Power vs. Force: On Players Slumping
Power doesn't condemn, punish or manipulate mentally
Ahhh players struggling to score or do what they do best…
What you do in these situations as a coach comes from ‘who you are’.
A Force Coach condemns and punishes you ‘down’ to a lesser role.
An In-Powered Coach unites, helps, and uses love and compassion to raise the player up.
We’ve probably experienced getting scratched, benched, imprisoned on the 4th line or getting ignored until we transfer… Just me?
Brandon Naurato takes a different approach at Michigan. One that comes from a place of Power.
He gets to this idea in explaining the conversation he might have with a player who is struggling, as if distilling the program into a single hypothetical meeting. Naurato doesn’t believe in psychological manipulation as a motivator to break free of a slump. Instead, he wants to help chart a path out of that slump together, cultivating an environment where people like McGroarty or Hughes want to stay and keep developing.
“I want you to do more,” Naurato says. “‘Hey I haven’t scored in five games.’ ‘Great, let me sit with you and let's watch all your stuff.’ I want to help you score because I need you to score. I don’t need to fuck with you and put you on the fourth line to get you going, because our kids they work and there's an honest effort. That's what's so good, man, is we have great people, and they're always together and they care and it sounds cliché, and I always say this, but that's the culture.”
Force separates you from your:
Coaching staff
Current role
Confidence/ Current strengths (“just play more defensively and conservatively and hit people more”, they say to the slumping player)
Power unites and strengthens all of those relationships.
Force separates and weakens all of the above.