MY  WEB SITE…

The web site is updated with a lot of new features.  It has a decidedly Mighty Duck slant with new photographs, new hockey camp information, a page about my Charitable Trust Fund and, an on-line auction where you can get some of the stuff I’ve collected - the proceeds of which go to my Trust.  If you’ve always wanted a Teemu Selanne autographed stick…  next will be a Paul Kariya autographed stick.  Maybe you know how rare they are. 

Let me know how you like the changes and if there is something you would like to see on the site that’s not there now.   

THE NEW BOOK IS OUT… finally and you can get it at bookstores or at the on-line book stores or you can get a personalized and autographed copy on the website.  I’m pleased with how it turned out.  It won’t help you play the game better, but I think it will help you live the game better. 

DAN’S TIP OF THE MONTH FOR KIDS...

“I’m not a good loser but I don’t let it show”.

 One of my friends asked me why there’s not a chapter in the new book about being a good loser.  We missed that one but if we did have a chapter on being a good loser, this is what I would have said.

I am not a good loser.  I hate losing.  I’ve hated losing ever since I can remember playing games with my older brothers and their friends in the back yard and I can tell you that it’s worse now than it’s ever been. 

I know hate is a strong word but losing makes me mad.  It keeps me up at night - but so does making a big mistake even if we win or if the other team scores on the penalty kill even if I’m not on the ice. 

Maybe it’s not losing that I hate so much but I hate it when my expectations are not met or the goals I’ve set for myself are not met.  I don’t feel quite so bad when we do everything we could do win, but I still hate losing.

And it isn’t just about winning or losing a game in sports.  I hated not to get the best grades I could in school.  I hate it that Wayne Gretzky’s name is misspelled in the first printing of the “So Your Son …” book (and my father and I had nothing to do with the misspellings).  I hate it now when a ref calls a penalty on me when it was a clean hit.  I hate it when I don’t get credited with an assist or I give someone a solid check and I don’t get credited with a hit on the score sheet.  I hate it when I don’t get to play every game or get a lot of ice time.

Perhaps it isn’t that I hate losing so much but it’s that I like winning so much better.  My first big win came when I won the Michigan State Class D High School golf championship as a freshman.  My oldest brother had won it before me and my other two brothers had been runners-up and it was a gut-busting good feeling when I won – a feeling I’ll never forget. It was another great feeling when my high school’s baseball team won the State Championship later that school year.  None of my teammates or I will forget it.

I also know what it’s like to lose.  My sophomore year I shanked three consecutive balls out of bounds to spoil a very good round and lose the state golf championship when I probably was one of the favorites to win.  The baseball team was supposed to win again, but we didn’t.  So I know what it feels like to lose, and I don’t like it.

So I admit to you that I’m not a good loser, but I’m not a sore loser.  What’s the difference?  A sore loser is a bad loser who lets his or her feelings show. I’m not a good loser, but I try never to let it show. 

I think to be successful in life, you need hate to lose.  I think you need to want to do your best and be sour with yourself if you don’t - but don’t let it show.  You need to want to have successful outcomes and not to be satisfied if they're not - but don’t let it show.  You need to be willing to work hard to win, to be the first chair in the trumpet section of the band, or to get the highest grade in the class and not be satisfied if you’re not - but don’t let it show. 

Almost as bad as being a sore loser is being a cruel winner.  A cruel winner is someone who is deliberately insulting to the players he beats.  I’ve never seen a real champion do that.  Have you ever seen Tiger Woods go up to someone he’s beaten and get in his face and say, “You’re a loser, chump” or  “Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Nah, You’re a loser”?  There’s two reasons why that’s not a good idea:  it shows everyone what a long way you have to go to become a good sport, and if you did it to me, I’d be sure I beat you the next time.  Because as much as I hate to lose, I hate losing to a poor winner even more. 

I believe it’s easier to not show how much you hate losing if you understand what a loss is.  In a loss you have an opportunity handed to you that you don’t get in a win.  A loss is an opportunity?  Yes, an opportunity to learn what you need to do to improve.  It’s an opportunity winners usually don’t get.  And what would you rather be, someone who in a single snapshot in time was better than someone else or someone who’s always trying to improve yourself and becoming better in the process of competition.  Yes, you’re right, I would rather win too, but losing has its opportunities.

So you watch me at games.  If the ref calls a bad penalty, see if I whine or complain or argue. If a teammate’s mistake costs us a goal or the game, see if I swing my stick in disgust.  I will not be a happy camper, because as I’ve told you, I hate to lose.  But I don’t show it.  What you may be seeing is a considerable display of temper control.

One of my adult hockey school attendees from New York said, “You show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser”.  I think we should change that and say “You show me a bad loser who looks like a good loser and I’ll show you a person of character.”

 “When you're a winner you're always happy, but if you're happy as a loser you'll always be a loser.” -- Mark (The Bird) Fidrych

DAN’S HOCKEY TIP OF THE MONTH – for beleaguered hockey moms and sisters who can’t stand the smell of used hockey gear…

 At the end of last season we got this question on the Q&A page of the web site:

Dear Dan: Another season is over and it's time to put away the gear for the summer.  How do you get rid of the stinking odor in some of the stuff?  DF.

We wrote back and posted this answer:

Dear D.F. Stink? What stink? I don't know what odor you're talking about.  My gloves smell good to me and that "odor", as you call it, keeps the girls away. Most of us in the game prefer to call that an aroma - "Eau 'd Hockey Gloves".  Why would you want to get rid of it?

Seriously, the only method I know is to wash it if its washable, put the stuff in the sun and wind for a few days, and store it with baking soda in an area that is not susceptible to mildew (that is, not your typical basement -- it needs dry, circulating air to prevent mildew) and then hope the smell doesn't go away.

We'll be the first to admit that laundry is not our forte and my Mom doesn't have any good ideas either.  If any parents or equipment managers have any better ideas, let us know and we'll past them along to DF.

P.S. My sister changed the punctuation of "Eau 'd Hockey Gloves" and would exclaim, "Eau! d' hockey gloves!" when she would smell my hands after a game.  I think she would identify with your description of "stinking odor".

Well, Shohei Itami - a goalie from Japan (not exactly a country known for hockey advice) who catches NHL games on satellite wrote me to say:

Dan: Let me tell you my experience.  I have found drying my stuff on a room dehumidifier works great.  After all practices and games, I carry all of my goalie gear to my basement and hang them up on a clothesline. I turn on a room dehumidifier which sets under the clothesline.

That's all! As soon as you dry them up, no germs & molds propagate in your stuff. NO SMELLS!!  I swear to you that my 3 year old catching gloves (which I  use 3-4 times a week) don't smell at all.

Domoarigato (Thanks in Japanese) Shohei.  Mothers and sisters all over North America thank you as well.

Now, Shohei, my wife (and my sister) wants to know how you get the smell off your hands after a game?

UPCOMING PUBLIC APPEARANCES:

DAN:

December 1, 2000, at the Disney Grand California Hotel the Ducks in Tux will be serving dinner to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. .  (The Ducks are serving, they’re not serving ducks).  For information call 714-940-2910.

       JAY:

November 29, 2000, at the Forest Hills Northern 5^th  & 6^th Grade Building, for the GRAHA (Grand Rapids Area Hockey Assn) Academic Excellence Awards Program.  For more information call Jean Laxton at 616-365-8041   

DAN’S HONOR ROLL  -

Those kids who understand one of the most important things necessary to make it to the NHL:

Here are the first nominees to the Honor Roll.  Great job kids.  Is it a coincidence that six of the first seven I received are or have been students at my hockey school?  I think not!  If you qualify, Email your name, age, GPA (on a 4.0 scale A= 4.0, A- = 3.75, B+ = 3.25, B= 3.0, etc.- must be 3.50 or better), or average overall grade improvement (must be at least one full grade over last year or OGI), or Teacher Recommendation (TR) (must be Emailed directly to me by your teacher and be based on outstanding achievement in a non-letter graded situation), school, team, and state.

NAME            AGE     GPA        SCHOOL                                          TEAM                                        STATE   

Erin Cutter                 10          4.0         Beach Elementary                  Muskegon Chiefs Squirt AA            MI*       

Travis Vayda           13        4.0            Bradon River Middle Sch    Ellenton Eels PeeWee AA                    FL* 

Mark Janninga         10        3.96          St. Mary's School                 Fredrickson Design Squirt                    MI

Tyler Spiering         10         3.9            Sylvan Chr. School                E.G.A.R.H.A. Squirt AA                     MI*

Ian Redlinger            9         4.0            Los Flores Elementary         Anaheim Jr. Ducks Squirt                     CA*

Josh Corgan               8         3.5           N. Muskegon Elementary     Muskegon Chiefs Mite B2                 MI*      

Aaron Alkema          6         TR            Kettle Lake Elementary       G.R.A.H.A. Mite                                     MI*      

Bennett Schneider   12        4.0           Canterbury School               Ellenton Eels PeeWee AA                   FL

Daniel Monteforte   13          3.5         J.T. Lambert Middle Sch      Lehigh Valley Thunder Bantam A      PA     

Sean LaDouce          10          3.97       Saginaw Sherwood Elem       Bay City Blizzards Squirt AA              MI

Ryan Corgan             12          4.0         N. Muskegon Middle Sch    Muskegon Chiefs PeeWee B4           MI*                                   (I hope all of you can make this list.)

* attendees of my hockey camp

COACH TO COACH – from JAY

      Dan and I have established cyber-relationships with many coaches, parents and kids around the country.  One such relationship is with a parent/coach in Atlanta who found himself, a self-styled good ol’ boy from the South, with very little hockey experience coaching for the first time.  His first Email said, in short - “Help!!”.  He got our standard “let them have fun”, “this is about life lessons”, “teach them skills not systems” advice and the fellow has gone from what appeared to be sheer panic to actually having fun. 

Until we got an Email which contained this excerpt:

“I asked you about Ray Ferraro (a former teammate of Dan’s with the Kings who now plays for Atlanta) the last time I wrote you. You mentioned his kids were good skaters.  Well, I ran into one of his sons playing for an opposing team.  He lit the lamp for five goals unassisted. Wow, can that kid play some hockey.  We lost 9-3.”

I wrote back, “Now you have seen the definition of ‘a good skater’.  I’m not surprised about the results of your game or the Ferraro boy’s performance.  Ray used to get to the arena ahead of a Kings’ practice and skate with his kids for a half hour.  Then the kids would stay on the ice and play shinny for another half hour while Ray got dressed for the practice.

“Ray’s kids have three advantages over your players:  Pond hockey ice time, someone to emulate, and someone who can teach them the fundamentals.

“This should be an important lesson to every coach.  Ray's kids are tangible proof of the things I've been telling you; that is, if you teach the fundamentals, and the kids have time to develop (free ice time), they'll be hockey players.  Without the fundamentals and without time to develop, the score will continue to be 9 - 3”.

(Dan would like to interject here.  He thinks more kids become professional athletes by default (that is, by their own ingenuity and devices) than by design (that is, their parents lay out a regimen of practices, special coaches, etc.))

Dan and I have talked a lot about the trend away from practice time to game time.  I think it’s a societal thing.  Baby boomers are results orientated; they don’t want to watch practices were there’s no immediate outcome; they want to see games with scores and winners.  Dan thinks it’s because kids no longer amuse themselves with the backyard, sand lot games where skills are developed as he and his brothers did by the hour in the games of the season.

We both believe skills CANNOT be developed in games.  Consider this.  As I write, Dan gets an average of 15 minutes of playing time per game. He believes his stick is on the puck for 20 seconds per game at most.  So he’s touching the puck less than 30 minutes in an 82 game season.  We think that puck handling-to-playing-time ratio holds true down through the system all the way to Mites.

How much skill improvement happens in those 30 minutes of game time?  We don’t think very much if any.  We suggest that Ray Ferraro’s kids developed more skill in the one hour they skated with Ray and played shinny before one practice than they would have in 82 games. 

So how does skill improvement happen?  Through practice, practice, and more practice.  The Hockey News that came the day I’m writing this (dated 11/10/2000) has a front page headline appropriate to this topic: it reads LEAGUE OF NATIONS.  Its article on pages 10 and 11 points out that 31.8% of the NHLers are non-North American and that this season 45 of 89 NHL (that’s more than half) rookies are non-North American.  

Couple that with the statistic that there are six times as many players in amateur hockey in the US and Canada's than all the kids playing youth hockey in all of Europe.  I believe the reason for their hugely disproportionate success is simple: typically no games until age 10 and two to three practices per game played.

For most of the kids who participate, youth hockey is a pastime.  They’ll play for a few years and something else will seize their interest.  However, if you have a team with players who aspire to take the game as far as they can, remember what their competition in Europe is doing: learning fundamentals and developing their skills, not playing 90 games or playing year ‘round. 

The data in Pavel Bure's draft year reveal he had 25 points in 30 games in league play at the age of 18.  A kid of 18 with skills like that playing only 30 league games?  Was his coach/were his parents nuts?  Perhaps the results of his training speak for themselves.

So if your kids are in this for recreation: play games.  But if you coach a team of kids who aspire to go on in the sport, don’t play games - with their hockey future.

The web site has links to a number of articles on this subject.  I especially recommend the article at http://www.ahai.org/Quotes.htm#jack. 

THIS MONTH’S SAYING TO PUT IN YOUR LOCKER:

 “Success comes in cans.  Failure comes in can’ts”

from a sign in front of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Spring Lake, MI. 

THIS MONTH’S BEST QUESTION TO THE WEBSITE (is a skating tip):

 We have had more comments and questions from coaches and players about Q & A #64 on the web site than any other.  In that answer, I describe that in making turns, you actually lean away from the circle, not into it.  Leaning away helps you maintain your edge longer.  Two individuals have offered additional comments that we think are worth sharing.  They clarify and add to my original answer.  Dan

 E. L. of St. Albert, Alberta, writes:

“I have taught power skating in the past, but I had questions about the leaning in/out of the circle as Dan describes.  A series of E-Mails and a face-to-face meeting with Dan has helped explain what he was saying.  Actually, we were both saying the same thing, but speaking different languages (Dan speaks American, I speak Canadian).  I’ve been asked to try to explain my position.  Maybe the language that I speak will make it easier to understand!

"If you swing a ball around on a short string, you will feel it pull out on your hand.  Swing the same ball at the same speed on a long string, it will pull out much harder (try it if you don’t believe me).  If you spin the ball on the short string very fast, the force pushing out on your hand gets even bigger.  You can make it as much as with the long string.  Of course, spinning the ball on the long string very fast makes it even worse!  This is why we need to bend our knees in tight turns (crossover or tight cuts).  We want to keep the string as short as possible, to keep the force pushing us away from the circle we’re skating, as small as possible.  I think most people understand this.

"If we bend our knees, our upper body can end up at an angle, which makes it hard to see or stickhandle (both come in handy when you’re playing hockey).

"For this reason we’re taught to bend our knees deep, and hold our upper body upright (90 degrees to the ice surface).  We’re taught to lead into the turn with our shoulders to help steer us through the turn. 

"The faster you go, the more you have to lean to keep from getting flung outwards, using your derriere and the boards as a landing assembly.  Unfortunately, when we lean, we expose less and less of our in-turn edge to the ice.

"So how do we overcome this?  You have to learn to keep your hips and shoulders parallel to the ice in your turn.  This will not feel natural at first, but that’s part of learning.  What this will force your body to do is to bend a bit sideways through the knee.  You end up with a low body position to keep the string shorter, an upright upper body to be able to see and stickhandle, hip lean (i.e./ center of gravity) to help us push against the outward pull, and more edge on the ice.  It sounds difficult, and it is - but it isn’t impossible.  It just takes 3 things to get good at it: Practice, Practice, Practice!!!  Once you get the basic form down, you can work at improving your speed through turns.

"Hope this helps!  If Dan can learn it, so can you!   :o)"

K.M. from Chicago writes:

"Doing the turn correctly does feel like "leaning away".  I describe the turn as "keeping the shoulders level", and others describe it as "leaning in with the hip".

"It is simply maintaining proper basic skating form: knees bent, shoulders back, head up and back (nearly) straight.  To turn, the knees are bent even lower (like starting from a standstill) and the shoulders must be kept level.  One leans into the turn with the hip as much as the shoulder.

"If done right, a line drawn from the inside heel though the middle of the butt and chest would point almost straight up.  This keeps the center of gravity low and over one's feet (for stability) and allows the muscles to work freely (for stronger, quicker crossovers and strides)."

My Dad and I thank these contributors.  We hope this clarifies it for you. 

ABOUT ONE KID’S TRIP TO THE NHL—current installment  

After the best start in the history of the Ducks, we went through a stretch of having bad luck when we played well and having no luck when we admittedly did not play as well as we could have.  This concerns everyone from the General Manager to the coaching staff and down to every player.

So there was a lot of evaluation, line shakeups, calling players up from the minors, and self-examination that goes on in a time like this.  One of the things that happens and you may read about in the papers is “players-only” meetings.  The particulars of what happens in these players-only meetings doesn’t go outside the locker room door and if you are waiting for me to tell you what happened, you’re going to be disappointed.  But I’ve been in enough of these meetings to be able to share what typically goes on and share an observation or two.

The team leaders usually carry the burden of the discussion.  Notice I didn’t say the “C” or the “A”s carry the burden, because not all of the team leaders wear letters on the front of their jerseys.  Typically grizzled veterans’ advice is sought and given a lot of weight.  There are often other players who are acknowledged students of the game whose opinion is valued.  Of course, the “C” and the “A”s are expected to provide leadership as well.

Some of the discussion is thoughtful and insightful.  Some of it is an expression of frustration and not as helpful.  But it is usually a frank discussion by professionals who are the best at what they do in the whole world, trying to do what they want to do more than anything else in the world – win (everyone at this level hates to lose).

It is a fascinating thing to watch, to be a part of, and to be a contributor to.  Winning or losing, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

This may seem like an unlikely connection, but I am often struck by how important it is to make the best of your education.  To be able to analyze situations and people, to understand motives, to be able to express oneself clearly and succinctly, and to be able to make rational judgments – these things are so important in life whether you’re in a players-only meeting in the NHL or whatever you do.  

My father and I have often said that one of the most important things you can do to get to play in the NHL is to get good grades in school.  A good education is also very helpful to be an effective team member in the NHL once you get here because there’s more to being in the NHL than what you do on the ice.

Next issue I’ll talk about what life is like on road trips.

So… how’s your season going?   I hope you can Email me the right answer.  

  Dan Bylsma  #21

DAN AND JAY’S BOOKS

So Your Son Wants to Play In The NHL   Published in 1998 by Sleeping Bear Press in the US and McClelland & Stewart in Canada.  HC $24.95.  The story of Dan’s journey from the ice rink in our back yard to the NHL.  Autographed and personalized copies available at www.DanBylsma.com.

So You Want to Play In The NHL  Published in November, 2000, by NTC/Con- temporary Publishing Group.  Trade paperback—$14.95.  Thirty-five questions that aspiring young athletes have and Dan’s and Jay’s alternating answers. Forward by Luc Robitaille. Autographed copies available at www.DanBylsma.com.

Pitcher’s Hands is Out    To be published in February, 2001 by River Road Publishing.  HC and Trade paperback.  A historical novel about what it was like to be a kid living in the Great Depression.  A baseball story.

Dan’s On the web

At www.DanBylsma.com