Tara WatchornTCS+ Follow 6
After an illustrious playing career, Tara Watchorn is back at her alma mater as Head Coach of the Boston Terriers Women’s Hockey Program. Watchorn is always preaching to her team the value of gaining momentum and at TCS Live 2024 she discussed how to build and ultimately capitalize on those peaks and valleys in a game.
Watchorn’s biggest message to her players is not to be bigger than the person next to you. A simple way to do this is line changes. When everyone is fresh and eager to get out there and involved in the game, momentum follows naturally. Watchorn hyped the benefits of building momentum as a team because it enhances value and understanding for all roles in a team’s line up. It also creates an energy mismatch with your opponent while also increasing the likelihood of causing an icing and penalties by the other team. The more time and space generated causes more quality scoring chances. Watchorn preaches to her team about the three shift idea. Rather than thinking about needing to score right away, Watchorn tells her players to focus on putting three strong shifts together where all lines can build off each other.
Shift lengths are the key to a team’s success. The likelihood of getting a shot later in your shift decreases by every second. For the best players to be impactful they need to be fresh and short shifts is the way to make that happen. As a coach it is not about just imposing short shifts, but rather selling players on why short shifts need to occur. When players are taking short shifts, reward them and put them back out. Integrating practice strategies is an effective way to do this with the goal of players integrating their own internal clock of their shift time. There is only so much energy a player can give and enforcing 30 to 40 second shifts is the most effective way to carry the load as a team.
There are four ways to end a shift when focusing on shift management.
- The best way to end your shift is to score a goal.
- The second best way is to change with possession.
- The third is with territorial advantage which sets the next line up for success.
- Finally, if it needs to be used, make the wholesale change play.
It takes one line or one player to have a long shift to cause a snowball effect to not set the next line up for success. Setting the next player and line up for success is one way to live up to a team’s values and is a sign of a cohesive collective team.
Noteworthy Timestamps:
- 1:20 Benefits of building momentum
- 4:15 Components of building momentum
- 6:35 Habits
- 9:45 Shift length
- 15:15 Small area games
- 17:30 4 ways to end your shift
- 20:25 Game examples
- 24:05 Awareness of energy mismatch situations
- 6:50 Quality scoring chances
