BruinDust
Registered User
- Aug 2, 2005
- 25,129
- 23,761
But see that's it - I went through a whole winter session with a pretty good coach (in a group). Half the time there was no puck involved - just skating and edges. And it really helped me. I mean it helped coming from a low bar, but my skating improved significantly - and nothing I ever would have learned just playing games.
So that's where even if you're 1 16 year old who with no path to pro hockey - there's still a lot of benefit to working on fundamentals. Maybe you have a bad coach who doesn't teach those things, but a good coach who does is gold.
That makes sense. And I do agree with you that there are skating fundamentals you can't work on in a game. For example, my backwards cross-overs left-to-right have never gotten back to what they were when I played minor hockey. Only practice focusing on that skill would I be able to improve upon it.
I found once we got to that say 15-16 year old level, the practices didn't involve much if any of this kind of work. I recall it being there in the practices at lower age groups (not novice but upper atom and peewee). Granted they did now have to spend some time on body-checking and learning how to take a hit. I found the practices were generic, repetitive, unorganized, just not well done. Almost no individual instruction. And from one coach to another, they didn't change much.
I guess all of that to say the quality of coaching and the quality of the practices plays a big part in their overall usefulness. And truth be told, that brief time coaching high school I probably ran my practices exactly the same as the coaches I had, so I shouldn't throw too many stones.