Sometimes the answer is simple.
The lowest-hanging fruit is supposed to get picked because it’s easy to grab.
But you’d be surprised how often our players won’t reach for it.
What if our players leave so much of their potential on the table because…
They won’t sit down and watch a hockey game.
Yes, I’m serious.
In the Instagram age, the kids watch highlights of everything… Including their favorite sport.
Gone are the days when I sat down 3 nights a week at 7 pm and watched the Detroit Red Wings from puck drop to final horn.
I’d even convince my dad to let me stay up late and watch west coast games sometimes… Mostly the Ducks games for Paul Kariya.
But enough of the story time… Let’s get into it why you need to tell your kids/players to sit down and watch a game.
The Problem
I would randomly ask my junior team to close their eyes and ask them to raise their hand if they had watched hockey the night before.
Many hands would go up.
How many watched a full game?
Fewer hands.
How many watched a full game without their phone in the room?
Zero hands.
When I was playing junior hockey, middle lane drive on a line rush was just starting to gain traction. Our coach had to break us of old habits of coming behind the puck carrier for a drop pass as F2.
But my players still had no concept of middle lane drive in 2019.
Which led me to believe they weren’t watching NHL games.
And they weren’t.
Why Watching Games is Important?
Learning to See
There’s a difference between looking and seeing.
Looking is auto-pilot. If our eyes are open, we are looking.
Seeing is intentional. This requires training. To focus attention on the “right” things.
It takes years of experience in seeing and recognizing patterns in the game to start making the correct reads in the moment.
Your “instincts” come from knowing the patterns.
Watching the game transfers the patterns of the 4 game moments:
offense
defense
offense to defense transition
defense to offense transition
Into long-term memory.
But to know the patterns, you need reps.
Watching an NHL game from start to finish might net you hundreds or thousands of mental reps in:
breakout retrieval
line rush
OZP
DZP
forecheck angling
defensemen surfing
There is a ton of pull at their attention, but simply watching the game just might be what’s missing to take them to the next level.
Another Antidote
How else can we get these reps to improve players’ ability to see?
“The game is not the best teacher. The game teaches those who have first been caused to understand.”
-Doug Lemov
Have you caused your players to understand?
Don’t “get out of the way” before teaching the first principles of the game.
They’ll learn after they’ve been prompted.