Things I have learned

It’s been almost ten months of lessons, discovery, and tips. Here’s the top things I would pass along to the adult beginner:

1. Skate, skate, and skate. Every opportunity you can take to get out on the ice just to skate will pay dividends. As my neighbour, a former competitive dance skater told me: “Mileage. Skating is just mileage.”

2. Get small gloves so you can feel and handle your stick.

3. Look to the direction you are skating, it will happen immensely with stopping and turning.

4. Dry land stickhandling with a weighted ball, golf ball helps! It really does.

5. The ONLY jerseys you really need are a black and a white one. 

6. Sharpen your skates more frequently rather than less frequently.

7. Like finding a good woman, you will probably have to go through a few sticks until you find the one that is just right for you.

8. Don’t take long shifts. It is always noticed who pulls the longest shifts.

9. A good rule of thumb: if somebody is ahead of you, pass them the puck.

10. Buy a sports tree to hang up your equipment. There are few things more unpleasant than putting on wet equipment.

11. Get some flip-flops and shower afterwards.

12. Go hard or go home. When you are out there, the only way to play is to play fast and hard. Believe me, everybody notices the guys who stand around. And these are the guys who usually take the longest shifts.

13. Try on as many pairs of skates as you can. Then go home, return the next day and repeat the process. In other words, don’t rush yourself when purchasing your skates.

14. Accept for your skates and helmet, think about purchasing everything else used.

15. The boards are your friends. As tempting as that cross-ice lead out pass is, it is almost always going to be knocked down.

My first season

Wow.

With my last class at the SensPlex wrapping up a few days ago I feel as if my first season of hockey has concluded. And so I write ‘wow’ because I don’t think I could ever have anticipated how much impact hockey has had on my life.

While I have written lots on this blog about how much damn fun it has been, I don’t think I have touched upon a more cerebral aspect that I have enjoyed.

I don’t want to get all Roy MacGregor on you, but hockey has also helped me feel a connection to my country that I did not have before. Before this year, hockey was a sport I followed. Now though, I feel I have a connection to the culture of the sport. All the small, large, significant and insignificant practices, rituals and movements of the sport have captured my attention:

Hearing the sound of tape peeling off a roll in the dressing room.

Fumbling with my mouthpiece to communicate something on the bench.

Looking over my shoulder to see if the Zamboni driver has arrived yet.

Sticks clattering as they are thrown into the trunk of the car.

Time stopping as a puck lies in the crease.

There’s all these vignettes of hockey that until last October, I really had no idea about. And now that I know them, I feel a connection to the culture of the sport, a culture of a country.

Adult Dynamic Skills Class #10

Last night wrapped up the ten class Adult Dynamic Skills Course at the SensPlex. In order to make up for the session cancelled by the power outage, we went on a Thursday night. And this was probably why there were only eight of us on the ice last night!

And although there was a sort of a ‘last day of school’ feeling on the ice, once the coaches called us in, we actually went pretty hard and did some neat things.

The first part featured a lot passing drills using the full length of the ice. This morphed into a tense little segment on power starts using the toe of your blades. From there we played 4 v 4 and then the last ten minutes were given over to us to do whatever we wanted.

And it was this last ten minutes which really sort of encapsulated what I have learned over the past six months:

• There I was taking a slap shot. Down on one knee, turning the wrist over and pinging one off the post and enjoying that sound that I cannot believe ever becomes boring.
• There I was practicing my one-foot stops with the inside leg. Suddenly it started to come together as I remembered an early tip from a class in October: look towards the direction you are turning and stopping. Presto! I was managing a little one-foot glide stop with both feet.

As I left the ice, I felt that I was indeed finishing my first season of hockey. And it has been so much more enjoyable and rewarding than I could ever have imagined.

Adult Dynamic Skills Class #9

A fun and fast paced class with lots more work on transition skating and always being square and facing the play. Here are three things that happened:

1. I fell on my ass like I haven’t fallen in a long time. I can still hear my helmet smacking the ice as I lost my balanced and went backwards. If there is one thing adult beginners have to get over that is the fear of hurting yourself when falling. I’ll talk more about this in a future posting.

2. The lead instructor stopped us for a moment to acknowledge one of the other instructors on the ice: Mike Bergin. Mike had just been drafted on the weekend by the Dallas Stars, 209th overall from Smiths Falls of the CJHL. It sort of freaked me out to be honest. The kid looked so normal! I know every dad thinks his son is going to play in the NHL, but looking at this guy made it seem so accessible.

3. We ended the class with a shootout drill. I was all primed! I knew from other shooting drills that the goalie in net always went for my forehand to backhand fake. So as I went in on him I did my shuffle stride, moved my shoulders, faked one way, then another and I had him beat! The goal was there! Except I couldn’t get the puck over the shaft of his stick!!!! All I needed to do was raise the puck off the ice 2 inches! Dammit!

Wax off, Wax on

A small note I have forgotten to mention: I have been waxing the blade of my stick for about a month now.

And the result?

Unquestionably it has helped keeping the puck on the blade when receiving a pass.

But to be honest, I can’t help but wonder if it is a mind trick. What I mean is, here I am with this wax which is supposed to help the puck stay on the blade, so in my mind I know the puck should be sticking better and as a result I am less tense and I am not gripping the stick so tightly.

Whatever the reason though, I have been receiving pass a while since last night’s effort.

My first fake

Thanks to the fabulous ‘Stick Handling Beyond Belief’ DVD series I bought and have been watching I now have my first fake.

It’s nothing special I am sure, but I am finding I am really moving goalies with it. Or to be exact, moving goalies during warmup! I have not yet had a game situation opportunity to give it a try.

Here’s the move:

Stickhanding, I am move in on the goalie until I am fairly tight. Maybe a couple of stick lenghts away. I move the puck on to my forehand, where I then fake a shot with this combo shoulder and stick fake. I then switch to the backhand where I try to lift it up over the pad for a goal.

All in all, I find I am staring to incorporate more fakes into my game in greater frequency. For me, the biggest thing I have come to realize (thanks to Sean Skinner!) is that fakes must be set up quite early while you are at least a stick length away from the man you are trying to beat.

Adult Dynamic Skills Class #8

Disappointing.

Very disappointing.

Not in the class or my performance, but in the power outage!

I get to the SensPlex and everyone is standing outside. Not a good sign obviously.

The power was out and it remained out. Class cancelled. What a bummer.

But at least I didn’t have to hang my equipment up or wash anything. It stayed in the bag waiting for Thursday pickup.

Adult Dynamic Skills Class #7

Another great class!

Low numbers again, so plenty of reps and rotations through the various skating and stick handling drills.

Here are some notes and thoughts:

1. With the temperature outside at 30 degrees and humidity at 8,000% it wasn’t that surprising that last night was my first experience with soft ice. Man! Handling the puck was at times like trying to push it along a sheet of peanut butter.
2. One skill we practice every class is transition skating, going from front to back with a little glide stop and then a quick backwards crossover. Like most players, I have a strong side and weak side to this (I am much stronger when the turn puts my right foot on the outside). To get better at this, I have thought of this game plan: the next time I go to a public skate, I am just going to skate backwards. Think about it! Remembering my neighbour’s credo that skating is just ‘mileage’, I simply need to skate more often backwards. If you skate four hours a week, what percentage of that is spent going forward? I would say at least 85%. So what I am asking myself is how much better would I be if I switched that around for a while?
3. We did an awesome ’situational’ drill that had us practicing the basics of cycling the puck. I love the ’situational’ stuff because in my mind I like to transform it into a sign that somehow I have graduated from being a beginner. Afterall, we’re not talking about skating here, we’re talking about fundamental positioning and movement on the ice!

Things I have learned #3

When you first start playing, the need to ‘look’ a hockey player is strong. You want the right skates and pads—and the right gloves! And usually the right gloves means big thick gloves with lots of padding and stuff.

But as I have learned now, smaller is better when it comes to gloves.

You need to feel the stick. And I mean really feel it! You need to maintain a tight control on the stick in order to be quick and agile with it.

I got these gloves about two weeks ago:

They are the smallest and best fitting gloves I have. My first gloves were 14-inch. I then traded those in for a 13.5 inch glove. These current gloves are 13-inch. 

I’ve seen a couple of tests you can do to determine if you got a good fit.

1. You should be able to pick your stick up off the ice via the shaft. Don’t cheat and use the axe.
2. See if you can twirl your stick with your top hand.

 

Adult Dynamic Skills Class #6

One of the best and enjoyable classes I have taken!

Working on face-offs and on stopping the puck along the boards, mixed in with plenty of shooting, is a pretty good combo. But when half the class is missing, it is even better as the pace was quick and the amount of touches and reps was pretty darn high.

Doing face-offs was a blast — and also very insightful. The instructor broke down a few moves and techniques. Stuff I had seen thousands of times on tv, but just didn’t know enough to recognize. For instance, instead of trying to win the puck, try to neutralize the other player’s stick so he can’t play the puck. 

The time spent practicing stopping the puck along the boards was also great — and welcomed! This is one thing I have been surprised how easy it is to screw up. We were shown two methods on how to stop the puck. The first was simply to keep facing the puck and getting the blade of the stick right into the bottom of the boards. I know, I know, simple stuff, but sometimes until you are shown the logical, it just remains one big mystery.

The second technique was not quite so obvious: pivoting into the boards so your back and skates are against the boards. This one I loved! With your entire body against the boards, there is hardly anyway that the puck can skoot and slip by. As well, with your back against the boards, now you are facing the play and ready to go once you have controlled the puck.