Post Season Self-Evaluation

All right, you just completed or will soon be completing another hockey season. As we all know, the months you dedicated to your coaches and fellow teammates had their share of ups and downs. Winning streaks, losing streaks, bag skates, injuries, heartbreaking losses and exhilarating game-winning goals. It was an emotional year, much like riding an out-of-control roller coaster, but guess what, you made it.

All the experts say that to reach your full potential; you have to train with purpose, having the mindset of getting better every day. To be able to have purposeful training, you first must do a truthful self-evaluation exercise to identify the player you are today and the player you want to work toward becoming in the future.

I don’t want you to look at it from a team perspective. Your team may have been successful, but you may not have been a significant contributor to the success of the team. Costly mistakes, limited ice-time, no specialty teams opportunities or for the older player, being a healthy scratch. You have to take a hard look at yourself and your game and determine what your strengths are, and even more importantly, what are your weaknesses, which are opportunities for positive growth.

Are you ready to start the exercise? Your first step is to download and print off the Post-Season Self-Evaluation Exercise sheet (Click Here).

Your next step is to fill the sheet out. I’ve broken skill sets into three categories -
Physical, Mental and Intangibles. For each skill set, you are going to give yourself a number 1-5, 1 being areas of your game that are less developed and 5 for the skills that are strong. If you are truthful with your answers, it will give you a very detailed roadmap of what you should be focusing on before the start of next season.

I’d suggest isolating 3 or 4 that will be your primary improvement objectives. You’ll then need to determine how you’re going to develop those areas and who can help you with it. Do you need to find a power skating instructor or personal strength trainer? In most cases, you can’t do it on your own and will need to find someone who specializes in that particular sector of the sport.

I always ask players I work with, “Are you just playing hockey, or training to be a hockey player, where you one day want to play on the best team in your area and college or Junior hockey?” If it’s the latter, then the rules are different, and you have to do way more than everyone else. You have to acknowledge your strengths, but more importantly your weaknesses and not look at them as a negative, but as guideposts to get you to where you want to be.

Best of Luck and always remember to Work Hard and Dream Bigger Than Everyone Else!!