I arrived Wednesday and had a chance to watch the U16 games and practices today.
First I watched last year the U15 games in St. Cloud…..a year makes a big difference in size, speed, strength, physical, smarter - I have a daughter who is 5″10″…..last year it seemed like there were about 5 or so this size – this year it seems +20…..size matters (I know about 50% of U16 are new – many are size BIG or maybe everyone grew) – these aren’t just tall kids but tall kids who can really play – size counts……
Or maybe it doesn’t the most amzing player to watch is Kendall Coyne from IL who may be one of the smaller shorter U16 players. I am not sure which zone or with or without the puck is the best time to watch….when she doesn’t have the puck she is moving to get it back on defense or move on offense to create a scoring option, she takes cycling like arching attacks with the puck and without – I have heard many things about her great play on the U18 team and at the U22 camp – after watching her it is all fact not fiction – she could be in Vancouver in 2010. She may have suffered an injury and may miss game today.
With physical, fast play it does look a bit like a MASH unit – lots of ice bags and 2-3 sets of crucths……
Always tough to judge goalies but O’ Sullivan from Mass. impressed me last year and is doing the same this year.
Staff – WOW it is neat to watch the teaching going on by top D1 coaches and others on ice - watched Brad Frost today with Maroon team and he was 1-1 with kids the whole hour he had some neat drills. One drill I really liked had the five attackers positioned in the zone – the 5 defenders had to do a kind of ring around the rosey thing going around in a circle in the slot (maybe getting a bit dizzy) - the puck was shot in and then the five posies/defenders had to scramble to cover the zone based on where they were – low or high in the circle. They did it several times and each time they were better at reading and reacting with his instruction – hey chaos happens in games and this drill was great to help players read and cover. The Orange team did some similar 2 vs 2 small game drills with lots of flow and coaching. Every staff person I have met working the camp really love hockey and are doing this to teach, learn more and committed to take new ideas home! Tony Schied who coaches Stillwater HS which is one of the best teams in MN is here with U15, hearing and soaking up knowledge and he says he can’t wait to go home and share – his comment “we have to do more in hockey to develop skills”. Met one of the young team leads Sonn who is a SR. at Wayne State – she loves giving back and said she likes to help at the Central Dist and WAHA Camps to…..these are all passionate people!
What I see is kids can learn fast and have a lot of fun doing drills – they are learning the attacking cycle things that make Coyne so effective. So if a kid is mostly just playing games how do they learn this style of play? I think whoever helped to reshape the camps had this fact in mind. The good players here are N&S players the great players kind of have this “go N&S while changing attacking lanes at full speed” (think the French Connection car chasese) and moving the puck. You don’t learn this stuff only playing AAA hockey games (that is what a lot of Minnesota kids do all summer) or games at National Camp - you use the skills you develop in games but you don’t learn skills in games.
Had a few interchanges on MN hockey vs. other areas – I don’t know the best approach and not holding MN as the only model only sharing what we do - I sometimes wish the MN girls could play HS and U19 AAA in the same season and then be able to take the summers off. I wrote about MN because it is all I know and wanted to learn what others have and see in their states with their daughters – lots of passionate hockey folks here and I might be learning as much as any player by watching, listening and talking with others from all across the US.
Anyways what a great experience I hope the tide of knowledge and lessons flows across the US to every district to help make this game all us love better.
