Hockey coaches hit Vancouver to discuss skills development

By Lucas Aykroyd

Vince Lombardi once said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” But far more progressive attitudes were in evidence at the 2000 Play Right Coaches Conference at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver from July 6 to 9.

The conference brought together some 500 hockey coaches from every level: minor, junior, and professional. Not all were Canadian. More than half the delegates attended from such countries as Austria, Spain, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Finland, Japan, Switzerland, New Zealand, and the USA.

The Canadian Hockey Association and the British Columbia Centre of Excellence organized the event with support from the Vancouver Canucks and the British Columbia Amateur Hockey Association.

The presentations and lectures, ranging between one and two hours apiece, offered invaluable advice for coaches striving to improve both individual and team performance. Many tips were particularly useful for training young players.

Erkka Westerlund, the head coach of Jokerit in the Finnish League, discussed “Observing the Physiological Stress with Heart Rate Monitors in Practice.” Westerlund noted a disturbing trend in his native country: young players have begun to sacrifice endurance for strength. In 1990, members of the Finnish under-20 national team typically boasted a maximal oxygen intake of 57-58 ml/kg/min, but that figure has now dropped to 53-54 ml/kg/min. This shows young players need to spend at least as much time on cardiovascular exercise as on weightlifting.

Bjorn Kinding, who has coached the national teams of Denmark, Switzerland, and Japan, said coaches need to develop accurate, scientific ways of “Measuring Progress, Today and Beyond.” Describing a player as “very smart” or “very fast” is not sufficient. Kinding suggested using video cameras and stopwatches to keep track of how athletes improve their skills and techniques.

Vancouver Canucks conditioning coach Peter Twist reinforced Kinding’s message with his presentation on off-ice training, emphasizing that players need to do sport-specific training to maximize their potential instead of setting vague general fitness goals.

E.J. McGuire of the New York Rangers scouting staff focused on the “Technology of Coaching.” While highlighting new computer software that helps coaches do their scouting and teaching better, he offered a balanced perspective with this reminder: “Every time a player passes by our office and keeps going because we appear too ensconced in our mechanical gadgetry, we are making a grave error. The kids must remain our main focus as coaches.”

Longtime NHL and Olympic coach Dave King addressed concerns about Canada’s recent struggles to develop high-skilled players in his lecture entitled “Changing Our Coaching Paradigm.” He pointed out some of the traps coaches fall into and the disservice this does to their teams: overemphasizing size, always playing a low-risk defensive game, and viewing the NHL as the ultimate model for development. He encouraged coaches to look to the future and not get hung up on old systems.

Interestingly, two NHL coaches, Pat Quinn of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ken Hitchcock of the Dallas Stars, had very different opinions about the state of the NHL today. Quinn believes defensive systems are stifling the game, while Hitchcock said it’s only going to get more defensive and coaches should teach players to crash the net and take away space in order to generate scoring chances.

Other topics ranged from sport psychology and leadership to forechecking strategies and bench management. When the delegates weren’t taking notes, they enjoyed tours of this West Coast paradise and went up Grouse Mountain one night for a salmon feast and a series of “hot stove sessions” about coaching.

In his conference-closing keynote address, Vancouver Canucks general manager Brian Burke delivered a vital message about young players: North American coaches need to strive for a better ratio of practices to games, 3:1 being preferable. Spending time both on skills like stickhandling, shooting, and passing and on free-flow scrimmages is what will produce talented players for the future, instead of one-dimensional grinders who lack hockey sense.

This was the seventh Coaches Conference Canada has hosted. Calgary was the site in 1989, 1990, 1992 and 1994. Toronto hosted the conference in 1996, and Saint John, New Brunswick did the honors in 1998. Montreal is up next in 2002.