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Cold, Dry Hands

By Hal Tearse, 11/28/23, 10:00AM CST

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How short is your team's bench?

Hockey is a team game, and youth hockey is for the enjoyment and development of all the players. At the college and professional ranks, teams play 3 lines regularly and often times use the fourth line. In youth hockey, the holy grail of “winning” is too often used to relegate the third line to the bench in many games.

When I coached Bantam A teams, our opponents regularly shortened their bench early in the game. We beat a better team in Regions a couple years because they only played two of their three lines. We changed our three lines every 30 seconds and wore them out. When we went through the post game handshake, there were five cold, dry hands. It was the last game of the season for them and the third line did not skate a shift.

In another instance, the third line never played a shift against us…in a scrimmage…in October!

So what is this all about? Is it about winning? Perhaps, or maybe, it is about not losing. Perhaps the fear of losing is stronger than the joy of winning. I cannot actually understand what is so important that a coach needs to sit a third of the team down in the important games, much less games early in the year. The impact on those players is devastating. Winning cannot heal the damage.

I am often told that the parents and players were told by the coach at the beginning of the season that this might occur, and that everybody agreed to it. This is self serving for the coach because when would a parent or player speak up against a policy like this? After all, every parent and player thinks it will be the other kids who sit out. It is not until it occurs to them that the reality sinks in. By the time it happens, it is too late to object. The parents of the players who are getting the extra ice time are suddenly in favor of the short bench and will not speak up.

I know that there are two schools of thought about this. The first is that winning is the salve that heals all wounds. A player relegated to the bench during the championship run should be happy to be along for the ride. The second is that we play all season together as a team and as a team, we will finish by playing together.

At the higher levels of hockey, where it is a business and winning actually affects players and coach’s careers, player utilization is accepted by the participants. Players are delegated certain roles, and they need to fulfill those expectations. In youth hockey, winning feels good but there are few real benefits other than adult ego gratification. I believe that in youth hockey there is no place for the short bench. A good coach can manage the players so that all of the skaters participate in the game. A good coach will spend extra time with the weaker players throughout the season to improve their skills. A coach who starts the season by talking about skill development, teaching, self esteem, and having fun would not break his word by shortening the bench. The short bench is the easy way out for a coach who has not prepared his team properly.

Does this mean a youth coach should run the lines in order - one, two, three? Well, for the most part, yes. I would suggest that a skilled coach can find a way to equal the ice time out. Will some players get more ice time than others? Yes. In fact, some players do not want to be put into the game in pressure situations. Are there specific reasons to reduce ice time for individual players? Yes, there are (discipline or perhaps illness) but to relegate five skaters and a goalie to the bench for extended periods of time in order to win is not a valid reason. In effect, the message to those benched players is that they are being penalized for lack of talent, and they are not really part of the team.

The game is for the kids, all of the kids. Research nationwide tells us that players would rather play on a team that wins 50% of their games than sit on the bench of a championship team with little or no playing time. The bottom line is that all of the kids want to play.

I can personally cite numerous conversations with Peewee and Bantam parents over the past several years that told me that their boys had played for five or six years, and they were about to quit because there is so much pressure to win. It just was not fun anymore. I received numerous emails this past season from parents upset that their child’s coach was routinely running a short bench. One was from the parents of a Squirt C team.

This is an issue that needs to be resolved at the beginning of each season. The parents and coaches need to all understand the policy. With a no short bench policy, there are no problems. If your team is going to have a short bench policy, perhaps it is better to not have three lines but rather roster only 14 players. That would solve the problem.

This one issue alone ruins the season for hundreds of kids and parents each year. Victory is hollow for the players who sat and watched their teammates play.

Parents of youth players should not put up with short bench policies. You need to get a commitment from your coaches at the beginning of the year that they will not shorten the bench. Be proactive about this issue at the beginning of the season because once the train leaves the station it is to. late to get off.

Thoughts From the Bench

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