BayToday Hockey Tip #5 - Going from Hesitant to Assertive

Former OHLer and North Bay native Cassidy Preston runs a local hockey development program, Complete Hockey Training, and will be offering his experience, knowledge and enthusiasm in his "BayToday Hockey Tip." Preston currently plays for the York Lions of the OUA, pursing his Bachelors of Science in Kinesiology and was named CIS Academic All-Canadian for the 08/09 season. Enjoy!

My last topic covered aggressive vs assertive, where I promoted assertiveness over aggression. Now I’m going to discuss the other end of the spectrum, going from timid and hesitant to assertive.

I believe it’s a well known fact that assertiveness (often inaccurately referred to as aggression) is an essential characteristic for elite hockey players. It is pretty clear that when two players go into the corner to get the puck that an assertive player will come out with the puck against a timid and hesitant player.

Personally there has been many times when I played timid and hesitant, even though for most of my career I’ve been very assertive. Therefore, it is my hope to provide some useful insight from my personal experiences to help explain why players play hesitant and how they can become assertive.

In reflecting, I found that part of my hesitation was the result of not understanding the difference between aggression and assertiveness. I thought hitting a player too hard wasn’t nice, as it was not what I learned to do growing up. I was aware of the importance for me to play physical, yet I developed a habit of going hard to hit a guy like I was told, but last second slow up or not hit my opponent nearly as hard as I could. I remember being told to “hit like you mean it.” Reasonable advice, but was useless in helping me recognize that playing assertive is a part of the game and doesn’t imply that I am being a bully, cruel or mean. The deciding factor that shifted my game back to being assertive during my junior career was my Sport Psychologist, Barbara Meyer.

The year I spent working with Barbara was instrumental to my overall development. I can still recall our first few sessions where she would simply ask me questions about my game and how I could improve. I would come up with all the answers, and then she would give her thoughts on top. This simplistic but elegant method quickly allowed me to uncover that playing assertive is one of the key components for me to play my best game.

The idea of playing assertive made a lot more sense to me then playing aggressive. I noticed that when I played assertive I didn’t have the little hesitations that I often had hitting my opponents when I thought I was playing aggressive.

On a side note, we now have Don Cherry sending out the message in support of how Mike Richards apparently “hits to hurt.” I don’t know what he is thinking saying that, but we can’t be promoting players to hit to hurt. Moreover, he is only adding more reason for players to become timid and hesitant in fear of hurting others. Not what I would call a great message by any means.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that playing assertive is much more than simply how hard a player makes a body check. When it comes to playing assertive it is more important to work hard and have the will to win puck battles than making a hard hit.

In summary, I found through my experience that a player may be playing timid and hesitant because of a misunderstanding about playing assertive, possibly confusing it with aggression. It is then my tip to resolve this misinterpretation by the player to first clearly understand for themselves the meaning of assertiveness and aggression.

After clarifying, the player can begin engraining how important assertiveness is to their game. I simply recommend that the player takes the time to breakdown their game into a few key components and I’m sure they will find playing assertive to be among the few, just like I did. This awareness will begin the shift in the player’s game and hopefully allow them to let go of the hesitation and truly play assertive.

If you have any questions, comments or an idea for future topics, please email me at [email protected]

If you are interested in my programs check out www.CompleteHockeyTraining.ca

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Complete Hockey Training and Sports Development Program