The Coach's Road

This weeks episode we welcome on Travis Crickard, Program Specialist for Hockey Canada. Originally we had Travis on to talk about his Coach's Road but we get into some theoretical topics so we thought it would be a good fit for this week's episode! We get into Travis' career, the adjustments he and his team have made for COVID, the impact science has on his coaching, the experiences he had with th...

On this weeks Coach's Road we welcome on Oliver David, Head Coach of the USHL Dubuque Fighting Saints. It was a great conversation this week with Oliver and we dive into his career, the core principles in his team and why he won the USHL Coach of the Year award in 2019-2020 season. Oliver shares a lot of great ideas and thoughts and creates a great open conversation in this weeks episode. We hope...

This week we welcome on Tobias Johansson, U20 Head Coach and Director of Player Development Academy for the Frölunda Indians in Gothenburg, Sweden. It was an exciting chat with a great hockey mind. In our conversation, Tobias offers a lot of insights into Frölunda's process and philosophy which builds nicely on the episode with Mikael Ström. We chat about the way they practice in Frölunda, the dif...

In this week's episode we welcome on Dean Kriellaars from the College of Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Manitoba. We talk with Dean about Physical Literacy and his work in this field. This is quite the episode exploring physical literacy and everything that it goes into. We talk about what physical literacy is, how we inspire people to move, physical literacy enhanced design, and the...

This week we welcome on Topher Scott, founder of The Hockey Think Tank and co-host of The Hockey Think Tank Podcast. With this episode however, we focus more on Topher's other role as the Director of the Syracuse Nationals AAA Program in New York State. We explore his coaching philosophy and core values, his motivation for getting into youth hockey and the vision and goals he has for his club. The...

On this week's episode we welcome on Ted Suihkonen, Director of Player Development and Skills Specialist for HC Lokomotiv in the KHL. Ted brings a lot of experience in the world of skill development into our conversation today and a lot of great thoughts as well. In today's show we talk about how Ted got started in skill development, how he educates himself in the field, and a little about his com...

On this episode of our Coach's Road series we welcome on Jochen Molling. Jochen has a storied playing career starting back in West Berlin and ended with 17 years playing on the professional level including 7 world championships and the 1998  Olympic Games in Nagano. He started his coaching career in Berlin for ECC Pressen Berlin. In Berlin he coached Rick for three years. After his time in Berlin...

This week we welcome on Mark Smith, the High Performance Director and Head Coach of the Women's Olympic Team for Softball Canada. With Mark we explore what it takes to develop a winning and successful culture, the characteristics of winning individual and how to develop competitive habits. Mark provides a great and refreshing conversation on this weeks episode with a lot of really good insigh...

This week we have our second round table discussion on the Coach's Road featuring Regional Managers/Coaches from the United States, Sweden and Finland. With Joe Bonnett from the US, Markus Korpinen from Sweden, and Olli Savikko from Finland we dive a little deeper into hockey in these three countries. Specifically we talk about the cooperation in and between their countries, what coaching developm...

On this week's episode we welcome on Mental Coach and CEO of INTOValmennus, Laura Andelin to discuss psychological safety and its impact on learning and development. Laura provides a lot of insight into the impact of feeling unsafe as an athlete, the role of autonomy in feeling safe, and what we can do as coaches to help our athletes feel more safe. She provides a lot of information in such an imp...

On this week's Coach's Road we welcome on Mika Saarinen, Senior Lecturer in the Degree Program of Sports Coaching and Management here in Vierumäki. Mika has a long history of coaching at the elite level of hockey including spending time as the Head Coach for JYP and Tappara in Liiga and the Assistant Coach for the Pelicans in Liiga and most recently as the Assistant Coach for Jokerit in the KHL th...

In this week's episode we chat with Anders Wahlström the Children and Youth Manager for the Swedish Ice Hockey Association about a recent study done between them and FIHA on the appropriate game formats for youth hockey. We dive into the results of the study and talk about how it is being implemented and the expectations for the changes. We also talk about the new Home Field Model that the Swedish...

In this episode of the show we welcome on Gordon Bloom, Sport Psychology Professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. We talk about the importance of team building and cohesion for team performance and how the behavior of the coach impacts that process. We go through several hypothetical solutions and Gordon provides some great interventions that coaches can do to help right the ship. Final...

On this week's episode we welcome on Juha Vuori, Assistant Coach of Klagenfurt AC in Austria. We talk with Juha about invasion game principles and game situation roles. This week's episode is a little shorter but hits on some really important topics including what the objectives of invasion games are, how to teach in invasion games, the benefits of playing multiple invasion games, playing roles an...

In this Coach's Road we explore the journey of Shaun Hathaway, Executive Director of Team Colorado Girls AAA Hockey Program. Shaun also serves as the Head Coach of the Colorado Springs Jr. Tigers 14 & Under team and the ADM Coordinator for the state of Colorado. Previously Shaun served as the Executive Director of the Aspen Leafs and has been involved in youth hockey in Colorado since 1997. Sh...

This week we explore what Fun is from the perspective of the players. Our guest is Heather Mannix, USA Hockey Regional Manager and researcher on the Fun Integration Theory. With Heather we explore the operational definition of fun that the Fun Maps provide, how to create a Fun environment, what makes certain activities Fun and how Fun is connected to motivation, participation, confidence and devel...

In this week's episode we chat with Darren Kruisselbrink, a Professor of Motor Learning and Applied Sports Psychology at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. We cover a lot in this week's episode including Darren's unique combination of Applied Sports Psych and Motor Learning, what is required to learn from a psychological perspective, what is expertise and what are the common features in the backgro...

This week's episode features Anders Lundberg, the Manager of Player Development for the Swedish Ice Hockey Association. Anders also serves as the head coach of the U18 Women's National Team in Sweden. This is the next installation in our series exploring top development countries around the world but one of our favorites as it is full of practical ideas that can be implemented by any coach around...

In this episode we explore the path of Dan Jablonic, father of twins and ADM Regional Manager for USA Hockey. Dan grew up playing in Minnesota where he played for Blaine High School. He then moved to play in the USHL before moving to play at the University of Minnesota Duluth from 1993-97. While at Duluth, Dan received a bachelors in sports psychology. After college he played in the ECHL and spent...

This week we are joined by Tommi Niemelä, the Head Coach of the Lahti Pelicans in Finland. Tommi is an alumni of our program and considered as an expert on coaching the individual within a team. This weeks episode is a little shorter but full of insightful and practical ideas about how to better focus on the individuals that make up your team. The ideas we talk about can be implemented at all ages...

This weeks episode features coaching scientist, team performance consultant and author Wade Gilbert. Wade is also a professor at California State University - Fresno and a editor for the International Sports Coaching Journal. Wade's book " Coaching Better Every Season " is the main topic of this week's episode but we also explore how he got interested in the science of coaching, why he decided to...

This week's episode features Mikael Ström the Development Manager for the Academy and Youth at the Frölunda Indians in Gothenburg. Frölunda is a well respected clubs and has sent many players to the NHL and other professional leagues across the globe and we had Mikael on to find out why they are so successful in developing players. We talk about the club's philosophy, why they are successful, how...

In this episode of The Coach's Road Podcast we explore the journey of Klagenfurter AC Head Coach Petri Matikainen. As a player Petri grew up playing in Finland and moved to play in Canada's OHL for two years. After winning a championship in the OHL and the U20 World Championship with Finland, Petri moved back to Finland to play with Tappara where he won a Liiga title. Petri finished his playing ca...

In today's episode we are joined by Kalle Väliaho, the Youth Hockey Manager from the Finnish Ice Hockey Association. With Kalle we talk about Finnish hockey culture and the keys to their success in international hockey as a small country. We also talk about the key qualities they look to develop in their players and coaches, the environment they want to create, the emphasis they place on the indiv...

This weeks episode features Erkka Westerlund, former Head Coach of the Finnish Men's National Team as well as coaching in Liiga and the KHL. It was an honor to talk with Erkka today about athlete centered coaching and how it differs from coach centered coaching. We also talked with Erkka about why he switched to athlete centered coaching, the benefits this approach has for the athletes and the imp...