Picture yourself heading for the car and find you've got a tire with no air on the bottom half of the tire. You have a couple of options at this point, but the most important option is that you cannot drive the car without doing some serious damage to your tire, wheel or both and you're probably going to have a difficult time reaching your destination. The same should hold true for hockey players. If there's some aspect of the player's game that seems to be not functioning well, it's not the time to ignore it and wish the problem away, but rather tackle it head on. Obviously this doesn't seem that difficult to comprehend, but seeing that it's much easier to hope things get better, this is often the chosen path.
Pairing back to the basics of skating or stick skills, where does the player measure up to their peers in those areas. If they seem to be high on both these ladders, great, don't rest on your laurels and keep working at it. If that's not the case, what are you going to do about it? Seeing that skating and stick skills are the foundation that all other aspects of hockey are built on, quickly finding ways to improve is very important. Players, themselves are often poor judges of where they stack up ability wise and parents can often view their child from overly critical or optimistic perspectives. Add to that the challenge of having a coach who is not willing to communicate with parents about critical needs that their children might be facing, it can be difficult. However, somehow this information needs to be gathered if you wish your child to progress with-in the sport. Even if you need to ask for insights from someone outside your home program, it is very important at the early stages of development that players and hockey parents are aware if there are critical challenges that need to be addressed.
The easier of the fixes, is catching up with the stick skills part of game, as a player can always find opportunities to work on these off the ice as well as on the ice. Here's just one example on youtube for ideas on how to add to the players skill levels. There's lots of resources out there for help in this area and space and props can be paired down or up where needed. Keep in mind it's important to make sure the player is gripping the stick the right way, holds the stick with a light grip and rolls their wrists and is using a stick that is the correct length. There's also videos that cover these areas.
Skating-wise, you have a greater challenge, but if this is a needy area, the sooner it is addressed the better. Once again, if you can get a knowledgeable person to evaluate the skater, all the better. Undoing bad habits is far more difficult the longer they are ingrained. There seems to be more and more skating instructors out there and also a number of coaches that are using studio rinks or artificial ice to help in this area. Ask around the local hockey circles, you may be surprised that one of these coaches is in your area. If that is not the case, make sure that your child takes advantage of one of the many summer skating camps. If skating is the need make sure you don't assume an all-around camp will address those needs. They most likely will not. Any other thoughts on help in these areas, jump in and add to the mix.
On the coaching side of things the same ideas hold true. If your team's have overall technical skating or skill abilities that are lower than the rest of your competition, this should send out a strong signal that you need to be spending some or a little more time on those needs.
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