skip navigation

14U/16U Q-and-A: Games vs. Training: Which rules supreme?

08/12/2014, 4:45pm MDT
By Ty Hennes, ADM Regional Manager

Q: Games vs. Training: Which rules supreme at 14U and 16U?

A: In today’s youth sports culture, coaches, players and parents know how to surf the web to find the current national rankings of youth hockey teams. Many of those coaches, players and parents tend to view a team’s record as an indication of player development. But is a team’s national ranking indicative of the team’s training program, or is it only the result of recruiting the top players?

Sports science and long-term athlete development research identifies the 14U/16U period as a time to focus on stamina and strength. Athletes in this phase are capable of “building their engine” for future success. This requires adequate strength training, with sessions scheduled during the season, along with striving toward a 3:1 practice-to-game ratio. Valuable games should be scheduled to fit within this training calendar and ratio. Too often we see the opposite approach, in which training and practice schedules are pieced together around the competition schedule.

To put this in perspective, USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program (NTDP) is completely focused on developing players for future success. Each year, the NTDP trains 46 American players covering two birth years. Since it opened in 1996, the NTDP, with its development-centric approach, helped produce 281 NHL draft picks, including a record nine first-round picks in 2016.

The coaching staff and strength coaches are focused solely on developing athletes to reach their maximum potential. Their method is simple: more training and fewer games. The results speak for themselves.

So the training program that prepares many of our country’s top players for future success understands how to assemble a season schedule that maximizes the players’ development. The following numbers mean a lot to the NTDP staff: 135-100-50.

What’s their significance? It’s the NTDP training schedule for the hockey season: 135 practices, 100 strength-training sessions and 50 games.

Does your season training schedule look similar to USA Hockey’s NTDP?

More ADM Newsletter Articles

Tag(s): Newsletters  Q&A Articles