Note: This post is a collaboration with Mikhail Bryan
Inversion is knowing the disaster situation and avoiding it.
This is a disastrous situation in a hockey career.
You may have heard this tale before. A player skates circles around his 12u peers in his town. By 14u, he’s the best player in the state. Major junior teams are all over him, USHL teams want to tender him and he’s invited to try out for the national team. He continues his ‘tear’ through junior hockey and then he gets to college. For this player, this is where the punch happens. He gets scratched for the first time, he plays 8 minutes in the Saturday game he dresses in.
At 20, he experiences adversity for the first time in his life.
With no experience, because he’s never had to ‘train’ for this, the player is shocked, unprepared and his ego is massively bruised. Instead of having been there before, he’s experiencing a hard thing for the first time.
Without experience and proper coping systems in place, he decides to play the victim, and might even begin some self-sabotaging behaviors that are destructive because he’s never had to learn anything constructive…
The player’s career begins to spiral. Maybe he ends up transferring to look for greener pastures, but the lack of tools and experience with adversity is still going to manifest in other situations as a player and when his playing days are over.
The beauty in the nightmare of this story is that it is entirely avoidable…
How?
These 2 programs understand that 99% of hockey players will at some point:
Not be the best player on the team
Be asked to change roles
Be told they aren’t dressing in a game
Be scratched 5+ games in a row
Unless your name is McDavid, Crosby, Ovechkin or the small group of generational talent, you’ll get ‘punched in the face’ at some point in your career.
And that first punch happens at different times for everyone. Some players get it their first year in the USHL, some breeze through that league and get punched in college…
This first punch is the hardest one to take.
This punch can knock you out or strengthen your resolve.
Here are 2 examples of how the best in the business build intentional antifragility training into their seasons so players can take future punches without getting knocked out.
Chicago Steel
Of the many times I (Drew) have written about the Chicago Steel, I haven’t mentioned this part of their ‘machine’. They have a system for developing antifragility in their players which essentially boils down to this… On some nights, 1st liners play 4th line minutes. A player who plays 22 minutes a night might play 7 and have to find a way to be effective with that reduced time on ice. The staff makes it quite clear that they ‘might lose games’ because of this. The beauty of it is, they are willing to let their W-L record suffer for the betterment of the player.
Short-term… Not great for results. Long-term… Incredibly valuable for the human being, athlete and hockey player.
What does this do?
Punches them so it is not a shock if they get scratched, or have a diminished role during their freshman year in college hockey
Gets them a rep at acceptance of a role so that this conversation doesn’t happen for the first time in pro hockey
To give an example of this, Darren Helm scored 1 million points in junior hockey (not the real number but the point is that he scored a lot) but when it was time to fight for a job in the NHL, he made his name as a depth forward who was hard to play against. I can’t claim to know if the Medicine Hat Tigers had the same system as the Steel or if some players are adapting simply because they ‘have to’ but if you can intentionally manufacture this, it’s better than hoping a player like Helm can ‘get lucky’ and adapt. Just build a more adaptable player into your system using various constraints and tactics like this one.
NTDP
Here’s what happens with the NTDP if you’re not familiar. The very best kids from all over the United States come in at 17. The very best kid dominating high school hockey in Minnesota. The best AAA player from Michigan. A ‘once in a lifetime’ player from the east coast. And 20 more elite 17-year-olds all end up in the same place at the same time for the first time in their lives. Then they just chuck them in the deep end and tell them to survive. 17-year-old kids play a schedule of D1 games against 24-year-olds, they play in the best junior league in the country against 20-year-olds, and they lose a lot in the 17’s year.
Guess who the parents aren’t calling to pull their kid out of the program at year’s end because they didn’t win enough? The National Coaches…
Guess who isn’t quitting the team for playing 4th line on an essential all-star team even though he’s committed to a major Big 10 school? Guess who isn’t quitting and playing for a different team because they ‘lost too much’? The NTDP players…
Why?
They knew the punch was coming… The frustration in the lack of ‘results’ in the W column is part of the deal. It’s known to be coming. So you can prepare mentally for it. This keeps players in the fight and develops resilience instead of folding up and quitting on the process.
Other Approaches
Here is Mikhail on what he’s seen and tried in his experience.
One way I have seen intentional adversity introduced throughout a season occurred while coaching in college for the last four years. Our team had been struggling to handle adverse moments in games. This included “bad” penalties called against us, untimely goals against, and anything else you can think of. Our reactions were usually negative more than neutral or positive, and the event seemed to deter us from our ability to play well.
As a coaching staff, we talked about ways we could create adversity in practice, so that when game time rolled around, we were somewhat used to it. What we came up with appeared to help in the moment, although I suppose you’d have to track down and ask one of the former players from this team to see if it helped. The first thing we did was mentioned above in Drew’s tweet, but we started making intentionally bad calls at practice. Not just penalty calls. It’s during a scrimmage when we call an icing on a missed pass that clearly the defending team could’ve gotten to, but didn’t try to. Instead of waving it off like any ref/linesman would in a game, call the ice. Force the other team to deal with an unwarranted DZ draw. It’s calling a horrible penalty against when you’re practicing PP/PK, and putting the killing team down 5-3 or equalizing and making it 4-4. This works both ways, either the killers have to buckle down and kill a 2-man advantage, or the PP has to kiss their man advantage goodbye. How will each team react? Does their reaction help them move on and win anyway? Or does it hurt them? That’s all we’re paying attention to and looking for.
Another way is during an early week practice when we usually have 50-60 minutes of competition-based games. One team vs the other in a series of either small area or full ice games. Usually, after each game is finished, the team that lost skates. Then we move to the next game. We started doing the opposite, occasionally. So the team that won skates. The team that lost doesn’t. So say dark team beats light team game 1. Light team skates for losing. Game 2 light team beats dark team. Skate light team again, even though they won. How are they reacting? Palms up looking at the coaches like they’re nuts? Or unphased and skating through the “punishment” ready to win the next game on deck.
The point isn’t to punish good outcomes (like winning) or reward bad outcomes (like losing) but to create adverse moments in order to prepare the team to handle those same moments in games. It’s often talked about that events are largely uncontrollable, and that reactions are all we can control. So we know this, as a society and as coaches. The next step is taking action to improve your reactions. They’re not just going to get better on their own, magically. I’d recommend creating adversity, tailored to what your team may be struggling with, and seeing what happens after. Our team stopped getting rattled about bad calls in games, expected adversity every time we played, and above all learned how important it is to control our reactions.
Lesson Recap
Where it is within your power as a coach, create conditions for the development of antifragility.
Athletes who are fragile break like our first athlete.
Athletes who play for Chicago, Team USA, and Mikhail know the value of developing this trait in the people you serve.
Antifragile players can take more ‘punches’ and players will rise in their career in direct proportion to the amount of punches they can take.
Antifragile players don’t get knocked out of the game, they stay in and continue to compound their advantages.
Answer this question, are your players getting ‘punched’ regularly with:
Intentional practice design
Intentional adversity training on and off the ice
Random strings you can pull as the coach
Intentional decision-making on lineups, roles, etc
If you lost a game this weekend but helped a person for the rest of their life, would it be worth experimenting with some of these things?
That’s up to you…
For more co-created projects with Mikhail, check out our Level 1 Coach Podcast
Dude I love this. I have been thinking more and more about how I can build anti fragility in coaching as well as every area of my
Life. Great examples of how teams use this.
Drop a comment down here if you deploy other tactics within this concept