Coaches Who Pick on Players to Show Dominance

I started playing hockey at 13 and didn't know anything. I was always catching up to years of experience I'd missed, learning on the fly, figuring it out as I went. I got yelled at. A lot. Most players do. I didn't love it, but I took notes, I improved fast because I had to, and I eventually moved on.

When I started coaching, I started watching other coaches the way I used to watch drills. And what I saw was consistent enough that I couldn't ignore it anymore.

There were a lot of yellers.

I kept thinking, just tell them what to do and they'll probably do it. But the yelling never stopped, and eventually I understood why. These coaches weren't yelling to fix anything. They were yelling to stay in charge.

Here's what tipped me off. Two players run the same drill. First player makes a mistake. Coach lets it go. Second player makes the exact same mistake. Coach blows the whistle, stops everything, and goes after that second player in front of the whole team.

Same mistake. Different treatment. That's not coaching. That's control.

Hockey coaches are, in a lot of ways, the same person throughout history. There's no university you go to. There's no certification that teaches you how to actually fix a skating problem or rebuild someone's mechanics under pressure. What most coaches do is watch the coaches before them and repeat what they saw. And what most of them saw was yelling.

Boys especially respond to a certain kind of group pressure. When a coach can't fix a problem through explanation or demonstration, the next tool they reach for is fear. Make an example out of someone, and the rest of the group will try harder to avoid the same thing. That's the theory. And it almost works, which is why it keeps happening.

It's almost always the same type of kid. Eager to please. Soft-spoken. Hard-working. Genuinely trying. This player becomes what I can only describe as a whipping post.

The coach identifies them early, often without realizing it. This player won't fight back. They won't go to their parents. They won't make a scene. So every time the coach needs to reassert control, this is the player who gets called out, even when they didn't do anything the two players before them didn't do.

I've seen coaches break sticks over this. Knock over water bottles. Go full theater. And what they almost never do is actually fix the problem. They identify what went wrong, make everyone aware of it, and move on. The player is no better after than before. They're just rattled.

I always know when I've been coaching girls instead of boys because I come home in a better mood.

With girls and women, dominance doesn't work. It backfires immediately. They're more literal learners. If you tell them what to do and explain why, they do it. You don't have to hold a line of fear to get their respect. You can joke around, have fun, come back to work without the whole group testing whether you're still in charge.

A lot of girls and women come to hockey for the social aspect too. They're not imagining themselves as gladiators. With boys, there's almost always an undercurrent of competition with the coach. Who's really running this thing? Who's tougher? The yelling is partly an answer to a question nobody's asking out loud.

The label almost always starts small. A coach mentions something in passing to the player, something about positioning or effort or attitude. At that point, it's still at the player level. If it gets to the parents, things have already escalated.

Before you go talk to anyone, pull up video. LiveBarn if your rink has it. Your phone if it doesn't. Watch the thing they're talking about. Is there something real there? If there is, fix it. Go hard into fixing it. Make it obvious. The best thing you can do when someone is pointing at a problem is make it impossible to point at anymore.

Don't pull the kid from the team.

Pulling a player from a team follows them. Word travels in hockey. Even if you leave the state or the province, someone knows someone. The story becomes that the player couldn't handle it. That's harder to shake than the original label ever was.

The only real option is to outgrow it.

The label doesn't follow the player forever. It follows them until they become undeniable.

Start scoring more. Become a bigger presence. Develop the skill nobody can ignore, whether that's your shot, your physicality, your defensive reads, whatever you're already closest to. When you're genuinely good, all the old stuff fades. The coach who singled you out starts finding reasons to play you more.

Improvement resets the whole relationship.

The best response I ever found to a coach getting on me about something was to take it seriously in a way they couldn't deny. I won both ways. I stopped being a target and I got better.

That's still the answer.