The Real Power of a Minor Hockey Coach

There were some interesting coaching match-ups in the football and hockey world last week. All of them spoke to the impact a coach can have on a team.

Philadelphia Eagles’ coach Chip Kelly and Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll. In hockey you had Willie Desjardins of the Canucks and Mike Johnston of the Pittsburgh Penguins. I saw Johnston – a former Canucks assistant coach with Marc Crawford – behind the bench coaching the Portland Winterhawks of the WHL. They played the way he coached behind the bench – assured, confident and composed.

While many people will look at the X’s and O’s of the game – I like to look at the psychology of the team. It is a coaches’ responsibility to manage the emotional and mental energy of ‘the room’, of his team. Yesterday Paul McLean was relieved of his duties as coach of the Ottawa Senators after the leadership group – some of the best players on the team-  felt he was too hard on them and singled them out too often. I liked McLean so it is tough to see him go but ultimately a coach is essentially a ‘players’ coach’. At least this time they didn’t decide to fire the Power Play coach – as they did with Perry Pearn a few years ago in Ottawa. He was served up to the fans by the team ownership as some sort of peace offering. (I understand the Trainers and Zamboni drivers were a bit worried for a few weeksll!)

I ask friends and parents in our hockey association how their child is enjoying the season. Inevitably their response gravitates to the coach and his/her impact on the team. In minor hockey, especially from the ages from 8 – 12, the experience kids have in Atom and Peewee hockey can impact their feelings and participation in the game over the long term.

The sad part of this is we have very few measurements on how they feel about the game and their season. We rarely have any feedback other than anecdotal feedback from parents brave enough to broach the subject. After all – who wants to challenge a volunteer.

But it is up to the coach to get this feedback at the very least.

To that end I think every coach should be told at the outset of the season.

“Your actions this year – on the ice, behind the bench and in the dressing rooms will determine whether these kids decide to play hockey into their teens and adulthood……or not”.

You just might want to do a barometer check once in a while.

Thriller in Semiahmoo

The AtoMc Bengals played a thrilling game against one of the top ranked teams from Semiahmoo and fought to a hard 4-4 tie. Leading for much of the game 2-0 and 3-1 at times, the Bengals succumbed to a weak 8-minute stretch where Semi scored 3 goals to take a 4-3 lead.

But showing the resilience of a WWII American soldier’s Hockey Helmet (we give that out every game to the player who shows ‘resilience’ and ‘soldiers on’) the Bengals came back with a goal with just under 2 minutes left to tie the game 4-4. You could here the cheers, laughs and screams from the stands in the last two minutes as the teams went back and forth with close plays around the net.

Appropriate to the work effort and passion of each team…..the game ended in a tie.

Leaving the arena last night I overheard a father from the other team say to his boy.

“I think that was the most exciting game I have ever seen you involved in”

The NHL’s Dirty Little Secret…..and We are all Complicit

I admit it. I like a good hockey scrap. I think that is the starting point. I need to accept my error.

Maybe its just because I am older now, coach minor hockey and lead our local hockey association. Maybe its because I see my children and their friends in the sport and I wonder what the sport can do FOR them….and worry about what it can do TO them.

Simply put — fighting in hockey is primarily for entertainment. While the players themselves do get involved in fisticuffs that spontaneously arise from the game the overall construct of fighting in the game is there to enhance its entertainment value – primarily with hardcore hockey fans – like me. And much of the fighting is staged – set up at face-offs where the two enforcers avoid instigator penalties  and- like George Laracques once did with his LA King counterpart – wish the other “good luck”. They do it simply to maintain their job in the NHL. Little do people know that just getting on the ice in the NHL means you have significant skating and hockey talent – and in many cases these men were the stars of minor hockey and led their teams and leagues in the better aspects of the game.  

But this appears to come with a cost. In this morning’s Globe and Mail, a story about a man charged with providing NHL Enforcer Derek Boogaard with Percocet painkillers to which he was addicted. Fresh out of the NHL substance abuse program Boogaard allegedly paid Jordan Hart for medication that would help ‘ease his physical pain’ and ‘ease his mental anguish’…..providing Boogaard with a combination of painkillers and sleep medication.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/indictment-reveals-challenge-faced-by-nhl-other-sports-in-addressing-painkiller-abuse/article20511032/#dashboard/follows/

One pill is essentially the ‘upper’ that allows the player to perform…….the other pill the ‘downer’ which allows him to recover and triggers a cycle of ever increasing highs and lows putting the human on a pendulum that they just can’t escape. Last night I watched a PBS documentary on Robin Williams and he too struggled with the same dynamic — the intoxicating highs of performing and the imponderable insecurity of being alone with one’s self.

And the final escape for Williams was the same as it was for Boogaard…..as it was for Rick Rypien…as it was for Wade Belak – with all three players, all accomplished NHL fighters, all players who were there to ‘answer the bell’ and pay the price for their team and for  essentially our entertainment.

I know somewhat of that journey myself, for that very same summer, for reasons I don’t fully understand, I too struggled with depression and anxiety, and the loss of sleep. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I was still driving myself at age 50 like I was a much younger man. In trying to transform myself through a job change I gave up coffee, sugar,  and wheat and started riding my bike 30-40kms a day. I lost my ability to sleep ……and then I was gone. I was then but a distant soul looking out at some movie I  seemed to be starring in……and couldn’t stop it from going on and with increasing pain you wonder how it will end. While I got help – and believe me with proper medical attention the solutions are easy – I can at least understand how these fine men, all, came to that final decision. Not rational at all, but living in an irrational situation, they just wanted relief from their mental anguish, and stemming from that , their real physical pain. It’s one thing to feel you can’t get through the day…….and it’s quite another to feel you can’t get through another minute.

So if professional hockey wants to reinforce fighting as a bona fide aspect of the game then we might want to add it to the Hockey Canada hockey skills framework – otherwise we should continue the journey to diminish  it in the game. The purveyors of the craft in our game seem to be paying too high a price.

Arrest made in murder of Hockey Mom

All of us in the minor hockey community were horrified when a hockey mom from Surrey was killed outside the local Surrey arena as she was picking up her son after he refereed a game.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/man-charged-in-hockey-mom-death-to-appear-in-bc-court/article18840621/#dashboard/follows/

Yesterday, at the PCAHA annual general meeting we held a moment of silence for the people of the hockey community who we lost or were taken from us in the past year. Julie Paskall was mentioned by name. Little did we know that a prime suspect in the case had been arrested.