For the most part, what gives a coach long term success? It’s the ability to motivate and captivate his or her players. How do modern day coaches fail? Bad luck, poor chemistry, injuries, for sure but what we see is the modern-day hockey coach is so apt to adopt the “modern” day language of labelling players. This limits maximizing the potential of their group.
How do they label players? Here are some examples;
- “top line”
- “4th line”
- “A top 4 D”
- “a 7 or 8 D”
- “he or she can be a 4th line player”
- “I project you(player) as a 3rd line player”
Now some of you reading this blog will say “well, that’s the truth”, and I say to you if you had children, say three children and two were really good students and one struggled in academics would you label he or she “a bottom student”. Likely not unless you were an anal passage as a parent. Would you go around calling your child who was the weakest student your “bottom child”? Of course not, each child has unique talents which if encouraged correctly contribute to the world or family a great team. If you were a good parent you would encourage them to do their best and find a way to contribute their talents and be happy in life. Why do so many hockey coaches label nowadays?
We believe that the best teams and coaches have a way of making everyone feel equal in whatever role they play. Some are hard-nosed players who wear down opponents, draw PIM’s, the more offensive players try to score, goalies stop the puck, some D can handle the puck better than others, other D are simple and tough. Some are better at playing PK, than others, etc. etc. Who are the top players? In order to win, consistently you need to motivate and improve all players.
It’s a bad to label players on a team. A hockey team is a team-a family, hockey is truly a team sport.
So big tip here-coaches stop using labels, and encourage players to be the best rounded players they can be, no more, top, bottom, 3rd line, 3rd pair, etc.
It’s always important for a coach to be honest with his or her players but you can do that without “labelling” or making your player feel more or less than any other. Assuming a player is giving a full effort; why not approach a player who doesn’t score much and say?(which approach is better?);
1)“Billy (or Cindy) I love what you do for our team. You make it better. Your hard-nosed play creates so much. I think you can also score more for us and we are going to help you do that but just know scoring doesn’t define success as a player…..our team success is what’s important”
Or would it be better to say?
2)“Billy (or Cindy) you’re a fourth line player for us and that won’t change. It’s your job to get out their and eat up some minutes so we can get our top players on the ice to give us a chance to win”
If you are Billy or Cindy what would you respond better to? #1 all day long!
And any of us who have coached know that any teams that go the distance need all players and need to have a close chemistry where everyone feels part of it all, players, trainers, management and coaches.
Great coaches support all their players equally and try to pull the players towards maximizing their talents for the good of the team.