Eight years is a long time. Yet eight years go by in a blink.
In 2014 I was starting my first season as the video & statistical coordinator for the McGill women’s hockey team, working alongside head coach Peter Smith.
Eight years later, after working in the NHL for the Toronto Maple Leafs, I’ve just spent a weekend bench coaching the Connecticut Whale against Peter and other former McGill Martlets.
All this makes it the ideal moment to revisit one of the first insights I hit upon when working in hockey: the 100-10-1 Rule
Peter puts tremendous value on preparation. On the one hand, he loves taking in information – he spends a significant chunk of his day looking at game tape or reviewing stats. On the other hand, he is very careful about the quantity of information that he passes along to the players, for fear of overwhelming them or diluting his key message with other things that don’t matter as much.
So during the time we’ve worked together, I’ve developed an informal time management rule: 100-10-1
What it essentially means is that for every task he delegates to me (whether is it is coding a game’s footage, compiling our advanced stats for the last five games, or anything else), I aim to invest 100 minutes of my time, so that it takes Peter no more than 10 minutes to prepare a coaching message which he will deliver in one minute (or less) to the team. The key here is for me to do a lot of work in an organized manner, and then help Peter draw out the essentials insights.
With the benefit of experience, here’s a few more insights for the three different groups.
Video Coaches & Analysts: Taking care of the menial stuff
There’s no getting around the fact that the job requires lots of time and effort.
If you use the right tools and techniques, you can work faster and in a more scalable way. If you spend an hour programming something this week, you won’t have to do the same again the following week - it’ll just run and do what it should. But all this assumes that the fundamentals are on point.
Some of the less sexy aspects of being a video coach:
Tag video instances in full for a given game according to the needs of the coaching staff
Make regular data backups as to avoid lost work due to a computer crash
Address general computer/printer/logistical issues, like a IT guy would in an office environment
etc.
For statistical analysts:
Establish clear, consistent data tracking guidelines that are acceptable to the coaching staff (“What is a failed exit?”)
Massage/clean/process raw data so that it can be interpreted - at McGill I used a Excel → SQL → Tableau workflow to generate reports
Adopt a customer-oriented approach in how you present your findings
etc.
Having done all of these things for years, I wouldn’t exactly call them fun, but they’re foundational. Doing them correctly sets you up for success in your role.
Coaches: Shortening the OODA loop
In hockey, an okay decision made at the right time beats the perfect decision made too late. Every single time.
While the game is measured in split-seconds on the ice, off the ice coaches have the relative luxury of taking hours, days or weeks implement a change. The process itself remains the same.
USAF Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop:
Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
According to Boyd, a faction that is able to go through the OODA Loop at a higher frequency improves its ability to prevail in a competitive environment.
Here’s an anecdote from last weekend:
In the first game of our two-game series against Peter’s team, the Montreal Force, the Whale struggled to sustain possession despite having (in my estimation) better players.
In Game 1 we were opportunistic and went up 2-0, but never really controlled the run of play and ended up losing 4-3 in a shootout.
Overnight, Connecticut head coach Colton Orr and I agreed on a couple of tactical adjustments that we presented to our players the following morning.
It would have been far more prudent to wait for a three, five or 10-game sample to emerge before making changes, but we felt that immediate action was necessary to stem the tide.
There is always a risk that a decision based on a small sample size (in our case, one game) winds up being incorrect. I’d like to think that we did a good job of balancing evidence-based decision making with having a tight OODA loop.
In any case, we did a better job of countering MTL’s strengths in Game 2 to prevail 3-2 in regulation.
Players: Consuming vs. Creating
Over the years I’ve worked with coaches who were alarmed by how little their players watched hockey, whether it’s their shifts or high-level broadcasts.
Yet I’ve never shared that concern.
I know of many recreational athletes across sports (hockey, tennis, golf, etc.) who watch a ton of instructional content on YouTube but who never improve.
The problem is two-fold:
These folks don’t practice enough
They practice incorrectly by following tips that don’t apply to them
The fact of the matter is, players are creators, not consumers.
Consumers see quantity of information as a good thing. It’s entertaining and makes them feel like they’re improving.
Creators see quantity of information as an impediment to their work, a sink for valuable time and energy that could be deployed in a more active way. For them, a one-minute, evidence-based, personalized instruction beats hours of passive watching.
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