockey players. As you might have guessed, the post generated a lot of comments.
Read Post03.01.19
In youth hockey, where development is (or should be) the focus, wins and losses only tell part of the story.
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We’re excited about our numbers to date, because we know we can build on them. After all, that’s what long-term development is all about.
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I want to do everything I can to get the kids I work with to the next level — whatever that means to them individually — and to give them every advantage possible.
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If you’re coaching youth team sports, you’re coaching other people’s kids — which means you’re coaching parents too. In any successful relationship, communication is essential. The challenge in coaching, of course, is time.
Read Post11.23.18
As a player, I would have loved to get this kind of feedback. I always wanted to be first, to be the best. But how could I know what my coach was thinking about me? Not every player is ready to ask their coach questions — some people are just shy — and I’m talking about players from minor hockey all the way to pro.
Read Post11.07.18
I flipped on the NHL Network the other day. While I usually don’t pay too much attention to the panel discussion stuff they broadcast ahead of games, this time something got my attention.
Apparently Jamie Benn was in a bit of a slump.
Read Post10.30.18
I love the drills and metrics for sure, and so do the kids, but seriously, the most useful thing for me personally is the ability to coach from home.
Read Post10.08.18
Ever notice how people just seem to operate at higher levels when they perceive the thing they’re doing to be ‘fun’? That applies to sports, study, and whatever it is most of us do at our day jobs.
Read Post09.15.18
Kids who are positively reinforced by the people who surround them tend to be more confident, happy, and energetic, and are much more likely to succeed than those who may have similar skill sets, but who are less emotionally secure.
Read Post08.28.18
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Read Post07.31.18
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When we share feedback through PowerPlayer we know we’re sharing the beginning of a conversation that might never take place otherwise. How cool is that?
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For millions of kids, parents and coaches, the season is winding down. And all over the hockey world, the thought of a standard one-on-one, end of season coach/player/parent meeting is a stress-inducing prospect for many on both sides of the table.
Read Post02.21.18
I think we need parents to be part of the teams we’re coaching. If parents understand what I’m seeing in their child and can help me motivate them or address something that needs to be addressed, that’s hugely beneficial to their child, to me, and to the team.
Read Post02.07.18
Consisting of three parts, the formula involves providing feedback to young athletes at every stage of the development process as a way to help build their confidence.
Read Post01.15.18
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“We’re seeing huge improvements in our kids now and we’re excited to roll PowerPlayer out to more and more of our players in a big way in 2018.”
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“PowerPlayer really helps bring clarity to coaching, and I’m a big believer in communicating with players.”
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“We wouldn’t accept a teacher telling us that our child had failed a grade at the end of the year without any warning or aid in helping them succeed, so why would we allow our players to go through a season without continuous feedback?”
Read Post08.29.17
We’ve shared PowerPlayer with countless coaches, hockey directors, and parents, and we’re working with organizations from Anchorage to Philadelphia, from Syracuse to Sweden. No one has told us they think providing meaningful feedback to kids and their parents is a bad idea.
Read Post07.19.17
“The coach-player-parent dynamic is critical. Always tell players what you see and what to work on, because feedback is critical.” Ray Ferraro / Coaches Site Conference 2017
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Before your accountant became a professional accountant, before your dentist became a professional dentist, and before the leading scorer in the NHL became a professional hockey player, they were kids.
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Read Post12.19.16
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Growing up with a father who’s been a highly respected member of the Rochester NY-area hockey community for more than 40 years, Chris Collins has led a hockey life.
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A while back, I connected with a friend who’d spent part of his summer sitting in a hockey rink watching his 10 year-old run through some drills. And he was frustrated. Not because of what was happening on the ice during the camp, but because of what wasn’t happening.
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In 2015, a nine-year-old BC kid quit his team with two games left in the season. Seems he’d had enough of sitting on the bench game after game, crying while he watched his teammates play. Why was he denied the opportunity to play?
Read Post07.05.16
Essentially, our current youth hockey measurement system prioritizes games, where effort can produce wins, and virtually ignores practices, where effort can produce winners.
Read Post06.01.16
I grew up with sports. And, oh yeah, of course… school! One of those things was arguably more fun than the other, and the rewards they offered differed, but for any real chance of success, both required not just attention but commitment.
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