USA Hockey’s American Development Model (ADM) is an athlete-centered, coach-enhanced, administrator-supported framework that aims to help all individuals realize their athletic potential and utilize sport as a path toward an active and healthy lifestyle. This can be accomplished by following the 10 Guiding Principles and the age group recommendations that focus on developing all aspects of hockey performance in a developmentally appropriate manner, based on research and best practices in youth sports, human development, coaching, and the sports sciences.
12U: Scan Like Messi
06/12/2024, 3:15pm MDT
By Michael Rand
Lionel Messi, one of the greatest soccer players in the history of the sport and one of the top players in any sport over the last quarter-century, has made the idea of “scanning” popular.
The gist of it: Messi is a wizard at gathering information when he doesn’t have the ball. While action is happening around him that he is not yet directly involved in, Messi is scanning and re-scanning his surroundings for weaknesses and opportunities. This enables him to make quicker, more informed decisions on how to attack once he receives a pass.
This is not exactly earth-shattering stuff, but when a great player does it to such a profound effect, it gets attention. And we look for ways to apply Messi’s scanning gifts to other sports like hockey.
What does scanning mean when we translate it to hockey? How can it be taught more effectively? In what ways does it keep players safer? And how does it make players better? We’ll answer those questions through the lens of 12U development.
WHAT IT MEANS TO SCAN
In some ways, “scanning” in hockey is just a new term for an old idea, says Ken Martel, USA Hockey’s Senior Director of Player and Coach Development.
Players were previously told to do “shoulder checks,” particularly upon puck retrieval in their own end. When the play is in front of them but nine other skaters might be as much as 180 degrees from their direct field of vision, glances over each shoulder can inform where the puck should go next – either to avoid danger or create opportunity.
Soccer data suggests that players who apply that sort of behavior to all parts of the game – as Messi famously does – are more successful than those who don’t.
That’s hardly surprising to Martel, but that only reinforces the value of what it means to scan properly.
“It’s more about when and where they look,” Martel says.
BETTER TEACHING
Giving 12U players the tools to scan starts with better teaching, says Martel and Dan Jablonic, a player development manager for USA Hockey.
Traditional “shoulder check” drills are ineffective if the player doing the drill doesn’t really have to observe any conflict on the play. A more effective teaching method would be to simulate an actual game situation where a player retrieving a puck really needs to scan and problem solve.
“When we travel the country, it doesn’t matter if you’re talking to a youth coach, a college coach, a professional coach, they always want more hockey IQ,” Jablonic says. “I think that comes back in your environment. If you’re doing repetitions with prescribed drills every time where it’s start here, go there, go around and get back in line, guess what? That’s not going to develop that hockey IQ.”
Martel echoes that sentiment, noting that of course scanning doesn’t just involve puck retrieval. Like Messi, it can be a function of a forward searching for open ice away from the puck to put himself or herself in a good position to receive a pass and become a scoring threat.
“From a 12U perspective, I think we can start to teach this for sure. It’s about being more intentional than we do. One of the banes of our hockey culture are a lot of the activities that our coaches have traditionally done really narrow a player’s awareness,” Martel said. “They don’t require the players to be more aware to look around. Everything’s been pre-scripted.”
A SAFETY QUESTION
When we talk about scanning, there is also a component of player safety. Looking up, back and around at your surroundings as a player makes you more aware of potential body contact that might be coming your way. Though checking isn’t legal until 14U, scanning for that sort of trouble is a good habit to develop at 12U.
“Most of the injuries in our sport are player to player contact and a fair amount of the concussions are from the unsuspecting hits,” Martel says. “If you look at players at the high end, there are some that rarely get hit. But if they do, they’re completely aware that it’s going to happen. What information are they taking in that helps them be aware?”
BUILDING BETTER PLAYERS
Proactively teaching players to be good scanners at 12U is just another part of the process of player development. It’s imperative to away-from-the-puck support, which is almost the entire game for any individual skater.
“So much of the game is played away from the puck yet we give a lot of feedback to players only about when they have the puck,” Jablonic says. “That’s less than like two percent of the time in a game.”
The other 98 percent is vital to the success of a team. Given that 12U is the age when concepts of team play are really accelerating, it makes scanning the ice a critical component of development at this age.
“How do you set your teammate up for success by getting open and reading the play, leading to the end result?” Jablonic says. “We talk about team speed and team defense. Those are things that all work together, and that’s the beauty of our game. Yes there’s individual skill, but it’s how you work together and enhance that.”
3: Learn to Train (10U & 12U)
At this stage, participants continue to develop movement abilities across multiple sports and in a wide variety of environments. In ice hockey, players continue to increase their attunement to the appropriate environmental cues that allow them greater movement adaptability and hockey sense.
In late specialization sports such as ice hockey, early specialization can be detrimental to later stages of development. Participants should develop a solid base in a variety of sports in each of the physical literacy environments (e.g. swimming, athletics, gymnastics & skiing/skating).
10U: The Summer of Stick Skills
06/12/2024, 3:15pm MDT
By Michael Rand
For a 10U hockey player looking to have fun with the game and improve in the offseason, there might not be a more valuable pathway than working on stick and puck skills.
“That’s a skill where if you put the time in, you’re going to see a direct reflection back on the ice,” says Dan Jablonic, a player development director for USA Hockey. “You’re more comfortable and confident in your ability to make some plays.”
For a 10U player – and, frankly, for older players as well – that shouldn’t feel like work. It should be fun, it should stress a player’s burgeoning creativity, it should stress purposeful repetitions over pure number goals, and it can be achieved through means outside of hockey.
Jablonic shares some of the ways in which all of those things add up to a good 10U offseason plan to improve stick skills.
HAS TO BE FUN
When sports start to feel like a chore, young players start to tune out. They become less engaged, and sooner or later (often sooner) they leave the sport and find something else that’s more fun.
That has to be an emphasis with any offseason plan for a 10U player. It’s called an offseason for a reason, and any improvement should be a byproduct of growing a love and enjoyment of the game.
“You’re putting in the work and you’re kind of asking yourself how does it transfer to the game you’re playing,” Jablonic says. “Creativity starts with, it’s got to be fun. Where you’re not forced to go do those things, you do it because you enjoy it.”
CREATIVITY
Speaking of which, Jablonic says the offseason is a great time for young players to work on those creative nuances that make individuals unique.
“You go watch the (NHL) playoffs right now, it’s incredible hockey,” he says. “To see the way they’re shooting the pucks and the moves they’re making and the kids, they want to go down and practice some of that stuff. It’s great. Go emulate your favorite player, right?”
They shouldn’t expect to be perfect copies of NHL players, but that’s not the point.
“Let the kids explore. You’ve got plenty of time as you get older in this game to get really serious,” Jablonic says. “So the more important thing is to have fun and get creative and really enjoy what you’re doing.”
QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
Another important element of an offseason of improvement without burnout is stressing purposeful training. Instead of merely setting goals in terms of the number of pucks you shoot a day or time spent stickhandling, focus instead on things that make those repetitions more challenging and therefore interesting and transferrable to actual games, Jablonic says.
“If it’s something like, hey, I’ve got to shoot 100 pucks a day. Well, you know what? I’d much rather have 20 repetitions that were high-quality and with purpose and with different variables,” Jablonic says. “So it’s not just the same old motion because that’s our game. The same play doesn’t happen exactly the same the next time. It’s going to be a little bit different.”
Helping 10U players understand that context will give them valuable insights into the nuances of hockey.
“The game is not always pretty. There’s always traffic, there’s conflict,” Jablonic says. “And I think the more that you can put into that, once you have that technical foundation – once you start to feel comfortable with your shooting and stick skills – is critical.”
OTHER SPORTS
And of course, the best way to enjoy an offseason while returning to hockey both refreshed and improved? Play other sports.
“I can’t stress enough that it doesn’t always have to be about hockey,” Jablonic says, “because if you’re talking about stick skills, I hope that you’re exploring other sports like lacrosse and baseball. Golf, you talk about stick skills, being able to put it in the hole.”
A preponderance of both anecdotal and data-driven evidence suggests that the vast majority of elite athletes – including NHL players – played three or more sports growing up.
“So I think that’s important for us to always come back to,” Jablonic says. “A little bit of hockey, but at the same time, we need to reduce that growing trend of overuse injuries. That’s where we stress the other sports and you can get a lot of that work to transfer to your stick skills.”
And because there are so many things that factor into a strategy of purposeful offseason training, it’s important to know what works for each individual player.
“As parents, as coaches, we need to find what really what motivates kids,” Jablonic says. “It’s good to work hard, but it’s got to come from their environment.”
10U: Offseason development strategies
04/21/2024, 9:00am MDT
By Roger Grillo, USA Hockey ADM Regional Manager
Q: How do I ensure that my 10U hockey player continues to develop during the offseason?
A: If I was to average out all of the time I spent on some type of ice during the early years of my hockey life, it would probably average out to an hour a day for 365 days a year. Having said that, 90 percent of that time was in a free-play setting on the backyard rink my father built for me and my siblings, or on the local pond, the outdoor rink in my neighborhood, or public skating at the local indoor rink.
As a result, I have absolutely no issue with some spring or summer ice for younger players, as long as it looks nothing like their winter-season ice time.
Playing on an organized team and traveling around playing games or tournaments with officials on the ice is not the way to go. Instead, some type of unorganized open hockey or a cross-ice or half-ice 3v3 or 4v4 league is ideal, in complement to some other sport or athletic activity.
Above all, the offseason should be used to play other sports, meet other kids, experience other coaches and use different muscle groups to continue developing as an all-around athlete. It’s an important time to take a mental break from hockey, too. I always remind parents that passion is the most important ingredient in an athlete’s development, so making wise choices in terms of patience and burnout avoidance during the offseason is critical to reigniting that passion and putting your youngster in the best position to succeed in the fall.
