Bag Skate Honesty
Spoiler Alert: If you’re a player of mine, please bookmark this post and we will see you on the ice for practice at 4PM. The fate of today’s practice will be determined by the end of this post. Push the fluids and read further at your own risk.
I played nine holes this morning and while zig zagging across fairways and through the trees I began to mentally put our practice plan together for what is our second (on the record) team practice of the season this afternoon.
Today on the Morning Skate we need to decide whether or not to put the guys through a little bag skate.
But Dayzer, what’s a bag skate?
Exhibit A: What looks to be a Calgary Flames conditioning test… @kennyagostino can you confirm?
To be honest, I think I was very, very lucky during my playing years. I can only count on maybe one hand the amount of times we were really put through the ringer. The horror stories I’ve heard around the locker room about skates other guys have been through… ugly stuff that can keep you up at night.
Story Time
I’ll share a bag skate story with you this morning. A bag skate that looked nothing like the video above.
It was my freshman fall at Yale and I just broke into the lineup for the first time. How exciting, playing my first college hockey game!
We were scheduled to play Sacred Heart on a weekday in Bridgeport, CT, a neutral site game at the home of the NY Islanders AHL team. If I were to guess, the honest percentage chance of us winning that game before puck drop was probably 95%.
13 goals later, a 7-6 loss, we find ourselves walking back onto the bus with our tail between our legs. Thirty minutes of sheer silence ends as we pull up to Ingalls Rink.
We were conveniently on our fall break, there were no classes the next day. No excuses. We all know what is coming… Coach stands up as we pull in and the engine shuts down.
“See you at 7AM… and make sure you eat breakfast.”
The next day was one of the hardest of my career. A day full of 1 on 1 battles, full ice chases, shooting drills where if you miss the net you instantly drop and do 15 pushups.
The hardest skate of my life didn’t look anything like the famous scene in Miracle or the Flames video up above; instead it was a day of competition. The only difference is that our competitions started after you’ve already skated down the ice and back.
What to do today?
The success of a bag skate is ultimate dependent on the attitudes of the players. There comes a time when a message needs to be sent, when there are consequences for certain actions, those are times where as a player (and now as a coach) you understand why it’s necessary.
But how many times a year does that happen? One? Two?
So how can you still push your guys to the limit while removing the scent of punishment? I’ve found two ways so far.
Competition
Competition doesn’t allow for a convenient narrative or excuse. The results are a direct result of player input. Putting players in a position to compete on a daily basis, and not just at a weekend tournament, will elevate their senses and ultimately make them more comfortable in difficult, heightened situations… when it matters!
Honesty
Another way I approach our guys and lead them through a difficult skate is just honesty. We can’t act like we are in the shape we want to be. It’s early August.
If we are comfortable on the ice and are leaving the rink not completely exhausted then we aren’t making progress.
Through this honesty, our players become willing to accept that this is just part of the grind. Failure to take care of your conditioning in August will result in low energy practices. Low energy practices breed complacency. Losers are complacent.
So today we will compete. We will be honest in where we are at physically and take the appropriate steps to get 1% better than the last time we were on the ice.
- Dayzer