The Numbers’ Game
 Possession,
as they say, is nine-tenths of the law. In hockey, it may be worth even
more. That’s what a comprehensive USA Hockey study suggests, adding
statistical muscle to back the belief that puck skills are learned in
practice, not games. From the smallest PeeWee to the most-talented
Olympic player, the ability to effectively handle the puck is in short
supply these days. Many coaches within USA Hockey attribute these
diminished skills to a mindset that advocates more games and less
practice.
To back up this opinion, USA Hockey commissioned a comprehensive study
to calculate how much time the best players in the world had the puck on
their sticks at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. While
most people were glued to the Olympic hockey for pure viewing pleasure,
members of USA Hockey’s Coaching Education Program were keeping a closer
eye on the action. Perched high above center ice at the E Center in Salt
Lake and the Peaks Ice Arena in Provo, coaches paired up to observe and
record the action of players competing in 31 men’s and 24 women’s games.
Prior to each game, three players who were expected to be key performers
for their teams were selected for the study. The coaches calculated the
length of each player’s shift, how long the player had the puck on his
or her stick, how many passes were received and made and how many shots
on goal he or she attempted. They also counted the number of un-timed
touches—those when the puck hit their stick if only for a brief moment.
Top Players Touch the Puck for 1+ Minute in Games
Canada’s Joe Sakic, who dominated play in the gold-medal game, touched
the puck for only 1 minute, 19 seconds. In that time, he did tally two
goals and two assists along with four shots in Canada’s 5-2 victory.
The purpose of the study was to determine the best way to develop puck
possession skills with youth players. It also provided information when
it comes to puck possession in checking and non-checking situations. On
the women’s side, Cammi Granato slightly outdid her Canadian counterpart
Hayley Wickenheiser, touching the puck for a little more than one minute
(1:02.2 to 1:00.9) during their gold-medal outing. But
when even the best player only touches the puck for one minute, what are
other players doing?
When you factor in that we chose the players who handle the puck more
than others on the ice, you could argue that the numbers we came up with
were inflated compared to the average Olympic level player, said Mark
Tabrum, director of USA Hockey’s Coaching Education Program. To follow
up the Olympic study, USA Hockey volunteers brought their clipboards and
stopwatches to the Youth Hockey Tier I National Championships in
Colorado Springs, Colo.
Puck Skills Developed in Practice
While the skill levels varied, the results were pretty much the same.
Even the best players, the statistics showed, don’t handle the puck as
much as you might think. These studies validate what a lot of people
have been advocating for a long time, said Kevin McLaughlin, USA
Hockey’s Senior Director of Hockey Development.
The numbers showed that stick and puck skills can’t be developed in a
game. It proves you can accomplish a lot more in practice with the puck
than in a game. It also showed that you get so few opportunities with
the puck in the game that you have to be proficient when it does hit
your stick. USA Hockey hopes the results of the Observation Project will
serve as a reference for coaches, parents and players as they set up
their future practice and game schedules. I think we can safely say that
games are not the environment to develop puck skills in our youth
players, McLaughlin said.
Obviously, in practice, players will get a lot more ice time, will carry
a puck a lot longer than one minute, can give and receive a lot more
passes and will take a lot more shots.
Not everyone may agree with the statistical conclusions provided by the
study. As Mark Twain once wrote, there are three kinds of fallacies:
lies, damned lies and statistics. There will always be those who believe
that letting a PeeWee play the equivalent of an 82-game NHL schedule is
the best way to develop a hockey player.
The dilemma that virtually every coach of developmental-age hockey
players is faced with is: How much ice time does he devote to practice
and how much to games? Observation Project Chairman Rob Bruendl
addressed this in his final report: Ice time is getting more expensive
every year. Parents enjoy watching their children play and urge the
coach to schedule more games. So coaches and parents try to convince
themselves that their players are learning skills during the games.
Repetition Turns Skill into Instinct
USA Hockey’s National Coach-in-Chief Bob O’Connor disagrees with the
idea of using games as a learning tool, and he says the numbers prove
it. Having demographics of the Olympics with the best players in the
world and then following it up by studying our National Championships
just goes to show that you only have limited time to handle the puck and
when you have it you better learn to handle it right, said O’Connor.
We’ve been saying this over and over. The more quality repetitions you
get with any given skill, the easier it will be to turn that skill into
instinct. If you only have the puck two minutes, you’re not going to get
that practice of receiving it and controlling it.
George Kingston, a member of the physical education department at the
University of Calgary, conducted a similar study back in the 1970s.
Kingston looked at skill development in Sweden, Finland, the former
Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union and compared their techniques
to how players were developed in Canada. According to Kingston,
Europeans typically had two to five practices for each game they played,
compared to North American players, who played two or three games for
each practice. Kingston said that in order to get one hour of quality
work in practicing the basic skills of puck control, it would take
approximately 180 games.
Our emphasis on a great number of games, in part, reflects the problem
faced by minor hockey associations—namely, that they only get a
restricted amount of ice that is primarily given to scheduling of games,
wrote Kingston, who went on to become an assistant coach with the
Florida Panthers. O’Connor has been leading the charge to reverse that
trend in this country for an equally long time. We’ve been telling
coaches and parents for a long time that the repetition of skills is the
foundation of hockey, O’Connor said.
Ice time could be the best coach there is. The more often your son or
daughter handles the puck, the more skill and confidence they will have.
So what effect will these numbers have on the hockey community in the
United States? Armed with this statistical ammunition, USA Hockey will
continue advocating a 3-to-1 practice to game ratio in future coaching
clinics in hopes of persuading coaches to use their ice time more wisely
when it comes to skill development.
We’ll use these figures to preach the importance of skill development
and practice-to-game ratios, Tabrum said. I think it’ll grab the
attention of some people who have never stopped to think about it. Games
are a measuring stick where you evaluate skill development, but its not
where you teach it.
Editor’s Note: Thank
you to Harry
Thompson, Editor-in-Chief of USA
Hockey Magazine, for
this story.
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