Had a chance to go to a number of college and youth games over the weekend. The college game was a chance to see a team making the transition from having the best player in the league the past couple of years, to learning to play without that player. The interesting thing about this team was that despite losing this top end talent, in the grand scheme of things, they were actually a better team and much more dangerous. This is not the first time to see this occur and it's not that uncommon. What are some of the things we can learn from this situation?
First off, there are real challenges to coaching a team with a player that is at a higher level than their peers. In the perfect environment, the top end player has a high level of understanding the importance of playing a team game and making all the players around them better. At the same time that talented player must also gain an understanding a when to recognize they have an advantage over an opponent and should take them on individually. It's a difficult balancing act for both the coach and player and one that requires a lot of interaction between the coach and player.
The next challenge is to not to have the other players on the team stand back and allow the top player take over a game on their own. This is all the more difficult when the star player is simply faster than all those around them. The goal here is to work at ways to add speed to all your players and making sure the star understands that they must move the puck up ice quickly to open teammates to keep the speed of play at a high level for everyone. When they start to learn that joining a play as a late attacker can be just as dangerous as the first wave of attack they begin to comprehend the game at a much higher level.
In the college game it was very obvious right from the start that not having the top player meant they had to rely much more on a collective approach vs a much more individualistic one. What really stood out though was the emergence of much faster and creative play off the puck, as well as, a much better level of puck movement. The crispness of their passing was great to witness and the dangers they presented to their opponent with this style of play had increased dramatically. In the end they are a much better team without their star and their scores and record to date reflect that in a big way. They also seem to be a much tighter and close knit team which should serve them well in playoff hockey which requires a strong collective effort. Should be interesting to see how they make out in that phase of the season.
Every team is a different challenge to bring out their best and having a great talent on your team can be both a blessing and a difficult hurdle. One thing is for certain though, if you don't have a plan on how to maximize the growth for all your players, many will get left behind. At the youth levels, unfortunately far to many coaches allow the star to have no guidelines and consider winning over development a higher priority. A detriment to both the star player and their teammates.
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