On today’s SHORT SHIFTS episode, Vechs wants to talk about not only the importance of players learning how to talk to their coaches, but tips on HOW to effectively navigate initiating them.
TEN MINUTES ON THE CLOCK STARTING NOW!
We appreciate every listen, download, comment, rating and share on your social sites!
(upbeat music) - What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Short Shifts. I'm taking the lead on this one. As usual on Fridays, hope you liked the lead. I took on Monday, not a big deal. What's up? Tof gave me free rain. What an idiot. Hope has no idea what the topic is today. 90% of what I say in the beginning is just to make Tof laugh. Tof, today I wanna talk about something near and dear to my heart because it was very hard for me when I was younger. I love helping young players learn how to do this 'cause I think it can be a career changer. Honestly, I think it's that important. Tips to go in and talk to your coach. Whether it's a good conversation, you wanna have whether it's you're not playing, it's usually probably gonna be more of like, things aren't going your way and you wanna talk to coach and find out, you know, what can I do better or whatever it is. For me, as a young player, this was definitely scary, but as I've talked about on the podcast, quite a few times over the last five years of doing this, the first time that my parents ever made me go in and talk to the coach myself was after my first year at AAA, and they said, no, we will not go in there. We will not call the coach. You're gonna grab a notebook. You're gonna go into the coach's office and this is what we want you to do. That allowed me to not only learn of the things that I could do to get better immediately and what coach thought of me and things I could work on, but it made me less afraid to talk to any type of authority figure, which I think is really important in today's world, especially in hockey. So do you have any tips, any anecdotes, anything? Young players who wanna go in and talk to their coach but are nervous or don't know how to do that? - So are we talking to the players or are we talking to the parents here? - Well, parents, stay out of that anything room. Only players make them do this for their development as a human first and then as a hockey player for God's sakes. - Yeah, I think it's funny. And I tell this story. I've probably people who listen to our podcast a lot have heard it a million times, but it's very relevant. And that's when I was coaching at Cornell, we found a real, real, real correlation between the confidence for a kid to advocate for themselves and come in our office, walk through the open door policy and have a challenging conversation and their confidence as a hockey player. - Can you break, 'cause we got a lot of young players, can you break that down to what you mean by that? - Sure, so there's a kid who's playing on the third line and wants to play more, thinks he can play more, thinks he can play a bigger role and wants to play a more offensive role in the power play. Somebody who knocks on our door and comes in says, hey coach, I think I can be on the power play and advocates for themselves. So we'll talk about what that conversation looks like 'cause I think that's what this short shift is about. But on a bigger scale, the kids who came in and had those conversations and initiated those conversations themselves, those were the most confident hockey players that we had. Like the ones who kept it to themselves, the ones who moped, you know, the ones who were kind of like feeling sorry for themselves because of the role that they were playing. Like those are the kids that don't have a lot of confidence. And at the end of the day, like being on the same page as your coach is really important. You may not like what the coach has to say, but at least you know. And so like again, the kids who came in to have those conversations that wanted more ice time, those were the most confident kids at the end of the day. Now, it's really important in having these conversations that you do not come off and do not talk like an entitled piece of crap. So if you come in saying, I deserve to be on the power play because of X, Y, and Z, I should be playing in this role because of blah, blah, blah, blah, that coach is gonna be like this entitled little, you know what, like good grief. So you're not, that's not gonna help you at all. The best thing that you can do when you go in to talk to a coach, if you want more ice time or if you wanna play a better role, what can I do? What can I do to earn your trust to be able to play in this role? What do you need to see for me in practice? What do you need to see from in the games? What's holding me back from, you know, playing this role that I would love to play to help the team win? Again, it's a team like the coaches love to have these conversations. And they love to hear this stuff from players. And so what can I do to be better? What can I do to earn your trust? Like those, that's how you approach these conversations as a player. And then you take what that coach has to say and you go apply it in your game. And if you want to, there's one, it's important to go in and talk to the coach, but then the other thing is like, if you wanna earn more respect, ice time, whatever it may be, you better be the first person on the ice in the last one to leave. You have to, you absolutely have to. If you go in and talk to the coach and then you don't apply it or you're not, you know, working hard in practice, you're not the first guy on, last guy off, the coach can be like, okay, he said what he needed to say, but he's not showing me that he actually wants to do it. So like, you gotta walk the walk too. Don't just talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. - Absolutely love that. Or else coach doesn't believe you then, you know? Like if he gives you advice and I want you doing blah, blah, blah, working on X, Y, Z, and then you do none of that. Or hey, I need to see you start making plays on the walls. I need that out of you. And then you don't make any plays on the walls or you're not working on your wall play after practice before practice on days off, watching video, whatever it may be, you're the boy who cried wolf. Like you just went in there because you wanted to know that you're not happy with your playing time. You didn't actually want to go in there and get something tangible that you can do to improve your game right now. So like, you've got to take what they say and you got to do it, whether you like it or not, they're your coach, whatever they say, work on it. Number one, because it's probably what you need to be working on, that's what they're saying that you need to work on. And number two, they're gonna respect you for coming in, like Toph said, and then they're gonna respect you for working on that weak point of your game. And now you bring that up and now you get a bigger role, more playing time, whatever it is. - Dude, like coaches will give the benefit of the doubt to those kids a hundred times out of a hundred if all things are being equal. Or even if, maybe it's not even equal, maybe you're the kid and you're a little bit behind somebody else, but they can trust you. You know, they know that you put in the work, they know what they can expect, Aria. So they'll give you the benefit of the doubt rather than the person who's moping and complaining or whatever it may be. And so I think that that's just like a big part of it. And then the other side of it, I think, is I really wanna talk to the parents here. I really wanna talk to the parents here. Like let your kid fight their battles, man. Like let your kid fight their battles, man. I'm telling you, it's such an important skill. And we see it at the college level again, like the kids who can fight their own battles, like they're more confident people. They're more confident people. The kids who are better in confrontation, the kids who work more coachable, the kids who don't make excuses, those are the ones that get better. And those are the ones that ultimately make it at the end nine times out of 10. And so like as a parent now, if you're a younger kid or even if you're an older kid, whatever, like you can be in the room, you can be in the room with the coach, but let your kid do the talking, you know? And just be there as a bit of a support and have those same types of thoughts and mentalities that your kids say, "Hey, what can my kid do to be better?" Like, you know, and if your kid starts making excuses, it's like, "No, no, no, no, we're not making excuses here." Like, what can you do to be better? That's ultimately the conversation that we should be having. And so, man, like in the other side of it too, like for the parents, like especially for older kids, like you get labeled as a problem parent that talks to the coach about your kid's ice time. Like youth coaches talk to college coaches about that. That's like, that's not good. We don't like to hear that stuff as college coaches that you're a helicopter or a snowball parent. Like that's a real big red flag, a real big red flag for us. And so, like I think it's important obviously to talk about the kids with this stuff, but it's equally as important, you know, to talk to the parents about this too. - Guys, like I said, you know, it changed my career by that decision by my mom and dad to not ever call the coach, ever, never called the coach, made me go in there. They helped me with practice. What are you gonna say? What are you going to, what do you wanna talk about with them? How are we gonna say this? You know, they helped me, they let me practice, right? Bringing a notebook. They helped prepared me for that conversation. It was one of the scariest conversations I've ever had. I was a seventh grader, you know, I was a good kid, I had never been in trouble in school. I had only been in the principal office one time before that, two times actually. You know, one time, 'cause I got in a fight but I was protecting myself and I won not a big deal. Fourth grade, what's up? And the other time was 'cause I witnessed somebody stealing something like, I never gotten in trouble or anything. I wasn't used to like being in trouble or in the principal's office or talking to an authority figure. So like, it really, really was necessary for me at a young age to learn how to do that, feel confident and feel comfortable going in there and being able to advocate for myself over the rest of my career and just being comfortable talking to my coaches, what do I need to do better? I don't wanna guess. I want you to tell me what you need out of me 'cause I'll go work on it all day, all night, every day. You know, and that really helped me so. - And how many pro hockey players have you talked to that wishes they would've went into the GM or wishes they would've went into talk to the coach to have that conversation? So many pro hockey players are left in limbo and the coach or GM, they want a certain thing out of them and they think they want something else or there's just like a gray area there and they wish like, and sometimes it's millions of dollars that you lose because of it. 'Cause you could gain a third or fourth line role if that's what they're looking for. This is what we need out of that fourth line role player and then you don't do it so you get sent down and it just, so those two, like these conversations are so important. Go advocate for yourself, kids. - What did you just say? - Go advocate for yourselves. - Oh, do it. Championship too. (laughing) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
On today’s SHORT SHIFTS episode, Vechs wants to talk about not only the importance of players learning how to talk to their coaches, but tips on HOW to effectively navigate initiating them.
TEN MINUTES ON THE CLOCK STARTING NOW!
We appreciate every listen, download, comment, rating and share on your social sites!
