Coaching Life Skills: Work Ethic in Hockey

There are various hockey skills that are applicable not only in the game, but in life outside as well. As a coach, there are times in the locker room where I find myself talking about life, when I'm really intending to talk about hockey. Some of the lessons that we teach the kids about the game are directly applicable to the way in which they live their lives outside of the rink. This is the beauty of coaching and sports in general. Much of what we learn about teamwork, work ethic, and sportsmanship is beneficial to the people that we are in the real world.

One of the concepts that the coaches that I work with try to convey to the kids is the value of hard work. In hockey, there are those players that have natural ability, those players that have enduring work ethic, and then, those players that have both. Which players have the most success? Well, undoubtedly, it's the kids who have both natural ability and work ethic. Think about professional hockey players; they are all extremely skilled, but you can also bet that they've worked their tails off to be in the position that they are. However, while natural ability is just that, natural, work ethic takes will and determination. Personally, I'd rather have a team full of kids with little skill that worked as hard as they could than a team full of kids with skills that didn't show an ounce of effort. I learned a long time ago, in the real world, it's not necessarily how smart you are; it's how hard you work with that intelligence. As the adage goes: hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.

Working hard is vitally important in various aspects of life, just as it is at various points in the hockey game. Whether you're digging for a puck in the corner, fore-checking, back-checking, or simply driving hard to the net, you'd better be doing it hard. And, in life, working hard is the key to achieving the goals that you set. Coming from a family with parents that worked hard their entire lives, I've always placed a certain value on work ethic. I can only hope that instilling this value on the younger generations will make them not only better hockey players, but also better persons.