This Summer (July & August) we will again be putting together a team of some of the top Squirt & Pee Wee aged players from Central New Hampshire, training for a month, and then going down to Marlborough, Massachusetts and competing in the North American Championships.
Last year's spring team for High School aged kids was such a success that it helped put 2 kids into Junior Hockey, 2 kids into the u16 USPHL, helped prepare several for their first seasons in Varsity New England Prep School Hockey, and prepare the rest for outstanding NHIAA High School seasons.
The Squirt and Pee Wee program ran from July to August last summer as well. These programs are not your typical "Summer Teams". They are not a house league that has no practices, or a Tournament team that just takes in top kids and puts them together for a 3-4 day weekend tournament. These programs are "Training" environments, that give kids opportunities to enhance their skills with advanced coaching and training techniques, build friendship through social and team building activities, and then culminates in a weekend tournament against out of the area competition.
Each participant gets:
Entry into Coca- Cola Showcase Tournament(August 15-18)
4 Weeks of On & Off Ice Training at PSU
2014 Team Scoring Concepts Jersey
Team BBQ Party
I'm looking forward to a great summer of training! Email me for more info- scoringconcepts@gmail.com
This Spring we will again be putting together a team of the best High School aged players from New Hampshire's Lakes Region, training for a month, and then going down to Marlborough, Massachusetts and competing in the Coca- Cola Showcase.
Last year's team was such a success that it helped put 2 kids into Junior Hockey, 2 kids into the u16 USPHL, helped prepare several for their first seasons in Varsity New England Prep School Hockey, and prepare the rest for outstanding NHIAA High School seasons. As the youngest team in our division, we went undefeated in the round robin, and earned a birth in the tournament final. It was a fun weekend. So much so, that we will be adding a Bantam age group for 2014!
Each participant gets:
Entry into Coca- Cola Showcase Tournament(April 17-19)
4 Weeks of On & Off Ice Training at PSU
2014 Team Scoring Concepts Jersey
Team Pizza Party
I'm looking forward to a great spring of training! Email me for more info- scoringconcepts@gmail.com
I was speaking with some coaching colleagues the other night about some of the best ways to practice plan according to your game day timetable. A few of us had watched a youth practice that was close-to, if not the easiest practice we had ever seen, and had wondered if that coach had done any kind of plan beforehand or had set goals for his practice according to his upcoming game schedule.
Here are some of the ways I try to structure practice planning once the season starts.-
1) Using the calendar to determine difficulty- Unless I am rewarding the team for a job well done, I will make the furthest practice away from our next game the most difficult. Typically called a "Battle Day", I will focus on 1 on 1's, 2 on 2's, 3 on 2's, and Defensive Zone concepts. In my opinion this is where everything starts, and you should layer concepts on top of this foundation.
2) Progressing Skills within a practice- The warmup will either be an individual or partner skill, and I will progress the difficulty of drills up throughout the course of the practice session.
3) Uptempo Days- These days occur after the Battle days, and attempt to ramp up the speed to game-like conditions. Drills will include a lot of combo passing, breakouts and regroups.
4) Detail Days- Focusing on Power Play, Penalty Kill and Systems work, the day right before a game, to me, are "detail" days that attempt to drill down into the systemic problems we may be having or highlighting areas that we can exploit in our opponents.
Other concepts-
* Meetings & Film- Meetings should always have a desired outcome, and in my experience the more direct the better. Kids get off topic easily, so keeping these short and to the point have traditionally had the best results for me. It's better to have 2- 5 minute meetings about 2 unrelated topics than try to cram both topics into one meeting, as kids usually won't take away multiple topics. Additionally, I am a big proponent of film study, and find better results are achieved by doing it this way as well. Instead of watching a whole game, I'll take clips of just our d-zone faceoff or clips of just our forecheck, and focus a meeting on those items. This may take a little longer, but a team will have a deeper understanding of the system in the long run.
* Splits- I try to use my help as much and as often as possible. Assistant coaches are great assets, so split your group up into goalie, defense and forward groups and focus 10 minutes of a given practice on details for that specific position. It empowers the coach, and drills down for the players in greater detail.
* Conditioning between drills- I've used sideboards, hardlaps, burpees, board jumps, suicides and small circles between drills to enhance my teams conditioning. I've found that it's best to explain what you want your team to do in this area BEFORE you get on the ice and then give them the whistle or word command, so that they know ahead of time. Keep it fresh and build it up, instead of gassing them all for 10 minutes at the end of practice. A great deal of conditioning can be done off-ice as well.
* Lack of focus... COMPETE!- When a drill is lagging or the pace or attention span for a team is off, I will quickly end a drill and make it a battle or compete drill such as 2 v2 in corner or net battles. I'd rather have 2 minutes of screw ups than 20, and most of the time words can not relay to the team what the coach is seeing in this regard. Make them immediately accountable!
Shot this June on Gilford, New Hampshire, the making of the "Home School Hockey" has been a dream come true.
As a kid I remember watching my fathers old UHAUS (the precursor to USA Hockey) instructional VHS tapes, and memorizing the on-ice tutorials performed by our national teams. With limited ice time as a youngster in New Jersey, I relived the drills and activities they were doing on the ice in my own driveway and in the roller hockey games my friends and I would play on local tennis courts and church parking lots.
Championship Productions has been producing instructional VHS tapes and DVD's for coaches and players since the late 1970's. Throughout their hockey catalog you will see a tremendous amount of focus paid to on ice drills, skills, and systems for a hockey players development. Their off-ice focus has been primarily strength training and conditioning.
What I wanted to accomplish with this video, was to combine an at- home workout DVD (think a tamed down Richard Simmons haha) with applicable drills and skills for hockey, to give kids a chance to either play along with in their basement or memorize and perform in their own backyard. Everything crosses over in this DVD... the skills on the driveway can be performed on synthetic ice and then on ice.... and the strength training and conditioning enhances total body fitness so each drill is performed better...
Here is what the DVD is composed of-
Driveway Drills
Discover drills that can improve your
stickhandling, eye/hand coordination and shot power and accuracy, by using
everyday tools that can be found in your basement or garage.
For each drill, Coach Trimble explains and coaches
as one of his high school and youth level players demonstrates.
Cardio Conditioning
Increase your strength, power and endurance with his
simple plyometric program.Drills in
this segment can be practiced in your own backyard or coaches can utilize this
with their respective teams.
Strength Training
10 Hockey- specific strength training exercises that
focus on developing the athlete’s total body.With both youth and high school aged player demonstrating, this segment
uses the athletes own bodyweight or simple at-home materials to build strength.
Included is an explanation of
the specifics of each exercise. An
excellent resource for any player, coach or team.
Synthetic Ice Training
Understand the power and
versatility of training on this new technology!Players can perform right alongside over 20 drills that will enhance
their skating, stickhandling, passing, and shooting, as well as their strength
and endurance.Never run out of drills
for this surface that has become popular in garages, rec rooms, backyards and
basements.
Video Analysis
All player’s love to see their skills in
action.Find out how your smart phone,
camera, or video device can be used to correct some of the weaknesses in your
player’s game. Taking a simple approach,
this segment shows you what to look for, and how to correct it with positive
feedback.
Click here for more info or to purchase your copy-
It has long been my belief that Puck Possession and Transition (From Defense to Offense) is the essential concept to winning hockey teams. The teams that hold the puck longer and can create turnovers to move quicker than their opponent from defense to offense, are winning teams.
Recent studies have created data to support this hypothesis.
Study 1 The Flyers’ fourth line (Couturier-Talbot-Rinaldo) averaged 0.29 shots per time they dumped or deflected the puck in, while the top line (Giroux-Jagr-Hartnell) averaged 0.28. The fourth line averaged 0.56 shots per time they carried or passed the puck in, while the top line averaged 0.53. The reason Giroux has a better shot differential than Rinaldo isn’t that he does more with each entry; it’s that he wins the neutral zone more often (more total entries) and does so more decisively (gaining the zone with possession). If it’s true that the less-skilled players are being coached to just dump the puck in—and I suspect it is—then the coach might be doing more to limit their offense than their own lack of skill is. This is the kind of inefficiency that can be identified, fixed, and exploited to gain an advantage over the rest of the league. Info provided by- Eric T. of Broad Street Hockey and NHL Numbers
Study 2 The conclusions drawn from this study may have some people questioning the deployment of players in zone specific roles. But remember from above that a substantial amount (>50%) of offensive production comes after an offensive or neutral zone (faceoff) win, obviously having a huge impact on game outcomes. Simply put, neutral zone performance predicts future wins, offensive and defensive zone performance determines wins. I don't think this data really changes anything for zone starts. Coaches who deploy their players in zones best suited to their talent are efficiently utilizing the resources on their roster. If given an option for a player who performs equally well in the offensive and neutral zone, then perhaps, choosing the neutral zone above the offensive zone may be a better choice. Info provided by- http://www.fearthefin.com/2012/8/12/3224106/1st-shift-corsi-by-zone-the-impact-of-neutral-zone-performance-on
Study 3
stats can be intimidating, I know. But this one's super-simple. "Fenwick" is the differential between the shots a team takes (minus blocked shots), and those taken by its opponent. Think of it as +/-, but for shots instead of points. A .500 percentage is average. "Fenwick close," which this graphic shows, is the same thing, but only in one-goal situations in the first and second periods, and in tied games after that. It's a more effective baseline that discards situations where one team is trying to run out the clock, or desperately catch up.
The graphic charts every team's Fenwick close since the 2007-2008 season. It's broken up into 50-percentage-point quadrants, from .400 to .600. Read it counterclockwise from the top right. Zero teams with the lowest Fenwick close have made the playoffs in the last five years. Every team with the highest Fenwick close has played into May, with three of the eight reaching the Cup finals. Even discarding those outliers, there's an enormous correlation with being on the plus side of .500.
Here is a great video on Puck Possession, covering great concepts such as Offensive Zone entry, cycling, puck support and good passing angles...
Furthermore, NHL.com Ranks the NHL's best defenseman, furthering illustrating the importance of having great first passers D's who can quickly and effectively transition the puck from defense to offense. Here's the list-
Jaromir Jagr (and Martin Brodeur) will be 40- somethings starting the 2013-2014 NHL season, and in today's faster NHL game, training and physical conditioning are paramount to what has made them successful.
Here are some excerpts regarding Jagr's training methods-
Old dog, new tricks
"Stars winger Jaromir Jagr just turned 41, but his unique take on training methods is spreading throughout the team. Here are three things he likes to do that teammates have followed:
Weighted stick: Jagr takes a barbell weight and places it on the blade of his stick, then works the stick back and forth to build strength in his wrists and forearms. Player reaction: “My wrists hurt after a minute, so I’m sure it works.” — defenseman Brenden Dillon.
Jump drills: Jagr participates in traditional jumping drills after a game when he has the time. Often, he goes from one end of a hallway to another jumping from one foot to the next. The drill builds leg strength. Player reaction: “A lot of the stuff he does, we have done in the off-season but we think it’s too intense for the season. But he does it anyway, and he’s played for 20 years and he’s still going strong, so it does make you think twice about how you’ve been doing things.” — captain Brenden Morrow.
Midnight practice: Jagr has his own key to the practice facility in Frisco and brings teammates in for midnight workouts every now and then. The practices are referred to as Jagr Hockey School. Player reaction: “Yeah, I’m not sure I’m going to be a part of that. I think midnight is a good time for sleep.” — center Jamie Benn."
"As human beings, we admire when others have exceptional work ethics, and so we should. Sloth is the enemy, and those who put their heart and soul into what they do should be celebrated. That group of people includes the great Jaromir Jagr, one of the most hard-working supremely gifted humans in hockey. There’s a reason he’s still an effective hockey player at age 41.
Yesterday Elliotte Friedman of CBC wrote about Jagr and his aforementioned admirable work ethic, which shared some of the details about his regimen, which includes extra on-ice workouts with a weight vest…after actual games have finished. He uses a heavy puck, and occasionally weights his skates to make his muscles work harder. His place in Pittsburgh was rumoured to good for two things: sleeping and working out. Petr Prucha, who stayed with him for awhile, said “While the NHL is sleeping, he is working.”
*Portions reprinted from- http://blogs.thescore.com/nhl/2013/06/07/is-it-possible-that-jaromir-jagr-is-over-training/
Dedication to Training
"Another prime example of extreme dedication to training is Boston Bruins forward Jaromir Jagr. At 41 years of age this future first ballot Hockey Hall of Fame freak of nature is still playing a lot of quality minutes at the highest level in hockey. Recently during the overtime games in the 2013 Eastern Conference and Stanley Cup Finals, Jagr seemingly got better as the game went on. In fact what happened was that Jagr’s play stayed the same while everyone else fatigued and slowed down.
Arguably Jagr trains more than any other player in the National Hockey League. Early in his career with the Pittsburgh Penguins a strong commitment to training was instilled into him by Hall of Fame player Paul Coffey. In 20+ years playing professional hockey it has served Jagr well as he keeps going in a game that punishes aging.
His workouts are legendary. Following games Jagr will put on the weight vest and do skating drills (he recently did this after the overtime games in the Stanley Cup Final). Sometimes he will perform a combination of plyometrics, quick feet drills, various leg exercises and sprints in the hallways while all his teammates have showered, dressed and left the building. Other times he puts weights on the end of stick does a variety of dryland drills and movements to train the shoulders, wrists, and grip. Consistently day in and day out Jagr performs workouts that leave many in the NHL shaking their heads at how dedicated he is with his fitness."
With the NHL training camp just a month away and most Junior and Youth programs starting up sooner, here are some ideas to make your training camp unique, competitive and productive.
1) Fitness Testing- In the below article Bill Guerin talks about the conditioning tests and standards that measured NHL players when he first started till now. In my opinion, the conditioning standards need to be rigid (taking a minimum or baseline approach) but also be flexible as all athletes are better or worse at certain exercises. Focus on having a standard minimum for strength (lower body, upper body and core) and cardiovascular fitness (both short distances and long). Also too... ice time is expensive and valuable, so try not to waste it with these activities for youth or junior programs. Do these Off- Ice. http://espn.go.com/blog/nhl/post/_/id/11273/oh-my-how-training-camps-have-changed
2) On- Ice practices- Separate the days and build in a progressive format. For example, don't put in your power play system (no matter how important you think it is) before you have your players adjusted to the pace and they have their timing back. If they are gassed, and the players timing is off because of a long off-season, then even the best potential power plays are going to look awful.
Early on, make the environment competitive, so players feel like they are being given a realistic shot to compete for opportunities.
3) Meetings and Culture- Meetings and establishing the team rules are extremely important. The culture you create in the pre-season, will carry forward, as players remember these early situations more than a typical meeting during the regular season. Set the standard and set the example with your enthusiasm and professionalism.
Use the off-ice meetings to put in your system before hitting the ice, so that you can create practice plans that drill down into what your D- Zone coverage, Forecheck, D- Zone face-off etc., is going to be.
Also, use video whenever you can. Players have to connect with their coach, and where some players might be audio learners (listening to you and understanding) others may be only visual learners and need to see exactly ( diagrammed and with game tape) what you are asking them to do.
4) Team Building- In my opinion, the best teams I've ever coached, or played on, were built off the ice. The On- ice activities are generally set in a competitive work environment. Off the ice however, whether it be in meetings, the gym, structured activities or just during social times, are when players create real bonds. The better you can fostered these bonds, the more likely your team will still be close-knit months down the road when they are competing for a playoff spot.
Focus on structured team activities that have an end result, and create a sense of accomplishment. There are hundreds to choose from, but also be creative and look into activities that can tie into your local community.
Moreover, don't feel like you have to lead all these activites. Many leaders will emerge during these situations. Allow them to lead.
Remember....
* The more activities that you can complete Off- Ice, saves time and money On the Ice.
* First Impressions Matter.
* Leaders Emerge in Pre- Season.
* There are 24 hours in a day... Players can learn most details to your system in a training camp.
* Be progressive and build upon fundamentals.
* Conditioning is paramount. If you team comes out of training camp less ready than it's peers, the situation won't get better once games begin.
* Have a plan in place for the entire camp, but be willing to adjust.
.jpg)
