Excelling and playing competitive hockey

Playing competitive hockey with hopes of making it to the national league is something completely possible. If it is your dream, a friends dream a sons dream and even a daughters dream to play in the national hockey league I am begging you to please not doubt them. Practice is something this sport requires to excell at and practicing as hard as you play made me into a solid hockey player. Support from family friends and most of all believing that the possibilities are endless and real for dreams to come true are what makes the dream become a reality. Commitment and ambition are essential variables in the success of any great player. Naturally born on skates for example is someone whose been skating and playing hockey throughout the winter at minimum since the age of four year olds. These are generally going to be the most vigilant and creative players to roam the ice. Not necessarily however because ten thousand hours can be attained quickly after ages of nine through eleven. The sooner the player hits the ice to become natural in the hockey eco-system the more familiar a player becomes with the environment. The player will learn adaptability of the game is also extremely important. Games can change from one match to the next these days from a skill-talented clean smooth game to a gritty, tough and violent one in the course of two days. In some cases even in tournaments. Size is not really a factor in a hockey players capabilities what does matter is the heart of the character, the ability to work hard and understand the dynamics of a team. Team building is an extremely complex series of overlapping cooperations. Most teams fail and some fail forward and get better. Practicing everyday for about thirty minutes from a young age will forge the foundational attributes of any decent hockey player. The love can grow and that time practicing with friends from road hockey games to garage stickhandling and puck shooting can quickly become two or three hours. The game of hockey has evolved to a much more skilled game. Every player has acceptional skills in stickhandling, backhand shooting and passing, recieving passes, picking the corners, passing the puck hard and properly recieving a pass all while moving in motion. Preferably to play hockey it would be ideal to have a colder climate. Renting ice at an arena is not always the most economical way to practice. Frozen ponds are the most economical way to gain lower level practice and game time. Once you have the routine engraved in your lifestyle, eat, sleep, school, friends, hockey it becomes natural to you that you may want to be in the hockey industry. The roaring of the fans at Jr level games and beyond is something worth it if you ever get there. The hockey rink in many ways are just as the roman colossums were years and years ago aside from the end results being death. People come out and watch as elegant skaters fly across the ice occassionally bashing into eachother, while crattiling the puck so articulately almost as if they were rocking a baby. The level of focus the an acceptional puck carrier is known as flow. If you're an avid white collar worker, plumber, electrician, yoga teacher, etc. you'll know this as the state where you're entire and complete attention is on the task at hand and almost as if the rest of the world is irrelevant to what you are doing in this moment. The game has adapted so much to the high skill that not only do you need to feel this state of flow when you are the puck carrier, but also when you are not. Seeing and feeling the ice is known as hockey sense and using the four teamates you have on the ice with you while you're on the ice is equivicol to using five fingers on a key board to type. You need to know where your teammates are not just by seeing and hearing, but by sensing and knowing, trusting. If you want to be the winning team in the league because there is only ever one you need to trust eachother. I would get into spirituality and the dynamics of that while on the ice to create such a chemistry but the physical and socio economic world is not yet ready. The support system is so important in becomnig a very good hockey player. Sacrifices at a young age especially as a teenager can be a struggle. With the way the internet swallows and bullies people it is important to always keep an open dialogue with whomever it is you are supporting or need support from. In the worst case scenario where all support systems are lost and trust is gone, it may be to late to be a successfull hockey player. Try to stay as close as possible to your supportee or supporter. Play as close to home as you can and if you have to billet make sure it is a harmonous and supportive envirnoment. Aside from having these supports give yourself a balance with nature and peace of mind. Hockey can be extremely frustrating if you are on a high level junior and even minor hockey team with high expectations. We all experience losing and droughts without putting up goals or points. Whether you're a grinder or a skilled player it all hits us differently. Give yourself outside of the game to realize that it is truly just a game despite that it can be everything you are if you want to be a professional. Connect to something larger than hockey such as the natural world, friends and family to help you get over the darkest parts especially when unknowingly the dawn is likely just in reach. It is difficult to put a measurement on the time and training you may put into the game when it can sometimes drag on and feel like forever because time moves slower when we are younger. Dreaming of the player you view yourself as is important in the grand picture. Most players are well rounded enough to play almost every roll. The game is changing once again. The high contract players who want ten and eleven million dollars such as the Nylander and Marner deal of the Toronto Maple leafs are absurd. A general manager whose so oblivious to the magnitude of players who would take a two or three million dollar contract and fullfill the same role with less ego, more team centric views and probably more grit to win the toughest trophy in sports is well, jsut oblivious. The boston bruins and st louis blues are the two toughest and hardest working teams in the NHL which is why they were the final contendors for the stanley cup. Every single body check was being finished and that wears and tears the body frequently. The fact that players who cannot make it past the first round are making that kind of coin is ridiculous and reflects the failures of an organization. Moral of the paragraph know that as soon as you hit the ice you have to protect yourself from body checks, slashes, hooks, crosschecks and hopefully the reff calls it a clean and fair game otherwise. Nintey nine percent of reffs are acceptional and want to call a clean and fair game. You may see yourself playing in a game while laying in bed the nigh before scoring a couple of goals in the game tomorrow because that is what you do as a winger. You may see yourself getting a couple of assists that game instead because you are an acceptional playmaker. Or maybe you are a defence men and make an extraordinary play to shut down a two on one. Maybe you view yourself making a rush of a play as a defender for a back door tap in. Imagination is in the roots of the game. Fighting has dwindled down significantly. Which is bad and not really that good. Less fighting has let players get away with more bitching, whinning and assualts thrown at the refs. A player should never want to fight just to fight. That is not the game of hockey. However, a player should want to fight to give his team an egnimatic boost of moral on the bench. A player should want to fight to shut the chirper up on the other team. And a player should want to fight to stand up for him or herself in the scenario that another player gives him or her a slash, hack or whack that they have no tolerance for. In other words I enjoy the fight in hockey because like anything in life actions speak louder than words. When I was playing in teh greater ontario junior hockey league at sixteen and seventeen I saw myself in five or six different fights on the ice over a fifty game seson and close to twenty game playoff run, the next season was just short of fifty games aswell. Take no shit from players regardless of age. If you are sixteen playing with twenty year olds you better be physical and mentally ready. Just as is in the national league. I know that big shooters and general managers do not want anything happening to their one hundred and sixty five pound five foot eight first round draft picks but that is why there was an enforcer to protect them. Now that the game is changing every player should be able to do this task themselves. Some guys can be scarier on the others based on size on and training. I do not believe that you need to take any fighting training nor should you. The fight on the ice is more of a parking lot street style scrap. The worse someone should leave with is a black eye, chipped or lost tooth, cut lip. You are not fighting to knock someone out or kill but rather to prove a point of strength and honour.