Coach has to be part psychologist, part teacher
Long breaks between games filled with plenty of learning for juniors
The gaps between professional hockey and the junior ranks are obvious to most hockey enthusiasts, including the amount of practice.
With NHL teams having three or four games a week, the number of practices decrease.
In junior hockey, gaps between games may drag on. Take the Edmonton Oil Kings, for example: they played last Saturday night against the Vancouver Giants and don’t play their next game until Friday against the Red Deer Rebels.
“I think it’s a good idea to front-load your practices at the beginning of a week when you have several days between games,” says Edmonton Oil King coach Derek Laxdal.
“As you get closer to the game, you can break the time up into offensive teams, defensive teams and special teams.
With plenty of time to teach, keeping players engaged is crucial.
“Flow is very important in practice. If you have good flow in your practice, then you’re going to have good flow in your games,” says Laxdal.
“If you have good flow, you might be on the ice for an hour and 15 minutes, but if you’re doing lots of things it feels like 20 minutes — and then you have good flow.”
Gord Thibodeau, coach of the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s Fort Mcmurray Oil Barons agrees with Laxdal, but only to a point.
“... the execution cannot suffer or be compromised for pace,” says Thibodeau, adding practice takes on a different meaning as the season skates along.
“At the junior level we spend a large amount of the early part of the season teaching skills and concepts and as the season progresses more emphasis is spent on coaching and systems.”
Thibodeau says he meets with his coaching staff daily to decide what specific area needs to be worked on.
Sherwood Park Crusader head coach Tim Fragle says making sure to have practice with a purpose is key.
“The combination of teaching and coaching is a daily occurrence. We stress and enforce personal and team accountability,” says Fragle.
Now in his second season with the Crusaders, Fragle says his practices are broken down into two parts: the first being very high tempo with competition drills, while the second is focused on system play.
Still, teaching the game is at the forefront.
Laxdal is in his second year as Oil Kings bench boss after several years coaching at the pro level. He says he must constantly remind himself his players are teenagers.
“When you teach something in the pros it sticks, in junior you have to teach it over again,” says Laxdal.
“Not here in junior. They’re kids and tend to get back to their own habits really fast.
“It could be something like defensive-zone coverage where it’s as simple as stop and start and react, but it’s something you have to teach every day.”
Like all junior hockey coaches, Laxdal needs to be a part-time psychologist, always keeping in mind the mental capabilities of his players.
“I once read a report where the frontal lobe of the brain is where the thought processing happens and it isn’t really developed until someone is 23,” says Laxdal in his fourth decade before breaking into a wide grin.
“My frontal lobe is still growing.”