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.

In an absolutely great game, the US beats Canada and takes home gold at the U20 World Championships on Canadian ice in Saskatoon. Canada, looking for it's sixth straight Gold took an early lead but surrendered it going down 5-3 late in the third before rallying once again from a two goal deficit to tie the US in regulation. With all the momentum, Canada was not able to seize the opportunity. US defensemen John Carlson brought the puck into the Canada zone on a three on one, he opened up like he was going to pass near the left face off dot and then ripped one short side for the sudden death game winner about five minutes into OT.

Canada has won the U20 gold medal the last five years and was seeking a record sixth gold on home ice. Somehow, they let the Americans get a two goal lead and somehow they tied it late in regulation. This time OT was scheduled for 20 minutes before the shootout instead of five minutes and we didn't have to see a shootout decide the outcome. A rerun of this game will play on the NHL Network tomorrow (06-Jan-2009) at 6:00pm EST.

Next year the US hosts the U20 Championships for the first time since 2005. Buffalo will play host. Information is available at www.buffaloworldjuniors.com. Tickets are already on sale and you can bet that the Canadians will be fighting to regain what they consider their trophy and title.

In a side note that could easily be it's own story, the USA U17 team went 6-0 against the world's best and won the 2010 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge. They defeated Canada-Ontario last night 2-1 for the gold in Timmins, Ontario. At the U17 level Canada fields five teams (Pacific, West, Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic) and the field is rounded out with the USA, Czech Republic, Russia, Sweden and Finland.

Congrats to all. While I'm hopeful that the US can sweep gold on Canadian soil this winter, I'm still not betting on the US in the Olympics. Nonetheless, it will be exciting in Vancouver!

MYHockey works and is useful to viewers because it includes virtually all games played by the teams that qualify to be included in the system. MYHockey was never designed to be a league ranking system. It actually would not work if only league games were included.

Some users have requested that exhibition games be removed from MYHockey. This makes no sense and would erode the accuracy and completeness of the system. There are a set of games that cannot or should not be entered. A more complete set of rules around which games should or should not be entered into MYHockey is detailed on the MYHockey Game Definition page.

These days, there are about a dozen different ways that you can represent a tie, overtime or shootout game. Each league and tournament handles these events differently. With hundreds of leagues, thousands of teams and hundreds of thousands of games, MYHockey cannot identify the rules governing each tie, overtime or shootout game. At this point in time, all games that have an overtime or shootout period where a winner is identified, will result in a game where both a winner and loser are identified. Overtime and shootout games should not be recorded as ties, but as one goal victories for the winning team. That also means the games are identified as one goal losses for the losing team. MYHockey does not recognize the OT loss or SO loss as something different than a regulation loss.

We realize that MYHockey standings might thus be denoted differently than your league website and apologize for this confusion. We will be looking at this situation in the coming months and it is possible that you might see some enhancements at certain age levels by the 2010-11 season.

Week #3 rankings for the MYHockey 2009-10 season have been released with a number of enhancements. All divisions titles that have been bolded are now ranked divisions. Divisions in standard font are presented as alphabetic listings. Because it takes five recorded games scores to be eligible to be ranked, many divisions have few, if any, teams that have reached that threshold. While a number of new divisions had their rankings released this week, many still have a minority of teams that have met the five game minimum.

Released this week are the USA Girls AAA divisions and the top Canada (mostly Ontario) Girls divisions. No USA Girls Tier 2 rankings are available at this time. USA ACHA College rankings have also released, although NCAA D1 and D3 rankings will still take another couple weeks. Additionally, some Junior and Illinois HS rankings are now live.

While MYHockey has volunteers for over 350 divisions, we still have 400 divisions without volunteers. The traditional boys squirt (atom) through midgets have about 75% volunteer coverage, but volunteers remain sparse in some of the newer ranking areas. The girls divisions need more volunteers, especially from the East Coast of the US. Western & Eastern Canada Midget and Bantams are light. Although most areas of the country haven't started High School hockey, we will definitely need more input on the high school level. Go to the Report Scores page for more instructions on how to volunteer to input scores.

There are many more areas that MYHockey could be covering. Canadian peewee hockey outside Ontario, for example. If you are interested, drop MYHockey a line. Heck, we'll develop European divisions, pro hockey divisions, you name it. But, we need to know that you are interested.

Look for more divisions to be release weekly through the end of 2009. Enjoy the season.