Written by Danny Carels, Male U15 Prep Assistant Coach at the Pilot Mound Hockey Academy.
Most Players, parents, and fans will decide if a season has been successful based on how many tournaments they went to, how many games their team won or how many goals they got; well most of this depends a lot on what league you play in and the caliber of the hockey. If a player can skate it end
to end and score 5 goals a game, is he learning anything, are their teammates learning anything? Or if a team wins every game by 10 goals, are they improving individually as fast as if the same team played in a higher caliber and lost every game by 2 or 3? Right up until the NHL, whether it’s A, AA, AAA, Junior, or WHL, the main goal is to develop players and get them ready for the next level. Players will develop better if they are challenged every time they get on the ice, so sometimes this means they might not score many goals or win a lot of games. Most players have that competitive edge and hate losing, so push themselves a lot harder if they are challenged, whereas a player who isn’t challenged might not see the reason to push themselves to get better and possibly fall behind or not progress as fast.
Winning is a lot more fun then losing, but at the end of the season its all about the development of the individual player. How much did they improve from the start of the season to the end? Did they get faster, stronger, more skilled? Did they learn to work with there teammates and have a better understanding of the game? Did they become better both on and off the ice? Did they learn any life
lessons? Did, they push themselves and never gave up? If the answer to most of these questions is yes, then I'd say that the season was pretty successful.