Keeping players safe and lessons learned

Had the pleasure of officiating a number of game over the weekend. There were some well coached teams and some that were still a work in progress, but seemed to be focusing on more long term development; which was nice to see. This post is about a team with a focus that is all to often missing the boat on where the coaching staff needs to lead their team on so many fronts.

This group is in it's first year of checking hockey and like many coaches with a new tool they can implement, it has become the most important tool in their arsenal. My guess is the coaches would not be aware of just how much focus they have put on this area and it's not that they are not encouraging many other positive aspects of the game, like moving the puck and playing with speed. The struggle with this particular group is how they, probably without realizing it, put so much weight and importance on hitting. They do this in many ways that don't work in the kids best interests. Like many coaches, they start out with encouraging the players to "take the body" in the course of the early play. This starts out fine, but as the game proceeds it becomes a larger demand from the bench and pretty soon the earlier encouragements turn into heated emotional yelling from the bench to the on ice players and big demands on the bench, that they follow thru with this tactic when the get back out there.

Added to this increase in emotion from the coaches, is their increased inability to think clearly and deal with the inevitable penalties that their team will be given for illegal hits. Keep in mind that these new checking players are still very much trying to figure out how to make effective hits, how to absorb hits and what is legal and illegal on this front. The players are novices in this area, where as the coaches are have most likely been exposed to hitting as coaches or former players for a number of years. I realize for many different reasons and different experience levels that many coaches will have varied prospectives on what legal and illegal hitting might be. However, in my mind, there is absolutely no excuse for any adult behind the bench at this point and time to not be aware that their number one job is to do all they can to make sure their athletes are safe and the athletes on their opposing team are equally safe. I apologize ahead for this post for it's lecturing tone, but unfortunately this topic is far to important to be treated with kid gloves or politically correctness.

Just in case these coaches missed the last 10-15 years of athletics and not just in hockey, there has been a huge push in eliminating, as much as possible, the number of violent hits. The kind of hits that have left far to many athletes injured to the point where they miss large parts of their season, career or even worse hamper them for the rest of their lives outside of sports. We all know stories of some athletes that were not even lucky enough to have just suffered the above struggles. Getting back to the team that inspired this post though. Somewhat early in the contest one of their players found an opponent, head down, trying to control the puck in the neutral zone. With his head bent forward and not moving much at all, the checking player stepped into him with decent speed and delivered a shoulder check that in many circumstances would have been legal. The problem though was that he delivered his shoulder squarely into the defenseless players head, knocking him hard to the ice and partially removing his helmet. The player needed a number of minutes before he was helped to his feet.

The checking player's coaches were infuriated that we gave him a penalty (which was a major) for a hit that they considered to be perfectly legal. Of course, I went over and explained the reason that hits to the head have been not only ruled illegal, but become maybe the biggest emphasis of not only youth hockey, but college hockey, the NHL, college and pro football etc. For these coaches to defend this play, in this day an age, is absolutely stunning to me, but more importantly these coaches need to educated quickly on just how damaging these hits can be if they were not already aware of it. Additionally, these coaches must be brought up to speed (they are being emailed) on how constantly defending your players when they are penalized for illegal play is the surest route possible that they will not learn the lesson and make adjustments. They will also quickly learn to emulate the same contempt that they have for officials that they do and in a short period begin to show the same disrespect for officials that they do. Having been on all sides of the official/hockey participant relationship, I'm well aware just how difficult it is to control you emotions at times. Hopefully though, you as the adult, have the aha moment where you realize that wigging it on the bench is really not in anyone's best interest and certainly not in your youth players best interest at any level. This is especially difficult, as all of us regularly watch professional sports where abusing officials is not only prevalent, but often shown on replay with the best possible angles to highlight the anger. This behavior however, has no place in youth sports where the athletes emotional and developmental needs must be the focus rather than winning a game or argument.

As officials, we are fully aware that we do not get every call right, will miss some situations that most everyone else saw and at times, downright blow a call. As a coach, as hard as it is to swallow these moments, this can be a huge teachable moment for your young athletes. Just think back to this summer's potential perfect game by Tiger's pitcher Armando Galarraga being lost when umpire Jim Joyce missed the call. Sure we all remember the call, but the real takeaway from the whole story was the incredible restraint and understanding that Galarraga demonstrated. Unlike most athletes in that situation, he showed class and handled the situation with dignity and also forgave the umpire for his mistake. If only more people had that capacity for restraint; not only would hockey be better served, but the world would be a better and safer place than it is today.