The Ride to The Rink: Want to Try That Move in a Game? Practice It First.

This episode is powered by NHL Sense Arena. Hello, hockey skaters and goalies around the world, and welcome back to another edition of the Ride to the Rink. It's Mike and Lee here today. You know, kids, I want to talk about something with you because you guys out there on the ice, you love trying new things. And you know what? I'm gonna be honest with you, kids. I love that you love trying new things. If you don't try new things, you're not gonna know what you like, what you're good at, what you don't like. We could apply this to food. We can also apply it to hockey. All right. And here's what I see sometimes, kids, and I want to give you a roadmap here to success with this. Let's say you're watching an NHL game, your favorite team is on, or a PWHL game, your favorite team is on, and you see one of those players make a move, and you go, I love that move. I can make that move. I'm gonna make that move in my next game. All right, and then you go out in the next game, you've never tried to make this move. You try to make it in the game, you turn the puck over in the blue line, it goes the other end of the ice and they get a goal. All right. Now, are you wrong for wanting to try that move in a game? Yes and no. The game was not the place for you to try it. Okay? Now, this might be a controversial topic because everyone's gonna tell you, well, it's a game. You gotta do things in the game. All right, listen, you do need to take risks in games to find success in ice hockey, okay? But the caveat, kids, for me is it's a calculated risk. You want to do things in games that you're comfortable with and you're confident when so if you see a new move, this is for goaltenders too, by the way. Practice that move, practice that move relentlessly at practice or off the ice at your home. I always talk about with kids when I'm coaching about muscle memory. You want to get so good at that move at practice that it just happens in a game. And I really want you to hear me, kids. When I was training, I would practice moves at practice and at home. I would do repetition after repetition of whatever move or whatever situation I wanted to practice. And then without fail, it would just happen in a game. I didn't even think about it. Right, it would just happen. All right, that is the best way to do it. Now, I I I want to again say this, and I'm gonna throw it to you, Mike, in a minute. Kids, I'm not telling you not to have fun. Okay, it is very fun to try new things, all right? But I'm gonna tell you that sometimes when you take a big risk on something you've never tried, the problem can be you let your team down a little bit. All right, and that's what I'm saying. That that's more about you than the team. But if you go to practice and say, hey, I'm gonna work on this toe drag deek over and over, I'm gonna work on it in different situations, in different places on the ice. I promise you, promise you, that when the time's right in the game, your body will just do that move. You'll feel it, right? But the the lack of this at practice right now, kids, is why we're seeing so many turnovers on the blue line. It's why we're seeing so many poor decisions with shots and passes, because we're not practicing them enough. I'm gonna say it again, not just at practice, at home, in your driveway or downstairs or in VR. Shout out to NHL Sense Arena. All right, get those reps in so that when you're in the game, it just happens. Mike, I talked a long time there, but it's your turn.

No, you're absolutely right. I mean, I think there's there's so when coaches talk about taking risks in games, it's not thinking about the a move so much. They're always thinking about like, okay, if you're a defenseman and you're gonna pinch or not pinch, or if you're you know a player that's gonna forecheck in a certain way and you think, oh, I could get that, I know I could get that puck. And then if you don't, like that's a risk.

Yeah.

And that's a that's a that's a that's a confidence thing. That's a, oh, I think I can do it. I'm gonna try it. If you fail at it, hopefully your coach isn't gonna, you know, beat you up too bad. It's more of the that's where it's like, hey, listen, I love the I love the ability to say I'm gonna try this because I can, I, I, I think I could beat that player to the puck. That's a lot different than what uh a move. And I think that's a lot different than trying to make a play, like you know, a reverse bounce off the boards, a spin a rama, or you know, trying to, you know, pull the puck and flip it over a player's stick and go around them, which you see, you know, actually just recently in the PWHL. But I think it's like doing those kind of things. We know this. This is this is without a doubt factual and can be backed up with years and years and years of knowledge that the players that do those things, it wasn't the first time they ever did it.

I guarantee, Mike, that you're right on this.

It was over and over. And it was the practice, it was the sweat, it was the it was the trial and error. It was like, oh, I this is where my stick is, and this is where my blade is, this is where my hands are, and they failed and failed and failed. We all see the Pavel Barbers and the and and he's he's on our show talking about this. Everybody sees the end result of throwing the puck up, flipping your stick, catching on your butt end, and then and then spinning it around and shooting in the net. What they don't see is the 7,000 takes it took to get there.

And I think all of the reps, just the reps in general.

The reps and the reps and the reps. And then the one thing we didn't talk about is the fact that all of these things that we do as athletes are built upon something else we did as an athlete. So let's let's be great at this first and then build to this and then build to that. And all of a sudden, like Lee said, it's just going to become natural to do. Uh, when you get older, learning how to drive, that's you don't just say, hey, here's the keys.

Good luck.

Try something new. What the hell? Yeah, it's like uh, you know, you're you're trying you're trying these things out because you have confidence, number one, is just you built the muscle memory and your and your and your ability to do something, and then you were able to build on that and build on it and build on it. And again, that's when, you know, that's when, hey, when you take a risk and you feel like, hey, 50-50 here, I'm gonna like like we we go back to everybody loves the Michigan, right? And when you talk to anybody that did the Michigan or has done the Michigan, every one of them will tell you that as they oh, you know what? I was behind the net that last game. I'm gonna try something I've never ever tried before and trying to score a goal. You talk to any of them, like, oh, I remember that kid, he used to practice that for 20 minutes after every practice for four years until he got it, until the confidence was there to do it. Uh, if you want to try a pull cue shot, right? And off the butt end of your stick. I I've seen it happen. I've seen it in adult tons of adult league games. You want to flip the puck over the net and give it to your teammate in front. Doing it in a game for the first time ever is not the time to do it. No. But practice, practice, practice. And I'll and coaches, if you don't let your players have a little bit of time to do these kind of things and find that creativity, shame on you. Let them get it out of their system, and then you can help them build the little pieces of fundamentals that are going to help them be successful. But players, understand that those are bad for you, they're bad for your team, they're bad for your overall well-being, as far as how can you affect uh your own ability to get better. Practices are there for a reason, training's there for a reason, reps are there for a reason, do all of those things, and then we love it. Then try it. Then then you're in a game, you feel like, coach, I can I this is something I feel really good at doing, and I've seen you do this in practice 15 times. Hey, go at it.

Well, and kids, I I'll end on this note. Uh, and I'm gonna be a little critical here. When Mike and I were kids, we could go outside to do this, and we would go outside with a ball and a stick and we'd practice. Guess what? You can do that too. And if you're choosing not to do that, to get those extra reps in, which is a choice, then you can't choose to try it in a game because you didn't feel like practicing it at another time. All right, that's just not fair to you and your team. Right. All right. Now, again, I always say this if you're listening to this show, you're probably not the kid who's lazy and doesn't want to get better. All right, it doesn't take that long. Go outside for 15 minutes, pick something you want to work on and do it relentlessly. Get in the reps. I promise you, I don't give promises out too much on this show. I promise you, if you put the time in and put the reps in, it will pay off. All right, and again, want to reiterate one thing Mike said to end this. Whoever that player is that you love watching that's doing the amazing move, I guarantee you they have practiced that move over and over and over and over again to get it done. So easy to look at Ovechkin and say, yeah, top of the right circle, man. He's gonna score. We've seen him score 900 plus goals. He's probably taken 10,000 million billion shots to get that good at shooting.

You see the videos of like everybody's like, oh my god, Sidney Crosby took that backhand, you know, pulled top hand, top shelf. He's like, that's probably the first time he's ever done that. He does you watch him and you hear stories about him in practice where probably tens of hundreds of hours doing the same move over and over successfully, by the way. Like he got great at it and he still practiced it, tipping pucks in front of that. Chris Kreider, right now. Chris Kreider, great at it. Well, why? Because he always does dip bugs over and over and over. And he and he can say, look, I'm great at it, but I still practice it. So I think knowing that and building on that skill, and then I think it's building it to your toolbox of the things you do doesn't happen by just saying, I want to do it.

Well, and I'll say this too on Crosby. There was a video of him on a pond, I think just last season, uh, between games, because he couldn't find ice, so he went to an outdoor rank and basically said, kids, I had to get my daily reps in. Right. It's such a habit for him. If Sidney Crosby misses one day of reps, Mike, you think that's gonna change his game? No, probably not. He'll probably be fine. But he could not allow himself to do that. 100%. Kids, kids, I'm not saying you need to be Sidney Crosby, but you can learn from the reps that he's taken. All right. And remember that no matter where you're at on your hockey journey, my friends, we believe in you. You should too. For Mike, I'm Lee. We will see you on the next ride to the ring, kids. Skate hard, have fun, go learn something.