When less is more in coaching junior hockey

I watched U11s hockey tournament in Finland last week as the local sides battled it out over three days. The standard was high but what struck me more was the coaching and how different the approach was to what I often see in the UK. In this post, I call out some of those observations.

Coaching during the game

Most teams and most coaches were very quiet during the games. There was little shouting of instructions to players either when they were on the ice or on the bench. I helped to run a couple of games and witnessed this first hand.

Team talk before the game hardly focused on technical or tactical instructions but rather on encouraging the players to try their hardest and to apply the skills that they have learned at training. When a player made a “mistake” (e.g. didn’t pass the puck to the headman), nothing negative was said to that player.

The same applied to talking to the referees. Over the 50 or so games played during the tournament, I didn’t see any coaches shouting at the officials. The referees did get decisions wrong just as they always do (!!) but this was accepted without arguments and the game continued. I can’t remember the last game I’ve seen in the UK where neither coach challenged or addressed the referees on at least one call that they made.

Coaching philosophy

During the tournament I spoke to many coaches to hear their views on how they run their games but also what they do at practice. The idea is to facilitate a positive environment where the players are allowed to learn and think for themselves. The top priority at younger age groups remains in making sure that the children love the game and are enthusiastic about it.

The approach is very much about developing individuals rather than optimising team results. Most of the coaching takes place at practice and when it comes to games the children are not inundated by a stream of instructions. Instead the emphasis is very much on the players to figure this out for themselves through trial and error.

As the players improve in their decision making and their technical skills, they are moved to higher ability groups. This means that the AAA players (highest level of streaming) have worked out for example the advantage of passing or positioning themselves rather than it having been drilled into them. Ultimately the idea is that these players will be able to make better decisions by themselves and they learn to be creative in the process.

Feedback from the children

I used to coach some of the children that were playing in this tournament when they first started playing hockey. It was great to catch up with them and to see that they were not afraid to try different things in the games even when the decisions that they made resulted in conceding a goal. They knew that they won’t be told off on the bench and that the coach will encourage them to just try again. Win or lose, the kids were just having fun and that was fantastic to see.  

My son’s feedback was also interesting and it made me think about how we do things coaching wise in the UK. Having played at the tournament, one of his first comments was that “it was nice to just play the game without being told how to play” and "not being told off for not passing or carrying the puck or forgetting to cover the goal" or indeed committing any other myriad of actions that would be classified as “mistakes” in adult hockey.

Being game-brave

Pelirohkeus is a Finnish term that describes a mentality where the players are not afraid of making mistakes and they have the courage to excel and put their skills to full use during the games. Pelirohkeus can be loosely translated as being game-brave.

Scott Frost, the University of Nebraska football coach puts the message very eloquently in the following interview.

"Once you take away that fear of what might happen if you make a bad play, it frees you up to go and make great plays"

https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/video/frost-wants-team-to-not-fear-failure/

It felt like lot of the coaching ethos in Finland last weekend fitted in what coach Frost talks about.

Food for thought for coaches in the UK

It does sometimes feel like we over-coach and over-instruct the children in the UK. For U13 and younger age groups the top priority should be about keeping the kids enthusiastic and developing and supporting their love for the game. This mainly happens by building an environment that encourages the kids to be brave on the ice, not be afraid of making mistakes and allowing the kids to figure some of this hockey stuff out for themselves.

In the UK we don’t have the luxury of having pond hockey or kids being able to play much outside team practice and games so it becomes even more pertinent. Sometimes less can be more.