An Interview With Darryl Belfry, Part 1

SPEAKER_03 1:23

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another edition of Our Kids Play Hockey. This is gonna be our first two-part episode, and you're listening to part one right now. We have an unbelievable guest for you today, Daryl Belfry. He is a man, he's a myth, he's a legend. For those of you who don't know, uh, this man is a skill development coach at the top level, and he has worked with some of the greatest players in the game today. And his top-down rebuild approach to skill development has not only been motivating to me throughout my career as a coach, but it will really make you rethink how you're approaching the game as a parent, as a coach, from a skill level, from an ethical level, from every level. There's so much value in this episode, and I know it sounds like I'm selling it to you, but I was that just amazed with all the stuff that came out of this. So, because of that, we're making it a two-part episode because we just kept going and going. It was way too long to make it once. So, enjoy this episode with Daryl Belfry. Um, the man has a book out. If you haven't seen it yet, Belfry Hockey, you can get this wherever books are sold. Um, and also remind you that our book, Christy and I, our children's book, children's book, excuse me, When Hockey Stops. It's available now for pre-shipment. So you cannot get it yet on the major retailers, but you can get it early access right now at whenhockey stops.com. Signed copy. Uh, also gonna come with some free gifts. Uh, and again, the book deals with dealing with the diversity, it's targeted towards six to twelve year olds. Um, and uh and the reviews coming in, which you'll see soon. Uh, I am humbled by how how many people are saying how great this book is. But if you're looking for that last second gift, you're looking for something great for your kid, whenhockeystops.com, check out your copy today. And uh otherwise, enjoy this part one edition of Our Kids Play Hockey with Daryl Belfry. Enjoy it. Hello, hockey friends and families around the world, and welcome to another edition of Our Kids Play Hockey. I'm Leah Lias, and I'm joined as always by my good friends Mike Benelli and Christy Cassiano Burns. And we are joined today by the top performance and premier development coach in hockey, Daryl Belfry. Daryl is recognized as the leading expert in uncovering new pathways to performance excellence. He has worked with several future Hall of Famers. You might have heard of some of them: Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane, John Tavares, Austin Matthews, and many others, and is currently a development consultant for the Toronto Maple Leafs. In addition to his work on the ice, Daryl is also a professional speaker and is the author of Belfry Hockey, excuse me, strategies to teach the world's best athletes. Pick this book up if you're serious about the game at any level. And on a personal note, I have been following this man for nearly a decade, and he's been a major influence on my coaching career. And I really am humbled to have him with us here today. Daryl, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Wow, with an intro like that, I mean, I don't know where we're gonna go from here, but that was phenomenal. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 4:01

No, thank you for being here, Daryl. I know you're a busy man, and and uh listen, we we try and do the best we can with the intro. I don't like to just read Wikipedia pages or LinkedIn profiles, you know. I think everybody deserves that, especially you.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

So yeah, after after that, I was dying to meet them too.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Beautiful. Yeah, Daryl. One of the uh aspects of coaching that I've always loved is that you in many cases reinvented how to teach skill sets uh within the game. Um, so I want to start there. How did you build the confidence to do this both mentally and physically? Because in my experience, coaching, there's a lot of leadership that says don't reinvent the wheel, don't do different things, kind of just stick to the plan. And in in some cases, I agree with them, but you have totally broke that wide open.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

Well, I for me, the there was really not what confidence wasn't the mo wasn't the thing. The it was the the necessity of having to do it that way. Like when I first started, which is I don't know, say almost 20 years ago now. Um, there was no such thing as like skill coaches. You'd have the odd power skater here and there that would come in, but like in my hometown, there was none of that, it was volunteer coaches everywhere. I had just finished playing, but I wasn't very good, and I was a goalie, and then I wanted to coach. So I was I couldn't skate really like in forward skates or anything. And now I want to be a I want to be a skills coach who can't skate, who never played any position other than goalie. And I want to, I want to like do something here, and I want to I want to coach. And so you can imagine what that was met with. Uh, talk about resistance. It was like, what is this guy doing? And and I want to get paid for it. And like, okay, time out. Like, someone needs to give this guy a reality check. Like, first off, we're all volunteers here, we all played extensively, we did all that. So, confidence was nowhere, like anywhere near the conversation. What I had to do in order for me to establish myself was I had to look for all the inefficiencies that were going on, and I needed to become different in my approach to those inefficiencies and then produce better results by attacking those windows. So, the very fact, exactly what you're talking about, is exactly what happened. It was very rigid. Hey, listen, if you want to teach someone to skate, first you teach them without the puck, then you teach them with the puck. It's only common sense, Daryl. I said, okay, if that's the way you guys are gonna do it, that's great. I'm not doing it that way. I'm gonna put the puck on the kid's stick right from the start. Daryl, you're an idiot. I said, okay, I if I'm going down, I'm going down my way, but I'm taking shots here at trying to do something different. So for maybe the first six or eight years, I just spent all of my time running around looking at what was being done and being accepted as this is normal, this is how you coach. And I just did the opposite, and I tried to see if that was gonna work. And so I uh confidence, there really wasn't any of it. It that wasn't really what it was, it was more like I was curious, and I was and I knew like I had no choice, like I couldn't just come in and just do what everybody else was doing. That was not gonna fly. I had to do it differently. So uh it was uh it was a difficult process, met with a lot of resistance, but the payoffs have been pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 7:45

I guess you started started us with that answer, but no, it's it's a it's a phenomenal answer to the question, and and I love that because I I think creativity and coaching is something that's we need more of to evolve the game. Um, you know, it again it doesn't downplay like all the like the ADM model, obviously, in the United States and everything that people go through. But um, I remember as a young coach, you know, I would draw out my own plays and I would create my own drills. Uh, you know, I'm speaking kind of the young coaches that listen to this, and it was discouraged at most times. But I, you know, so not every one of them worked, but I had to learn and grow. And that was one of the ways it became more creative as a coach. Um, you know, a job I'm still happy to do today. But I, you know, again, I've said this before, you were a huge influence on me with that. I got a quick story for you. And parents listening to this, don't worry, we are gonna dive into this at the youth level and get Daryl's thoughts on that too. So make sure you stay tuned to that. But Daryl, I was coaching in England in the uh elite league over there, and um, I'll never forget I used to watch your YouTube videos all the time where the rubber meets the road. And I just remember sitting there doing that. And uh there was a drill you did, I think you did it with Patrick Kame, but um, I was watching your drill, it's kind of that in-out drill on the boards and pop around the top of the circle. Um, and I started doing that with my team. These are pro players in again in England, and I remember they were fighting me on the drill, they had never done anything like that. And I said, listen, we're just gonna keep doing it, we're gonna keep doing it with build the muscle memory because I want to have the in-game transfer. You see where I'm going with this, because that's the other video series that you do that I follow so much. Um, and one of my favorite moments coaching all time, and when I when I got to coach these games, I was a little bit on a perch. I got to watch from the overhead, and one of my players in the game did it flawlessly and goes in and scores, right? And I kind of ran down and I said, You did it. And he looked at me and said, Did what? Had no idea he had just done that move, right? And that goes into the in-game transfer that you are you preach on your videos, you know, old and new, right? Um, can you talk about how you approach athletes with building muscle memory so that it becomes in-game transfer? Because what I what I tell my players, and you can tell me if I'm wrong here, is if you do it correctly, it practices enough. If we practice it right, it'll just happen in a game. You won't have to think about it. You won't have to be in that situation to go, oh, I should do this. It'll just snap your fingers and be there.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

So the trick to uh training to game transfer is to pick subjects or topics or areas that are that happen frequently. So if something is occurring a lot or the situation happens a lot, then now you're in there a lot more. So then players will recognize it. Like whether they recognize it consciously or to your point, they just unconsciously do something different or they read something different, then it just automatically happens. So the trick is is to try to find something that happens multiple times in a game and then provide them with options or solutions that extend beyond what their normal approach would be. So let's say something happens and the that particular player is involved in that play. Let's say it's six or eight times. So let's say it's a defenseman and it's a retrieval, and you just know that I'm gonna have to go get a puck. It usually happens six or eight times. And you have a certain success rate that comes with that. You know, I'm able to go get the puck and I can make an exit play, and we're out of the zone. I do that of the eight, maybe I do that, you know, four or five times. So I'm around 50% of being able to make a good play that gets us out, and 50%, you know, I make a poor decision and then puck stays in. So for me, I have now when I look at that, I'm like, okay, this happens a lot. Uh so the players in there, and the success rate is not tight. Like, it's not like they're eight out of 10, right? They're four out of 10, 5 out of 10. So if I can improve them like two, I'm gonna give them like a lot. Like if I can get from four to six or from five to seven, now we're like in business of being like elite. So then you go in and you start working on different solutions. So oftentimes players are unsuccessful because they do the same thing over and over again, right? So you say, Well, wait a minute, right now you're sprinting to the puck, but like no one's around you. So maybe like take a shoulder check and see, like sometimes you have to sprint to the puck, and sometimes you don't. You can take a little bit of time and you know, see what else around you and do all that. So now I've added one skill already. We haven't even started yet. I've added a shoulder check. So now the player immediately has vision, so now they can make a better decision. That could be the only influence I have on that skill, and it could probably improve them by at least one, right? But we haven't even started yet. Then I could say, okay, now the times where it's real tight and people are all over you, like you got a pressure on you. Like you never really like make any deception. You never like, you never like hide your intentions in any way. So is there something you can do with whether it be the line of the puck that you're going to or the way you approach it by making it look like you're going to do one thing and then doing it the other way? Uh, is there something you can do there? Well, yeah, you know, and then the player starts going back and forth. Yeah, you know, maybe I could use my stick differently. Okay, well, how would that implement your influence your feet? So, what skating skills do we need now? Okay, so in the deception, there's a certain amount of skating that needs to go in here. So now I can dig into the skating. The player can't wait to do it because they're interested in the result. So oftentimes we do this backwards. We don't talk about the desired effect, you don't say, like, hey, Bob, like you got eight of these that happening every night. You're sitting at around 50, you do the exact same thing over and over again. First off, you got Bob's attention because he didn't even realize that you were paying attention enough to know that he actually does this this many times. So, right away, you have a captive audience because you know something about it, about him that he doesn't know about himself. Really? I do that a lot, yeah. And you kind of do it the same way. Let's try to get some different results here. So now you have a captive audience, he's listening, and then not only is he listening, but you can engage him in the problem solving. Hey, what could you do here? What could you do there? He already knows some of the answers, but you might be surprised by some of the things that he says as well. And then now you got something that you can work with, and then there's any different way you can go. You know, you get a kid, you know, you talk about mites. Well, listen, everyone who's watching mic game knows I got one kid, he skates it from one end, he goes all the way to the other and he shoots. He probably does that six, eight, ten times. Okay, and he get he probably does it similarly, like he likes to beat people from his forehand to his backhand or his backhand to his forehand. He probab and and kids get intoxicated by the success rate because, especially when they're really young, it happens that they can do the same thing over and over again, and it's a high level of result, right? And they get so many instances, it's easy to do. So, those are an opportunity to create awareness where you might say, Hey, like Tommy, like you're going the same way, beating the same guy every time the same way. Can you maybe do another way? Maybe like, let's add something else. Imagine if you could do it this way, something else. Now he's interested. Yeah, that'd be cool. Maybe I could do it this way. Like, that's training to game transfer from NHL all the way down. It's an awareness of what someone does frequently, provide some kind of thought towards that, acknowledge it, and then engage the student, off they go.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

They're like, gotta be honest with you, I I love free clinics, and you just gave us one right there, you know. Um, one of the things I want to tap into this because we're gonna turn this right into youth hockey now, and and you're tapping on it perfectly, you know. Um, I'm gonna try and detect this from a coaching standpoint first and then a player standpoint second. You know, one of the things you taught me again, through, you know, through videos and just through watching, reading your book, is kind of again, you just said it, how to approach a situation or how to approach building a drill for an in-game transfer. So when I help to create practice plans, again, we we do some basic fundamental stuff in the beginning. Then I bring in some ADM drills just to keep it fun, but I always try to end on a drill that's going to transfer to a game. And what I like to do, and I I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, and and if this is a good tactic or if there's as if there's another way to do it, I'll say, like, okay, we need to work on our breakout. And I break it down more. Okay, what parts of the breakout? Okay, pass to the to the wing, you know, just simple might hockey. And then I break it down even more. And this is where your influence comes in on me, right? Because it's not as simple as just, well, we have to make this good pass and get out. It's what skill sets do they need at this point to be able to receive the pass, to make that with movement, to look up and find their heads up. And then you can break it down even more beyond that to the player of which players excel at this. And then try, I try and create the drill so it's going to simulate the game, right? So we'll put mild pressure on them. Uh and the other thing I do is this, and and this goes against some of the some of the things we're told, Mike, you'll like this is if it's gonna be a drill with I'm talking with mites, where we're gonna try and transfer a game situation. I'll actually stop the practice, just talk to them for three or four minutes and say, listen, I want you to understand the why behind this drill. I don't want you just going through the motions here. We're we're practicing this for the game. And I always say, if as long as you're not taking 15 minutes to tell the kids how much you know about the game and you're explaining to them why we're doing the drill, I think that has more of a progression to an in-game transfer. But even from a coaching aspect, the question I'm getting towards is for coaches that want to break things down, right? Is that the process? Is it kind of gradually break it down to the lowest level and then build from there?

SPEAKER_02 17:30

Yeah, that you take a common situation. What you're talking about is you're working on the breakout. Why? Because it happens a lot. It happens a lot in a game. You're not gonna pick something that's very random that only happens like once or twice at a game. You're gonna pick something that happens a lot and it it leads to success. Like if we can get out of our own zone efficiently, we're gonna spend more time in the offensive zone, it all makes sense. Everyone has more fun. Okay, so when you're trying to break it down, one of the best ways I try to do it is I try to personalize the experience for every player. So, for example, one of the big mistakes I think coaches make is we get it, we want it to be like perfect. So D goes back and gets it, they get it quickly to their forehand, they come around the net, they get their eyes up, and they zip a pass, tape to tape to the winger. The winger does a good job, starts in the dot line, comes down the dot, pivots, they're going backwards, they catch the puck that's tape to tape inside the pivot, cross over, get the dot line, find the center, and when Bob's your uncle, you're gone. Everything's great. We do it over and over and over again. Except the problem is now you had a little pressure. Now all of a sudden, that tape to tape pass, like there's a stick in there. Right now it's like, ah, geez, like I can't make that tape to tape pass. What am I gonna do? So, what I do is I try to personalize it. So I say to them, like, listen, first time through, tape to tape. Second time through, I don't want to tape to tape. I want you to imagine that there's a stick in the way, and now you have to find a different way to get it there. So maybe you have to pass it like off the board. So it's got to be like a board pass to get it to him. Now the poor kid on the wall is like, hold on, like that was a tape to tape pass. Now I got to field this thing off the wall. So he's working on his skill. The variability that goes along with a breakout is extensive, or I might pass it like you want to pass it to him in front of him, but sometimes you can't pass it to him in front of him. So instead of zipping a pass in front of him, I'll pass it slowly towards his backhand so he has time to turn because I got to allow for that time to turn. Now he gets it on his backhand. You're working on a breakout, but the kid, the passer is trying to problem solve and create solutions. You have no pressure yet. It's just it's just a regular drill. But you take the idea off the table that he has to be perfect and zip a pass tape to tape, because you and I both know it's unrealistic. You watch 20 breakouts of your team. How many times is the tape-to-tape pass actually available?

SPEAKER_03 20:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

It's not available as often as we like to at what we like to think. So now the kid comes there. What happens? How many times does this happen? He comes there, he looks, it's not there. So, what does he do? He turns back. Everyone, like, oh my God, what's he doing? He's turning back. They don't, they're not old enough for all the rest of the kids to adjust to that. So they're like, whoa, like, what is he doing? So then the whole thing breaks down. Skill development is expanding capacity. So when you're breaking it down, what you should also be doing is adding variability, more variability, not less. Right. So you want the winger to be able to catch it on his backhand, catch it on the rim, catch it off a board pass, catch it tape to tape, catch it standing still, maybe have to protect it right away. You want to give all that variability. First, you start tape to tape, then you got to get out of that. You got to get out of it. Variability is the key to skill development. So, as a coach, the first thing you got to throw out is perfect. Get that out of there. We are not trying to be perfect, we are trying to be problem solvers. So, here's the oxymoron in most of it. I'm a coach, I show up, I got my practice, it's all dialed in, it's all color-coded, it looks fantastic. Like I am prepared, I'm ready to go. I'm so excited. I get there and I want every drill to look like a symphony, like it just is like poetry in motion. I want every pass to be on, I want the timing to be great. That's what I want. I am already failing. I'm already failing. I'm failing my kids and I'm failing my practice. What I should want is messy to start, a little bit ugly, not very in sync. Add a lot of variability, and then gradually, uh, it doesn't matter how that pass gets there. Our kids are going to learn to adjust. If the kid comes around the corner, the D comes around the net and the play is not there because I'm the coach and I take it away. He turns back, my other D automatically just moves to go get an up be an option. Everybody turns and snaps over to the other side, and now we're available. That's what I want to see. But when did you practice that? When did you create that as a problem? Well, you never did because we're too interested in perfect, right? Perfect is not the goal, variability of skill is the goal. So let it be messy. It's okay for it to be messy. I think that's my number one message as it relates to young coaches is walk in, practice one, bring all the parents aside and say your kid's gonna get six or eight reps at every one of these drills. The first six, I'm hoping, are awful. I want the last two to be really good. I don't want so when he comes in the car and he's driving here, don't tell him to tell him to have every passion. Pass on because that's not what we're doing here. I want him to learn to adapt and adjust and stop and start, and that's hockey. Hockey is sometimes making the messy look really good. It's like being a it's like what my buddy used to tell me all the time, Daryl, what's the difference between an unbelievably like genius level carpenter and an average carpenter? I say, I have no idea. The quality of their work. No, the brilliant guy he hides his mistakes way better. He knows how to hide his mistakes. They still make the same mistakes, he just hides it so no one knows. That's hockey brilliance, especially like at the highest level. You think of like the NHL, where it's really done at the highest level. You know how many mistakes are happening there? You know many times the guy can't make the pass where he needs to make a pass, and there's all these like problem solving that's going on. There's a ton of it. As we need to bring that attitude down to the kids, we're not trying to get you to be perfect, we're trying to get you to hide your mistakes better. That's what we're trying to get you to do.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Yeah, that's a whole new way of thinking, and that is that's my job.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

That's my job is to create a whole new way of thinking. Seems like a good time to bring up if you haven't gotten this book yet.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

I need to get this book for my daughter. It's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Good thinking. Go ahead, Mike. No, I was gonna say, and I think Daryl, I think you bring, I mean, one of the things you bring up in in your book, and and a lot of the stuff that you obviously do, you know, professionally is that you know, that that sweat equity, that parent that looks out and wants to see like what Lee's drew. I'm sure like if Lee's doing a breakout drill, right? And the kids come, they pick up the puck behind the net, the kid curls up the boards, and the pass is made in a 90-degree angle, like, oh, he's he's really teaching breakouts. And like where I've gone for a long time now, I mean, I don't even know if I even have done a breakout drill in 15 years. It's all small area games or or drills that simulate all that chaos. Because if I'm standing in a lane, I couldn't believe how many eight-year-olds would just pass through me. Like if I'm the if I'm the coach saying, okay, I'm gonna now put this, you know, okay, there's there's now somebody on the guy, and the kid will just try to blast it through me because he thinks he needs to make that pass. I think that's where you know your your conversation, I think, in a lot of stuff that you've done and I've listened to is the variables that you can put into small area games. Like a small area game can't just be three on three when the best kid just like you said, he gets the puck, he wheels behind the line, and he goes and scores. And the other kids put their hands up and they we won the game. And I think to to add variables in that maybe, maybe in your three on three, four on four, two on two, one-on-one, whatever it is, that every pass has to be a ram pass, every pass has to be a bank pass, every pass has to be, you know, you have to find the guy that has his blade on the ice and not the kid that has his butt ended on the ice. I don't know. There's all kinds of things that can happen where, like, I I would probably push back on on like an AU coach or even talking about a breakout to a kid. That's me. Like, I would probably just say, there's zero, because there are no breakouts, because the kids in the world we're trying to develop them for, and the fun is that that person that controls the puck is now able to say, Well, I'm gonna dictate based on what my teammates are doing, how we're gonna get out of the zone. And I think that that the the the but I think what what all of us as parents get anxiety about is, well, how are they gonna how are they, you know, when do you have the time to teach that piece without the chaos? Right? Like, like where do you find the time as a youth coach? Because look at you, you have like right, you could work with a player for hours, right? Unimpeded, but how do you find the time as a youth coach to take the chaos enough away in these little places to work on that skill development? I just like to hear your feedback from that, from you know, because your daughter went through youth hockey, right? And how many times you're like, I if they could just teach this little hitch or where you are, but then I gotta slow things down, and I have to do a 90-degree pass to the boards, stick on the ice because I can't learn that skill if I'm just if it's just chaos all the time.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

All of it's important, that's how I view it. So I have no issue with an AU coach going out there running a breakout drill. I have no issue with that. I just don't want you to do that all the time. I have I have no issue with a coach going in and doing uh simp a breakout type skills in a small area game. I have no issue with that. I just don't want you to do it all the time. I would like the coach to be creative to say, okay, like a breakout, like we need people in certain positions, like it's helpful if they're in like certain spots. So I'm gonna spend five minutes and I'm gonna just kind of take them through what that looks like. I'm gonna create a little variability, then I'm gonna add a couple other things, little like hey, if this is taken away, what other option might you have? I'm gonna do that, and then I'm gonna throw it into a game. Like, so I'm doing all of it. Like, I think what we get stuck on often is well, there's like like we have to do it this way. No, you do it, all of it's important. Do it all instead of doing one breakout drill for 15 minutes, do three drills for five minutes each. Where because that's how kids are, anyways, they just want it to get moving. So show me, let me mess around with it, and then let me like play. That's really what it is. Like, show me the breakout, like where I kind of need to be. Why do I need to be there? Okay, now add some variability, like where the pot goes. What if this play is not there? Then what do I what what else could I maybe do? Give me some ideas and then let's go. Let me play, let me try to figure it out, let me make some mistakes, let me do something well, all that. That one area that we think we really gotta be careful of as it relates to kids is we have to acknowledge that the game is being processed at all different levels. So you have a group of how many kids are on your on your mic team? 10. There's 10 kids, all 10 kids see the game at different speeds. So the top kid, he's above the speed. So the way the speed of the game is that when he's playing, his mind is able to process the game above that speed. That's why he's able to get to all the loose pocks, he can anticipate, he can do all because the game is too slow for his skill set. He's faster, he can process it faster. The 10th rated kid is below the level of the speed. So he this game is going a million miles an hour, like it's like everybody's going, he can't process it fast enough. And then all the kids in that in the order, all of them process it differently. We as coaches don't allow for that. The expectation is every kid needs to learn everything. You're right, they do, but there's allowances that need to happen. So the number one defenseman that you have, he comes whipping around the net on your breakout, like he has no issue with handling the puck with his head up. He can skate, handle the puck, keep his head up. He can see everything that's going on because he's above the level. Now, your fourth defenseman, who's like the weakest guy, this guy he has hard enough time like carrying the puck and skating at the same time. Like he's worried the puck's gonna like fall off of his stick. So he he's he's only focused on what's going on with him and his puck. Right, he can't see everything out. You tell him to put pick his head up, he loses the puck. He's like, I don't want to, I don't want to pick my head up. Every time I do that, I lose the puck. We have to coach kids where they are, not where we want them to be. Where are they? This kid has a hard enough time keeping the puck on his stick skating. So let's take the expectations and let's take the pin out of that, and let's focus on just coaching him where he is and praise him for small adjustments so that as he gets going, it's fine. And you can tell him, like Tommy, the best kid, he's gonna come around, he's looking up all the time. He knows how many he can count how many people are in the stands, he knows how many pucks are on the ice. This other guy, he has no idea, he's so tunneled vision, he can't see anything. So you tell him, hey, just take a peek. So now he takes a peek. Oh my god, what was unbelievable? You took a peek and you didn't lose a puck. That's coaching a kid where he is. I think that's important. We don't talk about that enough, master.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Right. So, Daryl, I'm gonna, I mean, it's actually I I'll I'll I'll be clipping that post there for it for my parents. So I'm I'm having these big conversations the last couple of weeks that now you're working 12U, 14U, 15U, 16U. And I but I think that that that it's it's compressing the kids that can't process the game are starting to be all on the same team because the other kids have advanced. So we're teaching, we're teaching these other kids that all quit can't process the game fast enough, the same way we're teaching the kids that are all processing the game fast. And I think parents get so uh there's so much anxiety that we talked about this uh on our last podcast about spring hockey. You don't have if you follow the same path at the kids that are better than you and you keep following their path, you're never gonna catch them, you're never gonna break the cycle of being able to fix the things that you've missed, or or to your point, never got a chance because all now because I think it's actually a benefit when the kids get to 14U and you're coaching like the third team in that age group, that for the majority of most of the kids are all in the same boat, it you know, conceptualizing the game, that's why they're there with you, because they didn't advance through the game, and then we try to teach, and then when and then parents get well, how come we're not doing what they're doing? Because because we haven't learned to process the game the way those kids did.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

So here's here's a great example. So I when I was young, I was a coach mentor for an organiz for an organization in Canada, and so I was basically like you know, suggesting drills and going out with teams and this and that. And we had from triple A all the way down to uh house league. Now I was dealing with just the rep kids, so it was just that triple A, double A, single A. So we would have a kid playing on the triple A team who the game was going too fast. He'd literally get the puck and get rid of it, like it was literally on the stick, off the stick. He to get the puck on a breakout, he's literally icing it nearly every time. There's no pressure on him, but the game is so fast and he just falls into these habits because it's so quick, it's just so anxious. He's so anxious because it's going too fast, he can't process it. That anxiety just continues to build the same habit. So, literally, every time he gets a puck, he's getting rid of it, getting rid of it. Okay, so that's the ninth forward on the triple A team. Now, the top forward on the double A team, this guy's handling the puck, he's skating the puck, he's doing all this stuff. So we go from like, he's like, So let's say this is 12U. All of a sudden, the next year it's 13U. The ninth forward, he gets cut, and the top forward from the other team, he moves up. So the ninth, the ninth forward, I'm thinking, okay, thank God. Like he's gonna come down and he's gonna be able to start handling the puck. That's not what happens. He does the same thing, even though the game's slower, he's been doing it for four or five years the same way. He's got habits, he he can't, he's never really handled the puck, he's never really made a play, he's never really done all that because he's playing at the wrong level. But we need the kid to play at that level because frankly, it costs so much to play hockey. We have to have nine forwards, six defensemen, two goalies. Because financially, if you went with 10 kids, that doesn't work. So you have a number of kids that are playing, they're like they're playing at the wrong level, and so now the speed is too fast, and they do that over. So if my kid goes up and she plays on a team and I know it's going too fast, she's not playing there next year. I'm pushing her down because I need her to have the puck. I can't have it go two, three years just because she needs an extra letter on her jersey, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Right, but it's two things, right? Daryl, it's pushing her down to play at the speed, but also then having the coach that gives you the freedom to say now she's you can lose the puck. I don't care if you lose the puck, lose it 25 times. But but you know what? You've got to beat that person, you've got to try. And here's the tools that I'm gonna give you to learn how to do that.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

There's nothing worse as a parent than to watch your kid be unimportant on a hockey team. Yeah, that is the worst place to be. So I'd rather my kid be important, top three, top five on a team lower, playing at the level that allows her to do that, than be a player like they're like, okay, the third line every year has to go. The top, the last two D, they gotta go. That's a triple-A environment, right? Like, we need to we need depth, we need depth. Well, these kids aren't developing. Well, why aren't they developing? I don't know, they don't care, they don't work hard enough. No, no, no, it's all mental, it's between the ears. They can't, it's too fast, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:33

No, and as coaches, we just can replace them, it's too easy for us to replace them.

SPEAKER_02 37:35

It's too easy to just cut them and bring the next group up, and cut them and bring the next group up. So the worst place, and and this is what I think is important is like you got to be honest with yourself and your kid. Are we in a spot? Like, you don't have to be the best player. I'm just saying, like, you have to be at a level where you can make a play, you're not scared to carry a puck, and no one's saying, Oh god, Daryl's got the puck. Oh, please, please don't. And then I come to the bench and say, Daryl, you got away with murder. That one, buddy. Do not handle a puck. Paz it to Tommy, get the hell off. Get the hell off.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

Do your job, do your job, do your job.

SPEAKER_02 38:16

Pass it, Tommy. Get the hell off. Don't be doing anything funny. Like, let's be honest here. Let's you, you don't you if you're at that spot, that's the worst spot. And so, to your point, you get so far, now you get kids that are like 14, 15. All these kids that the game was too fast for, they're now all on the same team, right? And they're not making any plays either. Like, you think, okay, well, now they've fallen down the tree, and here they are. They're not making any plays either because now it's it's not its habit. We talk about developing hockey sense. How the hell can you develop hockey sense when the game's going too fast? It's too fast. You can't develop it that way. The kids who the game is it's they're either at or above the level. Oh, I can build hockey sense with them. That's simple. Sometimes the best conduit to develop hockey sense is to get the kid to play at a competitive level that's at their level. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

Well, that's my argument, right? Every day, like we've got to play triple, you got to play the best to be the best. Not if you don't touch the pump. No, that's yeah, you don't get if you don't get to play hockey. If you don't get to play hockey against the best, you'll never be the best. It goes back to your thing. Yeah, good.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

You hear that all the time. And I heard it too when we were going through it. Oh no, she needs to be on a triple A team because if she's with them, she will play up to their level. That's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Not that she doesn't touch the puck. And if her job is to get the puck off the glass, because now she can be on that team and be a be a ninth forward or a or a sixth defenseman, you're doing nothing for that player. And I I I Daryl, you're absolutely, I mean, I think it comes back to, and and I look again, I know Lee brought it up, but I would be like, if I'm a hockey parent, I would get your book and I would try to understand the philosophy of when you look at a coach on the ice that kind of follows your you know uh model, that the chaos is good, and the lines and the and the and the Herb Brooks drills sometimes are bad. And and and again, but there's a mix in there, but it can't all be about uh this great structured movement and flow, and then I'm screaming because the kids miss seven passes in a row up the boards.

SPEAKER_02 40:36

I mean, you know, this is what this is what happens, and I think that I think that this is something we have to start acknowledging, and uh I think that we have to, as coaches, we have to create an environment that is more conducive for those kids that we're talking about, but it's also a problem for the kids at the top because the kids at the top they're above the level, but yet they continue to do the same things over and over again. They're not really thinking about new ideas because they're relied on to be the important player, and so they're not taking risks either. How many times do you see a forward, really skilled forward, who is faster than the league? Skating wise, they're faster than the league. Every team they play, they're in the top two, three kids. What one-on-one skill does that player use? I will tell you, gets the puck before he even gets to the stick range of the defender. He pulls it outside, turns on the jets, knows that the defenseman has the pivot. He knows that the defenseman's gonna lose at least one to two steps inside the pivot, and my buddy is gone. So he does that until you reach. So he does it over and over again. He's blowing the doors off defenseman, it's him and the goalie. He just flips it over him and it's him. And now you get to a level where you know what that defenseman, he can pivot now. He's not gonna lose any steps, and not only is he not gonna lose any steps, but he's on a good angle, so he's the rink all of a sudden isn't big enough for you to carry the puck that way. You're gonna have to engage this kid. So for three, four years, this kid leveraged his advantage to the detriment of his development because he was intoxicated with scoring. You know, he's got a well-intended grandma who's got five bucks a goal sitting there ready to go. She rolls out and she can't wait. The first thing they do is stop at uh stop at the you know, Tim Hortons to get a copy so she can get three fives back, so she's ready to go with the fives for that hat trick that Tommy's gonna score. Now, Tommy, he's thinking, okay, I got a chance to pick up 15 bucks here, or I'm gonna have I'm gonna have half. I think you think I'm gonna be at risk here of dangling the puck or going through someone's triangle. That ain't happening, so we got to be careful. Like the the kids in the middle that are at the level, those kids are the kids we're coaching. We're giving them ideas, we're talking to them about getting better because they represent depth. We're not looking to get rid of them. We know we need them, but they're like they can get better. The kids at the top were like, okay, whatever. They're like goalies. Don't talk to that kid because we want to mess him up, don't give him no new ideas, just let him go. And if he asks for something, we tell him. If not, we don't talk to him. Yeah, and the kid at the bottom were like, Look, how much, how many months we got left with this guy?

SPEAKER_03 43:50

And he's gone.

SPEAKER_02 43:51

So don't worry about that guy either. That's the environment that is happening way too much. And I make a joke about it, but it's not really that funny. It really is.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

But Daryl, you're you're if you're an East Coast what's happening. If you're an East Coast guy and you're a ranger, right? That's that's Chris Kreider. I mean, I mean, literally, well, from I'm gonna I'm when I'm in high school and college, I could just blow by people and I'm scoring top shelf, and his game has changed dramatically infinitely, yeah, infinitely, and all of a sudden you don't see him driving down, you know, sticking his ass out and and blowing past people because he couldn't. And now all of a sudden he's he's trans because he got the speed, he's got the he's got the skill, he's got the hands, he just needs to be put in a better place for him to score. And I I think if you're if you're somebody that likes watching the evolution of great players, so you're talking about an elite player, no matter what, he's an elite player, but now scoring right now, and there's a lot of guys who can score goals like transformed his game. And and again, I don't think he scored a goal with not being five feet outside the crease. So all of a sudden, he's trans translated his game because because skills people were able to say, we've got to change the paradigm of what you're doing, because what you're doing, everyone can can defend. So now you got to take this great skill set and change it. I think we see that in we see that with the Players all the time that go through deviators and then they get out of the deviator, and and there's just no other options but to shoot the top shelf, you know, short side. And I think that's where your you know tutelage, and I think a lot of stuff that you do in the videos is great. And I know hopefully we'll get to talk about you know your kind of experience of coaches coming down and learning from you, but that is the kind of stuff that we all can now take and incorporate into our practices and our station-based format, the philosophy that everything can't be this, you can't just take your best player and tell him to keep doing the same thing that maybe works at one level but will never translate to another. And that's where we miss a lot of these kids. I think.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

I think talking to this kid, I think talking to this top player, one of the things I would do is once you see what he does really well. So that scenario that I just described, I would say to him, okay, like you can do everything but that. We're taking that skill off the table. You have one month to come up with something else, but you're not beating them that way. I don't care how you got to go through. Maybe it's maybe you got maybe it's as simple as you always go to your backhand because then you can get build the wall, you're better on your crossovers on your backhand, and that's what takes the corner. Okay, we know you're good at that. That one's out now. You have to go the other way, or you have to find a different way. Who's doing that? We need him to score because he needs to like that's how we win. Like, we need him to score because that's how we win. What do we what are you talking about, Daryl? You have to like this is the courage that we have to have as coaches, as parents, as players. And like I said, whether we're talking about the top kid, we're talking about the bottom kid. Right now, we're coaching the middle one. I want to be in the middle, and you're talking about. I'm just gonna have have one more kind of sidebar to this, and then you can ask me the next question.

SPEAKER_03 47:15

But we're loving all of it, Daryl. Don't we're down.

SPEAKER_02 47:18

We you asked me two questions, we go for 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_03 47:20

I know I said that's that's how you know it's a good episode, man.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

Um, my daughter played on a team in which they had literally the exact same practice almost every time, they practice three times a week, and you know exactly what's happening within a few drills, like the odd time they throw maybe a wrinkle in it, but the structure is exactly the same. Ella comes home, she's like, Oh my god, dad, if we do that same drill again, I think I'm gonna die. Like, why does he do the same drill over and over again? I said, Ella, you it's this is your responsibility, not his. What are you talking about? I'm like, Well, I guarantee this guy's got a job all day. He's got a family, he's gonna come home, he's got responsibilities, he didn't have time to come up with a drill. Me, I have all day. That's what I do. I got all day, so I can come up with all the different stuff and I know all the stuff. That's not this guy, he's a volunteer, he's doing his best. This is switch got. If you want to get better, you need to learn how to work the drill. Work the drill. What the hell does that mean? Okay, so you know he's gonna do one-on-one drill every practice. He's gonna got the guy who starts on the the forward, starts on the wall, and the D starts in the center of the ice, and the forward goes around the bottom of the dot, the D curls over, and you take the one-on-one down the ice. He does it every practice, right? Yeah, well, the good news is you know what he's gonna do. So now, why don't you go go go uh forward angle, don't skate backwards, defend the whole play forwards, come down, get lower while the D while that forward's coming around. Go down, get down there, attach to him in the zone, go stride for stride and forward angle. Do that a few times. Then the next time, make it look like you're gonna forward angle, then pivot and fall back into your thing. Go one where you're gonna go in and you're only gonna stick check. So you're gonna try to you're gonna challenge yourself to only try to get a stick check. The next time you're not gonna use your stick at all, only play the body. So now here's this drill, they do it the same way every time, and you now have four ways you can do it. This is you, you need to do it. And if and if the coach tells you, What the hell are you doing? You just say, Hey, I'm trying this a few different ways, and then you can gauge then which one you're no good at. So you know you can fall back and play, absorb the one-on-one. You've been doing that all year. So forward angle, are you any good at that? Well, no, it takes angling, it takes you know, there's some things. Maybe you're not good at that. Okay, well, then do that more then to learn how to do that better. Are you good with your stick? How successful when you only use it? Are you getting walked because you know you don't have a good stick? Do that one more. Maybe you're good with the forward angle, you're good with the absorb, you're good with the stick. You need to be better using your body. So let's get tighter, let's learn how to pivot, get that contact in there. You need to self-assess which one am I no good at? I'm gonna do that more. The guy does it for 15 minutes every practice, not like you don't have any options, not like you're not gonna do it. If it didn't work today, don't worry, we're back again tomorrow. You can do it again. So, even in that situation, which for me is the worst possible way to practice, is to do the same drills over and over again. If you really want to be a player, you need to figure it out. It's up to you, and there's always a way to personalize it. Now you've taken the same format of a drill, you've come up with four different ways. That's empowering, and that's the kind of stuff we need to do with our kids. Now, you practice with me, I'm gonna give you a whole year's worth of practice. You might not do the same drill twice. Well, that's a problem too, because now it's like, oh my God, like I can't really get a solid footing. I like so now you have to take like-minded drills and recognize oh, that's that pivot. I'm gonna do that pivot over and over again. And I'm changing the drills every four or five minutes, but I can work that pivot in there. So even when it's all chaos, or in your take, now you're gonna go play for Mike. Mike's like, hey, you come to me, I'm gonna have you in small area games here for literally an hour. That's how we roll. Okay, that's great. Well, there's a lot of chaos in that, there's a lot of randomness in that, but I want to work on my crossovers. Figure it out, buddy. How can I work my crossovers into Mike's game? How can I do it? There's a way to do it, it's up to you to follow it. And as a parent, as a player, as a coach, we need to encourage that.

SPEAKER_03 52:13

Daryl.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

It's a great way to help our kids adjust the sales, you know, and to thinking. I I've got a question for you, and I'm almost afraid to ask because I know it's gonna be a ha ha ha, I told you so moment from my husband. So this question comes in.

SPEAKER_03 52:28

Oh, but we don't settle dead beater on the show.

SPEAKER_02 52:31

I'm gonna be good with you. The husband, gonna be a problem. Okay, let's go.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

So the husband, the husband was always of the philosophy to put our money towards a skills coach. Now, when Sophia was of the age where it was time to start, you know, she was getting serious about colleges. I believe that it was better invested to take that money, which he set aside for a skills coach, to put towards showcases. And my philosophy was let's get her in front of coaches where she's interested in going to college. We do our research, we find out, you know, is this coach going to be at this showcase? Let's put her in front of him, see if there's any connections made, um, actually have one-on-one sessions with him to see, you know, are we on the right course? What does she need to do? But he said it was a big waste of money. It would have been better well spent on a skills coach. What say you?

SPEAKER_02 53:22

What says me is you're both you're both right. But I will tell, but I will tell you how what I mean by that. Okay. Go to the showcase first. It's not really about the showcase of the coaches necessarily, it's to be around the best kids because you want to see where she's better, where she's worse. So you go to the showcase, you're self-evaluating. She's self-evaluating. Who's the best player you played against? Who's the best player we saw? What do they do? What how's that different than you, etc.? Now you have a list of skills that you know you need to get better at. Now you go to the skills coach and say, Okay, we need to work on these things. So now you go, you wait and you hide. So I always think the best way to do this is to show up, be visible, and then hide, then reappear better, then hide, then reappear, whoa, better. There is a way, like one, there's a an old saying in in coaching or uh scouting, like NHL scouting, is you got to be careful you don't watch the kid too much, because you can start talking yourself right out of them. So it's like any relationship, right? The first time you go see them, like all you want to see is all the pop, oh my god, they're positive at this, they're good at that, they're good at that. Then you, you know, five, six times down the road, you're like, I don't really don't like this about it. Then there's like something that like really irritates you, and now you're 20, 30 times you've seen them, you're out. You and meanwhile, the kid was like kids fantastic, but they have something that just irritates you, you just can't get past it. That's why we have lots of scouts so that someone can go watch, they go, Hey, we need to put this kid on the list because I like X, Y, and Z. But don't overdo it. Like, you don't want to be there every game watching them. Now, someone else comes back and say, you know what? I like those three things too, but there's a couple things I don't like. Okay, I'll go back and see if that's also the case. And now you go back. So now when they go back, you want them to see something improved or different. You say, Okay, uh, we went and watched her. What was her name? Sophia.

SPEAKER_01 55:49

Sophia.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

So Sophia shows up, she's let's say she's 14 years old, 13, 14 years old. They start the showcases, she rolls into her first showcase, and and you get some good data. Plus, they've seen her, she's on a list now because of her birthday. They for certainly are saying she's someone to watch. Now you hide, you hide, you hide, and you work on stuff. They have an impression. Oh, you know, she's a pretty good skater, you know, she handles a puck. I'd like her to be a little bit more aggressive. Okay. So those are all their notes they wrote down on her. Now you hide. Now you show back after you fix some of those things. She's a little faster, a little more aggressive. You know, maybe she's a little stronger. Uh, she feels more comfortable with her puck skills. Now she goes back. So now we're watching, and we remember we had her circled before, so she gets circled again because you get a window when you're young that you get circled a few times until you play yourself off the list. So now you roll in and they're like, Whoa, she's got better, she's improving. The worst thing you can do is go to a showcase every weekend. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Because they just keep seeing like it's the same kid over and over again doing the same thing. So you have an impression of being flatlined. They're not getting better. I'd rather see the kid. Where did she go? Where, where, where is where is this kid? Why is she not here? Oh, next year she shows up, she's 15 or whatever, 14. Now she shows up. Whoa, what the hell happened to this kid? She's faster, she's better, she's this, she's that. There's a thing of being overexposed to where people start. There's things that listen, I'm the nicest guy. I think I'm fantastic. There's a lot of things about me that if you're around me every day, it's gonna irritate the hell out of you. It'd be like this guy is nuts. Like, I don't that's just the nature, human nature, right? So you're both right. Put a little bit of money to the showcase, then work on specific things, not just get a skills coach to just say, hey, make her better. No, we went there, she's not fast enough. You got to make her faster. Oh, she doesn't handle the puck well enough. Nope, she doesn't shoot. She shoots it hard, but when no one's around, but when people are around, she's not as good in traffic. Okay, now you know what you're doing. Give the coach the marching orders. You have a month, two months to fix this, and that's it. And then we play our season, we keep getting better and better, and she's top of mind. I got to get better at these areas, I know what I'm good at, I work on it, and now we show up at the next showcase or the next big event, and all of a sudden, all the coats come in, and you can see them all with their jackets, and you know who they all are. She's confident. The version you saw of me before is not the same version of me you're gonna see now. Where showcases sometimes you go from one to the next to the next to the next. Yes, they all know your name, but now they've talked themselves right out of you, and that can become a problem. So I think that that's an important thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 59:03

Thank you for that, because there really isn't any tool or any navigation. You're kind of you're going through this blindly. You know, we don't get advice like this when our kids are at that stage where they want to get a little more serious and have colleges look at them. So thank you so much. That's fantastic advice. It's I hope a lot of parents are taking notes.

SPEAKER_02 59:24

Well, you have to remember put yourself in the college's shoes. Do you want a kid who's admittedly one of the best kids at their age group, which you do? You definitely want that. But every time you go watch them, they're kind of the same. Like they don't really show a lot of improvement. Or do you want to see a kid who wasn't quite at that level? But every time you see him, they're getting better. Now you got to think you're gonna have this kid for four years. Do you want a kid that's gonna be the same when they came in? Maybe a little bigger, maybe a little stronger, but not really adding to their game that significantly? Or do you want a kid where every time you see them, they're just significantly better? It gives you a lot of excitement because everyone thinks they're a development coach. Everyone thinks that they are. Every coach that you talk to, none of them are gonna tell you, well, yeah, we don't develop here. All of them are gonna tell you, no, like our environment, like we're gonna work with them in whatever way that they think that they can, and they're expecting the kids to get better. I know myself, I want to see this kid going like this. The other kid, like, yeah, they could be one of the best kids at their age group, and that could be enough. And they don't really necessarily have to get all that much better. That could be enough, and that's good, but there's always room for that kid that's like every time we see him, kids better. It reeks of character, it reeks of work ethic, it week reeks of self-awareness, it reeks of it reeks of all these like really good things that we care about with development. So hopefully I've answered.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

You have thank you so much. We appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:13

I'm on a roll right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:15

He absolutely is on a roll, but that is gonna be where we stop today's episode of Our Kids Play Hockey. Again, part two will be available next week, right back here at your same our kids play hockey channel at your same our kids play hockey time. So make sure you check it out, part two at Daryl Belfry next week on our kids play hockey. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great week, everybody.