• Jason Yee

What Is 2.0 Hockey Development?

2.0 Hockey Development is a toolkit for a hockey player to control the uncontrollables. It's a way to predict the unpredictable. And it gives an entirely new meaning to the term: Training To Game Transfer. TTGT 2.0 if you will.

Here are the two Principles of 2.0 Hockey Development:

1. Optionality

2. Addition Through Subtraction

1. Optionality

Optionality is the ability to always have movement options available to you.

The best way to improve your optionality is to identify which mechanics NHLers routinely execute in a game that you cannot execute. Then learn to move with that new mechanic.

We call that going from 0 to 1.

Each new mechanic that you add to your mechanic stack doubles your odds of success.

When you add a new mechanic that you previously couldn't execute, you create new possibilities for movement. Options that never existed to you before become accessible.

You don't have to work harder for these options. They just exist for you now.

When a player has no options with the puck, they make bad plays. When a player has options, they can choose. This choosing is where hockey sense happens. Not through some innate gift. But from the experience of choosing again and again and again. Sometimes right. Sometimes wrong.

When you choose enough times, you learn. And that's where hockey sense is present for you. In the learning.

But until you have options, you can't make a choice. And therefore hockey sense doesn't exist to you.

2. Addition Through Subtraction

Via Negativa. Refinement. The daily removal of excess.

At a certain point, a player is able to execute the 26 Downhill NHL skating mechanics that we've discovered. But the degree to which each mechanic is transferable to game a situation is dependent on the consistency.

Going from 0 to 1 gives you options. Now we ask, how many times can you execute that mechanic perfectly, at speed, under pressure?

When you are at 1/10, you'll pull it off "if you're lucky".

When you are at 5/10, you'll pull it off "sometimes".

When you are at 9/10, you have NHL level skill.

What is surprising is that even first liners in the NHL can't execute all 26 mechanics at 9/10 consistency. Perhaps Crosby, McDavid, and other superstars can. But many NHL first liners actually "get by" with a partial mechanic stack.

Instead, they combine 3-4 mechanics that work, and repeat them again and again. And they work well enough to be a first liner in the NHL.

The future of hockey is great. If an NHL first liner is egoless enough to get uncomfortable going 0 to 1 in one mechanic, they'll double their odds of success. It's astounding what is possible for these players. And you.

So you're not that far off if you're taking this approach to your development. But if you're not thinking about optionality and addition through subtraction - then no amount of cone skills, power skating, and "hockey sense" training will get you where you want to go. Sorry.


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