A Deep Dive into Coaching with Guest Darryl Belfry, NHL Player Development Author, Analyst, & Consultant (Rerun) - EP 393

(upbeat music) - Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody to the Hockey Think Tank podcast brought to you. But Hockey Think Tank, you, a place for all passion and parents, players and coaches to go to get a little bit of education and a little bit of inspiration regarding the greatest game on the planet. What an episode we have for you guys here today, coming off the heels of Thanksgiving down here in the USA. We are bringing on Daryl Belfrey, who is one of the top hockey development coaches in the entire world. He has worked with some of the best players in the game, including Austin Matthews, Patrick K and the Hughes boys, name it. He might have worked with them. This guy is one of the smartest hockey people that we've ever gotten the opportunity to talk to. And this is a re-air from a conversation that we had with him a few years ago. And we wanted to do this for a couple of different reasons. Number one, just logistically with Thanksgiving. I'm sitting here in a hotel room in Boston, Massachusetts. I was supposed to be back in Chicago after Thanksgiving before going to Boston, but Chicago got snowed in. So I had to fly from Portland, Oregon, where my wife's sister lives, and got right here to Boston, and actually got the chance to watch the Michigan Wolverines beat Harvard last night, four to three, and over time. So as all you guys know, as a Cornell alum, anytime you see Harvard lose is a good day, especially when the boys and blue were there. So I got to see Nar and Rass and all the staff there that I got to work with for my year up there in Ann Arbor. It was great to see that. But also, Daryl is a huge part-- a huge part of something that our title sponsor, Icehockey Systems, has just put out there. And that is IHS Plus. So over the past month, Icehockey Systems has come up with IHS Plus, and IHS Family, which IHS Plus is just more stuff. And again, Icehockey Systems in Feedback that I get about them and Feedback that they get, there's a lot of different coaches out there that are like, we want a little bit more. We want a little bit more. And so they created IHS Plus for a little bit more. For all the Hockey-- youth hockey coaches out there, Daryl is a huge part of that. And also, IHS Family. It's not just for coaches anymore. It's for players and it's for parents as well. And we've been a big part of that. Meg Popovic, who is an incredible hockey mind, as far as sports psychology type stuff. Dwayne Blay, who is the skills coach for Detroit Redwings, Daryl Belfry, like so many amazing hockey people. They got Scotty Bowman, Barry Smith, just unbelievable stuff in there. And so we wanted to re-air this from Daryl. And this is also one of our most downloaded episodes we've ever done. One of the most downloaded episodes we've ever done. Daryl, it just thinks about the game on another level, just on another level. So it was really, really cool to talk to him back in the day, and we're going to re-air that one here today. And so we hope you really, really enjoy it. Just a fun conversation, and again, like the feedback that we got years ago after talking to Daryl was just insane, just absolutely insane. And so with all the logistical stuff, and also with ice hockey systems coming out with all of their new features and new plans. We thought it would be great timing to get this out there. And I know I learned a ton, I re-listened this episode again, re-learned a ton, obviously the Game of Hockey changes. So there's going to be some different things in there. But like, guys, like this is just incredible stuff. Just absolutely, absolutely incredible stuff. So before we do get over to Daryl though, we obviously have some people to thank. First want to thank our title sponsor, icehockeysystems.com. We've talked about them already on the intro, and they are just doing amazing things for the hockey world right now. So go check out icehockeysystems.com. Also want to thank Train Heroic. I'll do it for Vex, and he's not on here in this intro here today. Train Heroic is the app that's allowed him to train thousands of people online. And it's just an incredible product. It's something that I use. And just go to Train Heroic and check that out. Also want to thank Helioshockey, which actually I'm in Boston right now. That's where they started their company. But it is an unbelievable hockey product. It's a chip that you put into your shoulder pad. And it gives you real-time data, real-time feedback on your play, specifically when it comes to a hustle score, which is what the kids absolutely love. But a lot to do with your stride as well. Stride-length, stride mechanics, all that kind of stuff. Great for skating development. So if you go to helioshockey.com, you use the discount code Think Tank 1 Word. And you will get a 20% discount on your Pro 12 month or 24 month subscription. And what I fail to mention, which I do every week, is that the kicker for this one is it syncs up with your video. So whatever video that you're using could be live barn, it could be an iPad, an iPhone, whatever it may be. Syncs up with it, you get your shifts or your reps and practice cut up for you directly after your game or directly after your practice. So again, go to helioshockey.com and check that out. Also want to thank Crossbar, one of the best youth hockey products I've ever seen. There are so many different youth hockey organizations that I know and that reach out to us that have made the switch over to Crossbar to basically streamline the operations of their youth hockey organization. It's a one stop shop. And so what do they have? First of all, unbelievably easy to use website and backend club schedule or five star communication app, the ability to do facility management, volunteer management, registration for everything from the season, all the way to little things like drop-ins and clinics and things like that, unbelievable, unbelievable products. So go to crossbar.org and check that out today. Also, thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you, our amazing listeners. We love you guys so much. If you can do something for us being in the spirit of thanks and thanksgiving, if you can just interact with our podcast in any way possible on your podcast app. We're on Apple Podcasts, we're on iTunes, we're on Google Play, we're on Spotify, wherever you get it just goes a long way to the algorithm and getting us into some more ears. And if you think we're doing a positive service to the hockey world, that would go a long way for us. So we would appreciate it. And guys, you're going to love this episode. If you've listened to it a couple of years ago, it's worth a re-listen again. Darryl Belfrey, one of the top hockey minds in the entire world. So without further ado, here we go with Darryl Belfrey. [MUSIC PLAYING] We are so excited to have on this episode of the podcast, author of Belfrey hockey strategies to teach the world's best athletes, Darryl Belfrey. Darryl, how you doing today? Great, great. Thanks for having me on, guys. No, we're pumped. And this is something that we're really excited to do. I do have to say you are the most asked for person to have on our podcast from our listeners and stuff. So I think a lot of people are going to be really excited about this. And there's just so much to dive into. Got the chance to read your book. It was awesome, awesome stuff. One of the things that I found really intriguing was obviously there's a lot of hockey stuff to it, but it's not just about hockey. And I know something that you're really big on is teaching. Hockey is not just about teaching x's and o's and hockey stuff. It's about teaching, finding what the best ways the kids can learn and things like that. And you went through quite the transformation yourself in getting to a spot where all of that stuff was really, really important to you. And I'm really, really interested in kind of your transformation from when you started in hockey development to where you are now. How did you find your authentic strength as a coach and a teacher? And just how important do you think that is into the success that you're having today? I think it's critical to the success that I've had. And I think that the more authentic I got, the more successful I became. And so but early on, it was difficult to be authentic because I had no confidence and no, like there was no reason for me to even be doing it. I was really just trying to manufacture something out of nothing. And so my mentor had said to me, he said, it doesn't really matter what you know. It matters if the kids can grab it. And the way you're going to grab it is you have to find different vehicles to deliver your message. That's going to be your trick. And it's like a riddle, right? And it took me 20 years to figure out what the hell he was talking about. But that's part of that process. And so when I did it, it was all self-discovery. It wasn't really like, OK, it was very much, I'm going to try different things. So I knew early on that I had to command the attention of the group. And I couldn't do that by the normal ways you would do it. Like if you played hockey, you come out there and people know who you are. You have an instant sense of credibility amongst the people that you're talking to. And so people are going to give you the benefit of the doubt to get started. And I just didn't have that. And I couldn't really skate. I couldn't really do any of the things. So you can imagine, here's a skills instructor who can't do any of the skills. Like it's such an oxy moron, right? So-- but what I could do was I was a kid and I could connect to the kids. And that became the starting point. And then I tried to leverage that in different ways, whether it was a sweat test pushing them and being like at the beginning, a raving lunatic. And then I just pushed-- I heard it. Herding cattle was basically what I was doing at start. And then I got into ice utilization and then the aesthetics of it all. Like I wanted when someone comes to the rank and watch that though this thing, it's got a life. It's like a ballet, like it moves. And it's got the ice utilization and the interaction of the players they're on and they're off and they're in at the right time. And all that stuff was all interesting. But what I found was the first part was just all about me. Like it was really about me developing a presence and really didn't have anything to do with the kids. And so it took me six or eight years to kind of get beyond that and into actually becoming a teacher. And then that's the biggest thing. Once I realized I could teach, it was way easier to be authentic. Because before that I was very scared. I didn't know what effect I was having. I was just throwing stuff against the wall, hoping for the best. But then once I developed some confidence, I could see that I was able to influence skill will now became very easy to be authentic. I think it's important for everyone to be authentic, but I don't think it's an easy thing to do. And so I do think that there's a lot of people that are like me, that they're almost like two different people. Like when I was in the throes of this, like developing this company, I had met my wife. And at the time she was my girlfriend, she comes to watch me and watch me work. And she's like, who is that guy? Because that was not me at all. And it was genuinely two different people. And I think there's a lot of that that goes on in just the process of finding it, but it's extremely important. Yeah, it's one of those things I feel like every coach, but even every player trying to find out what their authentic strengths are that relates to their game. And I know that's something that you work a lot with your players on. But is that something a lot of people takes time to get there, as you mentioned? There had to have been a lot of ups and downs to that. And there had had been a lot of people downing you as you were going through that journey. And I know you had at least one mentor that was huge in that. And that's something that we talk a lot about on this podcast is mentorship. So as you were going through those ups and downs and trying to figure it all out, how important was Bud that mentor to you and just speak a little bit about how important that can be for any coach that's coming up or any player that's coming up that wants to be the best at what they're doing? Bud was really the most critical part of the process because his role was to insulate. So when I first started in my hometown, the idea of charging someone to come on the ice, come on the ice and aside from just paying for the ice, but paying for your time was taboo. It was, everyone here is a volunteer. Everyone here is a volunteer and we happily do it. And now you're coming here and you're saying you want to get paid for it, like this is crazy. And so not only was I did I go through ups and downs, there was a genuine interest to be like, this guy has to go, like he's got to go. He doesn't represent the values of small town hockey here. That's really what it was. So I was budding up against the establishment all the time. And so what Bud did initially was he gave me an insulated almost bubble to grow in where I didn't have to deal with a lot of the noise. He protected me from a lot of that early on that gave me a chance and he just said to me, Darryl, I'm not going to run any drills. I'm not going to collect any money. I'm not going to tell you what to do. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to talk to you about teaching and I'm going to provide this bubble for you to work. And that's what he did. And it allowed me to grow and he became a sounding board that I could work like, what about this or try that or do this. And he never told me necessarily what to do, which I think is very different than the type of mentorship that I know I've tried to afford at different times in my career that I've learned from. That's not really what we're after. We're after an established person who's got maturity in the game who can see something perhaps in a younger person who needs a little bit of guidance but don't tell them what to do and mostly just protect whatever it is that they're trying to do and just see if it'll grow. And for the longest time, I've tried to repay that back as in any way possible because I believe that that was the number one factor for me. I mean, you can talk about my work ethic and my unwillingness to say, for people to say no, I was able to thrive when literally everyone was throwing snowballs at me walking to the ring. That was OK because he was able to create that bubble for me. And if he wasn't there to do that and insulate me in such a way that allowed me to try to do what I wanted to do, it just wasn't, I don't think it would have been possible. I would have had to find a way different way than what I did this time. That makes so much sense, especially when you're trying to do something different. If you're just going along establishment status quo, then nothing's going to change, though. So that's the issue. I had a similar experience where-- and we've spoken about it in the podcast many times. I had a Russian coach growing up who did things way outside the box. And we talk about how, if it wasn't for a key group of a couple parents that believed in what he was doing and got all the other parents to kind of just, hey, this is going to work. Trust me. Hey, this guy's good. Trust me. And so it is. You need that insulation, as you say, to be able to go against the grain and try and do some things different. But when that happens, through your story, you're able to learn some new things and try some new things out, and eventually some things stick, and it just took off. Yeah, that's exactly it. But I mean, I remember coming off the ice one day, and I said to bud, everybody hates me here. I can feel it. I can feel like there's just-- I'm not wanted here. Everyone hates me. And he said, you're not hated enough. And I'm like, I'm expecting him to put his arm around me and go, hey, Darrell, it's OK. We'll get through it. He's like, no, no. You have no choice. You cannot do it the way everyone else does it. You have to be different, and you have to be better. And when you try to do that, you're going to ruffle feathers. And I'm going to be honest with you. I don't think you've ruffled enough. Like, you think you're hated now. You're nowhere near where you should be if you want to be good. And he said, if you really want to be good, it's going to be very lonely. So you have to determine whether you want to be good, or whether you want to be liked. And so the interesting part about all that path is that that gave me confidence to continue to kind of work, like do things that were very different. Because, again, he insulated me and encouraged me. And he said, listen, if everyone loved you, you came in and everyone's like, hey, there's Darrell, look at him trying to do his best over there. Look at him, he's doing all these crazy stuff. We don't know what he's doing, but all the best to him. What motivation would you have to leave here? The truth is, is in this small town, you're going to be the midget coach, the midget A coach, that's what you're going to be. That's the highlight of what you're going to do here. And he told me a story. He's like, you want to know if you're any good? Go somewhere, just like a player. He says, I used to tell players all the time. The one-- when you know you're really good is when you can go somewhere where nobody knows you. And after the first ice time, they want you. That's how you know you're good. Not when you grow up in your hometown and you go through and everybody knows who you are and they know your parents, they know your story and everything else. And then they tell you, you're great. That's a whole different thing. Go somewhere where no one knows you. Drop yourself in there. If they want you, you're good. That's what you need to do. Build yourself here and then you need to test yourself and you need to leave. And it's always in the times in which I left and did different things. That's when I started to see, oh, I am making some traction here. Because at first, when you're there, you're just budding up against yourself. It's just a battle, right? And you're focused all on the battle, but you're not really focused on everything else. Now, I'm focused on-- I start to see, oh, I went over here and this whole new group, like they're talking to me about different things. Like, they want me. They want me to come back. And they're not-- it's not the same. And so I remember sharing that with him. And he was like, now you believe me. You need to be more hated. And the reason you need to be more hated is because you need to leave here. You have to get out. You have to leave. That at some point, you're going to have to leave. And I just thought that was-- for me, that was one of the best things anybody could ever say. I'm not a very confrontational person. I don't like it when people don't like me. I'm just like anybody else that way. But-- and it was a very tumultuous time at the beginning. And he just was very courageous that way and instilled that in me early on. When you say people hated you in the beginning, who are the people? Like, I'm guessing not the players you were working with? No, no, no, no. The players-- and what I had was a group of-- I had a group of disciples that were with me all the time. And their parents, they were with us all the time. And they believed in whatever it was that I was doing. I'm talking about the coach who works all day. He comes home, and now he's going to go skate. And he does it at his own expense. And he just could not wrap it around his mind that I would not work all day, show up, and I would charge these kids what he could probably do better at that time. That's the truth. That was the dichotomy of it all. Is that this coach, who was not going to get paid a dollar, did not want to get paid a dollar, and felt culturally-- that's the way it should be in a small town. If you have something to offer, you offer it. That's what you do. And he's not incorrect. But what was the problem was, he's like, I'm better than this guy. I'm not taking a dollar. And he's charging a dollar, like that's ridiculous. And in hindsight, I don't even think it's wrong. Like, he's absolutely right. But I was trying to do it different. And so every time I was doing things, I was doing it different, and different, and different, and different, every single turn. And then it just became like, what is this guy doing? He's totally different, doing it totally different. And so I was rubbing everything the wrong way. I was the sandpaper all the time. And that's what I mean. And it wasn't like a malicious thing. It was they hated what I was doing and what I was representing, that this is this guy who's going to come in and try to make a living off this. Like, there's a lot of people that are around this town that can teach way better than you. And we don't take a dollar from anybody. That was what it was more than anything. Interesting. Interesting. Well, Darryl, one of the things that you just said in this conversation, I have a lot of, obviously, a lot of hockey questions that I want again to first. But one of the things that I'm really interested in doing some research on right now is just getting into the elite person's mind. And one of the things that you mentioned in the book is that being elite can be lonely. And being elite can piss people off because you are doing things very differently. Do you feel like having that experience in your ascent where you are now is a way to connect with some of these high level players that you're able to work with who are trying to be the best players in the world? And then you talk about it a lot in the book. And I just thought it was really, really interesting. It's a different mindset. If you want to be the best at anything, you have to be different than everybody else. And a lot of times, that's not easy. So being the best can be a lonely place. Is that something that you talk about with the Patrick Keynes of the world and the Austin Matthews of the world in your connecting with them? I mean, the truth of the matter is is that it's very difficult to truly understand the mind of that elite player. They have a sense of conviction towards what they're doing and a self-belief in where they're going that is, that allows them and they benefit so much from their achievement gap. In other words, they're just better at certain times than the rest of kids. So it allows them to try different things at different times. Can I relate to that? And does my story kind of give me or lend itself well to that? I don't think it lends itself well to that part. I think it's where my story is that I become more courageous in being able to articulate my idea and not be scared that the player may not share that idea and be willing to have a conversation. Because the truth is, is those top players, oftentimes, are kind of like they're not overly challenged by their environment. They have to seek that somewhere else. So they're the best player in their area and then they go to a tournament in the two states over to go find out where the good players are and they measure themselves. So they go up a year and they figure out what that looks like. So they're challenging themselves that way. But when they come back to their own age group, they have an achievement gap that they maximize in every possible way, which is what helps them make them great. Where my connection is is the ability to challenge them, which they don't get often. And especially if it's an intellectual discussion in the sense of like, hey, here's where your game is at. Perhaps we could go a different way. Here's some thoughts about what you might be able to do with this skill. And then once you throw that convert, like once you say it, it's like one of those things like everybody's been there where you say something and you can feel the words leaving your mouth and you just wanna grab them and put them back, you know, it's one of those because you just don't know how it's gonna be received, right? And so there's many of those moments. I still have them all the time where it's like, oh my God, I'm gonna say this and I hope like I'm suggesting this direction and I hope that I think the scars of that whole thing that I went through provides me with a better opportunity to present my case with more conviction and trust and not be scared of the player going, yeah, that's not for me. - Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, let's get into some hockey talk here 'cause I'm excited to do that. The first question that I have for you is, I've always been before reading your book and Adam would always give me some crap for this but I've always been a huge read and react guy. Like you gotta, you gotta, like hockey's about read and react, read and react and in reading your book, you know, what you said is the best in the world, yes, they can read and react but they even do more in that. They're actually manipulating the game in their favor so they don't even necessarily have to read and react. Um, it's just a fascinating topic. How did you get to that and like what are maybe some of the things and I know it's different for each player but how can an elite player manipulate the game in their favor? So they're not always reacting to what is going on. - So I think read and react is just an outdated term. I think the idea behind it is right and there was a time in which it was a really, it was a really a really appointed and very good term to use. I think it's now a little bit outdated in the sense that when you say read and then react, it's the and then react that I don't like because I don't think our game is played that way. The best players don't do that. They're, they play the game in for thought. So they see something and they can anticipate where it's gonna go next. That's not reacting. It is in the, if you, if you really looked at it to find, oh, he sees something. He can now read the pattern of where it's gonna go. He reacts and he moves to that pattern. You're not incorrect. But it's the connotation of saying react as a word that I don't like because it infers that you're now talking about someone who is now in the past of the event. The event has occurred and now he's moving. That's not and that's why I don't like it. I think it's the game is played in for thought. So the way the best players manipulate the game is that they can basically take what you do and or what you're doing and they can move you like a piece on a on a chest piece. And they move you and then they do something that they already know what the predicted response is gonna be. So they do something with their stick to move your stick. - To influence. - To influence. They're doing something to influence and then that allows them to do it more favorably. And I think that that's when you're manipulating, you're trying to stack the deck in your favor. So by definition, you would need to know what your favor is. What is it that's in my favor that I'm trying to do? And I don't think we talk enough about that. - Well, you talk a lot about that in the book. You talk a lot about leveraging your assets and finding out what your best assets are like you're talking about and being able to leverage those in a lot of situations that you're gonna be on the ice in a lot. You talk about high frequency situations. And so is that something that you really study with your top players? What are some of the situations that they're in during a game a lot? How can we use your skill set and the best parts of your skill set to put you in the best situation where you can end up having success in that situation, but also you even take it a step further where some of these best players in the world they're finding out what their linemates best assets are and they're able to leverage that's why like a cross being a cane you can play them with anybody. And those guys are scoring 40 goals a year. So is that something that you figured out a lot in your studies and how do you kind of work with that with your players? - Yeah, like the key thing is to determine what they do best so that you can find ways for them to do it more. And so you're trying to create these like many instances. So I call it like the race to 100. So you have a hundred instances. How quickly can you get to 100 instances? And if I if I can put you in those situations more frequently then you're gonna get more comfortable. You're gonna mess around because you're in there so often you're gonna be able to see nuances of different plays of where you could take advantage of things differently. So now you're building like a depth of understanding of what this situation actually is. And then you're learning to apply your assets in different ways versus maybe versus different competition. Maybe the competition doesn't matter. Sometimes the competition doesn't matter. And so now it's just the competition is about the space. It's not about the person, it's about the space. So how can I utilize the space more effectively than you? And do it in a way that's gonna give me more opportunity to do what I wanna do. And so it's the idea of like imposing your will on the game is ultimately what a lead player is trying to do. And so how do you impose your will? Well, you put yourself in your best skills most often in your best patterns of things you do all the time. So when you think of your best player, the player that you know, your favorite NHL player, right away there's an impression that's in your mind about a play that they do. And it's not gonna be random. It's probably something that they do a lot. So if your favorite player is Ovechkin, it's probable that you're gonna love his sellies after he scores the one T, like everyone the building knows he's gonna get, right? So he can do that. That's an impression that you have. What does Nathan McKinnon say to you? When I say the name Nathan McKinnon, what does it say? When I say Patrick Kane, when I say Crosby, what do you think about, you know, it's those things, well, those are things they're doing a lot. That's why they're really good at it. And so what I think we sometimes struggle with with the development of young players is the exploration of what they're really good at and how they can mess around with it and try different options. So it's not trying to find one tool. It's trying to use one tool as a conduit to give yourself multiple chances to use it in different ways. And maybe it's got a different ending to it. That's what it is. It's like a fork. Like you still hold the fork in the one part, but it has three different things at the end of it. That's what we're after is the main part, the handle of the fork is your skill set. But then when you get to the end, you could go in three different ways. That's the piece of the hockey sense development and the way in which we influence that, that I think is really important and where the creativity comes part of it is when we do that more effectively. - Yeah, well, that's awesome stuff. And one thing that I always am thinking about, and I try to ask a lot of people about it, it's very relevant to what we're talking about right now, is like, how do you teach that? You mentioned that, you know, you talk about Nathan McKinnon, I see him crossing over through the neutral zone. At your cane, I see him coming up the wall into the, I think you call him the elbows of the ice, you know, looking for somebody and things like that. So there's certainly certain patterns that they have in certain areas of the game that they're in a lot, like you said. But there's also a lot of like chaos situations that I feel like they're really, really good at because part of the game is, let's call it scripted and then part of the game is figuring out what's going on when it's not so structured. So like in your opinion, and especially as a development coach and working with these guys, do you teach much to the chaos side of it? Or do you teach more towards the pattern recognition and towards the structured side of it? And how much of the game do you think is one or the other? - Well, I think that's the whole game in like, I don't think it's either or, I don't, I think it's on a, it's on like a spectrum. - Yeah, yeah. - I don't think it's either or. The way I view it is, do you know what your role is in this particular play? And do you know if the puck moves to the left, how that influences what your role is in this play? And if it moves to the right, do you know the difference? That is pattern recognition and understanding the chaos. Here's the other problem with patterns. So our game is filled with patterns and it's very easy for us to want to like present the game in that way because it creates like a sense of predictability for the athlete and you can talk yourself into the idea that they're gonna recognize the pattern and then they're going to execute thereafter. And I'm not saying that's not correct because it is. What I'm saying as you go through pattern, as you go through pattern recognition is, I view it like everything is like a fingerprint. So if we looked at a breakout, so a breakout has a specific initial pattern to it. I know my role in this play, I know where I'm supposed to go and I know if the puck goes on this side, I'm gonna do this, if the puck goes on that side, I'm gonna do that. Fair? - Yeah. - Okay, so where's the chaos in that? Well, the chaos is we don't always know what the opponent is gonna do. And so that's the fingerprint part of it. So the breakout, you have five breakouts. Those are five fingers. The fingerprint is very unique. Each fingerprint is very unique. It's different in some way. The pressure is gonna be different. The person coming to, even if they run the same system, the same forecheck against your breakout, it's every breakout is gonna be just a little bit different in some way. The defenseman, instead of passing it to me on my forehand, it's the same exact, this time it gives it to me on my backhand. That changes things quite a bit. The center who is in support, he's the first, he's a little bit ahead of me on the first one. The next one he's a little bit behind me, third one he's right on time. The next one he's on time, but now they have their forecheck, their guy, the guy has a stick in the right spot. Another guy doesn't have a stick in the right spot. That's the chaos of it. So even when you're talking to me about highly structured situations, there's still chaos and reads that have to occur. That's what happens. And so we all talk about the practice player. Oh, this guy, I run a practice and he can do everything, we go in with game, he can't do anything. What happened to this kid? He's unbelievable in practice. That's because you tick away all the variability. There's no variables. You did it the same way every time. There was high number of predictability. He just followed the pattern. He executed beautifully. Great. Now the game comes and there's little differences. Settle, little differences. Sometimes they're really big. They'll hire you get the more subtle those differences are and you have to be able to read, react, or in my way, influence the way the game is going to be played. So I get the puck on my backhand. I get it to my forehand. I can feel pressure coming. I now do something with my stick to move your stick. Why would I do that, Tof? Because I'm trying to open up a passing lane. Another time, I don't have to do that. I just got to get it. It's a one touch. I get it. I want to touch it. My guy's gone. How do I know the difference? It's what I looked at beforehand. And if you care about the forethought about it, you would care about how the player is reading the situation and what it is he's actually seeing. How much detail is he getting? Last example, retrievals. Puck goes in on a retrieval. You're telling me you're great coach, so you're going to teach all your guys to shoulder check. So he's shoulder checks. He checks the box. The problem is the guy's still on top of him. The guy still makes a play on him. Why? Because he's not taking any detail. Does he know what hand the guy is that's coming to forecheck? Does that influence his greatly about how you might want to escape? Does he know where his pressure-- does he know where his support is? Because that's going to influence what decisions he's going to make. So yes, we did the shoulder check, but what did he see? How much detail did he actually take in? This is the type of thing. So when we're talking about ability to navigate chaos and ability to play in a structure, and we have those on two opposite ends of these spectrum, the truth is they're all the same. It's all going to be some level of chaos inside of your structure, no matter how you do it, because you can't account for the timing of the opponent and the spacing of your people. As much as you try to, things happen. So there's always little things I have to navigate. So I guess by definition, I would be more on the chaos side, but I'm on a side where I want players to be able to read the patterns so they understand the predictability of their people, but still be able to execute under a multitude of different levels of pressure and support. I love that. I love that. And it kind of goes along with one of the other questions that I had for you in terms of like, you talk a lot about failure rates and success rates and how you can manipulate that in your training sessions and getting to a spot where you're putting, let's go with the retrieval situation. Maybe there's a guy that needs a little bit more success so you don't add that much pressure to start. It's a little bit more predictable. The players who he's going with are good players and they're in the right spots. As opposed to now you're going to add some pressure here, you're going to manipulate it so they might fail. They're having a lot more pressure because a lot of the guys that I talk like pressure is everything. If you want to teach like pressure pressure pressure, it's going to get them to think quicker. It's going to get them to be better in the chaos situations of what we're talking about like that. So do you find a way to do that to add pressure to manipulate some of that failure and success rate when you're working with your players? Yes, but I'm not necessarily trying to use pressure as always a problem solving thing. I'm largely initially and this is where I think we miss like a first step here. Where we miss a first step is the idea is to read the pressure first. So if we just add pressure and we're trying to use it to manipulate the success rate, like to drop, maybe it's a great player and so this player needs to learn to do things quicker. He just plays with so much poise. There's times where he could move it quicker and he could do a better job for his team. Get the teammate a puck sooner so that that guy could then have time to make a play. Instead, he's got too much poise. He holds on to it too long. Now by the time he wants to make a play is really put his teammate in a tougher spot for that guy to execute. So you're trying to manipulate the success rate in my mind for two reasons. One, to capture what the player's ability is to see what his environment is and choose the right skill in that environment to make the right play. So could he choose when to be fast and when to be slow? That's the use of pressure and talking him through and understanding what that is. And then it's to use the success rate to encourage him to think differently. So the problem solving comes on the back end of it. It's, OK, now you're going to fail multiple times because I'm going to put the pressure in a way either through the quality of the player I use, pressuring by the way in which I start you that puts you in an awkward spot that now you're going to have to problem solve this. Now you're in one. And so now you've got to find your way out. I'm going to use that failure rate to highlight something or bubble it up to the surface so that you now feel it's a need. Because a lot of times in player development, it's really important to illustrate the need first as it relates to this. So maybe you're talking about the best player in your team. The best defenseman who plays like-- he plays with so much poise. It looks like he's half asleep out there. But he's so effective in just being able to make the place. The guy with the ice in his veins. Well, there's times he needs to be quick. And he actually hurts the play because he's too poised. He should move it quicker to give, like I said, his teammate a better opportunity. What are you teaching the guy to do? What's it for? And use pressure, either failure or success to bubble it up to the surface for a need. You need to get better. You need to improve. I don't know that we do enough of that with failure. But listen, I've done it a thousand times to humble a guy. Hey, I know you're in a good spot. I know you feel really good. Let me stack just a steady dose of failure into you so that now you start to question. And it's in the question that I'm going to come in and be the night I'm shining armor, and I'm going to save you. Now I'll be involved from that. And I feel like I'm better than that. Now I know what I'm trying to influence. And now I just need to bubble it up to the surface. So he will ask a question. Because then I got engagement. Once I have engagement, we're talking through it. Now I can manipulate the pressure to provide opportunity for him to answer his questions. You see what I mean? Yeah. And you can do that with all 6D. Every one of them needs different things. And you can set it all up so that each one of them has different levels of pressure. You can do it by who goes against who? You can go it by who starts where? You can go by how you start. And I can create all kinds of-- if I want to create problems for you, to offer, I'm going to put you with your back to the most amount of it to where the pressure is coming. And I have the pressure right on you with all kinds of speed. And I'm going to have my support like a little bit late so that now it's really problematic for you. But if I want to make life easier for you, I'm going to open it up where maybe you start with your vision towards the most amount of ice. Now when you pivot, you can go back. You got a little bit of time. You can locate where the puck is. You can take a look over both shoulders. The guy's coming. You can read which handy is and all that kind of stuff. And now you can start to execute. So it can be different for each guy. And I don't know that we do-- I think this is-- these are areas that I feel like I've done really well with my guys. That I'd love to see other people dabble with and see what they come up with. I think we have so many coaches that listen to this podcast real. And I think obviously they're going to get a ton out of this. But I think that right there is just such a-- it's very simple and complex at the same time. But you could break that down, even not even a skill session, just in practice for the coaches listening. You can decide what your pairings are. Who's going against who? If it's a drill, we're talking about where four checkers go in and on a D-man who's going back for a puck retrieval. You can decide when that player leaves to four check. You can decide if it's your best player going against your bestie or your best player going against your worstie. So he'll change how he does a stick. Where a stick positioning is, there's a lot of ways coaches listen to this. You can manipulate the exact same drills you're doing to make them both more efficient and more effective. So I would encourage everyone to rewind the last 10 minutes and listen to all of that again, because it's very simple. But it's something that I honestly-- I don't know if I ever saw playing hockey from the age of two until I retired at 32. I didn't ever see coaches. And obviously, it's a little harder. But it's very possible to do with just a little bit of planning of your practice plan. And it might take you 30 more seconds of drill to decide who's going to go against who. Grab this guy, grab that guy, all right. You tour up and then you decide when he's going. All right, wait, wait, wait. Now I want you to go. Or hey, I want you to go and forecheck that demon from this side and not that side. Put your stick here and out there. Like these little things are going to force your players to learn and problem solve for themselves instead of trying to be the coach who uses a controller and tells them exactly what to do all the time. Let them figure it out for themselves by throwing different challenges at them. How about what kind of puck you give them? So you go back for his retrieval. You put a puck, you just have a stationary puck. It's in a predictable position. And then that's one guy. Then the next guy, you know, you send a puck in or the next time you go through, you send the puck in and now it's bouncing in the actual corner. So you don't actually know what angle it's coming on. And it comes out at different speeds. And then another guy like the puck is flipping ever so slowly. It bounces and you're like the curling coach. All of us have done it. You're the curling coach. Just trying to get it to button up against the yellow to make it life just absolutely miserable. Trying to pick up the puck and it's flipping like, I just think that what we're talking about is the bridge a little bit between coaching and teaching. And this is where like I'm going to be all the way over on the teaching side. And what you're talking about through your experience is very much on the coaching side. I, the player, have to figure this out. And it's going to be what it's going to be. I say get in line, everyone gets in line. But I don't think about who's going with who necessarily. Well, this is now something that's just an additive. You keep doing what you normally do. But this is an additive now where you could start dab, when I say dab, I say, let's put these two guys together. You guys go against each other the whole, this whole drill you guys go against each other. And you two guys go against each other. And you just do it for a reason. Doesn't matter what the reason is, you just do it. And you're collecting as a coach, teacher, collecting information from the kids. How did he respond? How does this kid respond with a high amount of failure or a high amount of success? What's his reaction? Is he snapping the stick over top the crossbar? Because he's so angry. How does he, or does he kind of regret? Or does he, or does he like get really quiet? And does the guy doesn't do anything to solve the problem? He's just trying to like beat his head against well. He's the same thing over and over again. What you've done is, you've created a question. And sometimes I'll even say, there's no way after that, you don't have a question for me. And now he's like, yeah, you know what? Like help me, like my god, like what's going on? And then it just creates, because again, it's the exchange that you're after. It's not always what goes on in the physical component of the drill, it's in the reflection of what happened, what was I thinking? How could I approach it differently? And you are facilitating questions. You're just raising them all. And it could, and this isn't like a do this every time type of thing. You're, I don't know, like your college coach, so you have a schedule of which is much more predictable than most. So you know you're going to practice Monday to Thursday, and then you're going to play your games in the weekend. So maybe it's Monday, Tuesday. You're raising a lot of these questions. And then Thursday and Friday, you've answered all the questions. And now you want them hopping and popping, feeling really good. Now they go to their weekend, they feel great. What do you do Monday? Raise a lot more questions. That's the kind of thing that I'm talking about. And maybe it's a different kid, like one kid, like he needs to feel really good about himself right now. Like he went into last weekend, he did not have a good weekend. And now he needs to feel better. So now I'm going to look to try to find ways to build them up, to put some more kind of emotional equity into this kid. So he's capable of accepting failure again. Because sometimes we're not. We're just in an emotional state where we're just not feeling very good. We can't really accept failure as a teaching tool at that point. So it's no sense doing that. So you create these little moments where it's like, great job, Johnny, great job, Johnny. That was excellent, Johnny. I feel like you're getting better, Johnny. You're feeling good, feeling good. Now I see Johnny start to lift his head. His shoulders come up. Now he's ready for failure. Now I'm going to stick it to him. That's right. Now he's going to stick it to him. But I don't want to be sticking it to him when he's heads down. Like we're not like this is the kind of thing. And I speak more about this when we're talking about kids, young kids. These types of things can go a long way. It could save you two weeks of performance out of this kid where you get back earlier. Or you got another guy who's running roughshed all over your league. And you're looking for ways to challenge this kid. Well, maybe it's just every practice just becomes-- and you tell him what the outset, the games are easy for you right now. I have to make every practice feel like you're playing against 15 guys. That's my goal. So when you leave here next year and you go up, I'm assuming that it's going to be harder. That you'll now just feel so much better in those environments. It's different for everyone. And one of the things I've tried to impress particularly through the book is coaching is group, teaching is personal. And there's a lot of times where we need to teach. And teaching is very personal. And you're trying to raise questions. You're trying to elicit responses. And that's a major component. Yeah. And one of-- we talked about your transformation a little bit earlier at the beginning, one of the things that you've gotten to that has been very fruitful for you is you call co-teaching. So at the beginning, I think all of us are kind of in a sense where it's kind of cut top down. I'm going to tell you what to do. And then we're going to go from there. And now you're very much a co-teacher where it's a very much a relational type of thing where you are asking a lot of questions and getting a lot of questions and stuff like that. And one of the things that I've always found really, really cool in talking to Adam about this as well is when you guys got the chance at your 88 summit down in Florida to gather some of the best players in the world and say, what do you think about a lot of this stuff? So you put some video clips together and you have them watching video. And some of the best players in the world are sitting across from each other and talking about why they did certain things. How important is that co-teaching to you and having those conversations and getting into the head and asking all those questions to those best players? And then how cool was it to just kind of be-- I don't want to say a fly on the wall because I'm sure you guys were active in it, but to hear them talk to each other about what they're thinking in certain situations in the game. Co-teaching, I think, is the ultimate goal of the relationship that you're trying to get to. And it changes all the time. It's not like once you've achieved a co-teaching relationship that that's where it is and that's where it ends. You could have developed a co-teaching relationship with a certain skill set with a player. And then when you tackle the next skill set, you're right back to the beginning where you are the actual teacher and he is the student. And then you got to move them to try to facilitate some of his ideas because of the difficulty of the content. So with everything that you're doing and the relationship to me is threefold. It's my relationship with him, his relationship with the skill, and my relationship with the skill. What do I know about this skill? What's my background knowledge? What's my ability to teach it? What's his understanding of the skill? How good is he at it? What is the ancillary skills? How good is his depth of skill around it? That's going to tell us where we need to start. Sometimes we're starting at the beginning, some time. But eventually we're trying to get to a co-teaching environment. So now you fast forward. So all that being said, that means that's something I'm doing all the time. Now we go down to the 88th summit and it's exactly what everything that you would think it would be. It's genius level understanding of the game, sharing with other genius levels of understanding with the game. And what it highlighted for me more than anything is, I don't know why we don't do this more at every level. And I think you would be surprised by what you get from the kids. If you just ask, and you don't have to do it as a whole team because some kids might be uncomfortable. But let's say you just took all the deep. You have six of them. And you brought them in and you just sat them down. Well, now you'd have to do it on a Zoom call or whatever. But I mean, you do what you do. And you put up a clip. Could be their clip or could be a clip of an NHL situation. And you just say, hey, why don't we watch this clip two or three times? And then just tell me what jumps out at you. And I think you would be shocked at what some of the things that come out of these kids mom. No different than what you were expecting at the NHL level, only at the NHL level like it's truly expecting. Like it's expected. If I get all those players in one room and I just start talking about hockey, they're going to say pretty amazing things that you've never heard before. And interestingly enough, that other people in the room have never heard before. That's the interesting part, right? So then it starts to compound. And then they get off of the idea of the hesitation of sharing. And then they're like all in with sharing because now they're trying to understand. They're really trying to seek to understand. We can do that at every level. Every team could do that. And you might have this kid who you're not sure of. We've all coached this kid who is so hard to read. Like you can't really read, you talk to him and he just doesn't have the normal like facial expressions coming back, but it's not to say he doesn't understand. But you don't know, like you just can't read him. And now you get him in this environment. Maybe it's one on one, maybe it's in a small group, maybe it's at a team level, I don't know. And you just start asking questions. What do you see here? And I think that those kids can pop and give you a perspective about them that you didn't already know. And I think that it's a getting to know process of what you're trying to do. But I think that the one thing that jumped out when we did the 88 summit was, man, I think everybody could do this. Like I think everybody could do this and I think you could benefit. And there's something about the coach or teacher stepping back and handing over the marker or the cursor to a player and ask him, what do you think? And sometimes you like, it's one of those things again, like what do you think? And you just want to grab it back 'cause you don't know what's coming out next from that kid. But I think that there's tremendous value in that. And that's probably what I learned the most is, yeah, we need to do it here. It's unbelievable. It facilitates what we're trying to do here really well. But man, this is a message that others should get and try. - Yeah, for sure. It's really cool. And we had Al talk on our podcast a while ago. And I know he was down there and one of the things that we talked about is he did some kind of move where he came around the net. I can't remember exactly what it was. But then some NHL superstars, like, man, that was awesome. I need to implement into that into my game. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, sure. Mr. NHL, I'll start. That's awesome, you know? And just that facilitative learning where guys are kind of taking things from each other and stealing things from each other if that's what you want to call it and being able to use it and make it better in their own games. Like you said, when you got people at that level and how they process the game, being able to learn new things. - Yeah, very cool. - It's incredible. And it's everything that you could think it would be. It was in more. It really is. And you stand back like, I use the joke all the time. You know the Homer Simpson meme where he's by the hedge. And then he just comes back, fades into the back, yeah. That's kind of what you do. Like you ask the question and then you fade back into the, yeah, exactly, that's exactly what it is. And I think that was my role. And then you just, the best thing to do is to be quiet and let it go. And then you listen and then ask the next question that kind of keeps it moving. Once it's going, you know, it's like the, you know, it's like the, you're just trying to keep putting another log on it to see if you can keep it going. - We got a couple more hockey questions that we want to ask you before we let you go. The first one is, and this is an interesting one because I feel like the notion in the coaching world is it's very easy to coach defense. And so we coach defense a lot. And kind of the misconception or conception out there is that, you know, offense, that's just something that you have. It's a God-given talent or a God-given ability that players can just do. Why do you think that's the, I don't know if it's a common view, but I would say it's a common view in hockey. And what are your thoughts on that? Does it have a lot of merit? Does it not have a lot of merit? Do you think we can teach offense more than we can? - I definitely know that you can teach offense more than you can. It's just different. The trouble with offense is you have to, offense is options. Defense is less about options, it's about positioning, it's about getting to spots, it's about moving as a unit. It's a lot more like, there's a lot more like design to it. Where the offense, you're gonna get them to the spot and then they're gonna make decisions and they could make any of four or five different decisions, which can be scary. I think the interesting part about the popular, I think it's very common that there's a misconception that it's very difficult to teach offense. It's just easier to teach defense. And the way I look at it is a little bit different, maybe then most, but I think it's gonna be hard to teach offense so long as you stack the deck in favor of the defense. And coaching, we do that, we stack the deck. And I'll give you some examples. And what I mean is like, you're inadvertently luring the offense into defensive principles. So let me give you some examples to highlight. Puck protection, let's take that one. How do we teach puck protection? We tell the guy, get the puck, find out where the pressure is, put your back to the pressure and protect the puck. Make sure your body, your back, is to the puck. To your body, your body is between them and the puck. Okay, what do you now coach when you are on defense, what do you tell your defenders to do when the guy turns his back? What do you tell them to do? Well, you tell them to close space and push them into wall. So the very idea of puck protection of surrounding the puck, getting my, you know, my body between you and I'm putting my back to you. That's how you're telling me to play offense. But on defense, you're telling the defenders every time it turns his back, close the space. So are we teaching offense or defense? The guy's got the puck. You're telling me it's puck protection. We're teaching the, you're teaching the offense to play into the defensive principles. Instead of saying, don't turn your back on this guy. Keep your shoulder perpendicular to him. You're gonna only turn when you absolutely have to and you're gonna do it as quickly as possible because you wanna maintain your vision to the most amount of ice. So let me, so that's one. Give me another one, puck support. What do we do with puck support? You want close puck support. So I got a puck, Jeff trying to help me. What do you do? Well, you come to me. So now I have me, my defender. Now you have you and your defender and now you're gonna tell me what? I don't manage space well. Okay, well that's teaching offense into dovetail right into strong defensive principles. Every shot's a good shot. Is it really? Is every shot a good shot? Or is that defense? Is that defense? It's the easiest puck to break out is a bad shot. Is it not? But every shot's a good shot. Okay, that's a good shot. But every shot's a good shot though. Is that offense? Is that good? Is that an offensive thing that we're now dovetailing into good defensive principle? Hey, on a scale from one to 10, how fired up would your boy Adam be in this conversation right now? You see a 13. But that's a trick question. Adam is always at a 13. He's always true. That's true. So I have one more for you that kind of highlights this idea because I think that this is why offense is so hard to teach. We're talking about the rush, okay? So I got a guy on the breakout, he gets the puck. So you're gonna tell me number one, don't pass the puck to the middle of the ice. Number two, I'm gonna attack wide. And in doing that, what are you teaching the defenseman? Well, you're teaching the defenseman. I need to have my inside shoulder on his outside shoulder. My job is to keep him wide and put him in the least amount of ice. So you're telling the offense, enter wide. Don't use the middle of the ice. Don't change sides. And then you're gonna tell the defense, yeah, keep him on your outside shoulder, give him the outside, let him go down there, and then we're gonna close him off. That's why offense is hard to teach, to offer because defensive, because we're coaching, we're coaching the offense to adhere to solid defensive principles. We're luring the offense to do what's good or what's best defensively. And then you're gonna tell me, I didn't work hard enough. Right? What do you want from me? You gave me the puck on the half wall in the defensive zone. You told me I couldn't use my backhand, I can't use the middle of the ice. Now I'm gonna come up the ice. Everyone's gonna close me off. I can't use the middle, I can't change sides with it. I gotta just go straight north. If I can pass, I'm gonna pass to a guy who's ahead of me who's now, he's going into a one on two situation in no space. He's gonna chip it into the corner. Now we're gonna go down and get it. You're gonna do close support, so you're gonna bring everyone into the corner. So now we have a team picture in the corner and you're gonna accuse me of not using any good time in space. And I couldn't create any space. Then to protect the posture and all of this, what am I gonna do, Tofer? I'm gonna turn my back to the whole play, not, and now you're gonna tell me I have no ice vision. I'm gonna go low to high and now when you're defending, when you're defending, if it breaks down, Tofer, where do you want the shot? Where does every coach say they want the shot? Hey, if we're gonna give up a shot on a breakdown, where's it gonna be? - From the outside. - From the point shot, from the outside. So now we're gonna go low to high and we're gonna sift the puck. So now the sifter comes in. What did you tell the net front defender? Don't go pushing this guy, getting front of him, and you can just block the shot. Why, Tofer, 'cause it's not a slap shot, it's a sifter. Guys gonna get in the way and we start with this bad shot and we're gonna break out. That's why offense is so hard to teach because we do so much to eliminate it and stifle it by driving the principles, the good offense of principles that we are pushing on these players, feed directly into good defense. So until we start talking about offense as offensive principles and that they are directly counter to what good defense of principles are, I don't know that we can answer this question. We've never tried it. We've never tried to teach offense. We haven't. We've taken the offense and driven it into the defense and said, and now we like, oh, it's a two one game. That's good. We should have more offense. We need to create more offense. Well, that's in principle principles. Yeah, that's our opposite. They're opposite. They're exactly the same. That's what drives me crazy. Couldn't tell, I love it. Do you think that like even in the examples that you just mentioned there, in terms of even the puck protection, in terms of getting the puck wide, do you think a lot of that is just being a culture of being almost risk averse in terms of, we don't want to turn pucks over and have it come the other way? Do you think that's a big part of that? Of course, of course. The desire to win is more important than the desire to do what's right. And what I mean by what's right is what's right is, if you're teaching offense to offer, the right thing to do is to highlight options and the player needs to be able to come back to the line or come back to the bench and articulate to me that he had several options. The best players in the world are that way because every play they could choose any which option. They know what they all are. To the degree that you are lower than that is the degree that you see these options, these see these plays. That's the problem, right? So what's right is counterintuitive to being risk averse because when you're risk averse and you want to win and you know that we just can't turn pucks over at the offensive blend and frankly, I can't trust three quarters of my forward group to be able to navigate that line on their own. It's better for me not to worry about that. But if you're talking about teaching offense and that's what you're talking about, you're gonna need to live with the idea that these pucks are gonna have to turn over at times. I mean, listen, the best players in the world are about seven out of 10. Three times out of 10, it's going the other way. Why are you okay with that? Because three times out of 10 is probably ended up in the back of the net offensively. So you're okay with that because of the result. The result lets you take the ones that don't go in like the turnovers, you're okay with those because the success rate and the frequency of the event plus the success rate, when I combine those two things together, it's just better for us as a team for you to do that and I'll take the risk. But another guy who's three out of 10, we just can't afford that option for him. We can't give him that. We can't put that option on the table. So now you take the option off the table, what do you think the probability is he's looking for options? He's not. So now he's down to one option. Well, what's that? That's defense, defense, one option. Take him to his backhand, put him in small space, he's done, force him to stop. That's defense. - So do you think in like a youth hockey setting, like AAA, probably 14, 15, 16, when they're getting serious, do you think it makes sense to be like the guys who have that better reward to risk ratio, the guys who are seven out of 10 success, that say that's the first two lines. The second two lines are the one out of 10, two out of 10 success. Do you think coaches like that should make different kind of quote unquote rules for the guys who have a higher success rate than the guys are lower or you just say, "All right, everybody's gonna try all the time," kind of thing. - Well, I think the truth is there's many, many teams that have different rules for different people, right? That's just a fact, right? So I think that we start this whole process too late. I think we are risk adverse, way too early, and then when they get older, now we start thinking about maybe we should improve this capacity, but by then we box them in, and then you're less interested in, you have less rope to give now, because you just can't afford to lose the group or you can't afford to lose the team by having this guy turnpux over. The truth is, is that process, again, kind of like needs to have some forethought as to maybe we should have the no dump in rule or don't turn your back to a guy or put the training constraints that we talk about, like training constraints, there's a big word now. It's great, I use them, everybody uses them, that's great. Do maybe we could use the training constraints in the games when they're younger and say, "Hey, I mean, you could say to your D, the puck can't touch the wall, the whole night. Can't touch the wall. You need to make a play to somebody. I'd rather you turn it over by someone stripping you than the puck touch the wall." So it's worse for you to have the puck touch the wall than it is to have it taken from you. Okay, that's a constraint. You can practice and train or whatever. Now you get to a game and you put the constraint in. All six of you, D, puck can't touch the wall. There's no bumps, there's no nothing. You have to problem solve, you have to use your skating, you have to use escapes, and you're gonna have to make a play. And hey, don't be coming in help them because we need you over here to be over here ready for a pass. That's a constraint and I don't know when they're eight, nine, 10, 11. I don't know if we're doing any of that. And if we're not doing any of that, why are we not doing any of that? Now we get to what you're talking about, 15, 16, 17. I mean, the horse is out the barn because now they can think for themselves. So now they see Tommy struggling on the third line, coming in, getting puck, turning pucks over. They're at spend all their time backshacking. He's the kids looking at you now like coach, like you sure about this, like maybe Tommy should just dump the puck in. So that's the problem. Like when they're young, they don't think for themselves as much. So now it's easier to create, this is who we are. This is our team, this is what we do. And you can do that for stretches. And maybe it's one constraint like that at one time. Then you can say, hey, the next constraint is we're using the middle. To hell or high water, we're using the middle. And we're going to do it for a whole period. And then just when the other coach kind of thinks that we're going to be using the middle, well, then now we're going to go and we're going to use the wall. And then in the third period, we're going to read and see what's available and make the right play. Or maybe we section off the season that I don't know. I'm just throwing ideas out there. But if you want to improve offense and offensive IQ, you have to create options and you have to force them to use them. That's done when they're really young. It's easier done when they're really young. When they're older, you have the achievement gap that you're fighting like competency bias. If I put a three on three together in one end, who is the kid that's going to be trying the most stuff? The best kid. The best kid on the ice is going to try the best stuff. Who's the kid going to try the least? The worst kid. So back you. You're telling me, you're telling me that the three on three is going to give me time and space and opportunity to do different things. Yes, it provides the environment, but that's not always the effect. And the end, the competency bias and the achievement gap bites you. Unless you do things to influence it, and if you're not going to influence it, then you're going to accept that the bottom third of this team is getting replaced every year. It has to. That's just the reality of it. And that's the thing about offense and development and things that you have to allow for failure rates at the right time. And what we're talking about, I mean, you want to start this at 1617? Yeah, I think that you're going to be in for an uphill battle. It's going to be hard. If you started it when you're younger, if you can really do something. Yeah. That's actually so funny, because I'm thinking about like three on three cross eyes, even in my last, I don't know, five years playing. And it's like, all right, yeah, we're doing cross eyes now. We're going to work on skills and stuff like that. But I was still playing the exact same straight line way that I played five on five full ice. I was trying to beat a guy wide. I was trying to shoot it from everywhere and just go to the net. And I was like, wait, Jeff, you idiot. You're supposed to be like fail. You're supposed to be trying to make move. You're supposed to be trying to beat him through the triangle, even though you chopped the puck into a pizza. Like, that's so funny now. Reflecting back on that, me just playing the exact same way as five on five. Yeah, and you talk about that constraints. And you talk about that in the book, how, you know, when you're doing these small area games, sometimes, you know, we can be doing them a lot better in the sense that maybe it's not just keeping score in terms of how many goals that are scored, you know, putting in constraints or putting in different rules or putting in different ways that is going to help with the skills that maybe you've worked on earlier in the practice. That now you're getting recognized for a point for, I don't know, bringing a guy to you and then making a pass. Like, that's a point or just like little things like that. So it's almost like a progression. You're starting from the beginning of practice and you're working on, you know, a certain skill. And that's one thing you talk about in the book that I found really, really interesting that I would like to incorporate in more of my practices. It's almost like it's a theme where there's a certain skill or a certain couple skills that you want to blend together, that you want to work your way into and then you can end it in a small area game where you're being rewarded for doing that skill. I just think that was a really, really cool part of the book that I would like to implement more. Well, the development part of it, like, if you're doing player development, you need now multiple interactions with the same skill. So the reason why what we're talking about about practice, theming or having like one skill, like maybe it is, it's like drawing someone to you, you know, protect the puck, finding a slip pass. Maybe that's the thing that you're working on. So you isolate it, you know, you do it in partners and they got to, you know, they start off that way and it's very controlled. And then that it moves into an actual drill and then somehow it gets into like a two on one or something and they got to find their way to make these plays through people and and then ultimately you get into like a much more organic or game like setting and then you challenge them to see if they can find it. That's multiple interactions with the same skill and the probability of transfer skyrockets when you do that. But if you have a practice where you say, okay, like we're going to do five different things in this practice, each of those, each of those things are 10 minutes long and nothing has a relationship between one or the other, then how many reps am I really getting? By the time you explain it, by the time you do the demonstration, by the time it's my turn to go, we have six or eight kids in the line, I'm getting three, four, five, maybe opportunities to do this. So that's not giving me a hell of a lot of opportunity to try different things. But if I'm doing that whole thing, I'm doing it and I've stitched it through the entire practice. Now I'm doing it 30, 40, 50 times. Well, I'm going to try, I'm going to, my interaction and ability to do it with different spacing, different pressure, different support, different reads, that all gets, like I now have a fair opportunity to build this skill into my skill set and the probability of transfer goes through the roof. I love that, I love that. Well, I got a couple more questions for you, you got time? I got time, yeah, let's try it. All right, love it, okay. So one of the things that you wrote about in the book, and I would love to dive into this because I find it fascinating, is the exact quote is, "This to me is the definition of hockey sense, the ability to really understand transition." "Hockey is a game of transition, you're constantly going from offense to defense, defense to offense and having the ability to read when those things are happening, how those things are happening and everything like that, I'm 100% with you." But I've never really heard of transition in hockey sense used in the same family before. It's always kind of transition as a tactic and hockey sense is something, that's something completely different. So how did you get to a spot where you kind of melded those into one thing? And I would love to know who you think really does a good job of that in the NHL. For me, I love watching Conor McDavid, I feel like he's always a step ahead in transition. And part of the reason why he's so good, it's not just his speed, but his ability to process the speed and everything like that and what's happening. How did you merge those two? It started years ago, I went to like a hockey Canada certification course. There was a speaker there by the name of Bjorn Kinding, and he did this study on transition. And basically what he said was he had done a study of like international events. And he said that there were like 400 changes of possession inside of a single game. And he then went on to say that it's very few situations in transition, are we have all five guys on offense and all five guys on defense. Often times there's two guys who are attacking and there's three guys who are still defending. So there's times in which these are switching. And if it happens so frequently, then how much are we really in transition? And so then like that kind of sit with me for many years. And I built this whole idea of primary triangle and secondary triangle, which the primary triangle is to play like out surrounding the puck offensively or defensively. Then there's one guy that links the other two guys who are furthest away from the puck, who are going to be in transition. So if you're defending, you have a triangle at the puck. There's one guy who's closest to the other two people that once we get it, if we get it to them, we're now on offense and vice versa. So I built this whole idea of this primary triangle and secondary triangle, and having that as a teaching apparatus to help my players understand transition more. And then that ended up morphing to if as these things are going on, your rule changes with every where the puck is. So if your what your rule is on like just say basic, I'm in the defensive zone and the puck is in one corner. I'm the primary defenseman at the puck. And the puck changes sides. What happens? Well, my rule changes because the puck changes sides. I don't go with the puck all the way to the other side. I switch off my D partner goes over there. And then I become like the net front guy just to say it simply. So what happened in that switch of the puck? My rule changed in this situation. If you have a defenseman and a forward defending behind the icing line, who's the best guy to link the triangle to go on offense? Is it the centerman that's below the icing line? Or would it be the weak side D? Most often the weak side D is in the best position because he's probably 10, 15, 20 feet ahead of the poor centerman who would have to then pass that guy on his way to rejoin the play. So the rule changed. The guy in front of the net is now who's the D is the new centerman. He's the centerman in the play. And we've done a good job with the F1, F2, F3 when you talk about it years ago. So I believe that the most interesting part about transition of why I link it to hockey sense is because it's hockey sense in so much of hockey sense. As much as there's many different ways to define it about the way you utilize space, the way you use numerical advantages to or for your advantage or against you or against others. There's all of that. And then there's how you leverage your skills. But then there's this whole thing where understanding my role in the play and how my role in the play changes and what my movement is as I anticipate this role changing. So if we think about this weak side D who's the new centerman, how long does it take him to realize that he could, if he joins this rush, it's a three on two the other way. How long does it take him? That's a reflection of hockey sense. Because he has to read that I am the new centerman. And now you can implicitly have that as part of your system or you'll have kids who actually read that and all of a sudden Tommy's in the rush. That's hockey sense. In my mind it's the transition. It's less about the transition per se, although I do believe the transition because of the frequency of the amount of time, especially the lower you go. Like in the NHL there's less transition opportunities because it's harder to get the puck. And people reload so much better. The lower that you are, the better the transition situations are because the defense has a hard time getting staying organized and all of that going to end the switch of the rules. The time it takes every kid to process. Oh, I was on defense. Now I'm on offense. That time that it takes to do all of that and get into that position, that's a massive amount of time for us to be able to maximize offense. So understanding my role, how my role changes and how quickly I can understand how to do that. That to me is a high expression of hockey sense. Now you ask, who are the best guys in transition? We always talk about forwards. And I can, you know, you talk about them. It's all the best guys, right? It's it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, you know, it's McKinnon. It's Kutcheroff. It's all those top high level echelon guys. But you know who else it is? It's the D. There's so many elite level D. You think about like a Tory crew, for example. Is a master of transition. He facilitates transition because he's elite at a lot of these other things. How about Jared Spurgeon, who he might be one of the best defenders at the puck of anybody in the NHL? He creates changes of possession. Well, he's elite in transition. He can turn the puck, which is a part of that. So I believe all that is hockey sense. And I think that I'm glad you said that you haven't, you know, you coached a long time. You've been in the game your whole life. And to hear you say like I've never really connected those two. Because they are considered like three phases of the game, right? It's offense, defense, and then transition in the middle. But I think if you connect it from this perspective, it changes kind of your viewpoint. And you may go down a rabbit hole that would be very interesting for not only you but your kids. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that it's as it is. I mean, he hear about transition all the time. He hear about the other core parts of it, the offense and defense. And you obviously hear so many people talking about how do you get hockey IQ? How do you get hockey sense? I think that's like the million-get-jillion-be-jillion-dollar question right now that everybody's trying to figure out and linking the two. Because transition is such an important part to the game, especially in keeping pucks out of your net and putting pucks in the other net, which is what the hockey game is all about. I just think it's a really interesting way to teach hockey sense from that perspective. Well, how about this? So it's take the same kid in the week's ID. And now it's the last minute of the first period. You're up one nothing. His decision is a reflection of hockey sense. Is it not? Yeah. If he jumps, and it's a 50/50 puck, and that puck turns, you and I are both going to sit there and go, what is he doing this guy? He doesn't know that there's a minute left in the game. Now, if it's flipped, what if it's a minute left in the period? And we're down by one. And now he jumps. That's also a reflection. And the fact that he doesn't is a reflection. The truth is, everywhere he goes on the ice, at every minute or every second of what he's doing, has a tactical implication to it. Every player has the same burden. It's a burden. The second your feet touch the ice, or the second the puck hits the ice. Everything you do from that minute till you leave, or they pick the puck up, has a tactical implication that you're either helping your team or you're hurting them. You're either in position. You're either in position or you're not. You're either helping or you're hurting. Everything. And that's all 10 guys. So that's something we have to keep in mind. And so that's what it's all decisions and decisions and decisions and decisions. And that's all hockey sense. So are we developing, you're developing hockey sense all of the time? The key part about it is the questions you ask. Why did you go? What did you see? What role were you in this play? When did you know it? And having these types of discussions is how you foster it. Rather than say he has it and he doesn't. Maybe he has it, but he's just a conservative kid. He's never going to jump. He's never jumping. That doesn't mean he doesn't have the hockey sense. He saw it clearly. He just didn't do it. But you went the whole season. You never asked him. You're not going to know. But if you ask him and you know, now you can encourage him and say, Hey, yeah, here's some risk high risk areas. Like when you're on the ice against this line, probably not a good idea because these D, they like to pinch. They're probably going to keep it in. That could be problematic for us. But if you're on the ice against these D, they don't pinch as much. They're going to fall back. This is probably a good idea. Oh, he starts looking for conditions in which he can do these sorts of things. That's such a key part of development. I don't know that we do enough of that. Particularly when the kids are younger. Yeah, I mean, they're asking questions part of it. I think it's a nail on the head too. Because you can learn so much as a coach about a kid's hockey sense just by asking those questions. Because you can't tell me you're always going to know by watching him because there's there's personalities at play. There's some kids are just overly conservative. There's other kids who are overly aggressive. There's some kids are going every single time. There's some kids who are never going. What are we doing? So you can't always judge it. I mean, yes, the byproduct of the whole year you watch him or you watch him over five or six games, you're going to see evidence that his hockey sense is higher by watching how he approaches a race to a puck. That could tell you a ton about a kid's hockey sense, right? So in fairness, I'm saying in general, it's important to ask these questions because you can dig down deeper beyond what you actually see. Yeah, and I think that even goes to a scouting perspective too. You know, some of the guys that I know in the game that do a really, really good job, they feel like one of the biggest parts of their job is after they watch a kid play, it's going down and having a few different situations that they saw the kid and maybe some positive, maybe some negative, and then going down and asking them, what'd you see? What was your thought process on that? And with the guys that I've spoken to that have talked about this, they said the players that have translated the ones that have gone on to do pretty good things are the ones that can have a recall that is just like that. Like they know exactly what you're talking about. They can take you exactly what they were thinking. They can tell you where the other players were on the ice, and why they made the vision. And yeah, those conversations are they're so enlightening because it can get you really into the mind of a player. And also, like you mentioned before, as being co-teacher, it can make you learn a little bit too. That's the relationship. So it's hard to teach someone if you don't understand them. Yeah, you have to get to a level of understanding. And that's why some of this exchange becomes really important. It's a fascinating part. We're never going to answer it totally, but you get into these situations where you can foster it, and there's a lot you can do to improve regardless of where you feel the player's hockey sense actually is. There's always a way to influence it to be better. Are you going to turn them into a first ball at Hall of Famer? Maybe not. But you're definitely going to be able to make him better because you're going to foster different things and you're going to encourage him to see. And then you're going to encourage him hopefully to have a little bit of forethought. Oh, I see that this is happening. I'm going to go there. You know, and that's what you're hoping in my mind to achieve as often as you can. But you need multiple interactions with that, not just one. I love it. I love it. Well, Darrell, thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with us here today. And before we let you go, obviously, and we talked about this before we even press record here, this was a process to write a book, a big time process. How do you feel now? Like now it's all out there. You've kind of buried your soul and you did in this book. You talk about the ups. You talk about the downs. You talk about stories with some of these amazing people you've been able to work with. I mean, there's so much cool things in the book. Jeff and I always talk about even on our podcasts. Like I almost grade the podcast based on the amount of notes that I've taken. And I don't think I've ever underlined so many things in a book as I did with yours. And even like, growing up in the game and we've all been at high levels of hockey, when you feel like you learned something new, that's always something that's very, very awesome. And I felt like I learned a ton from it. And I know that there's a lot of other people that have as well that I've spoken to. So how do you feel right now with this being out there? Some of the feedback you might have gotten already. And just putting so much passion and so much of something into something now, it's out. I think that I feel a lot better now. I felt great when it was done and it was going to print. And I got the first book. I mean, anybody who's written anything like that, they'll tell you like when you get that first book and you actually see it, it's physically in your hand, it's really something else. So nothing kind of prepares you for that. Where there was a lot of really tense moments for me was when the publisher started sending it out to the people that had contributed to the book. So like the players who had contributed, just to kind of send them an advanced copy. I got a call from one of the players and said, "Hey, I read the book." And it just dawned on me at that time. Like, "Oh, I never thought you were going to actually read it." So if you read a book and it's like implicit that, "Okay, people are going to read it." And then you realize, "No, no, people are going to read it." So then you're like, "Okay, did it really say what I wanted to say?" And I feel like it says what I wanted to say. The whole idea is for it to become a talking point about player development, which is now a touch point for a lot of people in hockey to try to wrap their brain around it. I've had a very unique experience. I've had a lot of highs, worked with them, and the best players on the planet, which has been a true gift for me. But I've also had a very hard road and difficult road, and there's been a lot of people that had to believe in me at the right time. And so I think what was important that I really want to come through in the book is that, you know, I realized that while my name is on it, and it's my experience, and I was the one that kind of shouldered most of it, I didn't do it alone. There's a lot of people that contributed to it, to my journey, and helped me at different times. And paying homage to them is as much and important to me as the message, you know, just to say. And then when I realize that they actually read it, then I'm like, "Oh God, hopefully it comes, hopefully it comes across really well." But the feedback has been good, and I think it's been interesting to get a different take because it's a little bit, it's not just a hockey book, it's about teaching. And so hearing from people who teach some of their thoughts about it has been really interesting. And these types of conversations, like here we are having a conversation about player development and my path, you know, and hopefully that that'll inspire other people to want to dig into something. We will have touched on a subject that somebody is going to dive head first into, and they're going to be better than all of us about it. That's what excites me is raising some questions in the issue that people start chasing down, and they become and take the game further than I can do it. That's what it's about. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, if you haven't gotten it already, Belfrey Hockey strategies to teach the world's best athletes. And I found it interesting. He said, world's best athletes because it's not just about hockey players, like you said. It's, you know, you can use this in any sport and you can use this outside of sports too in teaching whatever, whatever it is you're you're passionate about. So thank you for writing the book. It was awesome. 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