So YOU Want to Play in the NHL.
Sequel to So Your Son Wants To Play In The NHL
By Dan and Jay M. Bylsma
Published in the USA and Canada by Contemporary/McGraw-Hill
Trade Paperback. Retail $14.95
Forward to Parents
Introduction
Chapters:
1. Who is Dan Bylsma?
2. Why play sports at all?
3. Whose dream is it to play in the NHL?
4. What’s the most important thing you can to do make it to the NHL?
5. What’s that fire in my belly?
6. What’s so important about rules?
7. What’s a moral compass?
8. What’s so important about being a team player?
9. Everyone says I’m not good enough to make it.
10. What are my chances of making it to the show?
11. How hard do I have to work to make it?
12. Tryouts are next week and I’m scared I won’t make the team.
13. What if my parents won’t let me play AAA Travel Hockey?
14. My friend’s team plays 80 games a year. Isn’t he going to pass by me?
15. What if spring leagues interfere with baseball?
16. I like playing forward, but my coach wants me to play defense. What should I do?
17. How much off-ice training should I do?
18. What if my coach or my parents think you guys are full of bunk?
19. I need better skates.
20. What’s important to look for in a summer hockey camp?
21. If only I could play on the power play.
22. What if the coach doesn’t like me.
(reproduced below)
23. Do I have to have that kid on my line?
24. But it isn’t fair!
25. We lost, but it wasn’t my fault.
26. My parents are loud/critical/pushy. How can I handle that respectfully?
27. Why should I listen to my parents? They’re not that smart.
28. What’s wrong with sneaking a beer?
29. How do you get athletic scholarships for college hockey?
30. What are you going to do when time runs out at your last game?
31. What about fighting in hockey?
32. What’s a day like for a player in the NHL?
33. How did you guys make your back yard ice rink?
34. What is success?
35. Don’t stop dreaming.
A final thought.
Chapter 22 – What If My Coach Doesn’t Like Me!
“The most important single ingredient in the formula for success
is the knack of getting along with people”.
Theodore Roosevelt
DAN
When we are growing up, life outside of what is familiar to us can sometimes be scary. It might be anything from a trip to the store by yourself the first time to going to the city library. And that certainly includes playing for a new team or a new coach. New things are often scary when we’re kids because we haven’t matured and we’re not as full of confidence as we might be when we’re older or when the new becomes familiar. We also want to be liked. We wanted to be appreciated. And we don’t know if we will be liked or appreciated when we are involved in a new situation.
Having been to a NHL training camp or two, I can tell you that some of those feelings never go away, even when you’re a grown-up. So if I had those feelings in a NHL training camp, feelings of new experiences being scary and wanting to be liked and appreciated are normal when you’re a kid.
In most cases our fears of not being liked or appreciated go away when we grow accustomed to the situation. But sometimes these feeling don’t go away, and we begin to feel that the coach doesn’t like us or appreciate us. We don’t get enough ice time or we don’t get on the power play. At those times we rarely look to ourselves. Instead we blame the coach. We feel or say, “The coach doesn’t like me.”
I’ve played for a lot of coaches on a lot of different teams in the past twenty years. They range all the way from coaches who didn’t know a lick about hockey and didn’t own skates to a coach who is in the hockey Hall of Fame and has almost as many Stanley Cup rings as he has fingers. All of the good coaches had two things in common: they liked to work with and help kids and young adults, and they liked to win.
These two characteristics usually work in your favor. You need help and you like to win. So the relationship between you and your coach is usually based on common goals. I’m not saying that all coaches are good coaches. Nor am I saying that it’s easy to get along with all coaches. But based on common goals, it should be a good relationship. If it’s not, the first place to look is to yourself. If this is not the first coach who you thought didn’t like you, look really hard at yourself. Perhaps you’re not doing the things that every coach likes, or perhaps you are doing some of the things the coach doesn’t like.
What are some of the things every coach likes? You can put hard work on the top of your list. And the list will also contain things like these:
• hard work when you practice.
• hard work when you play.
• being courteous, that is: being on time, telling him in advance if you cannot be at a game or practice, listening when he speaks.
• being respectful of him, the officials, your teammates, and equipment, both yours and theirs.
• being coachable by doing what he asks you, following his game plan, taking suggestions as to how you can improve.
• being in control by not taking retaliating penalties, coming off the ice promptly when a line change is made on the fly, watching your temper and your language.
• being helpful by cleaning up your share of the tape balls after practice and taking your turn at being water boy or picking up the pucks after practice.
• being selfless by passing the puck to a teammate on a 2-on-0 with an open net, welcoming new players to the team, correcting the score sheet if you are credited with an assist that belongs to someone else.
• being ready to play by having all your equipment, being sure your skates sharpened, and having enough tape.
You can put all of the things on this list into a simple rule: work very hard, play very hard, and be a gentleman or lady (girls play hockey, too) in the process. Do these things and chances are the coach will like and appreciate you and the contribution you make to the team. Most likely, you will stand out from the me-first attitudes that are so common in sports these days, and that will not go unnoticed by the coach.
What are some of the things that coaches don’t like? Put being lazy at the top of the list. My dad use to address lazy play by saying, “I don’t hear any music playing!” What we knew he meant was that we were playing hockey, not going to a public skate session where one can leisurely skate to waltz music. The rest of the list would include these:
• being discourteous by missing practice or a game without warning or explanation or coming late.
• being disrespectful by talking back to the coach, mocking a teammate or opponent, mouthing off to the officials, or using foul language.
• not accepting coaching by having your own game plan instead of the coach’s, or whining when things don’t go the way you think they should go.
• being undisciplined by being a puck hog, staying out a little or a lot longer after the lines have changed (and cutting into the next guy’s shift), taking bad penalties, or not being in control of your temper or your tongue.
• being a slob by not cleaning up after yourself.
• being unprepared by never having enough tape, needing to get your skates sharpened ten minutes before game time, or forgetting some of your equipment.
You can put all of the things on this list into a simple rule, too: be a lazy, inconsiderate jerk. The reason coaches dislike the kind behavior listed in this second list is because it goes against the reason they coach in the first place: to help kids and to win. The kinds of kids who do the things on the second list usually don’t want any help and this kind of behavior often prevents the team from winning. Further, having one inconsiderate player on a team can make it no fun for anyone.
It may be possible that you have all the good characteristics on the first list and your coach still doesn’t like you or appreciate you. There are some coaches whose behavior we can find on the second list. But I believe those are the rare exceptions. And the good thing about it is you will only have them for one or two years, and it shouldn’t be an excuse for holding up your career.
But if the coach really doesn’t like you, and particularly if this is the second coach who doesn’t like you, it may be because you do some of the things on the second list. If that’s even partially true, I’m not sure your are someone I’d like to coach or play with either.
JAY
What Dan has said shows he understands productive and destructive behavior very well. Of course he speaks from a lot of experience. What he has not said is that his work habits, his courtesy, respect, and willingness to do what he is told to do helped him make it to the NHL. Here’s an example of what I mean.
When Dan was playing in the ECHL, his coach was Jeff Brubaker. Dan’s goal was to get promoted out of the ECHL into a team in the A (American Hockey League). On any given day, a coach from a team in the A might need a player to replace one who was injured. He would call Coach Brubaker and say, “We need a forward. Could you recommend someone who could help us out?"
At that moment Coach Brubaker has the fate of all the forwards on his team in his hands. Someone from his team is going to get a big chance and Brubaker has to decide who it will be. How will he make that decision?
Brubaker will make it so that he will look good. Why? Because he wants the selection to reflect well on himself. He wouldn’t mind getting promoted to coach in the NHL, so he’s going to pick the player who will be a credit to his program. He will pick someone who is a hard worker, who will be coachable, a player who will be in control.
And who comes to mind? Well, Dan Bylsma came to his mind several times. Dan consciously worked at having those characteristics mentioned in his first list. If Dan were lazy, loud-mouthed, inconsiderate, un-coachable, or a whiner, Brubaker would be sending him down a league, not up a league. Coaches recommend the good guys for promotion - the guys who will be a credit to their program. They get rid of the undesirable ones.
Jeff Brubaker later told me what he saw in Dan. He said, “It was immediately apparent when Dan came to us that he was a quality person. We were surprised that someone of this caliber had filtered down to the ECHL. The fact that he was a million miles from the NHL did not seem to lead him into the rut that most players in this league get into, consumed by the feeling that they had too far to go to make it. Dan seemed to operate on the theory that if he did everything possible to become the best player he could be, someone would notice and he would get a break. He was right.”
Notice Coach Brubaker didn’t say Dan was talented or tough. He said Dan was “a quality person” and that he was a high caliber person and that he “did everything possible to become the best player he could be”. He was talking about characteristics from Dan’s first list. So being a quality person is as important as being a good hockey player. It made Coach Brubaker, like every other coach Dan has had, like him.
Dan has seen both productive and destructive behavior and understands the consequences of each very well. That’s why I think he will make a very good coach himself some day.