Hockey Nerd

Over the past month I have become increasingly aware of a number of "blow-outs" in hockey. This started with Latvia in the World Juniors, but they happen every week in youth hockey. Personally, I hate these games. MYHockey was developed, in part, to help teams avoid these situations. Sometimes, however, you cannot avoid these games and simply have to make the best of it.

Blowouts create some interesting bad habits for all players. Players on the team getting blown out tend to not want to touch the puck. They typically just bat the puck as soon as it comes to them because they are often covered or hit before they can look up. Players on the winning team also can be "damaged" by these games. Kids forget when to pass, they become over-confident, they definitely get lazy and/or sloppy because they can get away with things in this game that they could never do against an equal opponent.

As a coach, it's hard to keep the kids focused and working towards the larger goals. If you push your kids too hard, an already ugly game will only get worse. Secretly, you hope your kids stop scoring, but you are afraid to tell them to stop scoring. The "don't shoot" or "don't score" command by the coach is always double-edged and not recommended by most. I've even seen where the "pass three times" approach makes the score worse because it's the passing that's harder to stop than an individual trying to do it all end-to-end. Obviously, pushing your kids so that the game finishes at 18-0 instead of 8-0 isn't the answer. What should a coach do?

Years ago, I watched a team execute the best blow-out pull-back strategy I've ever seen. It was so good, that I was the only one who noticed it from the opposing team at the time they did it. It kept their kids hustling while helping our kids build some skills and confidence. It curbed scoring, but didn't stop it. While you might say it's not possible to do all this, I'll explain how it's possible.

At an eight goal lead (you can develop your own threshold), this team was coached to go into "approach B". At this point the team could not carry the puck into the offensive zone. They were required to reach the red line, dump the puck and perform a five man change on the fly. If the new line as able to keep the puck in the offensive zone on the forecheck, they could attempt to score. If we were able to get the puck out of the zone, his next line was force to regroup, dump and change.

Analysis... The kids on this team never stopped hustling, they wanted to keep the puck in the zone after the dump and change because that was the only way they could try to score. This team regularly gave our team the puck (so often these games turn into a form of keep-away) with a few seconds to try to break it out. We were rewarded for doing it well, but if we fumbled a puck, they almost always kept it in the zone and ended up getting a shot or two on net. We succeed more than half the time and even ended up with a goal. We got touches on the puck, but because the other team was so much better, we had to be quick about things or they'd hold the puck in and possibly score. His team learned how to regroup in the neutral zone. Some might say that our parents and kids had the false belief that we could play with this team, which they did, but making the score 15-0 and making sure we knew how bad we are is not the point. Our kids got more touches and began to learn how to run a quick breakout. They didn't completely kill our kids confidence by making it obvious that they had pulled back the dogs. Both coaches were able to stay positive and encourage hustle. In a three game weekend series where this team developed sizable leads by the end of the second period, I believe we tied them twice in the third period and lost one. Each time our coach encouraged our kids and said things like "way to finish strong". We got blown out, but our coach was able to bring up some positives at the end of the game. Their coach was able to watch his kids hustle on every shift and work on their forecheck and change on the fly (it was squirts). His kids learned that short shifts don't kill anyone, many were 15 seconds, but you got rewarded for keeping it in the zone.

Playoffs can be another blow-out time of the season. Give this a strategy a try if you're still looking for the right approach to dealing with these games. Feel free to let you me know if you have another variation or concept that you employ.

I think there are ways to modify this approach depending upon the age and skill of the team, but I think it has the fundamentals of helping both teams get something out of a game that probably should not be played.

While I think a 20 minute lesson in a practice would be sufficient to help the team understand the approach, it's simple enough that you could explain it on the bench.