Mental Strngth Tips During Tryouts-Courtest of the Mind Warrior

Importance of Eliminating Negative Thinking Eliminating negative thinking is not simply about having a good attitude or feeling good or being positive just for the sake of being positive, although all these things have their benefits. It goes much deeper than that. The apprentice of the Warrior Mind Power System recognizes that thoughts are real forces and that how we think directly affects the things that happen to us. Our mind is like a garden, and we are the master gardeners. Through care and diligence we can create a botanical masterpiece, or through neglect our garden can be a mass of weeds--negatives, insecurities and failures. Understanding this, it becomes our duty and responsibility to eliminate negative thinking. Five Techniques for Eliminating Negatives from Your Mind! Each technique is separate and independent from the other. In fact some of these techniques will seem contradictory, but each will be highly effective in dealing with negative thinking. The First Technique: “Hack it off”. With this technique, the instant you recognize that you are thinking a negative thought, you end it. You don't argue with it, you don't analyze it; you don't defend yourself against it. You hack it off. The moment you recognize that you're thinking a negative thought, simply cut it off and insert a totally different thought into your mind. And the key here is the instant you recognize you're thinking a negative thought. So whenever you become aware of negative thinking, act immediately, hack it off and set a totally different thought into your mind. The Second Technique: “Indentify it”. As soon as you recognize that you are thinking a negative thought, instead of cutting it off as you did with the first technique, indentify it. You say to yourself, "What is happening inside me now is that I am experiencing 'a negative thought.' "That's all it is, and you keep reminding yourself of that. You keep reminding yourself that "It's only a negative thought. It's only a negative thought." I'm going to share an astounding truth with you that will help you immensely in ridding yourself of negatives. I'm going to write it in bold red underlined letters and I would like you to read it over at least three times before you continue on, so that it becomes imprinted into your mind. Here it is: Negatives Only Have Power Over You IF You React to Them! Negatives Only Have Power Over You IF You React to Them! Go back and read it again. Continue to read this statement until you fully realize that it's you reacting to negatives that gives them power. The minute you start worrying in this way, the minute you start reacting to the negative, the minute you start working yourself up about it, it's got you. But when you recognize that negatives only have power over you when you react to them, then you simply choose not to react. Label it. Remind yourself that it is only a negative thought. And then move on to something else. Don't get trapped into thinking about it. Dismiss it. Once again… The Third Technique: “Exaggeration” The exaggeration technique is a great technique, but you must exaggerate it into ridiculousness. And the key word here is ridiculousness. Let's say that you're a HOCKEYPLAYER and you're TRYING OUT FOR A N ELITE HOCKEY TEAM and suddenly the thought comes to you, "Ah, what's the use, I'm not going to make the team ANYWAY." And then you catch yourself and you say, "Wait a second that's a negative thought." With the exaggeration technique, what you might then say is, "That's right, I'm not going to make THE TEAM. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if, when I go t the rink, as soon as I open the door people are going to be throwing pails of water on me, and then they're going to release pit bull terriers and German shepherds and I'm going to be bitten and I'm going to be wet, and then this great big mechanical boxing glove will come out and it's going to smash me in the face. And then everybody is going to leap up on their desk and reveal this great big banner that says, 'You fool, why did you come here? You're never going to make this team!' "And you just keep carrying on like this, exaggerating it until your mind goes, "Okay, enough, this is ridiculous." You then find yourself laughing at the thought, and once you're laughing at the thought you have robbed it of all its power. Wouldn't it be great if when we had negative thoughts they came with warning signs reading, "It's only a negative thought, you don't have to believe it if you don't want to." But negatives don't come like that. They come disguised as apparently real problems, or quietly, slipping in when we're not paying attention. And if we're not aware of the fact that our mind is the great trickster, forever conjuring up negative thoughts, then we'll buy into every single destructive thought that occurs to us. But with these techniques we have ways of dealing with negatives. That's why they are so valuable. The Fourth Technique: Neutralize Whatever the negative is saying to you, you counteract it by thinking the exact opposite thought. When the negative thought comes to you, "I'm not going to make the team," you neutralize it with, "I'm going to make team and I an going to be a first line player." When the negative thought comes to you, "I'm never going to get ahead in this game," you neutralize it with the exact opposite - "I'm going to be tremendously successful in hockey." When the thought comes to you, "I'm never going to have a meaningful role on this team," you counteract it with the exact opposite -"I'm soon going to have a fabulous role on this team, I am going to be a go to guy." You see, the mind can think only one thought at a time. It might seem to you that you're thinking many thoughts at a time, but what is actually happening is you're thinking one thought after another one thought after another one thought, and so on. At any given moment, you're only thinking one thought. So if you take out the negative and put in the exact opposite, you are taking the power away from that negative. Don't feed the beast. This is often exactly opposite to what most people do. Most people, when they have something that they don't want to have happen to them, they think about it, they worry about it, they focus on it, eventually they manifest it. The Fifth Technique: Affirmations. If you don't know what affirmations are, they are simply statements that you repeat to yourself, over and over and over again. In Mind Power into the 21st Century there is an entire chapter on affirmations. Affirmations are extremely effective, especially on those reoccurring negatives, the ones that have haunted you for years. What you do is the next time that you find yourself thinking that negative, calmly inform it that, "From here on, every time that you come to me, you will be met with two minutes of affirmations stating the precise opposite of what you are saying." And keep to that promise. So when your mind comes up with a negative such as, "I'm never going to get ahead in my life," as soon as that thought comes to you, counteract it with two minutes of affirmations stating the exact opposite: "I'm going to be tremendously successful in my life. I'm going to be tremendously successful in my life. I'm going to be tremendously successful in my life." And repeat this affirmation to yourself over and over again for the full two minutes. And if the negative comes back, hit it again with another two minutes. If you respond with two minutes of affirmations every single time it comes to you, I will guarantee you that very quickly, often within days, that negative will cease haunting you. These are five excellent ways of dealing with negative thinking. Use whichever ones you find beneficial, use them in combinations with one another, but most importantly, use them. Because you no longer need to be overpowered by negatives. No longer do you have to let these negatives bring you down. From this point on you possess the tools and techniques to eliminate negatives. Congratulations! Now go out and use them.

Shot Release Drills from Coach Chris Hall

As a former goalie, the hardest shot to stop was always the one that I didn’t know was coming. The ability to catch a goalie (and the defense) off guard is one that is highly underestimated by players and coaches alike. Players that have a quick release, can shoot on the move and have the skill level necessary to shoot from any position are players that can score goals. Like any other skill, a quick release is something that must be practiced and developed in players. It requires physical and mental ability – you have to train your brain as much as your hands. I’ve put together some of my favorite shot release drills below in diagrams with brief explanations. Key aspects of a quick release include good weight transfer from the back to the front, strong wrist (esp bottom) and leg strength, keeping the head up, and a good follow through. In all of the following drills, accuracy and quick release is of the utmost importance. Drill A: Drag and Shoot: Player takes a puck and toe-drags it to a shooting position, using mostly legs to power the puck to the net. Player should focus on footwork, moving feet and shooting, using legs for power, quick snap to net. Both Sides. Drill B: Catch and Shoot: Player stands near the dot and catches and releases passes from coach/teammate. Simple catch and release in a scoring area – player should focus on quick catch and quick release. Both Sides. Drill A: Wide Drive & Shoot: Player comes hard down the wing and fires a quick shot on net at a point designated by a cone. The cone can be moved at every repetition to ensure a variance in the drill – high and low release points. Player should focus on fast acceleration, protecting the puck while driving down the wing and firing a quick release on net. Coaches/Teammates can pressure player down the wing to work on puck protection element. Both sides. Drill B: Deke & Shoot: Place a cone or object just inside the blue line and two near the top of the circle. Player will drive the cone (d-man) and make a move towards the outside. Player will then drive to the cones (placed closely together) and release a shot in-between them. The set of cones forces a player to shoot when they may not be fully ready and simulates a quick release situation. Player should focus on making a strong outside move and releasing the puck on the move – skating and shooting is critical. Improving your shot release and your ability to shoot on the move is a critical part of offensive hockey. I’ll make sure and have another post later with more quick release and skating and shooting drills. Besides these drills on the ice, I firmly believe that the best way to improve your shot is to buy 50 pucks and shoot them in your driveway every day. One of the easiest and most straightforward ways to improve your game, yet many refuse to do it.

Championship Habits! Visualization, A Powerful Tool!

Tips On reaching Your Goals, Visualization A Powerful Tool "It's all in the mind," says Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ex-Governor of California and multimillionaire, successful real estate tycoon, movie star, body-builder and five-time winner of the Mr. Universe title, Arnold has it made. But it wasn't always so. Arnold can remember when he had nothing except a belief that his mind was the key to where he wanted to go. "When I was very young, I visualized myself being and having what it was I wanted. Mentally I never had any doubts about it. The mind is really so incredible. Before I won my first Mr. Universe, I walked around the tournament like I owned it. The title was already mine. I had won it so many times in my mind that there was no doubt I would win it. Then, when I moved on to the movies, the same thing. I visualized myself being a successful actor and earning big money. I could feel and taste success. I just knew it would all happen." The technique Arnold is talking about, the technique that brought him so much success is called visualization. Visualization is using your imagination to see yourself in a situation that hasn't yet happened, picturing yourself having or doing the thing you want, or successfully achieving the results you desire. Let's say you want to be more confident. Using visualization you picture yourself working, talking to people, all with great confidence. You imagine yourself in situations that normally give you difficulty and you see yourself in these situations as confident, at ease, and performing well. You might picture your friends and associates complimenting you on your newfound confidence. You feel the pride and satisfaction of being a confident person and in your mind you enjoy the things that happen to you as a result of your confidence. You visualize everything that would or could happen to you and live as if it really is happening to you.

Mental Toughness Tips from Mind Warrior coach Gregg Swanson

Step 8 – Managing Mistakes and Their Negative Emotions mental strength in sports In my opinion the most performance damaging behavior an athlete can have is to hang on to their mistake during a competition. Hanging on to your mistake will certainly take you out of the game. Holding on to a mistake means you’re not mentally present and paying attention to the game or your cues to help you reach peak athletic performance. The only time you can achieve peak performance is now and the only place is here. When you are thinking about the mistake you are not in the here and now. You are in the past the there. Keep in mind that every athlete makes mistakes. The difference is the great ones know how to release the mistake during the competition and then use the mistake as feedback on what to improve on during practice. There is no real perfection in sports, except for how you respond to your imperfections. Your job as an athlete during the game is to forgive and forget. Forgive yourself and forget about the mistake. Then during practice work on improving your performance so the mistake won’t happen again. You see, you get what you focus on, the more you focus on the mistake during the game the more mistakes you’ll make in the game. Focusing on the mistake will only make your uptight, nervous and tense. Your muscles than won’t be able move and function properly and you’ll make more mistakes. This can be a death spiral for trying to reach peak performance. Peak performance comes from being calm and relaxed; focusing on mistake does just the opposite. Focusing on mistakes kills your self-confidence and give’s you a distorted picture of your abilities. For example, you’ve had numerous practices when you were in the zone. By focusing on the mistake this negates all those great practices and you end up thinking you’re no good. Dwelling on mistakes sets yourself up to trying too hard to make up for the mistake. When you try too hard guess what? That’s right; you make more mistakes, playing frustrated equals playing poorly. Mental Rebounding So what to do when a mistake does happen? Here are a few mental strength tactics to help manage the mental and emotional side of making a mistake. Step #1 – Awareness: When you make a mistake you must be aware that your focus of concentration has left the here and now and is in the past (on the mistake). Also you must become aware of the accompanying negative self-talk that comes along with the mistake. When you become aware you then can change your focus and negative self-talk. If you don’t become aware you’ll end up in the performance death spiral. You need to know the mental cascade of thoughts that occur when you make a mistake so you can break the cycle/pattern. Step #2 – Change Focus and Self-Talk: Once you become aware then you change your focus and self-talk. I went over the self-talk in a previous post that you can read HERE. As you change your self-talk you’ll be able to bring yourself back to the here and now. You might come up with a one word cue, like “focus” or “come back” to trigger yourself to refocus and shift your self-talk. Your job is to be aware where your attention is and bring it back to now (the game) so that you can achieve peak athletic performance. Step #3 – Calm Down: When you focus on mistake you get nervous, when you get nervous you make more mistakes. When you’re too emotional about your mistake you don’t have access to all your mental resources and you’ll say or do some very stupid things. One tip to calm down is to immediately slow down, that is, deepen your breathing (slow diaphragmatic breaths) and go into peripheral vision (looking from the sides of your eyes/vision). One method to control your breathing is to inhale to a count of 7 and exhale to count of 11. This will activate your “relaxing” nervous system and allow you to refocus and gain access to more of your mental resources. Doing this a few minutes of this daily will help you be prepared when you need it on the field. Refocus Ritual Use the above in any combine that works for you and when you make a mistake immediately perform the ritual. What ever ritual you create you need to have all 3 steps in the process. Here are three examples, oh yea, when reading these it may seem like they’ll take too long to do during the game, and as you practice them during training and practice you’ll be able to fire off your ritual during a match in no time. 1 – When the play (mistake) is over, go pick up some grass, focus on the grass and say “Let it go, it’s over, it’s in the past, stay in the now.” At the same time breathe deep, go into peripheral vision then take the grass and threw it away (the grass is representing your mistake), turn your back on the grass and get back into the game. 2 – Find a physical spot, when you make a mistake go the spot, touch it say “let it go”, take a few deep breaths go into peripheral vision and then come back to the game. 3 – Imagine you’re holding the mistake in your hand, breath deep, go into peripheral vision, squeeze your hand and then let relax and let go of the mistake. It’s important to work on your ritual during practice so it becomes automatic in a game. Step #4: Act as if: Once you have performed your refocus ritual you then use the “act as it” technique. This is, right after your ritual you “come back” to the game and act as if nothing happen. Head up, shoulders back, breathing confidently, you have a focused relaxed look your face and you act positive, as if nothing happen. When you change your physiology (your body) you will change your internal picture of yourself. Play around with these steps and come up with your own refocus ritual. When you do, you’ll be better prepared to reach peak athletic performance.

Former Tiger Paw Students Max Cote and Ryan Patulli Honored by Mdget AAA League

Former Tiger Paw Elite Hockey School student Max Côté - has been selected to the Quebec midget AAA all-star hockey team, Côté was named to the second all star team.

Max, along with fellow Tiger Paw Elite Summer Hockey school student, Ryan Patulli were awarded student bursaries.

The Truth About Practice: The 10,000 Hour Rule by Kevin Neeld of KINAThletic Development

The Truth About Practice: The 10,000 Hour Rule Last week I posted two discussions on the status of youth hockey development that pointed out some commonly held misconceptions, areas that need revamping (or at least have room for improvement) and some of the barriers that the hockey community will face in pursuing a more effective model. If you missed those posts, I highly encourage you to go back and read them before continuing on here today. Check out the links below: Hockey Development Post 1 –>> The State of Youth Hockey Hockey Development Post 2 –>> Hockey Development Resistance Those discussions were primarily inspired by my experiences in learning more about USA Hockey’s American Development Model. If you haven’t yet, I recommend heading over to their site and reading more about it: ADM Kids Somewhat to my surprise (I thought I’d get more hate mail), both posts were really well received and a few people responded with great comments. One in particular had to do with the apparent discrepancy between the recommendation that youth players participate in multiple sports and activities in order to achieve elite level status later down the road, and the idea that players need to spend a substantial amount of time developing their sport-specific skills in order to perfect their abilities. This latter idea is referred to as the 10,000 hour rule, as some research has shown that it generally takes about 10 years and 10,000 hours of purposeful practice for an individual in ANY field to achieve expert mastery. It’s easy to interpret the 10,000 hour rule as meaning that hockey players should focus ALL of their athletic time on the game of hockey to accumulate as many “practice hours” as possible at younger ages. Unfortunately, this idea is often misunderstood because “practice” is never adequately defined, and the idea of progressions and age-/developmental stage specificity is often lost. Briefly, I think it’s important to note that taking a young kid and submerging them into a single activity with the intention of making them one of the world’s elite has TREMENDOUSLY negative physical and psychological consequences. For our purposes today, however, I want to focus on what constitutes practice within the 10,000 hour rule paradigm. In order to understand what counts as practice, we need to have an understanding of what drives performance. At a minimum, it’s important to understand that there are physical and psychological components. The lists below are slight expansions on these ideas. Physical Components of Performance Technical Skill Athletic Ability Durability Psychological Components of Performance Hockey Sense Mental Preparation Grit Again, these lists are far from exhaustive, but are meant to start directing your thoughts as to lesser recognized components of performance and therefore of lesser recognized necessities of practice. So for a young hockey player looking to accumulate as much practice time as possible, what should they do? 10,000 Hours of Hockey Practice Structured hockey practice Unstructured hockey (pick-up) Watching game film of personal performances Watching practices, games, and/or film of players at the next level up Playing other sports Off-ice training This is a pretty short list, but can be branched out to a wide variety of activities. Structured practice will help players develop technical skills, hockey sense and, at the appropriate age, their tactical awareness. It’s important to recognize that having 100 hours of practice won’t lead to 100 hours of benefit if the players spend the majority of their time standing in lines or staring at the ceiling while the coach draws on the whiteboard. This is one of the strongest points of USA Hockey’s recommendations for players at younger levels and one of the primary benefits of unstructured play-the kids actually get to touch a puck and move around on the ice! Unstructured play will also help develop technical skills and hockey sense, but increases the emphasis on fun (this doesn’t mean not COMPETING, it just means that the competition is for pride instead of the mixed emotions of pride, not letting your coach down, and not getting “Vince Lombardied” by your parents on the ride home from the rink), and ultimately fuels a kid’s passion for the game. Watching game film and next-level hockey will help players develop hockey sense, tactical skills, and components of technical abilities secondary to visualization. In other words, hockey players can improve their performance simply by analytically WATCHING players at the level above theirs. Playing other sports and off-ice training serve some common and quite supplementary purposes. First, playing other sports exposes kids to different coaching methods, different social groups, different physical stresses, and emphasizes different athletic components. This helps develop highly coachable athletes with lots of friends, that are further from injury threshold and have more advanced athletic capacity. Simply, there is NO wrong here. To provide an athletic ability example (because that’s all the crazy parents and coaches will care about), playing baseball is “hockey-specific training” at younger ages. It teaches rotational power, hand-eye coordination, first step quickness, rapid reaction, and athletic body positions, all things that transfer. Similar arguments could be made for the benefits of soccer, lacrosse, basketball, football, and tennis for hockey. These other sports also provide more opportunities for young athletes to experience success, which is a primary driver in confidence. Also, simply because the “hockey player” is NOT playing hockey, they are maintaining a safe distance from their injury threshold due to overuse/under recovery (e.g. my stress overflow “theory”). Playing competitive hockey year-round is making old men out of young players; the insane number of players we see with chronic hip flexor and adductor (groin) injuries is evidence of a flawed development system. These nagging injuries become career limiting/ending for some, and experience/potential fulfillment limiting in everyone. Referring back to the lists above, it COMPROMISES durability. Regarding off-ice training, even BASIC off-ice activities like skipping, hopping, holding single-leg stance, etc. will help improve coordination, rythmicity, balance, and other motor qualities that will positively influence hockey. The nature of the off-ice training should develop in accordance with the physical quality sensitive periods. Take Home Message The 10,000 hour rule holds merit in long-term hockey development. If the goal is to achieve elite level status, it’s going to take time and hard work. Throughout this process, it’s important to broaden our horizons on what is considered practice and not ignore age-specific recommendations. 1,000 hours of practice for a 10-year old should NOT look like 1,000 hours of practice for a 20-year old. Seeking to build advanced hockey-specific skill sets on a narrow foundation of proper movement is a recipe for disaster. They call it long-term player development for a reason. Follow age-appropriate recommendations and be patient; excellence is inevitable. To your success, Kevin Neeld

Hockey Development Resistance from Kevin Neeld of KinAthletic Development

Hockey Development Resistance A couple days ago, I wrote a long post highlighting three of the major problems in our current youth hockey player development systems. If you missed it, you can check it out here: The State of Youth Hockey That post was largely inspired by USA Hockey’s American Development Model Symposium, which I attended a couple weekends ago. Today I want to follow up on that post with a discussion on the most prominent barriers that USA Hockey will face in attempting to revamp the youth hockey development programs in our country. It was interesting to hear speakers with backgrounds in basketball in the U.S., tennis in the U.S., hockey in the U.S., hockey in Canada, hockey in Sweden, and hockey in Finland ALL allude to the idea that parents are one of the largest problems in trying to do the right thing for youth athletes. In other words, it appears that the “parent problem” permeates all sports and all countries. The Parent Problem Paradox The idea that parents create an obstacle to doing what is in a kid’s best interest is a bit strange. Why would a parent NOT want the best for their kid? My guess is that not a single parent, not one, would admit that they’re purposely doing something to harm their child’s development. In fact, I would bet that a large proportion of parents would defend their attitudes and behaviors as HELPING their kids, if anything (the rest would probably admit to not really knowing what the best course is and just following the trend around them). In other words, it’s not that parents are consciously out to impair their kids’ development, but simply that there is a disconnect between intention and outcome. The paradox lies in the collective parents’ demands for what they view as best for their kids PREVENTING organizations from implementing what is actually best for their kids. Of particular interest is where the disconnect originates. In other words, where has the misinformation regarding youth athletic development stemmed from and how has it permeated such a large audience? In this regard, the three largest culprits might be: Entrepreneurs Tiger Woods “This is what I did as an athlete” thinkers Each of these could be the subject of an entire post, but in brief: Entrepreneurs, very wisely, have marketed year-round sports participation as the key to development and exposure. NEITHER of these is remotely accurate, but the people responsible for running “off-season” camps, select teams and tournaments make an incredible amount of money preying on the fears of youth athlete families. In April 1997, Tiger Woods won the Master’s at the age of 21, the youngest golfer to ever win. Shortly after, commercials were aired showing a very young Tiger hitting golf balls with his dad. This may have marked the official death of long-term athletic development and the birth of short-term athletic development. On a subconscious level, these commercials set the stage for a push toward early specialization. As Tiger continued to excel, so did the early specialization movement. Unfortunately, the model that produced Tiger is the same model that drives many potential world-class athletes out of sport altogether, and invariably leads to reduced peak performance and injuries in those that decide to stick it out. Some ex-athletes simply self-pronounce themselves as experts in that sport. We’ll discuss this more in a bit, but it’s important to recognize how inherently flawed this concept it. First, what works for one person rarely is the best solution for another. Individuals have individual needs. Second, the best coaches are rarely the best athletes. In fact, the more natural certain components of a sport come to a player, the harder it will be for them to relay that quality to another individual or group of athletes. How many hall of fame hockey coaches are there that were also hall of fame hockey players? To be clear, these factors don’t just influence parents. They also influence coaches, organization heads, etc. In general, the problem in youth athletic development is that the people making the decisions are rarely long-term athletic development experts. It’s interesting, though, that many coaches and parents may view themselves (or at least behave as if they view themselves) as such. When was the last time a parent barged into a dentist’s office and demanded that the dentist did his/her job in accordance with the parent’s wishes. Think that happens to a heart surgeon? A lawyer? An accountant? A skydiving instructor? A street cleaner? No. In almost EVERY profession, outsiders defer to the professional. Athletics, for whatever reason and quite inappropriately, are an exception. Parents know how to coach better than the coach. They know what their kids need. They are the experts. Likewise, coaches with ZERO background or understanding of the physical, social, technical, and social development time courses of athletes are convinced that their system is the best. Does this sound familiar? It’s interesting that the majority of these people have never heard of Istvan Balyi, the world’s foremost expert on long-term athletic development. This guy really knows his stuff! Nor are they familiar with the sensitive periods of specific athletic qualities during a young athlete’s development process. Nor are they aware that research has shown that the world’s best hockey players spend the overwhelming majority of their time during their developmental years playing for fun and playing other sports. Note that deliberate practice (what we think of as normal practice) and organized games don’t take over these players’ sport time until ~15 years old! Taken from: Soberlak, P. & Cote, J. (2003) The Developmental Activities of Elite Ice Hockey Players. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 15 (1), pages 41 – 49. I realize that the general tone of this post could be interpreted as blaming parents (and youth coaches for that matter). This is not my intention. In fact, hockey parents and youth coaches are truly heroic in the amount of time and energy they put into helping the kids. I don’t think any sport requires as much of a total commitment as ice hockey (team costs, equipment costs, travel time and costs, etc.). Youth hockey wouldn’t exist without their collective consistent efforts. Instead, the intention of this discussion is one of awareness. Parents are the largest advocates for the development of their kids, but are viewed as one of the larger barriers to positive change. Ultimately, I think that player development decisions need to be placed back in the hands of the TRUE experts in long-term athletic development (and related fields), and that youth parents and coaches just need to be a little more patient with younger kids. It doesn’t matter if a kid isn’t a superstar at age 10! We shouldn’t be dividing kids by ability at this age anyway. At the mite and squirt levels, kids should have pucks on their sticks for the majority of the time they’re on the ice and should almost never stop moving. It should look like chaos, and it should be fun! By backing off the “rushed development” idea a bit, we can allow kids to develop a true love for the sport, which will be what fuels them to want to put in the time and energy to achieve excellence later in the development process. I say all that to say this: It will be of great benefit to the hockey community to learn more about USA Hockey’s American Development Model-their intentions, their age-specific recommendations, and their plan of implementation. In a future post, I’ll identify some of the more “big picture” messages that accompany their ADM, but in the meantime you can refer to here for more information: ADM Kids If your initial reaction to anything you read from their site is dismissive or generally disagreeable, please ask yourself these two questions: Do you believe that knowledge has the power to change opinion? Do you believe that you possess greater knowledge than the collective group of people that have collaborated in developing the model? To your success, Kevin Neeld

Mark Barberio Making an Imprint in AHL Playoffs!

Tiger Paw elite Summer Hockey School Guest Instructor/Speaker Mark Barberio had his four-game point and assist streak (1g, 4a) ended last night. Barberio is tied for second in points among defensemen in the 2012 Calder Cup Playoffs (2g, 4a, 6pts).