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Are HS coaches leading girl's HS hockey down the tubes? Girl's coaches continue to emphasize clutching and grabbing and forechecks that clog up the middle of the ice (ie left wing lock) all in an attempt to win more games and keep their jobs. But are they taking girls hockey down the wrong road?

How many girls truly have skill to handle the puck and shoot? One HS coach told me that he thought there was only one or two players in last years state tournament that had honest to goodness skill at stickhandling and shooting. All of the other girls just fling the puck in the zone and hope for the best. I would generally agree with this assessment.

Shouldn't HS coaches focus more attention on skill development to improve the game and improve the product on the ice?

Roman Legion wrote:Shouldn't HS coaches focus more attention on skill development to improve the game and improve the product on the ice?

I would say yes, definitely to this...but I don't think girls hockey is going down the tubes or necessarily down the wrong path. Naturally some teams just don't have a real chance of staying with certain other teams without resorting to a clutch & grab style...but even in those cases I don't care for a coach who calls for those tactics from his players. A coach should still emphasize the skills development, implementation and execution even when overmatched in my opinion. **Nevertheless, the clutch and grab style is alive and well by some teams at the collegiate level as well. Ya have to enforce the rules and make the calls at all levels.

**I don't want to mention any names, but have ya watched MSU play lately? Maybe that'll change now with the load of fleet footed talent they've accumulated.

Wow... I don't know about this...

I guess I would say that I haven't seen too many traps or wing locks over the years @ the G HS level, but that may be because against my teams the opponent hasn't had to implement those conservative style approaches too often.

My teams are known for two things - 1) Being the underdog 85-90% of the time (see my schedule for last year - 23 of 27 opponents were ranked at one point in the season), and 2) Sticking around a lot longer than their talent alone relative to some amazing opponents often should allow them to.

The only reason less talented teams are able to be successful (I believe) is to play conservative d-first hockey. I think it all starts from your own net, and this is likely due to the fact that I haven't always had the luxury of the offense for a run & gun approach (i.e. first one to 10 wins).

Note that I don't believe that conservative d-first hockey equals clutch & grab obstruction hockey. I also don't believe that teaching conservative systems is counter-productive to skill development.

This being said, I also consider what will best prepare a player to play at the next level if they are indeed talented enough to make it there. Now, I don't know the college game as well as I once did, but it would seem to me that the knowledge of systems (conservative & otherwise) would be beneficial in addition to talent.

I think that in-season most HS coaches spend more time than they'd like to on systems. But there is a way to balance that, and most coaches do a decent job of this I'm sure. There are multiple ways to teach systems, but with some visual learners you need to play "human chalk board" sometimes on the ice and slowly work up to full execution speed. That takes time (and patience).

The hardest part of making the transition to the girls game 8+ years ago was that I couldn't take the systems directly from the boys game to the girls at that time as the ability level & execution wasn't quite there yet. This has improved as time has went on, and the other thing that we've been lucky to have is more kids exposed to quality coaching at the youth level that actually gave them a basic system framework so they had some clue as to what we were doing at the HS level. It wasn't uncommon for me to get some blank looks when we talked "systems" even just a few years back believe it or not...

I still think the off-season is where a lot of skill building should be done, but this should be a part of the regular season as well obviously. There are limitations though with the amount of ice that some programs have to work with. Not all are blessed with 3-6 hrs a day on multiple rinks at times like I am!