Very wise coaches often say that it isn’t practice that makes perfect.  They say practice makes permanent and that perfect skill comes from perfect practice.  But why so much attention on perfection?  Is perfect technique the key to great hockey ability?

Of course better technique can only be an asset to our performance.  Greater efficiency in the stride can equate to greater acceleration, agility, and top speed.  Better shooting technique can help with velocity, release time, and accuracy.  No one would argue that improved technique is not valuable.  But if we had to choose between striving to perfect our techniques or working to have solid technique that we can use while focusing on something other than the technique itself, which should we choose?

In a culture that that has been flooded with the variations of “practice makes perfect”, most folks are conditioned to think perfection is the priority.  On the surface, most think that physical skill should be as near perfect as possible to foster the best hockey player.  Is that the whole story?

The key to answer this is to understand that we can execute a skill in two ways.  One way is to focus on it and do it as well as possible.  The other is to execute it while focused on something else, which, unless the player’s skill set is very well prepared, leads to a reduction in skill quality.  In the game of hockey, we almost always execute our skills in this second mode where it is tougher to execute with quality.  We are almost always focused on the flow and tactics of the game (and not on the technique itself).

Lets consider some situations in sports where striving for absolute perfect quality would be the right approach.  In golf, the best players choose their club, the swing they are going to use, and the line they will aim down while factoring in the wind, elevation change, the slope of the landing area, and the condition of the surface they from which they are hitting.  Once those decisions are made, they actually try to eliminate all other thoughts and concentrate only on executing the swing.

An elite 100 Meter sprinter knows exactly what direction they need to run, how far, what technique they will need to use, and how hard they will have to push themselves all before the race starts.  The only thing they don’t know is exactly what instant the race will start.  Aside from that, their focus is 100% on executing as well as possible at top exertion.

Hockey is not this way.  To play well, virtually everything we do while playing the game is dictated by interaction with our teammates and the opponent.

The question is not how close your technique is to perfect.  It is, “how good is your technique when it is being controlled while your focus is elsewhere?”

The NHL is not filled with guys who have perfect technique (though there are many who have near perfect technique) but it is filled with players whose skill remains at a very high level even when executed at the NHLs breakneck pace.  Men's leagues here in Minnesota feature a lot of guys who are near perfect in many of their techniques but could not translate that to a high enough pace to play at the highest levels.

Imagine the wizardry of Pavel Datsyuk playing opponents for fools with his ability to read and react to opportunities all while skating and puckhandling at exceptional levels.  The secret is his ability to do all of it at once.  Plus, while he’s doing it, he is thinking about the play as opposed to his skating or puckhandling technique.  He is special because he can execute those techniques at a world-class level without even thinking about them!

In Part 2, we’ll consider how to best prepare players for this challenge as they advance in the game.