It’s a different approach if you discuss one of the most important aspects of a world class hockey-player: Hockey sense. In my uncountable discussions with experts, coaches, managers, players and scouts most of them believe that hockey-sense is a god-given-talent and just very limited teachable. I did agree with this for long years, but not anymore.
Let’s start with my description of hockey sense: Hockeysense means to take the right decisions in different situations, with the puck and without the puck. In more specifics hockeysense means to think the game in advance, to act and react more fast than others, to create offensive options via passing, deking , efficient moves and hiding intentions, knowing when to slow down and when to speed up the game, seeing the open ice, smelling where the puck will be, smelling where lost pucks will be, where rebounds will end, reading what the opponents will do, reading what your teammates will do, reading how the game will develop. There are probably even more aspects of hockeysense.
After watching close to 3000 games I did notice that my theoretical hockey-sense, my hockey-sense from the outside, did improve dramatically compared to my early goings. In today’s hockey-world I can see from the outside pretty much in advance what a player should do on the ice, I can smell a dangerous situation well in advance and I started to be much too critical with players because I expect that they should have seen, should have smelled, this or that. Of course I do know that watching developing plays from under the roof is much more easy than doing the same as a player on the ice, while being exhausted, while taking hits and while not having the relaxed eagles eye of a scout sitting under the roof. On the other hand it tells me that my improvement in theoretical hockey-sense is an indication that players also can learn, can improve hockey-sense, at least to a certain extent. While playing 15000 hours of piano makes better piano-players compared to just playing 5000 hours I start to believe that watching and/or playing as much hockey as possible also makes a better hockey player in terms of hockey-sense. What does this teach to young players: Not only playing as many games or practicing in as many game-situations as possible but also watching hockey-games will improve your sense for the game. If you are passionate enough to watch as many games as possible, passion and love to analyze games, game-situations and players – this will tremendously improve your own game also. Actually it means you have to smell, to live, to breath hockey every single minute. Study the game, study players and you will develop your own hockeysense in big leaps. I even will go as far as thinking about practicing your eyes. There are new methods of practicing the eyes, so you will be more focused to the important things in the game, you will have a wider perspective to the game and you will have a more focused, more calm and relaxed eye. This might be a detail but maybe a detail to think about because it will be details who decide about success or not success at the very top. I think that practicing the eyes could be especially effective for goalies but not only for goalies.
Another thing: I do know very well that the advice of smelling, eating, breathing, watching hockey for 24 hours per day doesn’t produce well balanced educated people. This is for sure and please don’t ask me whether I want to have dinner and discuss about god and the world with such a person. But here we are not discussing about well balanced 360° educated personalities. We are discussing how to develop hockeysense and I think there are certain indications that I might be right with my thesis. What do you think?
Zurich, 16th September 20011 / Thomas Roost
