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5 Keys to Mental Toughness During Tourney Time

02/20/2015, 12:30pm MST
By Jessi Pierce - Special to USA Hockey

It’s tourney time. The time of year when players tend to feel added pressure. Their mind unwittingly puts extra emphasis on the “big game.” But according to Dr. Peter Haberl, senior sport psychologist at the United States Olympic Committee, having that “big game” mindset could actually hurt performance.

“You actually don’t want to treat it as a big game,” said Dr. Haberl. “If you approach it as the ‘big game,’ that tends to add pressure and tends to make it more difficult rather than just simply playing.”

Here are five ways to help mentally prepare your player for tournament time.

Balance Your Emotions: Hockey is an emotional sport. Ask your kid to find a balance between excitement and calmness. And believe it or not, there is such a thing as being too calm.

“It might not actually be the best thing to calm down too much, partially because hockey is a very intense sport and it requires some intensity. Being calm isn’t what you typically see in hockey players,” he explains. “Rather than calm yourself, you want to normalize the heightened emotion in that moment. Focus and refocus.”

Pregame prep is different for everyone. Pay attention to the routines and mindsets that produce positive results and duplicate.

Focus on the Tasks: Big games can cause a player to think more about the outcome rather than each play or shift.

“Athletes perform their best when they’re focused on the task, and they struggle in their performance when their own mind gets in the way of that focus,” Haberl said. “Sometimes their internal dialogue of winning or losing and what it means to them is highly distractive.”

Encourage your players to take the game play-by-play, shift-by-shift.

“Players have to constantly be in the moment,” said Haberl. “Focus and refocus because that’s what, in the end, will determine a player’s performance; the ability to assess what’s going on in the moment.”

Have a Short Memory: There will be bad games, bad periods, bad shifts, etc. Try to instill that short-memory way of thinking, where a player can accept their mistakes, learn from them and then move on quickly. Hockey is a fast game and requires full attention. Dwelling on previous plays or games can negatively affect performance.

Everybody makes bad plays – even NHL stars Zach Parise and Patrick Kane. It’s how they respond the next shift or game that makes the difference.

Mental Team Toughness: Try lifting a puck with just one finger. It’s not an easy task. Now try it with five. Suddenly it becomes a whole lot easier. The team has to work together and be confident in each other’s abilities.

“It’s highly unlikely that a single player determines the outcome of the game,” said Haberl. “Five players on the ice, working together as a whole has a much better chance at being successful. And when you have players working together as a whole it’s a lot more fun.”

Build mental team toughness through positive reinforcement and encouragement in the locker room, on the ice and on the bench. If the team falls behind a goal or two, don’t let negative thoughts or comments interfere with team’s mission and attitude.

Act on Confidence: There’s a difference between feeling confident and acting confident. A player that takes action on confidence trusts him or herself to make the play happen. They trust that they can make the pass, the shot or the save. Haberl says executing on confidence is more important than simply feeling or thinking it.

“Confidence is a bit overrated,” explains Haberl. “Too many times athletes think that they need to feel a certain way rather than act a certain way. Action itself really comes down to how well did you prepare and how hard did you work. The trust to act a certain way is the result of hard work. You can’t fake yourself with confidence. Unless you’ve done the work, you don’t really have any reason to be confident.

“In the end, success shouldn’t be determined by winning or losing but by how hard you played.”

At Left: The Grand Rapids (Minn.) bantams celebrate their 2014 Minnesota state championship after toppling Stillwater, 3-2. Tournament-time success has become something of a tradition in Grand Rapids, a northern Minnesota town of 11,000 that produces a disproportionately large number of NHL players — 11 to date.

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